Then he saw Sergeant Cockerill, who said in his curiously gentle voice: “Look out you don’t tread in it, sir—it’s Miss Bellbas. I’m fetching something to clear it up.”
Then his ears insisted that someone was screaming; had been screaming for some seconds.
He pushed past the sergeant and through the door of Bob Horniman’s room. Here his nose took charge. Three years of active service had taught him the sweet, throat-catching smell of corrupted flesh.
He saw Bob, white to the lips, standing beside his desk, and Miss Cornel, the corners of her mouth drawn into a pucker.
“What’s happened?” he said sharply.
“It’s in that box.” It was Bob who spoke. “We’ve just found him. For God’s sake, someone, stop that girl screaming.”
Henry went quickly out of the slaughter-house stench, and found Miss Bellbas sitting on a chair inside the secretaries’ office.
Most of the other members of the staff seemed to be crowding round her.
“Give her room,” he said with unconscious authority. “Stand back.”
He placed himself in front of her and gave her a swinging smack on the face with his open palm.
Miss Bellbas stopped screaming.
Then she opened her mouth and observed conversationally: “It’s the voice of the stars. You remember what they said. ‘Things will open up surprisingly about the middle of the week.’”
Chapter Four —Wednesday Evening— A Contract Is Entered Into
A contract is sometimes described as being uberrimae fidei. This is not a term which has ever received exclusive definition but it signifies that the contract is one of those—a contract of insurance is the commonest example—in which both parties are under an obligation to make the fullest disclosure of a relevant circumstance.
I
“Blast!” said the Assistant Commissioner.
“Yes, sir,” said Chief Inspector Hazlerigg.
“It’s damned inconvenient.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I particularly don’t want to take you off your regular work”—he meant Inspector Hazlerigg’s permanent Black Market assignment—“but I don’t see what I can do. With Aspinall and Hervey in Lancashire looking for that damned maniac and Cass in Paris; and now Pannel has to go and crock himself.”
“I expect I can manage it, sir. Pickup can do my job here…” But there was more to be said, and both men knew it.
“Look here,” said the Assistant Commissioner. “I think I’d better give you a quick outline, and then you’ll see how—well, never mind that. I won’t start by prejudicing you. Now. At eleven o’clock this morning a partner in this firm of solicitors—what’s their name?—Horniman, Birley and Craine, opened one of their deed boxes. The box was supposed to contain papers relating to a trust. What they found in it was one of the trustees. Name of Smallbone—Marcus Smallbone—very dead.”
He paused: then added inconsequentially: “The late senior partner in that firm was Abel Horniman. Friend of the Commissioner.”
“Wasn’t he the chairman of a committee on Criminal Law Revision?”
“That’s the man. Quite a leading light in the Law Society, and between you and me pretty widely tipped for the next Honours List. His name was a big one in legal circles and he was beginning”—the Assistant Commissioner, though he didn’t know it, was here paraphrasing Mr. Birley—“he was beginning to be a bit of a public figure, too.”
“But if he’s dead, sir,” said Hazlerigg cautiously, “I can’t quite see how—”
“He died about four weeks ago,” said the Assistant Commissioner, “of angina. He’d been ill for some time. I think it would be fair to say that he knew he was booked. His doctor had told him as much.”
“I see, sir.”
“Our pathologist’s first opinion,” went on the Assistant Commissioner, with elaborate casualness, “is that Smallbone had been dead for at least six weeks—possibly eight—maybe ten.”
“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “Yes, I see.”
“Abel Horniman and Marcus Smallbone were fellow trustees—the only trustees—of a very big affair—the Ichabod Stokes Trust. That’s an obvious line on the thing, of course. It’s almost the only direct connection between the two men.”
“And is this trust—I don’t know the proper legal word—is it in order?”
“That’s one of the things you’ll have to find out. Colley—he’s the D.D.I.—I’ll give you his full report in a minute—asked them about it. Apparently it isn’t just as easy as all that. One of the difficulties is that all the papers which might have helped should have been in that deed box—”
“And they were all gone?”
“Every one of them. Good Lord, as it was, there was hardly an inch of room to spare. If Smallbone hadn’t been quite unusually small and slight his body would never have gone in at all.”
“Ten weeks,” said Hazlerigg. “I should have thought they’d have begun to notice him by that time.”
“In the ordinary way, yes,” agreed the Assistant Commissioner. “But these were special boxes, as you’ll see. A rubber sealing-band round the edge and a compressor lid.”
“Rather unusual, sir,” said Hazlerigg. “Whose idea were they?”
“Abel Horniman’s.”
“Yes,” said Hazlerigg again. He was already beginning to see the outlines of a simple but unsatisfactory affair with a lot of work and not much kudos. He also realised why the case had been handed to him. The implied compliment added only a little to its attractions.
Another thought struck him.
“What room was this in?”
“Young Horniman’s—that’s the son. He’s taken his father’s place in the firm.”
“And his father’s room, I suppose.”
“Yes. I’ve got the first pictures here.” He opened a folder. “The deed box was kept on a shelf under the window—there—you can see the space it came out of.”
“I take it it was locked.”
“Yes—that was one of the things. They couldn’t find the key. The box was actually opened in the end by their commissionaire. He ‘sprung’ the lock with a hammer, and the lid flew open. Must have been quite a moment.”
Hazlerigg was studying one or two of the reports. Something seemed to have puzzled him. He looked through the photographs again and selected one gruesome close-up which showed the body of Marcus Smallbone as it had lain packed in its metal coffin.
Then he looked again at the statement.
“I can’t quite make out from this,” he said, “who actually identified the body first?”
“I thought it was young Horniman.”
“Not from what it says here. Horniman says that the first time Smallbone’s name was actually mentioned was when Miss Bellbas—she’s one of the typists, I gather—ran out of the room screaming ‘It’s Mr. Smallbone’ and something about the stars foretelling it. Miss Bellbas denies it. She says she had never seen Mr. Smallbone when he was alive so how could she have recognised him when he was dead. Miss Cornel, one of the secretaries, says that she thought Bob Horniman mentioned the name first. Sergeant Cockerill says, No. He doesn’t think anyone actually mentioned the name, but there had been so much speculation about Smallbone’s disappearance that he, for his part, assumed at once that the body must be his.”
“Sounds plausible,” said the Assistant Commissioner. “Why are you making a special point of it…?”
“Well, sir”—Hazlerigg pointed to the photograph—“you see how the body was lying. The face was pushed right down on to the chest. Then again, after eight or ten weeks, I shouldn’t have imagined that anyone could say with certainty—”