Ragg sank back a little, obviously tired by his narrative. Powerscourt wondered if his entire career had been a disappointment after that. ‘What a fascinating time it must have been, Mr Ragg. Did the two sides of the Martin family bury the hatchet in the end?’
There was a cackle from the solicitor. Now at last, Powerscourt thought, blood was going to escape from the unfortunate man’s mouth. But with a Herculean effort, swallowing hard three times like a seabird swallowing a fish, Theodore Ragg kept his dignity. ‘Bury the hatchet, Lord Powerscourt? The only way either side would have been satisfied would have been to bury the hatchet in the other party’s neck. I’m sure that’s still true today.’
Suddenly Theodore Ragg looked exhausted. He began to look anxious like a man who thinks he might miss his train or fail to make his connection. Powerscourt wondered if the blood was an omen of something rather more sinister than bad gums. He remembered a previous President of the Royal Academy coughing blood into a series of perfectly laundered white handkerchiefs and dying not long afterwards.
‘I must leave you in peace, Mr Ragg,’ said Powerscourt, looking into the sad brown eyes of the solicitor. ‘Just one last question. How old would Mr Samuel Martin be now?’
‘About fifty or a few years more,’ said Ragg. ‘Forgive me if I was rude earlier on, Lord Powerscourt. I was feeling particularly unwell.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Powerscourt, rising to his feet and heading for the door. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, you have been most helpful.’
As he made his way towards the front door, he understood what an enormous effort Theodore Ragg must have been making during their conversation. The coughing in the room behind him began like a slow rumble far off, then it turned into a great hacking shriek, and finally it ebbed away into sounds of weeping. Powerscourt could hear doors opening and closing as the partners went to offer help and comfort to their dying colleague.
The telegraph office was but a hundred yards away down the High Street. Powerscourt was shown into the office of the manager, a dapper young man by the name of Charlie Dean, who looked as if he and his clothes would have been happier in Finsbury Circus or Leadenhall Street in the City of London. He was quick to grasp the import of Powerscourt’s visit and the importance of any possible messages from St Petersburg.
‘How long would we keep a message, you ask, my lord. Three months.’
Fine, thought Powerscourt. If Martin had sent any message to his wife here, and if, for some reason she had forgotten to collect it, the message should still be somewhere in the system.
‘And what kind of authority would you need before you handed the message over to somebody, Mr Dean?’
‘Company rules say we have to try three times to deliver to the recipient in person. Well, we tried and failed three times in this case so now it could be handed over to anybody with a proof of connection with the address. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, Lord Powerscourt, I don’t think anybody has been in here asking for cables they have no business with. We know most of our customers in a place like this, you see.’ Charlie Dean sounded rather sad as he said that. Powerscourt thought he would be much happier somewhere very busy in the metropolis where every customer was a perfect stranger, a new challenge, offering possibilities of fresh messages and fresh romance.
‘And suppose you wanted to send a message the other way, Mr Dean. Would you have a copy of anything Mrs Martin might have sent to Russia?’
‘That would be before she was killed, I suppose,’ said Charlie happily, glad to welcome murder to the Tonbridge telegraph office. ‘Well, there should be a copy of that too. If you wait here, my lord, I’ll just go and make some inquiries.’
The walls of the little office were adorned with prints of great cricketers like C.B. Fry and Ranjitsinghi, interspersed with modern photographs of ancient telegraphic equipment. Powerscourt was reflecting that a man who scored as fast as Fry could probably transmit a telegraph message at record speed when the manager returned, in a very excited state.
‘Look, Lord Powerscourt, it’s a message! From Russia!’ He handed Powerscourt the thin envelope used to protect the cable. It came from St Petersburg, dated December 22nd, possibly the very date of Mr Martin’s death.
‘Has this been here ever since? Nobody has asked for it or anything like that?’ said Powerscourt.
‘It’s been here ever since,’ said Charlie Dean. ‘Aren’t you going to open it? The fiendish killer might be unmasked right here in this office, my lord.’
Powerscourt grinned. He wondered if Charlie was a regular reader of the adventures of heroes like Sexton Blake with their emphasis on excitement and melodrama rather than detection and analysis. He looked at the envelope.
‘What are you thinking, my lord? Do you feel you may have the master criminal in your hands?’ Powerscourt was feeling rather nervous. This could be the answer to all his problems. It could mean that he would never have to go back to St Petersburg. Above all, he thought of Roderick Martin. Did he send this message before he saw the Tsar or after? If it was after, had he put in the cable the news that was to kill him, and might have killed his wife too? The message, after all, might have been in the hands of the Russian security services inside the hour. Plenty of time to prepare an expedition to Tibenham Grange and push a widow into the moat beneath. And, maybe more important yet, how much longer did Martin have left to live when he wrote it?
Charlie Dean’s eyes were burning bright. His brain seemed to have taken off to some fictional Valhalla. ‘Maybe he’s going to tell of the deadly fight on the ice floe with the Russian killers, my lord. Maybe the chief villain behind Mr Martin’s murder is going to be exposed at last!’
Powerscourt opened the envelope. He looked rather sadly at the message. He handed it over to Charlie.
‘Coming home tomorrow, Thursday,’ it read, ‘should be back in three or four days.’
‘It must be in code, my lord,’ said Charlie feverishly. ‘Tomorrow probably means enemies vanquished and Thursday means, well, coming home Thursday.’
‘I think we’ll find,’ said Powerscourt, folding the message carefully and putting it in his pocket, ‘that the message is more useful than might first appear.’
‘You mean there is a secret code, my lord?’ Hope died hard in Charlie Dean’s heart.
‘Not exactly,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘but think about what the message says. He must have done, or been about to do, whatever he went to St Petersburg for, don’t you see, Charlie? Otherwise he wouldn’t be so confident about coming home tomorrow. Mission accomplished, that’s how I read that bit.’ Privately, Powerscourt wasn’t so sure. It could mean, this has all been a complete disaster, so I’m coming home tomorrow, he said to himself, though he wasn’t convinced. And had he sent it during the day? Or in the evening when Ricky Crabbe thought somebody else had been using his machines? And why – Powerscourt’s brain was circling round the problem like a bird of prey – hadn’t Mrs Martin come to pick it up? Maybe her husband wasn’t in the habit of sending messages. After the shock of his death it could have passed completely out of her mind as she mourned for her husband.