Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

He drove the fifteen miles to the outworked gravel pit and stowed the body in the brambles.

By four in the morning he was back in his flat in Wengrove Square, which is in West London. The square is an open car park and he was as confident as he was entitled to be that no one in London had observed his movements with the car.

The Blueprint gave place to a formula — that on the Tuesday afternoon Brendwright had accepted Finchmoor’s detailed offer. Thus, on the following morning, Wednesday, Finchmoor went to his office as usual. After returning the deedbox to the Safe Deposit he instructed his lawyer to start the ball rolling.

On Thursday morning his secretary handed him a telephoned message from Lorna: Re Thaleham: please ring my flat He guessed her news Re Thaleham. He did not ring. In half an hour he was on his way to her flat in West Kensington.

“Uncle John is missing.” She spoke as if telling him gently that he had bungled. “Mrs. Harbutt rang me before I left for the office.” Presently she was describing the functions of Mrs. Harbutt.

“She’s a very sensible woman. This morning she found the house empty. There was some rigmarole I couldn’t follow about a pie which he had or had not eaten. For some reason the pie incident upset her. His bed had not been slept in Wednesday night — she poked about and found that he must have left the house in the clothes he was wearing. So I rang the local police and told them what I suspected.”

That revealed to him some of his mistakes.

“And what do you suspect?”

He had to wait for her answer.

“This is going to be difficult, Harry. Please be patient with me,” she pleaded. “I was staggered when you told me on the telephone that he had accepted your offer. You had been in the house for less than two hours. In that short time you cured him of his obsession. I tried to believe it.”

“Go on,” he invited. This was getting very near the knuckle. “What did you believe instead?”

“That he was putting on an act. He saw that the land would be taken from him — your payments would seem to him a sort of sellout of his honor. I believe his mind was upset and that he went out and drowned himself.”

She would soon learn that it had not been suicide. And she would still not believe that he had talked the old man over. His position would need some strengthening.

“I don’t think suicide was in his mind,” he said weightily, “but I think death was. Perhaps that doctor really did scare him. Anyway, he said that if he were to die while our deal was still being dolled up by the lawyers I must promise to transfer the whole deal to you, as beneficiary. I gave him my promise.”

Like the traditional pirate, he was dumping some of his cargo in the hope of shaking off his pursuers. Not as a bribe — you couldn’t bribe Lorna. He was paying — say, £ 12,000 — to give his statement the color of truth.

“He was a pathetic old dreamer!” There was compassion in her voice and gentleness in her eyes. “The obsession again! Like Mother, I am his ‘kinswoman.’ He wanted to provide for me in this left-handed way.”

“Very sensible of him, I’d say.”

“Uncle John was not very sane. And of course I shall not hold you to that promise.”

“You could not hold me to that promise and you cannot release me,” he said. He had come near to bluffing himself that he was behaving in an honorable and generous manner. “My lawyers will handle it — if your uncle really is dead.”

He expected her to protest that she would refuse the money. But she did not.

“I see that was a foolish remark of mine — I apologize,” she said. “I will not obstruct your lawyers.”

Not even a thank-you. Very reasonable, in view of the explanation he had given her. Most women, he felt, would have fluttered a little — stammering out something about an honorable and generous act. But not Lorna.

After lunch he told his lawyers the little tale about the promise. It would be better, he said, to embody the reversion to Lorna in the Agreement.

On Saturday the local police called in Scotland Yard. On the following Thursday a local constable, patrolling the Wey Valley with a dog, found the body. It missed the evening editions — Finchmoor heard about it from a radio news flash and hurried home to await the police. But his only caller that evening was Lorna.

“I was wrong about suicide,” she said, in a tone in which she might have remarked on the weather.

“Come inside, first. You look tired out.”

She stopped in the doorway of the sitting room.

“He has been murdered — strangled.” Her voice was thin and uncontrolled. “He was found — Harry, the body was found — in an outworked gravel pit in the Wey Valley.”

“Steady!” He led her to a chair and gave her brandy.

She sipped and put down the glass. “I don’t know why I behaved like that. It did not occur to me that it might be our gravel pit until I came into this room.”

She meant that she had suddenly glimpsed the possibility that he might be the murderer, even if she had already put the thought aside. She could suspect him if she liked — the police certainly would. But nobody could now prove the exact time of death.

“Let’s stare this in the face,” he said. “There are at least a couple of hundred ex-gravel pits in that stretch of the valley. Still, it might turn out to be our gravel pit. But can we call it our gravel pit? I don’t really feel sentimental about my act of youthful loutishness.”

“You’re quite right,” she said. “We’ve met again as adults — as different persons.” She talked about her interview with the police. “A Chief Inspector Karslake — a pleasant enough man but asking wearisome questions about Uncle John. Oh! — he asked me if anyone profited by his death and I said I thought you did.”

“Actually, I don’t — but it doesn’t matter — the police will come to see me anyway.”

Karslake called in the morning — at Finchmoor’s flat, before he left for the office. He began by asking the effect of Brendwright’s death on the land development scheme.

“No effect at all on my interest in the deal.” He brought in the little tale about Lorna as beneficiary. “If you want the details, my solicitors will give you the layout.” He could not resist adding another bit of color. “The truth is, Mr. Karslake, the murderer came too late to be of any use to me.”

He was equally ready to account for his movements.

“In my mind the saga begins when I had lunch with Miss Brendwright on Tuesday, when she warned me the Compulsory Purchase was threatening. From the Besc Chinar to the Safe Deposit to collect relevant documents — then Thaleham by train, catching the 6:20 back — dinner at my club — then home, to work into the small hours. Between then and now — office — deedbox back to Safe Deposit — lunch — solicitors — office — home — late work again. Oh, yes, one morning visit to Miss Brendwright’s flat.”

There were gaps, of course, which Karslake probed but without finding a sensitive spot. In short, the alibi stood up.

If Finchmoor had no motive for the murder, who had? Beginning with the owner of the village pub, Karslake found about fifty persons who would benefit, indirectly, but certainly, from the building scheme which Brendwright was known to be opposing.

The medical evidence boiled down to the opinion that death had occurred within twenty-four hours of midday on Wednesday. Police work had established that the murder had been committed in the house, after Mrs. Harbutt had left it at about five on Tuesday afternoon and before she returned at eight on Thursday morning.