Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972

Mouse in a Trap by Michael Gilbert{©1970 by Michael Gilbert.}

The legal firm of Messrs. Lamplough, Fairchild and Brett found itself enmeshed in a little real-estate deal involving two of its valued clients. And the final resolution of the problem was — how do the lawyers say it? — “entirely without prejudice”…

When two people fall out and decide to seek legal advice over their dispute it may seem surprising to you that they should both go to the same firm of solicitors. It is only superficially surprising. For, if both of them have used the same firm for a long time, neither may see any reason why he should go elsewhere to oblige the other party. After all, they can always consult different partners. And anyway, in a small country town, there may only be one good firm. This explains why the offices of Messrs. Lamplough, Fairchild and Brett recently received visits, on successive mornings, both from Mr. Snuggs and Sir Charles Pellat.

These offices occupy an early Georgian building in the little Square behind the Corn-market. The brass plate is so worn with age and elbow grease that the names on it are almost illegible. No one living can remember Mr. Lamplough. There is a portrait of him in the waiting room which exhibits a crop of benevolent mutton-chop whiskers. If you look very closely you can see the rat-trap mouth behind them.

Mr. Cyprian Fairchild, the senior partner, is the grandson of the original Fairchild, and is himself approaching the age of retirement. Older clients value his advice. They realize that he may not be entirely au fait with the complexities of modern legislation, but they look on him as an old friend and a man of the world. The younger generation of lawyers in the office, headed by the junior partner, Mr. Roger Brett, privately consider him an old fuddy-duddy.

Mr. Snuggs parked his brand-new Three Litre Austin across the backs of two smaller cars, neatly blocking their exit, entered the office with the deliberate tread which befitted an independent tradesman and a man of property, and was shown up to the second-floor room of young Mr. Brett.

“It’s the roof, at the front,” said Mr. Snuggs. “Not the new bit over the back extension. That’s perfect and will be for another fifty years.”

“It should be,” said Mr. Brett, “seeing what it cost your landlord to put it up.”

“He can afford it,” said Mr. Snuggs. “No. It’s the front bit. Two tiles off in the gale last week, and Alfred and Henry ran a ladder up yesterday and stripped off a few more tiles. We found just what we expected. Wet rot.”

Mr. Brett said, “Tchk tchk,” and made a note. He reflected that it was the fourth such discovery that Mr. Snuggs and his sons had made in the past few years. The others had been dry rot, rising damp, and wood-worm. All had been rectified at considerable expense, by their long-suffering landlord, Sir Charles Pellat.

“Did you mention it to Sir Charles?”

“I did.”

“I don’t suppose he was pleased.”

“He was upset,” said Mr. Snuggs complacently. “But I told him, it’s your property. You’ve got to keep it in repair. Roof and main timbers. That’s what the lease says, isn’t it?”

“That’s roughly correct. Of course, he did build on that rear extension for you three years ago. That was an improvement. He didn’t have to do that.”

“He was improving his own property. It’ll come back to him when we go. He may not get it himself — he’s an old man. But it’ll come back to his family, won’t it?”

“That’s roughly correct.”

“Then he’s just investing his own money in his own property.”

“That’s certainly one way of looking at it,” said Mr. Brett. “Did he agree to make the repairs?”

“What he said was, seeing as me and my two boys were all builders, why didn’t we do it ourselves. Well, I wasn’t falling for that! I said, we don’t mix business with pleasure, Sir Charles. We’d rather get an outside firm to do it, then we’d know the job would be done properly. I suggested Palmer’s.”

Mr. Brett made another note. He knew that Palmer’s were the most expensive builders in the district. He didn’t think that Sir Charles would be very pleased. He fancied he would be seeing him quite soon.

This prediction was promptly fulfilled. At eleven o’clock on the following morning an aged Rolls-Royce pulled into the Square and parked across the backs of three smaller cars.

Sir Charles was tall and thin. He still retained, in his walk and his talk, a ghost of the cavalry subaltern he had been in the first World War. He refused a seat, and stood beside the fine bow-window of Mr. Cyprian Fairchild’s ground-floor office.

“It’s that damned fellow Snuggs,” he said.

“At it again, is he?”

“He never stops. Why the devil I ever let him have the lodge I don’t know!”

“When your lodgekeeper left, you had to let it to someone.”

“Should have chosen an old lady. A nice old lady. Not a bounder like Snuggs.”

“You couldn’t tell.”

“Might have known. Fellow’s a builder. Bound to be a crook. They all are.”

“That’s a bit sweeping,” said Mr. Fairchild. “There are honest builders. You happen to have struck a bad ’un, that’s all. What does he want now?”

“He wants a new front roof. Cost five hundred pounds. Got the estimate here.”

“How much did you pay for that back extension?”

“Fifteen hundred. That was three years ago. Cost more now. And that’s on top of what I paid for rebuilding the whole chimney and putting in new casement windows downstairs. To say nothing of regular annual repairs. I calculated the other day” — Sir Charles fished a scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket — “that lodge has cost me the thick end of five thousand pounds since the Snuggses went in.”

“I suppose it’s an investment,” said Mr. Fairchild gloomily.

“Investment! Who for? Me? I’ve got no heir, apart from my sister Lucretia, and she’s got all the money she wants. And anyway, what sort of investment is it for God’s sake? The place must be the best fitted-out cottage in England by now. Worth eight thousand pounds at least. If I had that money invested I’d get — never was much good at sums.”

“At six per cent you’d get four hundred and eighty pounds a year.”

“And the rent I get is thirty-five shillings a week. How much is that a year?”

“Just over ninety pounds.”

“Well, there you are,” said Sir Charles. He glowered out of the window at a lady driver who was trying with little success to back her car out past his Rolls-Royce.

“The trouble is,” said Mr. Fairchild, “that if you want to sell the Manor House, and I gather you’ve more or less made up your mind—”

“Got to. Can’t keep it up. Barn of a place. Far too big.”

“The park’s leased to an agricultural tenant. So the rent of that is regulated. And the lodge is the only cottage left. If you’d been able to give vacant possession of that, it would have been a great attraction. I wonder if we could buy the Snuggses out.”

“They wouldn’t leave,” said Sir Charles. He was staring gloomily out of the window. The woman driver had abandoned the attempt and started blowing her horn. Sir Charles ignored her. He swung round suddenly and said, “Do you suppose he’d do a swap?”

Mr. Fairchild gaped at him.

“Do a what?” he said.

“A swap. An exchange. I’ll take the lodge. He can have the Manor House. And the park.”

“He can’t mean it,” said young Mr. Brett.

“He’s quite serious. He reckons he’d be much better off in the lodge. He’ll be able to save his income instead of spending it trying to keep up the Manor. And he’ll be much warmer in winter.”

“But what will the Snugges do with the Manor House?”

“They’re builders, aren’t they? Plenty of scope for them.”

“It’s mad,” said Mr. Brett. “But all the same—”

“Squire Snuggs,” said Mr. Fairchild with a chuckle. “Think how he’ll enjoy that. There are one or two details. Sir Charles would like to keep the shooting. And there’s one particularly nice walk, up the beech avenue to that summerhouse — a gazebo is the correct name for it, I believe — he’d like to keep alright of way up to that. I’ll leave the conveyancing details to you, my boy. It shouldn’t take very long to fix up.”

It took a month to fix up. And Mr. Snuggs seemed happy with the exchange for nearly a year. At the end of that time he called by appointment to see Mr. Brett, and brought his two sons with him, solid youths who sat on the edges of their chairs holding their hats in their hands. Mr. Snuggs did most of the talking.

“It’s like this,” he said, “I want to put things back to what they was before.”

“You mean you want to re-exchange the properties?”

“That’s right. I want to put it back like it was.” His two sons nodded their somber approval.

“But why?”

“Because it won’t work. First, we get no money out of it. What that farmer chap pays us goes on his improvements, and anything that’s left goes on rates. Do you know how much the rates are on the Manor?”

“I know,” said Mr. Brett, “and so do you. Because I told you when you bought it.”

“Well, you may have told me, but I didn’t take it in. Then there’s the repairs. All right, we do them ourselves. But it’s bloody hard work—” His two sons nodded emphatically. It was clear to Mr. Brett that most of the hard work was done by them. “And it means we can’t take on much outside work, so we’ve got no money coming in. And last but not least, there’s the lodge.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Brett. “The lodge. Yes?”

“Twice already this year he’s been at us for money. First it was all the gutters wanted re-doing. Three hundred pounds that cost us. I offered to do it myself.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said he didn’t like to see us mixing business with pleasure. He’d get Palmer’s to do it.”

“Aren’t they apt to be a bit expensive?”

“Expensive! They build their houses with bricks of gold. Then there was the drains. We never found anything wrong with the drains, did we?”

Alfred and Henry shook their heads in unison.

“There was a surveyor’s report. I remember.”

“Oh, yes. He got a surveyor’s report all right. Six hundred pounds that cost us. And what are we getting for it? I’ll tell you.” Mr. Snuggs thumped the table with a large mahogany fist. “Ninety pounds a year, and everyone laughing at us. Why, we can’t hardly get in our own gate for the bloody great cars round his front door. And he’s bought himself a new Aston-Martin.”

“It’s true,” said Sir Charles to Mr. Fairchild, “that I do seem to have become a lot more popular since I moved. In the old days no one seemed keen on coming to dinner with me. I couldn’t blame them really. When I had guests we used to eat in the big dining room — the one my grandparents used when they had a royal visitation. It’s got three outside walls, and the central heating system at the Manor is so old-fashioned that although it used a ton of coke a week the pipes never got more than lukewarm. I remember once when I had old Colonel Featherstonehaugh to dinner he took a sip of his burgundy — rather a nice Corton, incidentally — and said, his teeth chattering at the time, “You know, Charles, the only w-w-way you could get this w-w-wine down to room temperature would be to put a l-l-lump of ice in it.” Sir Charles laughed heartily, and Mr. Fairchild laughed with him.

“So you’re better off now?”

“Oh, we’re very snug now. The gas-fired central heating keeps the cottage as warm as toast. Of course, I had to pay for the boiler, but I stung my landlord for all the builders’ work involved. And what’s more, now that I don’t need the cellar for coal, I’ve got most of my wine into it. I wonder, would you care to come up next week and try the Clos de Vougeot? It’s settled nicely.”

“I’d love to,” said Mr. Fairchild.

Pride, plus a determination not to be proved wrong, enabled Mr. Snuggs to stick it out for another twelve months. Then his Austin, two years old now and in sad need of a re-spray, crept into the little Square behind the Corn-market. Mr. Snuggs looked almost as battered as his car. He said to Mr. Brett, “It’s no good. It’s killing me. Something’s got to be done.”

“It’s got worse, has it?”

“Worse? If it goes on for another six months I’ll be bankrupt. And every time I go out of my own front gate I can see that old devil. He sits in his front window all the time, grinning at me. Except when he takes a stroll up to the summerhouse, and sits there grinning at all of us. We’ve got to stop it.”

Mr. Brett nearly said, “There’s no law against grinning,” and then realized that with Mr. Snuggs in his present frame of mind this might cost him a valuable client. He said, “It’s not going to be easy.”

“Couldn’t we raise his rent?”

“It’s a controlled rent. I remember explaining it to you when—”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Snuggs testily. “You’ve no call to remind me about that. But I recollect there was something about rates.”

“The taxable value.”

“If it goes up above a certain figure you can get him out. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s roughly correct.”

“It’s a lovely little cottage. In a beautiful state of repair. Modem drainage. Central heating.”

“I seem to remember,” said Mr. Brett, “that my partner, Mr. Fairchild, argued all those points most persuasively in front of the rating authority, but between us we succeeded in defeating him.”

Mr. Snuggs said, “Tchah,” and then, “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Why don’t you suggest something instead of just sitting there making remarks?”

“Sir Charles is pretty old. And I heard he hasn’t been very well lately.”

“I believe that’s right,” said Mr. Snuggs, looking more cheerful. “His sister’s come to look after him. And I saw the doctor’s car up there two days ago. Why?”

“A protected tenancy is a personal thing. Not something he can leave to his family—”

“You mean, if he popped off I’d get the cottage back?”

“That’s roughly correct.”

It was on a Monday morning in January, sharp with the first frost of the new year, that Mr. Fairchild came into Mr. Brett’s room with the news.

“It happened sometime last night,” he said. “The old boy must have gone for his usual walk up to the gazebo and had a stroke when he got there.”

“A fatal stroke?”

“Dr. Shuttleworth says no. It probably paralyzed him. By a damnable piece of bad luck his sister was out on one of her do-gooding committees and didn’t get home till quite late. She assumed he’d already gone to bed. It wasn’t until she went to call him this morning that the alarm was sounded. They searched the grounds and found him.”

“Then he died of exposure, sometime during the night?”

“Probably quite quickly, Dr. Shuttleworth says. After a stroke his vitality would be very low.”

“Poor old chap,” said Mr. Brett.

Mr. Snuggs, who called on the following day, expressed somewhat different sentiments.

“We’ve all got to go sometime,” he said, concealing any grief he may have felt. “I expect it was as good a way as any. Doctors nowadays keep old people living far too long. If it’s right he was paralyzed, he wouldn’t have enjoyed life, would he? A misery to himself and everyone else.”

“I suppose that’s right,” said Mr. Brett.

“Person I feel most sorry for is that sister of his. She’ll have to find somewhere to live. She gave up her own house, you know, when she came to look after him, in the summer. Something wrong?”

“In the summer?” croaked Mr. Brett.

“That’s right. Have I said something I shouldn’t?”

“Do you — do you happen to remember exactly when?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. It was on Midsummer Day. Longest day of the year. I remember remarking on it to Henry. Look here, Brett, what’s all this about?”

“And she’s been living at the lodge ever since?”

“That’s right. Like I said, he needed a bit of looking after at the end.”

“And if she came on Midsummer Day she’s been there more than six months.”

“So what?”

Mr. Brett was thumbing feverishly through the stout olive-green book on his desk.

“It’s one of the earlier Rent Acts,” he said. “The Act of 1920. Section Twelve. That’s right. Subsection One. I’d entirely overlooked the possibility — yes, yes.”

“Stop all this monkey talk,” said Mr. Snuggs, his face a bright red, “and explain.”

Mr. Brett explained.

“You mean,” said Mr. Snuggs, when he had finally taken it in, “that because she’s a relative, and because she’s lived there more than six months, I can’t turn her out either.”

“That’s roughly correct.”

A gleam of hope appeared in Mr. Snuggs’s watery eyes. “Perhaps she don’t know about this old Act,” he said.

“It’s a possibility. But when I saw her coming out of Mr. Fairchild’s room this morning I remember thinking she looked remarkably cheerful.”

“Perhaps if I offered her something—”

“You could try,” said Mr. Brett.

Brett had only met Miss Pellat once, but she had struck him as a remarkably tough character.

Mr. Snuggs tried that afternoon. He found Miss Lucretia Pellat in the small but nicely furnished front room of the lodge, pouring tea from a heavy old silver pot. He refused the offer of a cup for himself and opened his proposal.

Miss Pellat shook her head. She shook it so emphatically her long jade earrings tinkled.

“I wouldn’t dream of moving,” she said. “It’s a dear little house. Full of memories of the happy times my dear brother had here. He was happy, you know.”

“I daresay he was,” said Mr. Snuggs morosely.

“He kept his health to the last. When providence delivered that final stroke I could not help thinking that it was a perfect ending. Provided—” and on the word Miss Pellat leaned forward so sharply that her earrings tinkled again — “provided that it killed him.”

“Well, it did,” said Mr. Snuggs.

“That’s not true. It was the night in the open that killed him. If I had summoned help and had him carried back to the house — taken to a hospital or nursing home — and injected with drugs, no doubt he could have been saved. And saved for what? A pitiful, half-paralyzed old age. Like a mouse, caught by its back legs in a trap. I knew my brother too well to think he’d have wanted that.”

Mr. Snuggs had got his breath back by now. He said, “Do you mean to say you were with him when it happened and you just left him there to die?”

“Death by exposure is quick and not too uncomfortable. If you read the diaries of the great Polar explorers you will find that it comes with a feeling of warmth and relaxation.”

Mr. Snuggs stared at her, horrified. “But,” he said, “you’re his sister! How could you do it? Walk off like that and leave him!”

“I didn’t walk straight off,” said Miss Pellat, and her voice sounded a clear warning.

“You didn’t, eh?”

“Because, when I’d only got as far as the edge of the wood, I heard a car coming. Your car, Mr. Snuggs.”

Mr. Snuggs stared at her, hypnotized.

“And I saw you get out and walk over and look at my brother. And I saw you walk away again.”

There was a long, long silence. At last Mr. Snuggs said, in a croaking voice, “I deny it.”

“Of course you do. And everything I told you is entirely — what do the lawyers say? — without prejudice. Such a curious expression. No, no, I am sure we can keep each other’s little secret, Mr. Snuggs.”

As he rose heavily to his feet she added, “By the way, I fear I shall have to ask you to do something about the bath. I really need a new one. And while you’re at it you might let me have a new sink as well—”