Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

Tiger Country by Michael Gilbert

© 1995 by Michael Gilbert

Named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1986, Michael Gilbert has been a prominent figure in the world of crime fiction for more than forty years. His range in the genre is extraordinary. He can create with equal dependability a police procedural, a pure whodunit, a thriller, or a spy story. Often his stories meld elements of these various subgenres to create something uniquely his own.

Clive Brocklehurst and his wife no longer shared a bed, but they shared everything else in their lives and had done so for more than thirty happy years. It was only after Laura’s second, and more serious, attack of asthma that Clive had retreated to the dressing room.

On that morning in early October Laura had been lying awake for some minutes when she heard her husband getting out of bed and leaving the dressing room by the far door. Her sleepy mind registered two things. First, that it was unusually early for him to be stirring. Being the senior partner in the firm of Brocklehurst and Garigan, Accountants of London Wall, he normally got up for a leisurely breakfast at eight o’clock and was rarely out of the house before nine.

The second thought was that he had left his room so quickly that he could not have had time to do more than throw on his clothes. Usually he was a careful and meticulous dresser. Then she heard the front door of the house opening and shutting softly. Some minutes passed. Where could he be going? She remembered that on one occasion, when she had forgotten to replenish her asthma medicine, he had slipped out to the chemist in the village, who lived over his shop, and had extracted a new bottle from him. That was the sort of thing he did for her.

Then she heard the car starting up.

After listening for a few minutes she got out of bed, put on dressing gown and slippers, went downstairs and out into the garden.

The car seemed to have been running for a long time. As she approached she could hear the engine thudding away. When she tried to open the garage door she found that it was not only shut, but seemed to have been bolted on the inside. She wasted a few minutes clawing at it. Then turned, ran back to the house and grabbed the telephone.

The local policeman — there was only one in the village — had been out most of the night before watching for poachers, but the panic in her voice ultimately stirred him into action.

“Come quickly, please.”

“Sounds as if the door’s jammed. If it is, I’ll have to bring tools to break it down.”

“Quick, quick.”

“Quick as I can, ma’am.”

When he had succeeded, twenty agonising minutes later, in getting the door down, he was surprised that the garage was not full of exhaust fumes. Until he saw the piece of rubber hose, one end wired to the exhaust pipe, the other end tucked into the rear window of the car.

Francis Fearne said to his partner, Bob Bracknell, “Of all the people in the world I should not have expected to take their own lives, I’d have put Clive Brocklehurst near the top of the list.”

“You knew him pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Very well indeed. We qualified in the same year. Clive as an accountant, I as a solicitor. We were members of the same club and partnered each other in a lot of inexpert bridge. And we shared a rough — a very rough — shoot in Sussex.” He looked regretfully out of the window. It was a perfect day. With the weather like that, how often had they played truant from their offices and enjoyed themselves almost as much as the rabbits, pigeons, and pheasants whose numbers they never seriously diminished.

“You’re his executor, of course.”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen Laura since it happened?”

“I telephoned her as soon as I heard the news. The doctor answered the phone. He said that she was in no condition to talk. I left it for twenty-four hours, rang again, and found that the telephone had been disconnected.”

“So?”

“So I’m going round to see what’s happening. I’ll get Tara to drive me. There are a lot of things I need to know. She can take notes. Addresses of relatives. Insurance details. Where he kept his private bank account. And — well—”

“And,” said Bracknell after a long pause.

“And some hint, some sort of clue to explain what can have driven a man who was healthy, as far as I knew — and comfortably off financially — I’m sure of that — to do what he did.”

“Yes,” said Bracknell. “One would like to know that.”

When Fearne reached the Brocklehurst house he found the doctor on guard downstairs. His opening words were, “It’s a bad case. As bad as any I’ve had to deal with. I felt it my duty to get a second opinion. Since the trouble seemed to be more mental than physical, I needed a neurologist or a psychiatrist. Fortunately I knew the ideal man and he happened to be available. He’s with Mrs. Brocklehurst now.”

Fearne’s heart sank. Like all lawyers, he distrusted psychiatrists. He had heard too many of them contradict each other in the witness box.

“Which member of the tribe is this?”

“Dr. Sampson. George Sampson. I believe he’s generally considered—”

“No need to tell me about him,” said Fearne. The relief in his voice was apparent. “You couldn’t have anyone better.”

George Earle Sampson was a qualified doctor and a psychiatrist. He rarely appeared in court and, when he did, spoke the truth as he saw it in simple language. Fearne had briefed him more than once, was confident of his ability and his integrity. Later that morning he listened carefully to what Dr. Sampson had to tell him.

“I gather,” he said, “that Mrs. Brocklehurst was not a very strong character, but there is no question that she was totally devoted to her husband. He was her prop. Without him she is, for the time being, helpless and adrift. It is not an uncommon case, but there are one or two things in it which are not usual. For instance, she seems frightened of authority. Particularly of male authority. Anybody who might seem to usurp the place of the husband she has lost. If she was questioned by a policeman or by a senior lawyer, even a good one like you—”

“Thank you,” said Fearne.

“—she would retreat at once into herself. If you persisted, she would probably break down entirely.”

“You mean she would become insane?”

“Temporarily. Yes.”

Fearne thought about it, unhappily. He said, “Someone will have to talk to her sooner or later. I can get most of the information I need immediately from his secretary. But there are other things — more important things — that I can only get from her.”

“Then let me make a suggestion. Is that attractive young lady I saw in your car a member of your staff?”

“She is a member of my staff. She’s a qualified solicitor. She is also my daughter. Why?”

“I have a feeling that Mrs. Brocklehurst might talk to another woman — ultimately. Suppose that your daughter started with a few unimportant routine matters and then moved on, slowly, to a more personal approach. Is she capable of that sort of manoeuvre?”

“When she was younger,” said Fearne, “she had no difficulty in twisting me round her little finger.”

“Good. Let’s try it, anyway.”

“You said there were other things you noticed.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Sampson. He seemed, for a moment, unwilling to go on. “I’ll tell you something, if I have your undertaking to pass it on to no one else. I have no clear proof of its truth, and if I’m wrong about it, it might have a terrible boomerang effect. But since it may help you, you shall have it. Somewhere, in her poor old muddled mind, there is a feeling of guilt. She thinks she was, or may have been, responsible for what’s happened. Which means — if your Latin is up to it — festina lente.”

“Step at a time,” agreed Fearne. “The secretary first.”

Mr. Brocklehurst’s secretary, Miss Sharpe, was a sensible middle-aged woman who had been with him for ten years and knew almost as much about his business as he did himself. She was able to supply, without difficulty, the factual details that Fearne wanted. It was only when he touched on the second part of his enquiry that her replies became hesitant.

She said, “It’s true. And I’d noticed it. He had been worried.”

“For how long?”

“I should say, perhaps, for two months. More or less.”

“Did it start with anything in particular? A letter. Something like that.”

“Most of his mail came to the office and I saw it before he did.”

“Might it have been a letter he got at home?”

Miss Sharpe thought about this. Then she said, “I don’t think it was a letter at all. I think it started with a telephone call. A man rang up, said it was personal, and I put it through to Mr. Brocklehurst. A few minutes later he came into my room — he hadn’t cut the caller off — and sent me out to get some cigarettes. Quite unnecessarily. He had a boxful on his desk. Then he must have gone back to continue taking the call.”

“An unusual precaution.”

“Unheard of,” said Miss Sharpe. “I was completely in his confidence. Or had been until then.”

“And it was after this that he started worrying.”

“Yes. And there were more calls. Carefully timed, on each occasion, to take place when I was out at lunch. I asked the girl on the exchange to make a note of the caller’s name—”

“Let me guess. It was Mr. Smith.”

“Robinson, actually. You think someone was blackmailing him?”

“I certainly had the possibility in mind.”

“Then I can assure you of one thing. If it was blackmail, the blackmailer wasn’t paid.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“Mr. Brocklehurst had only one personal bank account. As his executor, you’ll need the account sheets, and I’ve got them out for you. They go back for six years. You can see from them that he was as open about money matters as about everything else in his life. Until—”

“Until he got that phone call.”

“Yes. But even after that, you’ll find no sign of large or unusual transactions.”

“Thank you,” said Fearne. “I’ll take those sheets with me, if I may. One other thing. I’d like to look through his files.”

“All of them?”

“I don’t mean client files. Personal ones.”

“I’m glad you didn’t mean client files,” said Miss Sharpe, with the ghost of a smile creasing her severe mouth. “Because we’ve three filing cabinets full of them. There are quite a few personal files, too.” She was opening a fourth cabinet. “How far back would you like to go?”

“Three or four years will be enough to start with. If I want more, I’ll let you know.”

To his partner, Bob Bracknell, Fearne said next morning, “Clive might, of course, have had a second bank account somewhere, but I’m damned if I can see where it would have been funded from. His only income was his share of partnership profits, and as you can see, they were credited to this account every quarter. And it’s quite clear that he has drawn no large sums out in the last four years.”

“But it’s obvious these phone calls were threats of some sort. If blackmail wasn’t behind them, what was?”

“I can think of one plausible motive. Hatred. Someone hated Clive so much that they didn’t want money. They didn’t want Clive to buy himself out of whatever mess he’d got into. They were going to watch him wriggle and enjoy every moment of it.”

Bob thought about this. He respected his senior partner’s instinct, honed in a hundred skirmishes in the jungle of the law. He said, “If you’re right, it’s going to be devilish difficult to locate this chap. And even more difficult to deal with him when you find him.”

“I’ll deal with him. Be sure of that,” said Fearne. Bob thought he had never seen him looking so savage. “However, I think the time has come to hand over to the second eleven.”

He referred, in this disparaging way, to his daughter, Tara, and Bob’s son, Hugo, who, with their managing clerk, old Horace Piggin, made up the operative side of the firm.

To Tara he said, “I’ve got one or two papers that need Mrs. Brocklehurst’s signature. That should enable you to get alongside her. And once you get there, stay there.”

Tara accepted this vague and irregular commitment without surprise or dissent.

To Hugo he said, “I want you to read through these personal files.”

“All of them?”

“You can start with the last three years. And check them against the bank statements. There’ll be occasions when he bought someone a present and was thanked for it. Quite clear?”

“It’s clear what you want me to do. But it would help if you’d tell me what we’re looking for.”

“Hatred,” said Fearne.

A fortnight later Hugo turned over the last page of the third large file. He had to do most of his reading in the evening, after a fairly demanding day’s work. The figure emerging from the files was an agreeable one. Hating nobody and hated by nobody. A man at peace with himself and his wife. There was a regular payment into her account, for household expenses. The only other sizeable payments were his club fees and his half share in the shoot. It was clear that he was earning more than he spent and there were regular transfers to his deposit account. The deposit bank sheets also were available. They showed only payments in. No withdrawals.

When he reported his lack of success, Fearne said, “Go back three years more. There’s something buried there. I can smell it.”

Tara was unsympathetic. She said, “It’s all right for you. You can do your work in the office or at home. You don’t have to sit for hours holding an old lady’s hand and wondering if she’ll be alive when you go back next.”

“Alive? What makes you think—?”

“I found that she’d got hold of two bottles of aspirin and a full bottle of sleeping pills and hidden them in the cupboard beside her bed. I saw them when she was out of the room for a moment. And something else with them. Her husband used an old fashioned cut-throat razor. That was there, too.”

“Good God!” said Hugo. “Shouldn’t you tell someone?”

“No. I don’t think she’ll kill herself. Not now. The shock’s wearing off and she’s getting more rational. But whatever you do, don’t tell Dad. He’d have a fit. Promise me.”

Hugo promised. But very unwillingly.

During those weeks they both — Tara in particular — found Mr. Piggin a great help in keeping an eye on their matters: dealing with occasional crises and keeping the wheels turning. He said to Hugo, “Keep it up. It doesn’t matter how long it takes — give the old man the lead he wants and he’ll sniff out the truth.” He added, “If I’d done something to upset him and I knew he was after my blood, do you know what I’d do? I’d emigrate.”

October died in glory and turned into a chilly November. Tara had established a friendly relationship with Mrs. Brocklehurst’s housekeeper, Mrs. Vicarage, who attended to Laura’s personal needs, while Tara herself dealt with business matters. This was largely a question of paying the household bills. There were not a great number of them, but she had come to the end of the current cheque book and suggested writing to the bank for a new one.

Laura said, “Now you mention it, I remember on the morning — on the morning it happened — there was a letter from the bank. It was probably a new cheque book. I put it in Clive’s desk—”

Tara went downstairs to Clive’s study. She had never been in the room before. It was cold and dusty and seemed to be mourning for its previous occupant. She found the envelope from the bank in one of the pigeonholes in the desk. There was a new cheque book in it. Something else too, which came out with it. Bank passbook sheets for the last quarter. She looked at them for a moment, then picked up a piece of paper and started to scribble. Then she poked the sheets back into the envelope behind the cheque book and went upstairs, on legs that felt oddly weak.

“Do you think she knew you’d seen these bank-account sheets?” said her father.

“I don’t think so. She got the cheque book out without looking at them. If I thought she had seen them — well, I can only tell you that I’d left the door ajar.”

“Why? Do you think she’d be violent? Her preparations, surely, were for suicide, not murder.”

“Then Hugo told you? He’d promised not to—”

“Of course he told me. As soon as he thought about it, he realised he had got to. And don’t talk about promises. We’re not playing nursery games. Now, about those statements. You got it all down accurately, I hope.”

“I think so,” said Tara faintly. She’d never seen her father in that mood before and it frightened her.

“On September first she drew a cheque for five thousand pounds in favour of stockbrokers Welsby and Grintham. There wasn’t a lot of money in the account, so she must have deposited the share certificate or contract note or whatever with the bank as security for a temporary loan. Then on September fifteenth she paid in six thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds, discharged the loan, and was credited with the profit — one thousand, two hundred and fifty?”

“Can you do something like that?”

“Easily. If you have inside information. Now, let’s think. You’d better keep clear of the Brocklehurst house for a bit. If we need anything, we’ll send in Mr. Piggin. He has a very calming effect on hysterical women.” Noting the look on his daughter’s face, he added, “Cheer up. I doubt if anyone could have done better than you did. Or as well.”

At eleven o’clock that same night Hugo closed the sixth personal file, which he had just finished, rubbed his eyes, and opened them again. Yes. Surely. There had been something. He had been so sleepy that, at first reading, he had missed it.

It was the carbon copy of a letter from Clive to Rupert Maxwell, the senior partner of the internationally known firm of City solicitors, Mayne, Maxwell, and Freudenger. They were evidently old friends.

“Dear Rupert, If you want my advice, as an accountant, I’d say no to Welling. You say that he’s a clever chap. All right. I accept your word for that. What makes me doubt whether he’s really fitted to be finance manager to a firm of your standing is that he appears to be totally unqualified. He calls himself an accountant. Anyone can so describe himself. But I’d prefer to see the letters F.C.A. or F.C.C.A. or even F.C.M.A. after a man’s name before I put him into such an important post.”

When he saw the letter next morning, Fearne said, “Well played the second eleven.” He told Bob what Tara had discovered. “Plenty of grounds there for Welling hating Clive. If he saw the letter. Which he could only have done if he was working, in some capacity, at Mayne, Maxwell, and Freudenger at the time. It’s an enormous outfit, with a rapid turnover of junior staff, so it’s quite possible that he was. We’ll get Mr. Piggin moving on that side of it. Meanwhile, it’s about time I had a word with Clive’s partner.”

Sam Garigan said, “You can count on me, of course. Any help I can give you, you’ve only to ask. I’m still shaken when I think of what Clive was driven to. Ghastly. Do you know, a few days before it happened, we gave him a little party to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of him joining the firm. And he seemed so happy and relaxed.”

“He was a very self-controlled man,” said Fearne. “I doubt if anyone, even his wife, had any idea of what was happening. What I want you to do now is to let me have a list of all the companies your firm acts for, leaving out small private companies.”

“Even without them it will be quite a long list. But you shall have it.”

“Right. Then I want you to mark on it any companies that have had capital dealings in the last six months. I mean takeovers, or being taken over. Increases or reductions of capital. Rights issues. Bonus issues. Anything like that.”

“There won’t be many of them.”

“Good,” said Fearne. He thought for a moment and then said, “At that party you gave for Clive, were there any presents?”

Garigan said, with some surprise, “Only two. The firm gave him a set of golf clubs, and his wife gave him a camera. A very fine modern one. He was a keen photographer and was mighty pleased with it.”

“It would have cost a lot of money?”

“A fair amount, yes.”

“As much as one thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds?”

“Could be. But, forgive me, I hardly see how this information is going to help you.”

“It fills out the picture,” said Fearne. He added, “The fact is that I’m tracking a jackal, in very thick country. I can see his paw marks and I’m beginning to hope that with the help I am getting—” he smiled gratefully at Garigan, “I may soon sight him. When I do, I’ll skin him and nail his hide up on the wall.”

After which the pace slackened for some weeks, while Mr. Piggin pursued his molelike activities.

He knew many of the managing clerks and senior office staffs in the City offices. He stood a great many drinks and, in important cases, a few lunches. He knew that it was no use being impatient. If he listened carefully and waited long enough, the great sounding board of the east central district would transmit to him the message he wanted. It reached him in the bar of the Falstaff, when he was talking to a retired stockbroker’s clerk.

He reported to Fearne. “Welling’s your man. Not a shadow of doubt about it. Four years ago he had a temporary job with Mayne, Maxwell. He was being considered for a permanent job, but for some reason he didn’t get it. When it was clear that he wasn’t going to — that letter you showed me must have tipped the balance — he seems to have behaved like the unjust steward in the Bible. Feathered the nest he planned to occupy. He gave a number of useful tips to a not very large or respectable firm of stockbrokers, Welsby and Grintham. When Rupert Maxwell heard about it and kicked him straight out, he got a job with them and has been there ever since. Not a patch on the job he lost, but better than nothing, I suppose.”

“So that’s the truth of it,” said Fearne. “He must have seen that letter when he was at Maxwell’s — some secretarial indiscretion — and realised who had ditched him. So what does he do? Nothing, for a bit. Then he scrapes acquaintance with Laura Brocklehurst. She’s a sociable type. Got a certain way into her confidence. Bided his time. The chance he’d been waiting for came when she wanted to give her husband an extra-special present. He told her she could make a few hundred pounds — maybe a thousand — by buying and selling Kadmack shares.”

“The engineering firm?” said Bracknell.

“That’s the one. Brocklehurst and Garigan acted for them. They were on the list Sam gave me. They were in the middle of an amalgamation with Afro-Engines. When it came off, both lots of shares were going to go up. I needn’t say that Clive, who was organising the amalgamation, wouldn’t have touched the shares himself. And if he’d known that Laura was going to, he’d have warned her off. But that was where Welling was so clever. Clive wasn’t to be told. The whole thing was to be a surprise. And I guess he reckoned that the transaction was too small for the Stock Exchange Surveillance Department to worry about it.”

“Large or small,” said Bracknell, “if it had come out, it would have been assumed that Clive had tipped his wife off and they’d both have been in dead trouble, every way round. Insider dealing is a social as well as a legal crime nowadays.”

Fearne said, “It was the trouble coming to Laura that was in his mind when he switched on the car that morning. He knew that once he was out of the way, Welling wouldn’t move again.”

“Why should he? He’d done what he set out to do, the nasty little sod. So now that we know, what do we do?”

“We tell the whole story. To people we can trust.”

“Trust not to pass it on, you mean.”

“On the contrary, people we can trust to pass it on.”

“We’ll have to ask them to be a bit discreet about where they got it from.”

“Yes. But not too discreet,” said Fearne.

And so, in the exclusive luncheon clubs, in the not-so-exclusive drinking clubs, and in the entirely inexclusive sandwich bars, the story spread. Most people knew about Clive Brocklehurst’s death. Many of them had liked and respected him. When they heard the true story — on the unimpeachable authority of Francis Fearne — their indignation and their dislike for the perpetrator grew with each telling.

The City is a close community; in many ways as close and as prejudiced as a boarding school. Physical retaliation was out of the question, but there were other, more subtle and equally hurtful ways of expressing their feelings.

The luncheon club to which Welling belonged — it had taken him five years to procure his membership — had a simple method of preserving its tone and standing. Under the club rules, a fresh application for membership had to be made every year. Normally it was accepted as a matter of course. In Welling’s case it was refused. “Very sorry. Pressure of new members,” said the secretary.

Welling, his indignation mixed with a less comfortable feeling, spoke to Mr. Grintham, the partner for whom he did most of his work.

“It’s a scandal,” he said. “Pressure of new members. Why should new members be preferred to me?”

Mr. Grintham, looking at him over the top of his rimless glasses, said, “Do you really not know why they ousted you?”

“I know that Fearne’s been spreading some lying story about me. I didn’t know that anyone believed it.”

“They not only believe it,” said Mr. Grintham coldly, “they’re beginning to react to it. I suppose you noticed that we had lost two of our best clients recently. Again, no reason given. Companies are free to choose what brokers act for them. But off the record and from remarks that have been made to me, I’ve no doubt at all. It’s a sign of displeasure because you work for us. Also because it was through this firm that the purchase and sale were made, which is true, of course. We can’t deny the fact.”

“It’s quite true,” said Welling. “I handled it myself. Mrs. Brocklehurst is an old acquaintance of mine. She asked me to do it. Explained that she wanted to raise a little cash for a present to her husband. I saw no reason to refuse.”

“Why did she choose Kadmack?”

“She said she had a feeling they were going up. A woman’s instinct. You know what they’re like.”

“Then the whole idea was hers, not yours?”

“Yes.”

“You’re absolutely sure about that?”

“Absolutely. Why?”

“Because, as a measure of protection for the firm — and for you, of course — I have already spoken to George Capel. You know who I mean?”

“The Q.C.”

“Right. A specialist in defamation. I told him the whole story. And I asked him, if we brought an action for slander against Fearne, would we have a case that would stand up, and would he act for us. You know how counsel shy away from slander cases. In the end he said he thought we would have a convincing case and that he would act for us, subject to two points. The first was that there appeared to be no reason why you should have trapped Mrs. Brocklehurst in the way Fearne was suggesting. What was the suggested motive for the steps you took? Had you any reason to dislike Brocklehurst?”

“None at all. I’ve never had any dealings with him, professional or social. Apart from the fact that he was Laura Brocklehurst’s husband, I hardly knew of his existence.”

“Good. That should help a jury to make up its mind. Counsel’s second point was a very simple one. Fearne is saying that you suggested the sale and purchase to Mrs. Brocklehurst. You say that the suggestion came from her. Two different stories. Which of them is true?”

Before Welling could answer, Mr. Grintham leaned forward and said, “If it was put to Mrs. Brocklehurst, would she support you?”

Welling said, picking his words carefully, “She’s not in a very good state of health at the moment. In fact, her mind’s said to be going. If it was put to her, her first reaction might be to say that she’d forgotten all about it.”

“But if she was pressed — reminded of the precise circumstances in which the conversation took place—”

“Yes. I think she’d admit that the suggestion came from her.”

“Then ask her.”

“Personally?”

“Why not? You’re an old friend. Even if she’s bedridden, surely you’d be allowed in to see her.”

“I imagine so. Mrs. Vicarage knows me. But if Laura says — what we want her to say — shouldn’t I have a witness with me?”

“She’d be more likely to speak freely if you were on your own. But there’s no reason you shouldn’t take a tape recorder with you.”

When Albert Welling was ushered into her bedroom by Mrs. Vicarage and the door had closed behind her, Laura experienced such a feeling of relief and joy that it almost overwhelmed her. It was something she had hoped for and prayed for without really expecting it to happen.

Her hand slid down into the narrow space between the far side of her bed and the wall and her fingers caressed the stock of Clive’s shotgun.

She drew it up quite slowly.

When Welling saw it, his first instinct was to try to grab it. Then he changed his mind and made for the door. As he was trying to open it, Laura, resting the gun on the rail at the foot of her bed, discharged both barrels into the small of his back.

“Did you guess he’d come to see her?” said Bracknell. “And did you know she’d got hold of Clive’s gun?”

“No to both questions,” said Fearne. “I’m not a prophet or a mind reader. One thing I do know. We shall have to get busy now organising her defence.”

“She’ll get a lot of sympathy from the jury,” said Bracknell.