Эрик Эмблер - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 42, May 1947

“All right then — we’ll advertise for that cottage,” said Karslake. “The papers will make a news story of it, with picture. Warn all stations in the U. K. to study that picture in the Press and report to us if the cottage is in their district.”

In his Appreciation for the Chief, Karslake wrote: “An unpremeditated murder (cigarettes) by a man on familiar terms with deceased, who was urging Henshawk to do something important enough to make the latter forget his appointment with his wife (Mrs. Henshawk’s admitted annoyance). Mrs. Henshawk’s interruption broke the trend of their talk. Henshawk rejected the proposition, whereupon the other lost his temper and struck with the nearest object, not necessarily intending to kill. The murderer owns, or has some direct or indirect interest in, the cottage (theft of drawing: remark reported by Miss Birdridge — ‘I felt sure you wouldn’t mind’ i.e., use of cottage as advertisement). There should be little difficulty in tracing such a cottage.”

Karslake had Miss Birdridge’s report under his hand as he wrote. Yet he missed the clue-value of that other remark about “that damned cow.”

True, the murder was, in the legal sense, unpremeditated. But it might be argued that Harold Ledlaw had been unconsciously premeditating the murder for eighteen years, though he did not know that the victim would be Henshawk.

Ledlaw had been waiting outside Gorlay House expecting Henshawk to leave at the end of the office day. But he spotted him at once when he stepped out of the taxi that brought him from the club.

“Hullo, Albert!... Dammit, you’ve forgotten me!”

“I certainly have not —” a second’s pause “—Harold Ledlaw, of course.” He was pumping the other’s hand. “You’ve changed a lot, old man, but I’d have known you at once anywhere. I suppose we shall both soon be what they call middle-aged. Well, I’m jiggered! We must fix something. Are you staying long?”

“I’m not going back to Canada. It has done me proud, but I’m back for keeps. I landed last week. Been getting acclimatized. I’m counting on you to give me the low-down on one thing and another.”

“Look here, I’m rushed off my feet, but come up to the office for a few minutes and we’ll fix something.”

They ignored the lift and walked to the first floor, exchanging the commonplaces of an almost forgotten friendship, for Ledlaw had been in Canada for nearly eighteen years.

At the first pause, which occurred just outside Henshawk’s private door, Ledlaw said:

“Whiddon Cottage! I heard some of the timber had been cut. Can you tell me anything about it?”

“It so happens I can tell you quite a lot about it — though I’m not in touch with — er — anyone.” He unlocked the private door, said that he must speak to his secretary and, with a fatuous archness, invited the other to look about the office.

The first thing one noticed in that office was the model under its glass dome. Ledlaw stared at it, at first in confusion, then with full recognition.

“My God, what damned cheek, and what the hell does it mean!” he muttered under his breath, then warned himself that he must keep his temper. Albert Henshawk was braying at him from the doorway: he must say something in reply.

“But, my dear fellow, that damned cow spoils the whole thing!” Ledlaw heard his own voice making the protest, and asking what the hand meant, and Henshawk telling him it was a sort of advertisement.

“I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. After all, a place like that belongs, at least in its artistic aspect — well, it belongs to England, don’t you think! It symbolizes the urban Englishman’s dream of home. And that’s my line of business now, Harold — helping the hard-up middle-class to own their homes. I had to put those beastly animals in afterwards on the advice of the advertising experts. You see, the town dweller always fancies he’ll do a spot of spare-time farming, the stock to look after itself and pay off the mortgage.”

There was a good deal of it, but Ledlaw barely listened. He had already decided that they would not “fix something.” He would find out the two things he had come to find out, and then he need never see Henshawk again.

“You were going to tell me about the timber, Albert.”

“Ah! Wheels within wheels! I have not seen — er — Mrs. Ledlaw. But I heard last year through a mutual acquaintance — a woman you don’t know — that your daughter, Harold, wants to be a doctor. Let’s see, she’s nearly eighteen now, isn’t she? That’s a seven-year course. Well — er — my informant said that you would not be asked to make any further contribution. So Mrs. Ledlaw decided to sell the timber in Swallowsbath Rise. Mind you, it won’t affect the look of the place, being the other side of the hill.”

He had been speaking with some awkwardness which now slipped away.

“When I heard this, I thought perhaps Mrs. Ledlaw might want to sell the whole outfit, as I knew you had bought it outright for her. I went down to see her last year, but she was on holiday and the place was shut up. So I thought I’d sketch it. I wrote to her asking if it was in the market and got a reply, written in the third person, saying no. I don’t suppose she remembers me. I haven’t seen her since — well, since.”

So that was that! He had the right to see that his daughter took her medical course in comfort. Now for that other question that must be approached circuitously. Twenty past six. He would have to hurry or he might fumble the showdown he had planned — if indeed it was to be a showdown, of which he was not yet certain.

“There’s another thing I want to ask you, Albert. You perhaps remember that, when Ruth divorced me, I withdrew the defense I had previously entered denying infidelity. I then vamoosed to Canada. I want to know whether you believed what that Valerie Carmaen said — that I had been her lover?”

“Really, Harold, after all these years!” Henshawk was definitely embarrassed.

“You knew her. And you knew she was the kind of dirt I wouldn’t touch if she were the only female left in the world.”

“Yes, yes, Harold! Just as you say!”

“Then you believe she faked that bedroom incident — that my original pleading, which I showed you, stated the truth?”

“Of course, I believe it if you say so! Didn’t I tell you at the time that I believed you! I wondered why you didn’t go on with the defense.”

“I withdrew the defense because Ruth made it clear that, whatever was proved in court, she would believe me guilty. That broke me up, Albert. Ruth and I hadn’t started too well. The first few months had been difficult. But we were just getting right. Life was going to be grand. And then this thing happened.”

“But it’s more than eighteen years ago, old man!”

“To me it’s as if it were yesterday. I know it’s an obsession and not quite sane, and all that. But all these years, when I’ve not been actually working, I’ve felt much as I felt at the time — humiliated, washed up, finished.”

Henshawk was making soothing noises. He looked sympathetic, not afraid. Perhaps, thought Ledlaw, there was no reason why he should be afraid. Perhaps the information he had received about Henshawk had been incorrect. He glanced at the clock — he would know in a few minutes.

“Have you any idea why that girl picked on me? I didn’t like her, but I never insulted her. She had no reason to hate me.”

“No, of course not! You shouldn’t let your mind dwell on it, old man. What about seeing a good psychiatrist?”

“She didn’t hate me. She just used me callously because she wanted to be divorced.”

He was not thinking now of Henshawk. In the grip of his obsession, he repeated the words he had been repeating for eighteen years.