Stephen Barr - Best of the best detective stories - 25th anniversary collection

“How different?” I asked.

“So much younger, if you know what I mean, Sergeant Mortimer. Almost like a girl again, bless her heart.”

I did know. And that was that. Blackmail.

What was I do to? What did my evidence amount to? Nothing. It was all corroborative evidence. If Kelso had done one suspicious thing, or left one real clue, then the story I had made up would have convinced any jury. As it was, in the eyes of a jury he had done one completely unsuspicious thing and had left one real clue to his innocence — his visiting card. Totman would just laugh at me.

I disliked the thought of being laughed at by Totman. I wondered how I could get the laugh on him. I took a bus to Baker Street, and walked into Regent’s Park, not minding where I was going, but just thinking. And then, as I got opposite Hanover Terrace, who should I see but young Roberts.

“Hallo, young fellow, what have you been up to?”

“Hallo, Sarge,” he grinned. “Been calling on my old school chum, Sir William Kelso — or rather, his valet. Tottie thought he might have known Merton. Speaking as one valet to another, so to speak.”

“Is Inspector Totman back?” I asked.

Roberts stood to attention, and said, “No Sergeant Mortimer, Inspector Totman is not expected to return from Leatherhead, Surrey, until a late hour tonight.”

You couldn’t be angry with the boy. At least I couldn’t. He had no respect for anybody, but he was a good lad. And he had an eye like a hawk. Saw everything and forgot none of it.

I said, “I didn’t know Sir William lived up this way.”

Roberts pointed across the road. “Observe the august mansion. Five minutes ago you’d have found me in the basement, talking to a housemaid who thought Merton was a town in Surrey. As it is, of course.”

I had a sudden crazy idea.

“Well, now you’re going back there,” I said. “I’m going to call on Sir William, and I want you handy. Would they let you in at the basement again, or are they sick of you?”

“Sarge, they just love me. When I went, they said, ‘Must you go?’ ”

We say at the Yard, “Once a murderer, always a murderer.” Perhaps that was why I had an absurd feeling that I should like young Roberts within call. Because I was going to tell Sir William Kelso what I’d been thinking about by the Leg of Mutton Pond. I’d only seen him once, but he gave me the idea of being the sort of man who wouldn’t mind killing, but didn’t like lying. I thought he would give himself away... and then — well, there might be a roughhouse, and Roberts would be useful.

As we walked in at the gate together, I looked in my pocket-book for a card. Luckily I had one left, though it wasn’t very clean. It was a bit ink-stained, in fact. Roberts, who never missed anything said, “Personally I always use blotting paper,” and went on whistling. If I hadn’t known him, I shouldn’t have known what he was talking about. I said, “Oh, do you?” and rang the bell. I gave the maid my card and asked if Sir William could see me, and at the same time Roberts gave her a wink and indicated the back door. She nodded to him, and asked me to come in. Roberts went down and waited for her in the basement. I felt safer.

Sir William was a big man, as big as I was. But of course a lot older. He said, “Well, Sergeant, what can I do for you?” twiddling my card in his fingers. He seemed quite friendly about it. “Sit down, won’t you?”

I said, “I think I’ll stand, Sir William. I want just to ask you one question, if I may?” Yes, I know I was crazy, but somehow I felt inspired.

“By all means,” he said, obviously not much interested.

“When did you first discover that Perkins was blackmailing Lady Hedingham?”

He was standing in front of his big desk, and I was opposite him. He stopped fiddling with my card and became absolutely still; and there was a silence so complete that I could feel it in every nerve of my body. I kept my eyes on his, you may be sure. We stood there, I don’t know how long.

“Is that the only question?” he asked. The thing that frightened me was that his voice was just the same as before. Ordinary.

“Well, just one more. Have you a typewriter in your house?” Just corroborative evidence again, that’s all. But it told him that I knew.

He gave a long sigh, tossed the card into the wastepaper basket and walked to the window. He stood there with his back to me, looking out but seeing nothing. Thinking. He must have stood there for a couple of minutes. Then he turned around, and to my amazement he had a friendly smile on his face. “I think we’d both better sit down,” he said. We did.

“There is a typewriter in the house which I sometimes use,” he began. “I daresay you use one too.”

“I do.”

“And so do thousands of other people — including, it may be, the murderer you are looking for.”

“Thousands of people, including the murderer,” I agreed.

He noticed the difference, and smiled. “People” I had said not “other people.” And I didn’t say I was looking for him. Because I had found him.

“And then,” I went on, “there was the actual wording of the typed message.”

“Was there anything remarkable about it?”

“No. Except that it was exactly right.”

“Oh, my dear fellow, anyone could have got it right. A simple birthday greeting.”

“Anyone in your own class, Sir William, who knew you both. But that’s all. It’s Inspector Totman’s birthday tomorrow.” I added to myself: As he keeps telling us, damn him!

“If I sent him a bottle of whiskey, young Roberts — that’s the constable who’s in on this case; you may have seen him about, he’s waiting for me now down below” — I thought this was rather a neat way of getting that in — “Roberts could make a guess at what I’d say, and so could anybody at the Yard who knows us both, and they wouldn’t be far wrong. But you couldn’t. Sir William.”

He looked at me. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. I wondered what he was thinking. At last he said, “You’d probably say, ‘A long life and all the best, with the admiring good wishes of—’ How’s that?”

It was devilish. First that he had really been thinking it out when he had so much else to think about, and then that he’d got it so right. That “admiring” which meant that he’d studied Totman just as he was studying me, and knew how I’d play up to him.

“You see,” he smiled, “it isn’t really difficult. And the fact that my card was used is in itself convincing evidence of my innocence, don’t you think?”

“To a jury perhaps,” I said, “but not to me.”

“I wish I could convince you ,” he murmured to himself. “Well, what are you doing about it?”

“I shall, of course, put my reconstruction of the case in front of Inspector Totman tomorrow.”

“Ah! A nice birthday surprise for him. And, knowing your Totman, what do you think he will do?”

He had me there, and he knew it.

“I think you know him too. Sir,” I said.

“I do,” he smiled.

“And me, I daresay, and anybody else you meet. Quick as lightning. But even ordinary men like me have a sort of sudden understanding of people sometimes. As I’ve got of you. Sir. And I’ve a sort of feeling that, if ever we get you into a witness box, and you’ve taken the oath, you won’t find perjury so much to your liking as murder. Or what the law calls murder.”

“But you don’t?” he said quickly.

“I think,” I said, “that there are a lot of people who ought to be killed. But I’m a policeman, and what I think isn’t evidence. You killed Perkins, didn’t you?”

He nodded; and then said almost with a grin at me, “A nervous affection of the head, if you put it in evidence. I could get a specialist to swear to it.”