Smallbone Deceased

“My name’s Hazlerigg,” went on the newcomer. “I’m from Scotland Yard.”

Bohun had recognised the police car and managed not to look too shaken. The next remark, however, did surprise him.

“I believe you knew Bobby Pollock,” said Hazlerigg.

“Lord, yes,” said Bohun. “Won’t you sit down. Bobby and I were second loots in the Rum Runners. We were in Africa and Italy together. I heard—didn’t he get killed?”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “I had the pleasure of hanging both the responsible parties,” he added.

“I’m glad,” said Bohun. “Bobby was a first-rater. I believe he broke every regulation known to officialdom to get into the army.”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “He told me a lot about you too.”

“Well, I expect you know the worst. About my disability, you mean.”

“I should hesitate to describe para-insomnia as a disability,” said Hazlerigg, “although I know the army regarded it as such.”

“I don’t think that anyone really knows very much about it,” said Bohun, “or that’s the impression I’ve got from talking to a number of different doctors.”

“It’s true, then, that you never sleep more than two hours a night.”

“Two hours is a good night,” said Bohun. “Ninety minutes is about the average.”

“And you don’t suffer any ill effects—excuse me. It’s bad taste, I know, asking questions like that, only I was interested when Pollock told me.”

“It doesn’t make me feel tired, if that’s what you mean,” said Bohun. “It isn’t straightforward insomnia, you know—not as the term is usually understood. The only detail on which the medical profession are at all agreed is that some day I may drop down dead in the street. But what day—or what street—they can’t say.”

“I can’t do better,” said Hazlerigg, “than quote Sergeant Pollock. He said some nice things about you as an infantry officer, then he added, ‘Of course, he was God’s gift to the staff. Imagine a G.S.O. who could work indefinitely for twenty-two hours a day!’ I gather that an officious M.O. tumbled to it in the end and the net result was that you were boarded out.”

“Once they knew about the para-insomnia I don’t think they had any option.”

“I should have thought the most difficult thing was filling in the spare time.”

“Oh, I do a good deal of reading,” said Bohun. “It’s useful, too, when I’m taking an exam. And I do a good deal of walking about the streets. And sometimes I get a job.”

“A job?”

“As night watchman. I combined most of my reading for my Law Finals with a night watchman’s job for the Apex Shipping Company. Believe it or not, I was actually reading the sections in Kenny on ‘Robbery with Violence’ when I was knocked out by Syd Seligman, the strong-arm man for one of the—”

“I know Syd,” said Inspector Hazlerigg. “I helped to send him down for a seven last month. Well, now…”

“The preliminaries are now concluded,” thought Bohun. “Seconds out of the ring. Time!”

“I’ve got a proposal to put to you. I don’t know if you’ll think it’s a good one or not…” Shortly he laid before Bohun the idea which he had already put to the Assistant Commissioner and the facts on which it was based.

“We might as well face it at once,” he went on. “Almost the only person who could and would have killed Smallbone is your late senior partner, Abel Horniman. If you’re inclined to look anywhere else for a likely candidate just ask yourself how anyone else could have got the body into the room unobserved, and opened the box—of which only Abel had the key. For Abel himself, the box was the obvious place to put a body. He knew he was dying. He only needed a few weeks’ grace—a few months at the most. But for anyone else, the idea was madness.”

“Yes,” said Bohun. “Of course. When you put it like that it seems obvious enough… But why?”

“That’s where you come in,” said Hazlerigg. “Again, we’ll start with the obvious solution. You’d be surprised how often it’s the right one. Abel Horniman and Marcus Smallbone were fellow trustees. I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it, but I realise this much. They had joint control of a very large sum of money. It might be more accurate to say that Horniman had control of it. He was the professional. One would expect Smallbone to do what he was told—sign on the dotted line and so on.”

“I don’t think,” said Bohun slowly, “that Smallbone was quite that sort of man.”

“I don’t expect he was,” said Hazlerigg. “That’s why he’s dead, you know. It’s so obvious that it must be so. Some swindle was going on. I don’t mean that it was an easy swindle or an obvious swindle. Nothing that an outsider could spot. But Smallbone wasn’t an outsider. The thing had to be put up to him—to a limited extent. And he just happened to spot the rabbit in the conjurer’s hat.”

“So the conjurer popped him into his disappearing cabinet.”