Death in the Stocks: Merely Murder Read online

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannasyde, ‘I have.’

  Fifteen

  The smile vanished from Giles Carrington’s eyes, but it was in the same lazy, rather humorous voice that he said: ‘That sounds exciting. What has happened?’

  They began to walk up the stairs together. The Superintendent said with a twinkle: ‘Don’t worry, neither of your clients is implicated in the new developments.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ replied Giles, pressing the front door bell. ‘Roger was in England at the time of the murder. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannasyde. ‘That is it.’

  ‘Poor old Roger!’ remarked Giles. ‘I rather suspected he was when he forgot the name of his ship.’

  Hannasyde bent an accusing stare on him. ‘You’re as bad as the rest of them,’ he said severely. ‘The instant you set eyes on Roger Vereker you not only suspected that he’d been in England some time longer than he admitted, but you were pretty sure also that he was the shabby stranger who visited Arnold Vereker that Saturday. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Giles. ‘I suspected it several hours before I set eyes on him. As soon as I heard he had turned up, in fact. Good afternoon, Murgatroyd. Miss Tony in?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s expecting you, sir,’ said Murgatroyd, holding the door wide. ‘But what call you’ve got to bring the police back again I’m sure I don’t know. Seems as though we can’t call the place our own these days. They’re both in the studio, Mr Giles.’

  Giles Carrington nodded, and walked across the little hall, followed by the Superintendent. In the studio Roger Vereker was apparently working some problem out on scraps of paper, critically but not unamiably watched by his half-sister, who sat with her chin in her hands, looking over his calculations. She glanced up quickly as the door opened, and, when she saw Giles, smiled in her confiding way. ‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Roger’s trying to work out a System. I think it’s all rot myself.’

  ‘Long may you continue to think so,’ said Giles.

  Antonia perceived Superintendent Hannasyde, and raised her brows. ‘I didn’t know you were coming too,’ she said. ‘I rather wish you hadn’t, because, to tell you the truth, I’m getting awfully sick of the Family Crime. However, come in if you must.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to,’ answered Hannasyde, closing the door. ‘I want to ask your half-brother a few questions.’

  Roger, who had started violently at the sight of him, said: ‘It’s no good anyone asking me questions, because I’m very busy at the moment. As a matter of fact, I was hoping for a quiet afternoon, now we’ve got rid of Kenneth.’

  A rough sketch in pastels, propped on the mantelpiece, caught Giles’s attention. ‘Good Lord, that’s clever!’ he said involuntarily. ‘Kenneth’s?’

  ‘I don’t see anything clever in it at all,’ said Roger. ‘In fact, if I weren’t a very easy-going man, I might be quite annoyed by it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Giles. ‘I – I should think you might.’

  ‘Moreover, it isn’t anything like me,’ pursued Roger. ‘Can’t be, because Kenneth had to tell me who it was meant to be.’

  ‘He’s caught the look, hasn’t he?’ said Antonia. ‘He did it this morning. After saying portrait painting’s a debased art, too. It is good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wicked!’ said Giles, under his breath. ‘Really, it’s indecent, Tony!’

  Hannasyde, who had been also looking in considerable astonishment at the sketch, overheard this, and found himself in complete agreement, and wondered whether it was fanciful to feel convinced that the man who could perpetrate so merciless a portrait would be capable of anything, even murder. He transferred his gaze from it to the original, and said without preamble: ‘You informed me last night, Mr Vereker, that you landed in England two days ago.’

  ‘I daresay I did,’ admitted Roger. ‘One way and another there was a lot of chatter going on last night, and I don’t remember all I said. But I won’t want to start an argument, so have it your own way.’

  ‘Do you still adhere to that statement?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ said Roger cautiously.

  ‘Principally because it is untrue,’ replied the Superintendent, with disconcerting directness.

  ‘I object to that,’ said Roger. ‘That’s a very damaging thing to say, and if you think that just because you’re a detective you can go round giving people the lie you’ll find you’re mistaken.’ He paused, and reflected for a moment. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, you probably won’t,’ he said gloomily, ‘because it seems to me there’s no limit to what the police can get away with in this country.’

  ‘There is a limit,’ said Hannasyde, ‘but your cousin is here to see that I don’t overstep it. Your name, Mr Vereker, does not figure on the lists of passengers on board any vessel arriving from South America two days ago.’

  ‘Well, that’s a very extraordinary thing,’ said Roger, ‘But when I said I landed two days ago, I didn’t say I landed from South America.’

  ‘You said that you had come from Buenos Aires,’ Hannasyde reminded him.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ agreed Roger. ‘So I did. Of course, if I’d known you were interested I could have told you the whole story. The fact of the matter is, I got off at Lisbon.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ demanded Antonia.

  ‘There was a man I wanted to see,’ said Roger vaguely.

  ‘About a dog, I should think,’ said Antonia, with considerable scorn.

  ‘No, it wasn’t about a dog. It was about a lot of parrots,’ said Roger, improvising cleverly.

  ‘You got off at Lisbon to see a man about a lot of parrots?’ repeated the Superintendent.

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded Roger. ‘Amazon parrots. Not those grey ones with pink tails, but green ones. The sort that screech.’ The story began to grip him; warming to the theme, he continued: ‘Thought I could do a deal. You’d be surprised at the demand there is for parrots in Portugal.’

  ‘I should,’ interpolated Hannasyde grimly.

  ‘Anyone would be,’ said Roger. ‘I was myself. But there it is. The idea was to ship a lot over to this man I was telling you about. The only trouble was we couldn’t come to terms, so the best thing for me to do was to see him in person.’

  ‘I trust you arrived at an agreement,’ said Hannasyde, with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘Well, no,’ said Roger, ever fertile. ‘We didn’t, and the whole thing is more or less in abeyance, because he wanted to buy the parrots in bulk, which is ridiculous, of course. However, now I’ve come into money I shan’t bother any more about it.’

  ‘I say, what a shame Kenneth’s missing all this!’ said Antonia. ‘Where are the parrots supposed to be?’

  ‘Round about the Amazon,’ said Roger. ‘You have to catch them.’

  ‘Yes, I can just see you penetrating into forests and laying snares for parrots. You are an ass!’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t do that myself. I should employ people,’ said Roger. ‘Of course, if the business grew, and I daresay it would, the idea was to start a farm and breed them the same way that people breed silver foxes and things. Properly managed there might be a lot of money in it, because if the purchaser has to pay ten pounds for a parrot (and very often a good parrot costs more than that), you can see for yourself that the profit per parrot is pretty considerable.’ He decided that the parrots had served their turn, and jettisoned them. ‘But, as I say, I’ve given up thinking about it now that I’ve come into money. They’re really beside the point.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Hannasyde. ‘I have ascertained, Mr Vereker, that you were a passenger on board the SS Pride of London, which docked at Liverpool on 16th June – the day before that on which your brother was murdered.’

  Roger leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, if you’ve ascertained it, that’s that,’ he observed. ‘It’s silly to argue points like that with detectives, so I’ll tell you right away that the parrots were just a little joke of mine.’