Читать книгу The Lake District Murder - Ernest Elmore - Страница 6

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With his usual routine work to be tackled and a number of other commonplace little jobs to be attended to, Meredith had to shelve his investigations for that afternoon. But all the time his mind kept on straying back to the Clayton affair. One word continually reoccurred in his thoughts; a word which to him constituted the crux of the problem. Motive.

He now felt certain that the suicide theory could be abandoned. Clayton, for some reason, had been murdered and the murderer or murderers had so arranged the scene as to suggest suicide. But why had Clayton been killed? Several ordinary reasons for murder occurred to Meredith—jealousy, financial gain, revenge. He couldn’t credit that it was a crime passionnel. The whole affair had been too cleverly thought out for that. What then about jealousy? Had there been another aspirant to the hand of Lily Reade? That must be one line of inquiry. Another line to be followed up was the real state of the dead man’s finances—quite apart from the rather scrappy information already obtained from Higgins. Meredith felt that this was a matter which it might pay him to investigate as soon as he was finished at his desk.

At five o’clock, therefore, he rang through to the Pickford’s branch in Penrith and asked for information about the cheque they had received from Clayton for the Canadian tickets. As far as the clerk could remember, the cheque had been drawn on the Keswick branch of Barclays. This was a bit of luck, Meredith realized, as the manager, Burton, was rather a friend of his. Anxious to waste no time he put on his cap and strolled round to the bank in the hope of catching Burton before he left for tea. The manager was still in the building and a few minutes later Meredith had obtained exactly what he was after—a confidential report as to the state of Clayton’s finances.

The result astounded him. Clayton’s account, a current account, showed a credit balance of something over £2,000! His passbook gave no clue as to the source of this unexpected affluence. Amounts, varying from £50 to £100, had been paid in at odd intervals during the last seven years, but in every case they had been paid in in ordinary £1 treasury notes. Burton was certain that the money had not come from the profits in the garage—in the first place he felt certain that Clayton’s share in the profits would not amount to £300 a year. If it did, it meant that the concern was showing a clear profit of some £600 a year, a possibility which the manager flatly refused to accept. In the second place, Burton knew that the garage account was in the hands of the Westminster bank. Clayton’s account at his own bank was purely a personal account.

A further examination of the books showed that Clayton had first opened his account at the Keswick branch some eight years previously with a balance, transferred from Manchester, of £40 odd. For the first year only small amounts had been paid in and then, suddenly, the £50 and £100 entries began to appear. This fact seemed significant to the Inspector.

How, and from whom, had Clayton obtained the money?

“Do you happen to know the manager of the Westminster?” Meredith asked of Burton. “If so it would be doing me a favour if you could get his permission for me to run my eye over the garage account.”

Burton knew him well, as they were members of the same golf club, and after a short phone conversation, the Inspector, puzzled and excited, left for the Westminster. Goreleston proved to be a little more reticent over his client’s affairs than Burton, but after Meredith had briefly outlined the facts of Clayton’s death, he seemed willing to do all he could to help. But this time Meredith drew a blank. The garage showed a fluctuating profit of about £6 a week. In the summer months the amounts paid in by the proprietors of the Derwent rose to as much as £12 to £14 a week, then gradually declined to as little as £2 or £3 a week in January and February.

“I suppose you couldn’t tell me how the partners draw their money out?” asked Meredith.

“Nothing simpler,” replied Goreleston. “Once a month Clayton presented a cheque for £16 and it was paid out to him in £1 notes. There was an arrangement, as a matter of fact, that not more than £16 could be drawn out by either of the partners in any one month. Both Mr. Clayton and Mr. Higgins of course, had an equal right to examine the dual-account whenever they wanted to. To tell you the truth, I don’t ever remember seeing Mr. Higgins in the bank. He certainly never drew a cheque on his own signature, though there was nothing to prevent him from doing so, provided he kept to the conditions I’ve just mentioned. I suppose the monthly withdrawal of £16 was divided equally between the partners.”

“I see.” Meredith rose and extended his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Goreleston. You may rest assured that I shall make no mention of this interview and I trust you’ll be equally reticent over what I’ve told you.”

Wasting no time, Meredith hurried off through the wintry streets to his office, where he had soon put through a call to Messrs. Harben, Wilshin and Harben, the Penrith solicitors. Mr. Harben, the senior partner of the firm, flatly refused to divulge the nature of Clayton’s will.

“After all, Inspector, it will be public property in a few days. I really can’t see why I should disclose the terms of the will before it is formally declared!”

To this Meredith had no reply. He realized that he was treading on delicate ground and even if he had strong suspicions that Clayton had been murdered, a solicitor was the last person in whom to confide these suspicions. Rather nettled, he rang off and put himself to thinking about that astonishing nest-egg of £2,000. The first thought that entered his mind was theft. Was it possible that Clayton was a professional thief, whose activities spreading over some seven years had been attended with singular good fortune? But the record of local burglaries was disappointingly small. Besides, the amounts seemed to have been paid in fairly regularly about four times a year, and in every case in notes. Meredith could not conceive a clever thief being such a fool as to pay in the proceeds of his thefts in notes. Notes are numbered and often, when suspicion is aroused, easily traceable. Clayton would have to work in conjunction with a receiver and if any of the notes could have been traced back to a receiver the fat would have been properly in the fire.

Blackmail was a more feasible explanation. But if so, who was the victim? Surely not Higgins? That, at any rate, would supply a motive for the murder. Driven to desperation by Clayton’s continual threats of exposure Higgins might have decided that the only way to regain peace of mind was to get rid of his partner. But once again Meredith found himself up against that alibi. Thoroughly disheartened, he at length abandoned all attempts to solve the problem of Clayton’s bank-balance and decided to concentrate on the major problem of his death. Rather nervously he took up the phone and got through to Superintendent Thompson at Carlisle.

“This is Meredith speaking, sir. I want to have a word with you about this Clayton affair.”

At the breezy command of “Fire ahead” Meredith outlined the progress of his investigations, laying particular stress on his theory that Clayton had been drugged before being placed in the car. To his intense relief the Superintendent anticipated his request.

“And now I suppose you want permission for an autopsy? Is that it, Inspector?”

“That’s about it, sir. Any chance?”

“Hang on a minute and I’ll have a word with the Chief. Luckily he’s in his office. Don’t promise, mind you, but I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.”

Meredith waited apprehensively for the Chief’s decision. So much he felt depended on the autopsy. He was quite certain that he could not persuade a coroner’s jury to bring in a verdict of murder by putting forward his present suspicions; but once prove that Clayton had been drugged and the result of the inquest was a foregone conclusion. Not that Meredith was hankering after a sensational verdict. It was merely that he now felt certain that Clayton had not taken his own life.

The Superintendent’s voice drew him sharply out of his reverie.

“You there, Meredith? I’ve seen the Chief. He was a bit dubious at first. Thought that the reasons you’d put forward for the post mortem were a trifle too thin. But I’m glad to say that I got him round in the end, so you can go ahead with a clear conscience.”

“That’s really good news, sir. I’ll get Dr. Burney on the job straightaway and send through my report early to-morrow.”

“Good. By the way the inquest is fixed for Wednesday next at 2.30. The body’s at the mortuary isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then we’ll arrange for the Coroner to sit in the court-room. You’d better subpoena all the witnesses you think necessary. I shall probably be over myself if I can spare the time.”

Immensely pleased with the result of his phone call Meredith had soon fixed up with Dr. Burney, in conjunction with Dr. White, to perform the necessary post mortem. In less than an hour the two doctors were at their gruesome job in the little mortuary adjoining the station. When the Inspector returned from a hastily snatched meal he found the doctors waiting for him.

“Well, gentlemen?”

Dr. Burney smiled.

“You seem anxious, Inspector!”

Meredith laughed.

“I am. A negative report would make me look a tidy fool after airing my suspicions so strongly at H.Q.”

“Well you won’t lose your beauty sleep on that account. We’ve no reason to alter our opinion as to the cause of death. That’s asphyxia all right. On the other hand we found about thirty grains of trional in the stomach and intestines. You know what that is I suppose?”

“A drug?” asked Meredith on tenterhooks.

Burney nodded. Dr. White, a short podgy little man, cut in wheezily.

“A powerful drug too. Thirty grains of the stuff would send a man off to sleep in a brace of shakes.”

Burney grinned at the older man’s expression.

“I know exactly what you’re going to ask, Inspector. What is a ‘brace of shakes’? Say, in this case anything from twenty minutes to half an hour. That so, White?”

“Twenty minutes in my opinion. Can’t be certain of course. People react differently to drugs. But that’s about it!”

As the doctors were shuffling themselves into their overcoats, Meredith observed:

“No need to tell you, gentlemen, what this means?”

Burney winked.

“It wasn’t suicide—if that’s what you’re after. By the way, when’s the inquest? Is it fixed yet?”

Meredith told them and the doctors drove off together in Burney’s car to write up an official report of their findings.

Left alone the Inspector allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation, then tired out after his day’s work he trudged off through the frost-rimed streets to spend the tail-end of the evening helping his seventeen-year-old son, Tony, to assemble a new five-valve wireless set. Tony was apprenticed to a local photographer, but like Meredith, he had a mechanical turn of mind. A fact which did a lot to further the happy relationship existing between father and son. Meredith was inordinately proud of his only child, a feeling which he secretly believed to be reciprocated, and if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Meredith, Tony would have long ago been destined for the Force.