Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 2. Whole No. 321, August 1970

The Liquidation File by Simon Troy[10]

Roger Railton was an organized man — methodical, precise, careful, with everything planned in advance to the smallest detail. So when he decided to murder his wife, he brought his talent for exact order into full operation…

We would like to pay Simon Troy a great compliment: while reading his new story, “The Liquidation File,” we were strongly reminded of the late Roy Vickers’ crime short stories. Mr. Vickers added detection to his marvelous tales of the Department of Dead Ends, and we now urge Mr. Troy to try his hand at a series of contemporary “inverted detective” stories. Create a new Department, Mr. Troy, especially for EQMM...

Roger Railton was a methodical man. When he decided to murder his wife he opened a file and put Ag. (L) at the top right-hand corner.

All the details of his private and business life were highly organized. His wife’s name was Agnes. The L stood for Liquidation, a euphemism which offended him less than the word beginning with M.

The first entry he made in that file was headed B.S. Somebody had to dance at the end of Railton’s second string, and it might as well be someone he disliked, someone dangerous to him. Bernard Saunders was such a man.

Agnes had to die for several reasons, all of them adequate. She represented £.100,000 he would never lay his hands on otherwise — the present value of her shares in the company, left to her by her father. She was the one factor in his life he had never been able to organize. Cool, aloof, reserved, she had all the mulish obstinacy so often found in those women who apparently wouldn’t say boo to a goose. She was resilient. He could bend Agnes a long way, but she never broke. She always came back to right where she started from.

Also, she knew him, through and through — his cruelty, his rank dishonesty, his womanizing.

Agnes was fifteen years younger than Roger Railton. He had set about the business of marrying her just as methodically as he was now planning her exit from the scene. As the Managing Director’s daughter, she was worth a little trouble on Roger’s part.

Railton was Managing Director now, following his father-in-law’s death. But he wasn’t done with the family — oh, no! Agnes had what she called her obligations. She made a point of raising her voice at every Board meeting. She was a thorn, a dagger in Railton’s side. So was Saunders. He’d come into the firm four years ago — a specialist in heat-resisting alloys, a brilliant metallurgist, a forceful chap who had ideas and could put them over. Railton’s co-directors had been pressing a long time for Saunders to be appointed to the Board of Directors. So far, Railton had successfully resisted, but he knew the tide was running against him.

Yet Agnes, in spite of her interfering ways and the support she gave Saunders at Board meetings, might have survived if only she had been organizable. Roger Railton’s day was precisely ordered from his rising to his going to bed. He always knew exactly where he would be at, say, 5:07 a week from next Wednesday. Whereas Agnes neither knew nor cared where she would be or what she would be doing a half hour from now.

Bernard Saunders, in spite of his knowledge and skill, was cast in a mold similar to Agnes’. He was deceptively lazy, easy-going, and good-humored. It irked Railton that Saunders’ approach should be so nonchalant, and yet so productive. Not only did he get through an infernal lot of work, but he preserved his popularity at the factory as well.

So much for justification. Now, the means—

Bernard Saunders was coming into Roger’s office now, a big pipe between his teeth. He nodded casually as he closed the door. He accorded Railton a measure of polite respect, but his whole manner indicated that he wasn’t the man to grovel before the Managing Director of a smallish factory on the outskirts of a smallish town.

“About those struts,” he said. “I’ve had a report from the stress boys and they’re fifty percent plus. That’ll do for me. Give me the okay and I’ll get the job tooled up.”

“Deadline is the fifteenth of next month,” Railton said.

“You’ll get ’em.”

Railton glanced at a desk pad. “Your holidays start on the eighth. I suppose you’ve taken that into account?”

“I said you’ll get the stuff and you will. If necessary, I’ll postpone my three weeks to September.”

“But you’re here on the holiday list—”

“Scrub the list!”

“Surely you’ve already made arrangements? Plane reservations, hotels, and so on?”

“Me?” Saunders roared with laughter. “Not on your sweet nelly! Might go tramping in Dorset, might go to Istanbul. I’ll work that out in the ticket office at Victoria when the time comes.”

When Bernard Saunders had gone, Railton opened his file. SAUNDERS, Bernard, 34, unmarried, no feminine attachments or interests. Service flat on The Parkway.

He passed a big plump hand over his bald head and thought. Thought hard.

Roger was in no hurry. Such things should be approached calmly, objectively, carefully.

The next conversation he had with Saunders was at the Unionist Ball, held a little way out of town at Lord Vardy’s place. Railton had no urgent political loyalties, but social life can’t be entirely ignored in a satellite community 30 miles from London. He took Agnes, of course. One has to keep up pretenses.

A few of the boys were there, competitors who would grab Saunders if they had a chance. Railton towered above them at the bar — he was a big powerful man — and talked in a patronizing sort of way. Bernard Saunders was cheerful but steady after a few drinks. Rooke, the company’s Secretary, was talking to Dwyer, the Export Manager. One of Railton’s competitors was staring mournfully into his glass and shaking his head.

“Your wife’s father would turn in his grave if he saw what you’ve done to the old place,” he said.

“My wife’s father was old-fashioned — he wasn’t in touch.”

“You mean he wasn’t so bloody avaricious as you are. Special alloys — why, you’ve chivvied around for the sake of a few tin-pot contracts and lost half the reputation he took a lifetime to build up. And you’d have lost the other half if Saunders hadn’t put the brake on.”

“It’s a matter of organization,” Railton said. He looked vaguely round the big overheated room. “Where’s Agnes, I wonder?”

“Sitting it out behind the potted palms,” Rooke suggested.

Bernard Saunders took another glass from a convenient tray. “You can have too much damned organization,” he said. “That’s your chief trouble, Railton.”

Railton’s dislike welled up. Saunders’ use of his surname was deliberate, a calculated slight.

“What’s my chief trouble?” he asked.

“You could organize anything from a flea circus to a nuclear war, but there’s never any elasticity about your plans. They don’t bend. Where are you if anything goes haywire? The man who keeps the wind in his sails is the one who can change course at a moment’s notice.”

“Change course!” Railton repeated slowly. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong! I can change course with the next. You see, Bernard boy, my mind’s organized as well as my habits. Give me just fifteen seconds and I’ll have scrapped one line of action and taken up another — and that goes for poker or running the show that pays your damned inflated salary.”

Saunders clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m proud to work for you, Railton!”

None of this had been quite accidental. Railton knew exactly what he was doing.

He rescued his wife from the arms of a languid junior executive. Agnes had never been a vividly pretty girl, but she had charm, and she looked very young and attractive now as she smiled up at her husband. Mockery, of course, was behind the smile. Others might not notice it, but Railton did.

“You know my wife?” he said to Saunders, who was passing.

“We’ve met,” Saunders said. “How d’you do, Mrs. Railton.”

“I’m hot and tired,” she said. “Does anyone have a cigarette?”

Railton gave her one, and lit it.

“It’s late,” he said, “but I want to see a man named Dean on some business. He’s staying overnight at the Victoria Hotel. Shall you wait till I come back, Agnes? Or perhaps Saunders could drop you off on his way home. That would save me the trip back.”

“Glad to,” Saunders agreed. “Give me a nudge when you’re ready to leave, Mrs. Railton. I’ll be at the bar.”

There was no man named Dean staying at the Victoria. Nor did Railton go there or even leave Lord Vardy’s premises, though he kept out of his wife’s way, and Saunders’. He kept his eye on them till they both left about 12:45, then he made his way back to the bar for a nightcap.

After a carefully timed interval he touched Rooke’s shoulder. “Have you seen my wife?” he asked.

“Lost her again?” Rooke inquired with alcoholic gravity. “Last time I saw her she was talking to you.”

“That was an hour ago.” Railton glanced irritably at his watch. “Damned odd.”

He drifted away, spoke to two or three people, and returned to the bar with a carefully simulated expression of mild anxiety on his heavy face. He said once again that it was damned odd.

“What’s odd?” Rooke asked.

“I can’t find my wife. Where’s Saunders? Has he gone home?”

“Saunders?” Rooke surveyed the crowd, thinner now than an hour ago. “Haven’t seen him for quite a while.”

Railton said in a sharper voice to Dwyer, “Have you seen my wife?”

“Had a dance with her around nine,” Dwyer said. “Haven’t seen her since then.”

“I wonder if Saunders…”

“What’s that about Saunders again?” Rooke asked.

“Nothing.” Roger shook his head, well aware that both men were looking at him with mouths slightly open. “Seems queer, that’s all.”

He didn’t say what seemed queer, which only added to their curiosity.

Roger drove home, feeling moderately well-pleased with himself.

Home was a large, fairly modern structure set among trees near the river, well away from the industrial smoke that the town produced. It was a house without servants, except for day help — a factor Roger had carefully considered.

He garaged his car and let himself in. Agnes was kneeling in front of the fire. There was no sign of Saunders.

“He had a drink and went home,” she said indifferently.

A slight disappointment. Some mutual attraction between Agnes and Saunders would have helped, but perhaps that was too much to expect. Agnes was as frigid as a December morning and Bernard Saunders was obsessed with his work. Fortunately, the ultimate issue was out of their hands.

“I sometimes wonder why you bother to go to these affairs,” he said. “If it’s too much trouble to make yourself plesant to my business associates—”

“I don’t care for them.”

“I don’t care for them,” he mimicked. “I wonder what you do care for?”

She looked at him over her shoulder, her brown hair shining in the firelight. “Kindness, and perhaps a little flattery sometimes. Quiet pleasant things that you consider a complete waste of time. But most of all, kindness.”

He stared down at her. She was so much stronger than he was. He could snap every bone in her body, but he could never quench the mocking gleam in her eyes.

“You checked so many things before you married me,” she told him. “Other things, maybe more important, you missed… You wanted money so badly, didn’t you?”

“Most people do. And talking of money, your money, if you’ve changed your mind about the offer I made—”

“I haven’t. You didn’t do quite as you liked in my father’s day. You won’t in mine.”

And by saying that, he thought grimly, you’ve put the seal on your own death warrant.

For some weeks Roger Railton had been painstakingly copying his wife’s handwriting.

A few days after the Unionist dance he wrote an entirely imaginary letter from his wife to an entirely imaginary character, then promptly burned it. This was not such lunacy as it appeared to be. He wanted, not the letter, but its impression on the page underneath.

When Rooke came into the office the following afternoon, he found Railton standing near the window with a sheet of blank paper in one hand and a magnifying lens in the other. It was a posture and a preoccupation so emphatically out of character that Rooke stared in astonishment. Railton glanced up and hurriedly stuffed the paper into his pocket.

He came back to his desk, and Rooke opened a folder, drawing Roger’s attention to the columns of figures. But for once — indeed, for the first time in Rooke’s memory — Railton’s mind did not appear to be on his work.

“Is anything wrong, Mr. Railton?” he asked.

“Wrong? What the hell should be wrong?”

“I thought you seemed a bit upset, that’s all.”

Railton was breathing hard. “Nothing, nothing.”

He bent over the accounts that Rooke had brought in, then suddenly pushed them away and smacked his hand down on the desk. “I wonder how far you’re to be trusted?” he said, well-knowing that the distance could be measured in millimeters. “What d’you make of this?”

Rooke took the sheet of paper. “It’s blank,” he said.

“The sheet above it wasn’t.”

Rooke gave him a keen glance, then peered again at the sheet. “Your sight’s better than mine.”

“What about the third line? Is that word better?”

“Could be.”

“Follow that line on. And the next.”

Rooke sat down and gave the sheet his full attention. “Where did you get this?” he asked, after several minutes of scrutiny.

“Never mind where I got it.” Railton reached for the sheet and held one of the corners over his cigarette lighter. He dropped the curling ash into the wastebasket. “Best thing to do with it. Shouldn’t have bothered you, but—”

He mopped his forehead. “Get me a glass of water, Rooke. And oblige me by forgetting about this, will you?”

Rooke brought the glass of water and went out. Railton’s eyes followed his progress along the corridor. How long before Rooke told someone? — in strictest confidence, of course. Not long. Give him a mere quarter of an hour.

Rooke, as the firm’s Secretary, was perfectly well-acquainted with Agnes’ signature. Though not, perhaps, with those scraps of frustrated sentiment expressed on that sheet and now burned beyond further reference.

Some circumstances intolerable… Better perhaps to die if one had the courage…

Railton smiled craftily to himself. The subtle touch! Today has seemed like twenty days… If you mean all you say then for heaven’s sake…

Nothing extravagant, no purple prose. Agnes wasn’t that kind.

He drank the water that Rooke had brought. Nothing like being thorough.

By Saturday he was conscious of Rooke’s curious stare whenever he encountered the man. Rooke and Dwyer were members of the same golf club. There was a perceptible difference in Dwyer’s manner too. A slight — could it be concern, a man-to-man sympathy?

For a week Railton sat tight, carefully cultivating that preoccupied manner. It was late on Friday evening when he strolled along the corridor to the Export Department. The staff had left, and Dwyer was clearing his desk.

“When is Saunders putting that strut job into production?” Railton asked.

“It’s jigged up,” Dwyer told him. “Only a matter of days to run the lot off,”

Railton nodded. “Is Saunders anywhere about?”

“Maybe in the staff canteen. He’s working late tonight.”

Railton went to the door, then turned round. “By the way, was Saunders working late last Wednesday?”

“Wednesday?” Dwyer’s eyes veered sharply. “Couldn’t say offhand.”

“After — say, eight o’clock?”

“I’d gone home myself before then. Why all this about Saunders?”

“Eh? Oh, nothing, nothing. Don’t mention it to him, will you? It was — well, just a notion, that’s all.”

Tongue in cheek, he left Dwyer to make what he could of it.

There was no light in Saunders’ office. Railton slipped quietly inside. Saunders kept a little-used briefcase behind the filing cabinet. He found it, took the small risk, and carried it to his own office.

The gambit was over, and Railton was now ready for the middle game. One small touch, and he supplied it on Monday. Seeing Rooke’s angular shadow on the ribbed-glass door, he picked up the phone and pretended to be talking into it when Rooke entered.

“No, no, no!” he was saying. “I want somebody discreet. Not some clodhopping retired bobby. Somebody—”

He looked across the desk at Rooke. “Damn it, man, can’t you knock before you come in?”

“I did knock, Mr. Railton.”

Later that afternoon Rooke and Dwyer left together as usual. They were in earnest conversation, and Railton could guess what they were talking about.

The one uncooperative factor was Bernard Saunders himself.

Several times since the dance at Lord Vardy’s place, Railton had suggested that he should come round to the house for dinner, but Saunders had offered excuses and made it quite plain that after working hours he was interested neither in Railton’s home nor in Railton’s wife.

But that was only a minor snag. Railton was now planning the endgame.

Agnes had gone to see a movie. He went to her bedroom and spent a cautious half hour among the fripperies he found in her wardrobe, the tallboy, and her dressing-table drawers. He worked to a meticulous plan, smiling sourly as he handled his wife’s more intimate garments. He chose carefully, packing into her lightweight weekend bag only such things as she was not likely to miss within the next day or two — two dresses, a silk nightgown, stockings; he had made a list of everything she would be likely to take. He concealed the bag in his own room, and proceeded to the next item on his criminous agenda.

This was Bernard Saunders’ briefcase. In it he placed a number of securities, quietly accumulated at various times within the past few months. Their theft would be possible to Saunders, for Railton had kept them in a locked drawer of his desk, and at the last moment he would break open that drawer, as Saunders could easily have done.

When the briefcase too was safely hidden, he poured a liberal helping of whiskey and made himself comfortable in front of the fire. He projected himself into tomorrow, thinking of it as a third-person story. Closing his eyes, he visualized it exactly the way it would happen. He heard the words, felt the emotions. And realized the deep satisfaction that he would experience when the whole plan was fully carried out.

Tomorrow afternoon he would go to London and take a room at a small hotel where he had often stayed before. Shortly before five o’clock he would ring the factory and ask for Saunders.

“You, Saunders? Yes, I know you’re busy, but I’ve got Mellars here. He’s talking about another modification on his duct system. I’ve told him we’re all tied up and it’s out of the question at the old contract price, but you know how he is. Could you come up and talk him out of it?”

Saunders would look at his watch, grunt a reply.

“I know, Saunders, it’s a damn nuisance. Still, you could come up on the 8:10 and be home again by midnight. Yes, at Russell Court — I’ll have Mellars in the bar, well-oiled if possible. Okay? Oh, and by the way, could you drop off at my home and ask my wife for the large manila envelope I left on my desk? Some figures relevant to Mellars’ complaint.”

Another grunt from Saunders.

“It won’t be far out of your way — drop off on your way to the station. Unless you’re going to drive into London, of course — If anything turns up at this end and I can save you the trip I’ll phone you at my home. I’ll phone at 7:55 sharp — that’ll still give you time to make the 8:10 if I can’t manage without you.”

Saunders would know what sharp meant — Railton’s sharp. Not six minutes to eight, or four, but five.

Railton would then have a light snack, check out of his room, and make his leisurely way out of London. And within a couple of hours he would be a sorrowing widower.

For the final scenes he had aimed at absolute simplicity. Guns, poisons — all such comparatively tricky methods were out. Agnes was to be killed by her lover, Bernard Saunders, an unscrupulous rascal who had broken open his employer’s desk and stuffed his briefcase with the securities he knew, through Agnes, would be there. He had induced Agnes to pack her most attractive night attire, ready for a quick getaway. Then, the two lovers would quarrel…

Perhaps Agnes would have last-minute qualms, and Saunders would lose his temper with her. Railton had to kill his wife in such a way that an intelligent Coroner would credit Saunders with her death. So, how does one kill in a lovers’ quarrel?

One shakes the shoulders, makes a grab for the throat, and almost before one is aware of it the vital spark is quenched.

That was how it would be.

Then, hide behind the curtains. Wait for Saunders, innocently calling for that manila envelope and hoping that a phone call at 7:55 sharp will save him a trip to London. Saunders coming in, rushing to the body prostrate on the carpet, dropping on his knees beside it.

Then, enter the avenger. Agnes dead, Saunders bending over her. The poker snatched from the hearth… What temporarily demented husband would do less?

Strike at Saunders, again and again. Now draw the dead Agnes’ nails down Saunders’ face. Pull a button from Saunders’ coat and place it between the woman’s clenched fingers.

Nothing much else. Only the lightweight bag with its frothy fripperies to put in the hall, the loaded briefcase beside it, both ready for the romantic flight that had ended before it began.

Then Railton, crazy with grief, dazed, bewildered, blundering into the police station. The desk sergeant staring. “Well, it’s Mr. Railton! Good evening, sir.”

Looking with bloodshot eyes at the sergeant. “It… it’s my wife. Dead… I came back from London… unexpectedly. She was dead. Strangled. He was bending over her. He still had his hands on…”

“Steady, sir! Steady on, now!”

“I hit him with the poker. Who? You won’t know him. Fellow named Saunders. Works at my factory. Must have been going on for weeks, months, behind my back…”

“Now, sir, if you’ll begin at the beginning—”

“I hit him with the poker. But she’s dead, she’s dead…”

Railton poured another whiskey. Pretty good, considering that his wife and Saunders scarcely knew each other. What would happen? Justifiable homicide? A nominal sentence for manslaughter?

One couldn’t quite organize that. But Roger Railton was sure that he would be eating his next Christmas dinner at home.

And everything went according to plan.

He left for London shortly after noon, and spent an agreeable afternoon waiting for zero hour. He took a single room at his usual hotel and ordered dinner. At 4:55 he phoned the factory.

He was put through to Saunders, who was curt, saying that he was in the main assembly shop and up to his eyes. Railton explained the position, and waited for the grunt. It came.

“Can’t you deal with that fool Mellars yourself? It’s a bit late in the day for him to be coming along with major modifications.”

“That’s what I want you to tell him,” Railton said, and mentioned the manila envelope.

“Okay,” Saunders said in a resigned voice. “Large manila envelope on your desk, and you’ll ring at five to eight if I’m to cancel the trip.”

Railton put down the phone and ordered a light snack. An hour later he was checking out. The room clerk looked down his nose. “Sudden change of plan, Mr. Railton?”

“Say a sudden premonition,” Railton said. “A feeling that something’s wrong.”

“I know, sir. Like somebody walking over your grave.”

Railton nodded and made his way to the hotel garage. He was driving up Finchley Road when the odd train of thought occurred to him…

It was going to happen!

And what, when you came to think of it, had Agnes done to finish up on the rug with a purple throat and staring eyes? Or Saunders, for that matter, to lie beside her with brains and blood oozing onto the rug? Was it because Roger needed or even wanted them dead, or was it because he was caught like a fly in the web of his own organizing abilities?

He could call it off any moment, of course. He braked violently as a car jumped the traffic light at Swiss Cottage; sweat oozed into his eyes. But he couldn’t call it off — because in that case he was mad, a stark lunatic, and lunatics have to go right on to the end of the road just to prove they’re sane.

He took a grip on himself. Over the North Circular, onto the motorway. Mad as a hatter. Sane as a — now, what were you as sane as? Couldn’t remember. Didn’t matter, anyway…

It was 7:40 when he parked his car at the edge of a convenient spinney and let himself silently into the house by the little-used side entrance.

There was a light in his wife’s bedroom. He could hear her footsteps as he stood in the dark hall, listening intently. He would have to call her down, for the “liquidation” had to be staged in the living room. The poker and curtained hiding place made that imperative.

Upstairs a door slammed shut. He stepped into the small cloakroom under the stairs. Then his blood froze as he heard her voice.

“Bernard!” she called from the top of the stairs. “Bernard, I can’t find my bag. A little weekend case…”

In the darkness Railton put out both hands to grasp at something, but there was nothing to grasp. Now he heard Saunders’ voice from the living room.

“Damn the bag! Put what you need in something else. I’ll buy you another bag. Let’s get out of here before he comes back.”

A silence, then his wife’s voice again. “You’re sure, Bernard? Sure it’s the right thing for us to do?”

“What’s right, what’s wrong?” demanded Saunders. “You’re coming with me now — before he kills what’s left of you. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The click of a light switch, the slam of another door. Railton’s groping fingers grasped something at last. An empty coat hook. He gripped it, swung on it, suspended above the chasm of his future.

He’d never known, never even guessed.

Saunders, coming straight over the moment he knew the coast was clear. That hadn’t been in Roger’s carefully planned schedule.

Railton remembered the dance at Lord Vardy’s place. What had he said to Saunders? I can change course with the next… Give me just fifteen seconds…

Fifteen seconds. Time to assimilate all the details of a new situation and devise a new means to cope with it.

“Eight, nine, ten—” he muttered to himself.

They were going through the front door. Saunders’ car would be parked there. Railton swallowed the bitter pill — if he’d come that way instead of using the side door, he’d have seen it, he would have been able to think of something.

He blundered after them.

He was an organized man, wasn’t he?

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…

But Saunders’ car was already turning off into the quiet suburban road, and then it picked up speed.