Smallbone Deceased

“The boxes were in sets. Each partner’s room had a set. There was a master-key for each set, with a ‘single variant’ key for each box in the set. But no key of one set would fit another set. The partner concerned kept the ring of keys for his boxes, and the master-key, in case he lost an individual key.”

“Wasn’t that rather over-elaborate?”

“You just didn’t know Abel Horniman,” said Bohun.

“It was right up his street. One key—one box—one client. I don’t think the other partners enjoyed the system quite so much. Birley lost all his keys in the course of time and had to have a new set made. Craine, I know, keeps his boxes permanently unlocked. But that doesn’t affect the point at issue, since none of their keys would fit the Ichabod Stokes box, anyway. Only Abel Horniman had that key—and apparently he didn’t have it either. I don’t know what Bob Horniman’s story is—but Miss Cornel says that he couldn’t find either the key for this particular box, or the master. The other seventeen were there all right.”

“Thank you,” said Hazlerigg. “I think I’d better have a word with Bob Horniman.”

Bob could tell him very little about the keys.

“I was father’s sole executor,” he explained. “And I took everything over. There were a lot of keys. House keys as well as office keys. I knew that this bunch belonged to the office, so I brought them here and kept them in my desk drawer. I never realised that one of them was missing. I used the others from time to time to open various boxes—”

“But, of course, you’d never had occasion to go to this particular box until this morning.”

“Well, no, I hadn’t,” said Bob. “As a matter of fact I hadn’t really done much about the Ichabod Stokes Trust at all. It had been on my conscience a bit—but a trust isn’t like a conveyancing or litigation matter that has to be kept marching strictly along—and you know how it is. I was a bit rushed and the least urgent job went to the wall.”

“I quite understand,” said Hazlerigg. “Now, about your father. Can you give me some idea of his routine? When he arrived at the office, and so on. Particularly in the last months of his life.”

Bob looked faintly surprised, but said: “He had to take it quite easily. He was under doctor’s orders for the last six months. I think they’d have been happier if he hadn’t come to office at all, but that was out of the question with Dad. The office was his life, you know. He used to get here at about half-past ten and leave at about half-past four.”

“I suppose that the rest of you arrived earlier than that.”

“Good Lord, yes,” said Bob. “Nine-thirty sharp. Even Mr. Craine was usually behind his desk before ten o’clock.”

“I see. Were you and your father living together?”

“No,” said Bob shortly. “I’ve got a flat.”

“I suppose that your father’s house comes to you under the will. Are you going to live there now?”

Bob looked for a moment as if he was searching for some cause of offence in this question. In the end he said: “No. Certainly not. I couldn’t possibly keep it up. It’s a great barracks of a place in Kensington.”

IV

Sergeant Plumptree would have assented to this description. It wasn’t an attractive house. In colour it was greyish-yellow. In size it was enormous. It was designed on the sound Victorian principle which kept the kitchen in the basement, the family on the ground and the first floor, the guests on the second floor, the servants on the third floor and the children in the attic.

A bearded lady with one stationary and one roving eye opened the door and showed Sergeant Plumptree into a morning-room heavy with black satinwood and maroon chenille. She motioned him to a penitential chair, folded her plump white hands, and awaited in silence whatever indignities her interrogator might see fit to heap upon her.

“Well, ma’am,” said Sergeant Plumptree pleasantly. “It’s a question of times—”

Without too much prompting he obtained the following information. It would have seemed that Abel Horniman was as much a creature of habit in his home as in his office, particularly during the last six months of his life. Everything had been done to render his course smooth. A nurse had always been in attendance. Sergeant Plumptree noted her name and address, feeling glad of a chance of corroborative evidence. Abel Horniman had got up at eight-thirty and had his breakfast at nine-fifteen and had read his Times and his Financial Times until the car came to fetch him at five past ten. In the evenings he had always been home by five o’clock for tea, and had then liked to sit and listen to the wireless before changing into a dinner jacket for his evening meal.

“Did he ever go out at that time?”

The housekeeper looked faintly surprised. “Certainly not,” she said.

“Never,” persisted the sergeant. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we must be certain—”

“Mr. Horniman”—the housekeeper pursed her lips—“was a dying man. He never went out in the evenings.”

“Thank you. And then…”