Tenant for Death

Tenant for Death

by Cyril Hare

First published in 1937

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

For.ullstein@gmail.com

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Tenant for Death

Cyril Hare

To

M.B.G.C.

1

JACKIE ROACH

Friday, November 13th

Daylesford Gardens, S.W., is one of those addresses that make the most experienced of taxi-drivers hesitate for a moment or two when you give it. Not that he will have any difficulty in determining its general direction, which is in that quiet and respectable region where South Kensington borders on Chelsea. The trouble arises from the lack of imagination displayed by the building syndicate which first laid out the Daylesford estate some time in the middle of the last century. For besides Daylesford Gardens, there are Daylesford Terrace, Daylesford Square, Upper and Lower Daylesford Streets, not to mention a tall, raw red-brick block of flats known as Daylesford Court Mansions and two or three new and almost smart little houses which still keep the name of Daylesford Mews. The houses in Daylesford Gardens, however, are neither raw, tall, nor red-brick, nor new, nor anything approaching smart. On the contrary, they are squat, yellow and elderly, bearing on their monotonous three-storied fronts the same dingy livery of stucco, drab but—with an effort—respectable. One or two have sunk so far as to become boarding-houses, several may be suspected of paying guests, but for the most part they still contrive to carry on the unequal warfare against adverse circumstances and keep the banner of gentility flying.

House agents have been known to call the district a retired one, and the description is just in more ways than one. It certainly suits almost all the inhabitants of the Gardens. They are pre-eminently the refuge of the not too wealthy middle-aged. Retired colonels and County Court judges, ex-Civil Servants and half-pay naval officers, with one or two lean sallow-faced men who have in their time perhaps governed districts half as large as England, now share between them the empire of the muddy grass and draggled laurustinus bushes which constitute the gardens. Their houses, too, discreet and unassuming, seem also to have retired from whatever busy existence they may once have had, and to be awaiting with dignified resignation the fate that is in store for London houses when the building lease falls in.

At the northern end of Daylesford Gardens, where Upper Daylesford Street, noisy with omnibuses and motor vans, marks the boundary of the old Daylesford property, Jackie Roach, the newspaper seller, had his pitch. Every evening he was to be seen there, his comic blob of a nose wobbling uncertainly above his ragged red moustache in time to his husky chant of "News—Star—Standard! Most of the householders in the Gardens knew him by sight. How much he knew about them, their circumstances, habits and domestic staffs, few of them probably ever guessed. They were, as he put it, among his regulars", and it was almost a point of honour with him to be acquainted with their affairs. He knew—and liked—old Colonel Petherington at No. 15, with his threadbare grey suit and erect habit of body, who went so punctually to his club every afternoon and returned so punctually every evening for dinner. He knew—and disliked—the flashy Mrs. Brent at No. 34, and could have told her husband something of the man who came to visit her when he was away, if he had ever thought of enquiring in that direction. He knew the quiet, shy Miss Penrose of No. 27, whose maid, Rosa, came so regularly at six o’clock every evening for the Standard, and could always be relied upon for a few minutes’ gossip.

On this chill, windy evening, Roach would have been glad of a little chat with anyone who would stop to pass the time of day—anything to keep his mind off the rheumatism that always tortured him at this time of year. But nobody felt like stopping now. They only paused long enough to thrust a copper into Jackie’s hand and snatch a paper, for all the world as though a chap was an automatic machine. Rosa was different. Whatever the weather, she would always hang about a bit for a chat at the corner, as well she might indeed, with a warm back kitchen to go home to.

But no Rosa would come this evening. For a month past Miss Penrose had been away. She had gone abroad, and Rosa had gone to her family in the country. The house was let furnished to a Mr. Colin James. Roach knew his name, thanks to a nodding acquaintance with Crabtree, the manservant who had usurped Rosa’s place at No. 27, but he had never spoken to him, or even sold him newspapers. Unlike most of the other inhabitants of the Gardens, he was still in business. At least, nearly every morning he took an eastward bound bus from the corner, and came back again in the evening, so his business was to be presumed. Roach did not like him the better for it. He felt obscurely that such behaviour was letting the Gardens down.

At about half-past six, when the throng in Upper Daylesford Street was at its height and the long-threatening rain had begun to spatter down, Roach, fumbling with numbed fingers for elevenpence change, caught sight of Mr. James on the other side of the street. There was, as he afterwards explained to certain interested persons, no mistaking Mr. James. For one thing, he was the only resident in Daylesford Gardens with a beard. It was no mere apologetic tuft, either, but a bushy mass of brown hair, that fairly covered his face from the mouth down. Then there was his figure. He was noticeably fat, with a fatness that seemed quite out of proportion to his thin legs, so that he walked always with a cautious waddle, as though afraid that his weight would overbalance him. Roach noted the passing of the familiar ungainly shape without interest. Then something made him look round again, and stare after him with renewed attention. That something was the simple fact that on this occasion, Mr. James was accompanied by another person.

The old —— what lives by ’isself, was Roach’s private description of Mr. James. Most of the Gardens’ inhabitants, indeed, were of the type that keep themselves to themselves. Roach respected them all the more for that. But Mr. James was of them all the most completely alone. During his short residence at No. 27, no visitor had ever been known to cross the threshold, not so much as a letter or parcel, so Crabtree asserted, had ever been delivered there. And never, until now, had he seen Mr. Colin James in the street except alone.

But this time—there could be no doubt of it—Mr. James had found a friend. Or if not a friend, at any rate a near acquaintance, to judge from the way they went along the pavement side by side, their heads close together, as though in quiet, earnest discussion. A pity, thought Roach, that the stranger was on the far side as they went round the corner, so that James’s great bulk blotted him out completely. Just for curiosity’s sake, he would like to have known—"News, sir? Yessir! Fi’pence change, thank you, sir!"

He screwed his head round to look down the Gardens. There was a lamp-post opposite No. 27, and the couple were just within its beams. The light shone on the yellow-brown bag which Mr. James always carried. They stopped and Mr. James was evidently fumbling for his key. Then he opened the door, went in and the stranger followed him. Roach, as he turned to thrust a paper into the hand of a customer, felt oddly triumphant. Mr. James had a visitor! In a small way, it was as though a long-standing record had been broken.

Nearly an hour later, the newspaper seller finally left his pitch. The rain was now a steady downpour. The street was wet and deserted. The Crown in Lower Daylesford Street would by contrast be warm and friendly. Cold and thirsty, Roach sheltered his papers beneath his arm and set off in the direction which James had taken before him, but upon the other side of the street. He was halfway down it, his eyes fixed on the pavement, his thoughts on the refreshment that awaited him, when the sound of a street door closing made him look up. He was opposite No. 27, and a familiar figure, carrying the inevitable bag, had just emerged, and was now walking away towards the upper end of the Gardens.

Old Man-of-Mystery again! said Roach to himself. What’s he done to his pal, I wonder?

He reflected, as he went on his way, that he had never before seen Mr. James walk so fast.

Two minutes later he was standing in an infinitely pleasant, muggy atmosphere before a crowded bar.

’Ow’s trade, Jacko? asked an acquaintance.

Rotten bloody awful, answered Jackie, a tankard to his lips. There ain’t nothing in the papers nowadays ’cept this political stuff. What we want to make ’em sell is a murder. He took a long pull and repeated, smacking his lips: Murder—bloody murder, that’s the ticket!

2

THE TWELVE APOSTLES

Saturday, November 14th

The London and Imperial Estates Company, Ltd., and its eleven associated companies, familiarly known on the Stock Exchange as The Twelve Apostles, occupied imposing offices in Lothbury. There were eight storeys in all, a grandiose Portland stone façade without, waxed oak panels within. The entrance hall was adorned with pillars of polished marble, and was guarded by the largest and smartest commissionaire in the City of London. On the floors above, large airy rooms housed during business hours regiments of typists, clerks, and office boys. In smaller and more luxurious apartments, their superiors—managers, accountants and heads of departments—pursued their mysterious and, presumably, profitable ways. But to the man in the street, and more particularly to the investor or speculator in the City, all this splendour was summed up in and made significant by the personality of one man—Lionel Ballantine.

Ballantine was one of those picturesque figures appearing from time to time in the financial world of London, whose activities lend colour to the ordinarily drab record of commerce. He was, in the generally accepted sense of the phrase, one of the best known men in the City. That is to say, a large public was familiar through the papers with his outward appearance and that of his country house, his racing stables, his yacht and his herd of pedigree Jerseys. A smaller and more closely interested public knew something, though not as much as it would have wished, of his financial interests. In actual fact, the man himself was probably as little known as it is possible to be. He had no intimate friends and even his closest associates knew how far they were from possessing his full confidence. His origin was obscure, and if many people would have liked to penetrate the veil in which he chose to shroud it, there were more who contented themselves with prophesying, cynically or blasphemously, as to his future.

By the world in general, however, Ballantine was taken as what he appeared to be—a spectacularly successful business man. In a comparatively short space of time, he had risen from nothing—or at least from very little—to a position of genuine importance and even power. Such a career is never to be achieved save at the cost of a good deal of jealousy and detraction, and he had received his fair share of both. More than once there had been unpleasant whispers as to his methods, and on one occasion—the famous Fanshawe Bank failure of four years before—something louder than whispers. But each time the murmurs had died down, leaving Ballantine more prosperous than ever.

But now the whispers were beginning to be heard again in many places, and nowhere more urgently than in the little ante-room to Ballantine’s private office on the top floor of the great building. Here the affairs of the company were being discussed in low tones by two of its employees.

I tell you, Johnson, said one, I don’t like the look of things. Here’s the Annual General Meeting not two weeks away, and the market’s getting jumpy. Have you seen this morning’s figures?

The market! said the other contemptuously. The market’s always got nerves. We’ve been through worse scares than this, haven’t we? Remember what happened in ’29? Well, then——

I’ll tell you another thing, went on the first speaker without listening to the interruption. Du Pine has got the jumps too. Have you seen him this morning? He was absolutely green. I tell you, he knows something.

Where is he now? asked Johnson. In there? He nodded his head to a glass-panelled door labelled Secretary.

No. He’s in the old man’s room. Been in and out there the last half-hour, like a cat with the fidgets. And the old man isn’t there either.

Well, what of it? Would he be, on a Saturday morning?

Yes, he would—this morning. He’s got an appointment for eleven o’clock. I was here when Du Pine made it for him.

An appointment? Who with?

Robinson, the Southern Bank man. And he’s bringing Prufrock with him.

Prufrock? The solicitor?

That’s him.

Johnson whistled softly. Then he said after a noticeable pause:

Percy, old man, I suppose you don’t happen to know what it was they were coming to see him about, do you?

What are you getting at?

I mean, if it was the Redbury bond issue they were asking about, and if old Prufrock starts nosing round——

Well? said Percy. Suppose it was. You had the handling of that issue, hadn’t you? What about it?

Johnson was looking straight in front of him. He looked right through the wall and saw a trim red-brick villa at Ealing, heavily mortgaged and utterly desirable, with two small children playing on its minute scrap of lawn, and his wife on the doorstep watching them.

Well? Percy repeated.

Johnson turned his head.

I was just thinking, he said. A pal of mine in Garrisons’ told me there was a head clerk’s job going there. It would mean dropping fifty a year, but—I think I shall put in for it, Percy old man.

An understanding glance passed between the two men, but before either could speak the telephone on the table between them rang. At the same moment the door of Ballantine’s private room opened and Du Pine, the secretary to the company, walked quickly out. He picked up the receiver, barked into it: Send them up at once! and had disappeared again in the space of a few seconds.

You see what I mean? murmured Percy. Nervy, eh?

I suppose that was Robinson and Prufrock, said Johnson, rising to his feet. "Well, I’m going round to Garrisons’, now."

In the inner room, Du Pine took a deep breath and squared his thin shoulders, like a man preparing to face an assault. For a moment he stood thus, then relaxed. His hands, which he had kept still during that brief space by an effort of will, began to jump uneasily from the wrists. He paced the room twice in each direction, then came to a halt opposite a looking-glass. He saw in it a face which would have been handsome but for the unhealthy sallowness of the cheeks, black hair neatly brushed down, a pair of bright beady eyes with heavy lines beneath them. He was still staring at the reflection, as though at the portrait of a stranger, when the visitors were announced.

Du Pine spun round on his heel.

Good morning, gentlemen! he exclaimed.

You are Mr. Du Pine, I think? said the solicitor.

At your service, Mr. Prufrock, I think? Mr. Robinson I have met before. Won’t you sit down?

Mr. Prufrock did not sit down, still standing, he looked slowly round the room.

Our appointment was with Mr. Ballantine, he said.

Quite so, answered Du Pine easily. Quite so. But he is unfortunately not able to be here in person this morning, and has asked me to deal with the matter in his absence.

Mr. Prufrock’s eyebrows went up in shocked surprise. Mr. Robinson’s, on the other hand, came down in a threatening frown. It would be difficult to say which of the two expressions Du Pine found the more unpleasant.

"Mr. Ballantine has asked you—you—to deal with this matter in his absence? repeated the solicitor incredulously. With the Redbury bond issue? May I remind you once more that we have a personal appointment with Mr. Ballantine?"

Just so, said Du Pine, beginning to show signs of nervousness. Just so. And I can assure you, gentlemen, that Mr. Ballantine would certainly be here if—if he could.

What do you mean? Is he unwell?

Du Pine indicated assent.

That seems very strange. He seemed in perfect health yesterday. Can you tell me what form his illness takes?

No, I cannot.

Very well. Then we can assume that it is not serious. I think that the best thing would be for us to make an appointment to see him at his private house.

Robinson here spoke for the first time.

I rather doubt whether we should find him there, well or ill, he observed. If I might make the suggestion, it would be more to the purpose to enquire for him at the house of Mrs. Eales—his mistress, he added in an aside to Prufrock, who pursed his lips and sniffed by way of reply.

I have done so already, Du Pine broke in. He is not there.

I see. The solicitor looked very steadily at him for a moment, to give his next question its full weight. Mr. Du Pine, will you please answer me directly: Do you know where Mr. Ballantine is?

Du Pine took a deep breath, like a swimmer before the plunge, and then began to speak at a great pace.

No, I do not. And I am quite aware that in the circumstances Mr. Ballantine’s absence may seem rather—that it is a matter which calls for enquiry. But—gentlemen—before you put any construction on it—before you take any steps which—any irrevocable steps—there is one matter that—in fairness to Mr. Ballantine—in fairness to myself—it may be of importance in the future——

Well?

Mr. Ballantine had a visitor here yesterday morning, who disturbed him very much. It may in some way account for anything erratic in his behaviour——

Prufrock turned to Robinson. His mouth was set in a hard line.

Really, Robinson, I think we are wasting our time here, he said.

But, gentlemen, this is important, Du Pine insisted.

I can hardly think of any visitor yesterday who was more important to Mr. Ballantine than the appointment he had made for today, said Prufrock drily.

"But I can assure you, sir, I can assure you that Mr. Ballantine had every intention of meeting you today. He had a perfect explanation of any little discrepancies there might be in the bond issue. There is only one possible explanation for his not