Maurice Walsh - Nine Strings to your Bow

“Fair enough,” he said. “I’m told you can be real tough in a free-for-all. Where do I begin saving my hide?”

Peter leaned back too, and turned his head towards the bar door. “Another beer, Mister,” Peter called.

“A tankard of plain, Mike,” Con gave his order.

“Suppose you begin by telling me some of the things Dick Myles would say about you?” invited Peter.

Con lit a cigarette and inhaled a few times before he began.

“God instruct me!” he said. “Dick Myles would tell you something like this. We entered the Force together, and he was my best friend—”

“Not any more?”

“We are still friendly, but our lines moved apart. He is an Inspector, and I got thrown out on my ear, and barely escaped a spell in jail—”

“That one of your qualifications?”

“You might think so when I tell you that the man that got me dismissed was your friend Superintendent Mullen. That same one who has been so set upon seeing you hanged.”

“Damn Mullen!”

“To be sure. I became the youngest detective-inspector in the C.I.D. and the most promising, and no one knew that better than myself. Unfortunately I didn’t take my honours or my liquor with equanimity, and this Mullen as my superintendent rode me hard. I was desperate, young and proud, and I didn’t take the riding in good part. One day, having one over the eight to encourage me, I bucked the rider off, rolled on him, kicked him in the slats, knocked some of his teeth down his throat, mixed his kidneys with his liver, and a few little things like that. No qualification yet?”

“A useful man in a rough house, I’d say.”

“Make a note of it for immediate reference,” Con chuckled. “The powers asked for my resignation. A man higher up saved me from a spell in durance vile, and ten of my colleagues conveyed to me a vote of thanks. Some of them are now superintendents themselves and my very good friends. But I was out of a job, and at a particularly loose end, for I was a policeman and nothing else.

“Then one Saturday evening I encountered a solid chunk of humanity in a public bar. After due libations, my personal grievances came home to me mountain high, and, my tongue being loosed, I detailed and enlarged on them to this new-found soul-mate of mine. He listened but did not hesitate to tell me that I jolly well deserved all I had got and more, or words to that effect in classical languages.

“My new friend and I cultivated acquaintance and discussion. I found myself spending long week-ends at his place in the far-out suburbs. He ran a bachelor establishment and cultivated fruit and vegetables in an expert manner. Who he was or what he had been I didn’t know, and am not sure even now, but sometimes I suspect that he is a helper of lame dogs, and sometimes I have an idea that he once considered me lame on three feet and unsound on the other.

“He was interested in life, and especially in its vagaries on the abnormal and subnormal sides. At any rate he said he was, and his knowledge of criminology and aberrancy was full and fanciful. My own inclination was that way, and he put it to practical uses. Almost before I knew it I found myself a partner with him in a nice little organization. We are still partners, and the organization is nicer than ever—and profitable. And the organization is nice, too, in what it touches. You can ask the police about that. Most of its activities are hum-drum enough and concerned with search for documents and verification of facts and so on—”

“Divorce court proceedings?” suggested Peter.

“Why not? We turn down most of them, but where we think a man or woman is getting a raw deal we take a hand. We take a hand in other things too. My partner is always on the look-out for a busman’s holiday. A case interests us; we may have no professional connection with it; but we take a look at it round and about; and if it has possibilities we try and make contact with the interested party. In short, Mr. Falkner, like most business organizations we canvass for business, but unlike most of them we are particular where we canvass.”

“Ah! I am beginning to see,” Peter said. “My case interested you?”

“It did.”

“And you had a look round and about.”

“We had.”

“And found possibilities.”

“We have.”

“And you tried to contact me as the interested party? Would you care to go on talking?”

“About what?”

“About what you propose to do for me. You would clear my name?”

“I cannot promise that. I propose to bring the murderer into the open, and if that clears your name, well and good.”

Peter looked long at Con, his eyes frowning and intent.

“I like your style, Mr. Madden,” he said at last. “You have made contact, and I will talk with you.” He sat up and grinned pleasantly. “Have a drink with me?”

Con flicked his tankard. “I asked you first.”

“Two is my usual limit of this, but I’ll be glad to join you.” Peter leaned forward again. “Could you conceive the notion that I would like to take a look at the man who killed Marcus Aitken? He was my uncle, you know, and I liked the old tyrant.”

III

When Con Madden told Peter Falkner that he and his partner had had a look round and about at the murder of Marcus Aitken, it was in the nature of an understatement. For the look had been thorough, and Con Madden, after three weeks in the town of Eglintoun, had the facts on his mind as clear as a photograph. And the main fact was that Mark Aitken had been brutally murdered a year ago, shot through the spine from close up and his brains blown out as he lay on his face. That was the medical evidence.

There were other facts. The facts Con Madden had learned about Mark Aitken himself. That Mark had managed to survive to the age of sixty was only explained by the theory that the devil takes care of his own. On the surface Mark had been a big business man and sportsman, mill owner, company director, landed proprietor, justice of the peace, patron of racing, horse and cattle breeder, everything that makes a man the backbone of the country—for his own good! Actually Mark Aitken was a full-blooded blend of libertine, regency buck, racketeer and spendthrift, with enough Scots in him to make him a patient gatherer, enough Irish to make him a bold gambler, and enough English to make him think he was by the Lord appointed. A big sanguine-hued, blond, tempered man, afraid of nothing on two feet or four, in this world or the next. A hard drinker, a hard fighter, a hard lover, and a hard bargainer all his life, and at the age of sixty he possessed all the lustful virility of Augustus the Strong of Poland. He’d married and buried two women, had no direct heir, but by all accounts did not lack natural progeny.

But Mark Aitken had acquired three heirs. Two of them were a twin brother and sister, a nephew and niece. . . . Toby and Barbara Aitken. They were about twenty-five, or thereabouts. Toby was a big ash-haired, ash-eyed hulk of a lad, whose main pursuits were the drinking of double whiskies and the playing of first-class golf. He was a plus two man, and it was said he would cheat to win side bets. An unmoral young hound was Toby.

Barbara, as Con Madden could attest, was a looker, of the slender but not angular type. Five foot six with nice eager lines, and the curves circumspect but in the right places. Brown haired and on the dark side, she was, and there were red lights in her hair of which she had plenty. The huntress type—Diana of the Uplands with the greyhounds, like the famous painting.

These two lived with Mark in the manor, Danesford House, where Barbara acted as chatelaine.

The third heir was Peter Falkner himself. Peter was the son of Mark’s own sister and a Scotsman of the name of Robbie Falkner. It was Robbie who married Mark’s sister over violent protest and whisked her off to Canada where Peter was born. It was five years ago, when Robbie and Mark’s sister both died, that Peter wrote his uncle informing him of their deaths, and had received an offer from his uncle to come back to Eglintoun. Uncle and nephew had an interview, and as a result of that interview Peter had been appointed estate manager, under a written contract for five years. And beginning then and for the next five years these two had rowed until it brought down rain. At the trial Peter had claimed that underneath the quarreling was a mutual fondness and respect, but those who had heard the rowing wondered—especially when Mark’s body was found on the path between Danesford House, and the Home Farm where Peter, as manager, lived. He was found there by Peter himself. The finder of the corpus delicti is usually the first object of suspicion, and a few of them have been hanged.