Jeffrey Archer - Only Time Will Tell

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What is that?’ asked the inspector, pointing to a tin box on the bottom shelf of the safe.

‘It’s my coin collection, inspector. A hobby of mine.’

‘Would you be kind enough to open it, sir?’

‘Is that really necessary?’ asked Hugo impatiently.

‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, sir.’

Hugo reluctantly opened the box, to reveal a hoard of gold coins he had collected over many years.

‘Now, here’s another mystery,’ said the inspector. ‘Our thief takes sixty pounds from the safe, and eight pounds ten shillings from your desk drawer, but leaves behind a box of gold coins that must be worth considerably more. And then there’s the problem of the envelope.’

‘The envelope?’ said Hugo.

‘Yes, sir, the envelope you say contained the money.’

‘But I found it on my desk this morning.’

‘I don’t doubt that, sir, but you will notice that it has been slit neatly open.’

‘Probably with my letter opener,’ said Hugo, holding it up triumphantly.

‘Quite possibly, sir, but in my experience, burglars have a tendency to rip open envelopes, not slit them neatly with a letter opener as if they already knew what was inside.’

‘But Miss Potts told me that you’d found the thief,’ said Hugo, trying not to sound exasperated.

‘No, sir. We have found the money, but I’m not convinced that we’ve found the guilty party.’

‘But you found some of the money in his possession?’

‘Yes, we did, sir.’

‘Then what more do you want?’

‘To be certain we’ve got the right man.’

‘And who is the man you’ve charged?’

‘I didn’t say I’d charged him, sir,’ said the inspector as he turned a page in his notebook. ‘A Mr Stanley Tancock, who turns out to be one of your stevedores. Name ring a bell, sir?’

‘Can’t say it does,’ said Hugo. ‘But if he works in the yard, he would certainly have known where my office was.’

‘I am in no doubt, sir, that Tancock knew where your office was, because he says he came to see you around seven yesterday evening to tell you that his brother-in-law, a Mr Arthur Clifton, was trapped in the hull of a ship being built in the yard, and if you didn’t give the order to get him out, he would die.’

‘Ah, yes, I remember now. I did go over to the yard yesterday afternoon as my ganger will confirm, but it turned out to be a false alarm and a waste of everyone’s time. Clearly he just wanted to find out where the safe was, so he could come back later and rob me.’

‘He admits that he came back to your office a second time,’ said Blakemore, turning another page of his notes, ‘when he claims you offered him sixty-eight pounds and ten shillings if he would keep his mouth shut about Clifton.’

‘I’ve never heard such an outrageous suggestion.’

‘Then let us consider the alternative for a moment, sir. Let us suppose that Tancock did come back to your office with the intention of robbing you some time between seven o’clock and seven thirty yesterday evening. Having somehow managed to get into the building unobserved he reaches the fifth floor, makes his way to your office, and with either your key or Miss Potts’s unlocks the safe, enters the code, removes the envelope, slits it neatly open and takes out the money, but doesn’t bother with a box of gold coins. He leaves the safe door open, spreads some of its contents on the floor and places the neatly opened envelope on your desk, and then, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, disappears into thin air.’

‘It needn’t have been between seven and seven thirty in the evening,’ said Hugo defiantly. ‘It could have been any time before eight this morning.’

‘I think not, sir,’ said Blakemore. ‘You see, Tancock has an alibi between eight and eleven o’clock last night.’

‘No doubt this so-called “alibi” is some mate of his,’ said Barrington.

‘Thirty-one of them, at the last count,’ said the detective inspector. ‘It seems that having stolen your money, he turned up at the Pig and Whistle public house at around eight o’clock, and not only were the drinks on him, but he also cleared his slate. He paid the landlord with a new five-pound note, which I have in my possession.’

The detective removed his wallet, took out the note and placed it on Barrington’s desk.

‘The landlord also added that Tancock left the pub at around eleven, and was so drunk that two of his friends had to accompany him to his home in Still House Lane, where we found him this morning. I am bound to say, sir, that if it was Tancock who robbed you, we have a master criminal on our hands and I’d be proud to be the man who puts him behind bars. Which I suspect is exactly what you had in mind, sir,’ he added, looking directly at Barrington, ‘when you gave him the money.’

‘And why on earth would I do that?’ said Hugo, trying to keep his voice even.

‘Because if Stanley Tancock was arrested and sent to jail, no one would take his story about Arthur Clifton seriously. Incidentally, Clifton hasn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon. So I shall be recommending to my superiors that the hull be opened up without further delay so that we can discover if it was a false alarm and Tancock was wasting everyone’s time.’

Hugo Barrington checked in the mirror and straightened his bow tie. He hadn’t told his father about the Arthur Clifton incident or the visit from Detective Inspector Blakemore. The less the old man knew the better. All he’d said was that some money had been stolen from his office and one of the stevedores had been arrested.

Once he’d put on his dinner jacket, Hugo sat on the end of the bed and waited for his wife to finish dressing. He hated being late, but he knew that no amount of badgering would make Elizabeth move any faster. He’d checked on Giles and his baby sister Emma, who were both fast asleep.

Hugo had wanted two sons, an heir and a spare. Emma was an inconvenience, which meant he’d have to try again. His father had been a second child and lost his older brother fighting the Boers in South Africa. Hugo’s older brother had been killed at Ypres, along with half his regiment. So, in time, Hugo could expect to succeed his father as chairman of the company and, when his father died, to inherit the title and the family fortune.

So he and Elizabeth would have to try again. Not that making love to his wife was a pleasure any more. In fact, he couldn’t remember if it ever had been. Recently he’d been looking for distractions elsewhere.

‘Yours is a marriage made in heaven,’ his mother used to say. His father was more practical. He had felt that bringing together his elder son and the only daughter of Lord Harvey was more of a merger than a marriage. When Hugo’s brother was killed on the Western Front, his fiancée was passed on to Hugo. No longer a merger, more of a takeover. Hugo wasn’t surprised to discover on his wedding night that Elizabeth was a virgin; his second virgin, in fact.

Elizabeth finally emerged from the dressing room, apologizing, as she always did, for keeping him waiting. The journey from the Manor House to Barrington Hall was only a couple of miles, and all the land in between the two houses belonged to the family. By the time Hugo and Elizabeth entered his parents’ drawing room at a few minutes past eight, Lord Harvey was already on his second sherry. Hugo glanced around the room at the other guests. There was only one couple he didn’t recognize.

His father immediately took him across and introduced him to Colonel Danvers, the recently appointed chief constable of the county. Hugo decided not to mention his meeting that morning with Detective Inspector Blakemore to the colonel, but just before they sat down for dinner, he took his father on one side to bring him up to date on the theft, never once mentioning the name of Arthur Clifton.