Smallbone Deceased

Presently he reached the iron gate and white walls of the Villa Carpeggio, and five minutes later he was in official converse with Signora Bonaventura. He produced for her inspection a photograph and a card. Signora Bonaventura laughed over the one and clucked over the other. Certainly she recognised the photograph. It was Signor Smolbon, who stood apart from all other Englishmen in her memory, in that he was of a reasonable size. Not two metres high and one metre broad, like most Englishmen. But of reasonable stature: smaller, almost, than an Italian. But to say that he owned her house! She examined the card and clucked again. Certainly, he had stayed there for some weeks—two months, perhaps, in the previous summer. He had visited the galleries of Florence, and had purchased a number of earthenware cooking utensils of doubtful value. She had not seen him since, nor heard of him. What was it that brought the sergeant on his mission? So! Signor Smolbon was dead. Santa Maria! All must come to it.

A thousand miles to the north.

Sergeant Plumptree called on the secretary to the Bishop of London. He referred briefly to the circumstances outlined to him by the Reverend Eustace Evander. The secretary was able to reassure him. The clergyman concerned in the incident was now on missionary work in China; he had been out of England for more than a year. Sergeant Plumptree thanked the secretary. It had not seemed to him a very hopeful line, but all lines had to be hunted out.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Plumptree’s colleague, Sergeant Elvers, had visited Charing Cross and spent a tiresome hour in the stationmaster’s office. All the booking-office clerks who had been on duty on the morning of Friday, February 12th, inspected a photograph of Marcus Smallbone and they all said that he looked very like a lot of people they had seen but they certainly couldn’t swear that he had taken a ticket to anywhere in Kent on that particular morning. Sergeant Elvers thereupon departed to repeat the process at London Bridge, Waterloo and Victoria. One of his difficulties was that there was no station in Kent called Stanton or Stancomb.

At Maidstone, a member of the Kent Constabulary, equipped with a gazetteer, a large map, a county history and other useful books of reference, was compiling a list. Stancomb Peveril, Stancombe Basset, Stancombe Earls, Stancombe House, the Stancombe Arms, Stanton-le-Marsh, Stanton Heath, Staunton, Staunston-cum-Cliffe…

So the little wheels clicked and the spindles bobbed and curtsied, and the mesh was woven.

V

“The monetary position would seem, at first sight, to be fairly straightforward,” reported Mr. Hoffman that evening. “Under the Articles of Partnership the total net profits of the firm—and by that I mean, of all the allied firms—are to be divided into ten equal shares. Of these shares Abel Horniman took four, Mr. Birley three, and Mr. Craine three. The whole of Abel Horniman’s share has now passed to his son, who is, I understand, his sole executor and beneficiary.”

“What about the other partners—Ramussen and Oakshott and those people?”

“They are salaried partners only.”

“I see. Yes. What did the total profits amount to last year?”

“After everything had been paid”—Mr. Hoffman consulted his notes—“a little short of ten thousand pounds.”

“That’s not an awful lot, is it,” said Hazlerigg. “That would mean that Abel netted—let me see—a little under four thousand. He had that big house in Kensington to keep up—and I understand, a country house.”

“A large farm-house,” said Mr. Hoffman. “Almost, as you say, a small country house, with about two hundred acres of land, in Kent.”

“Yes. I thought he was making rather more. How do the figures compare with ten years ago?”

“A gradual but marked decline. In 1938 the net profits were in the neighbourhood of fifteen thousand.”

“But he was solvent. I take it—”

“That’s not a question I can answer at once,” said Hoffman cautiously. “There may be undisclosed debts. But I think that the probability is that he was solvent.”

“Is there any real doubt about it?”

“Both the house in Kensington and the farm in Kent were subject to very full mortgages. No doubt, with house and farming property at their present levels, they could afford to carry them. But there was no margin in them.”

“What about other assets?”

“There’s just his current account at the bank. As I say, it’s difficult to be precise about it at this stage. There is about four thousand pounds in it at the moment.”

“I see.” It didn’t accord very well with Hazlerigg’s notion of the senior partner of a well-known firm of solicitors. “It’s a bit hand-to-mouth, isn’t it? Are you sure there were no securities—no investments?”