The Key

CHAPTER THREE

SIR GEORGE RENDAL leaned forward.

‘Your part of the world, isn’t it?’

Major Garth Albany said, ‘Yes, sir – I used to spend my holidays there. My grandfather was the Rector. He’s dead now – he was pretty old then.’

Sir George nodded.

‘One of the daughters still lives in Bourne, doesn’t she? She’d be your aunt?’

‘Well, a kind of step. The old man got married three times, and two of them were widows. My Aunt Sophy isn’t really any relation, because she’s the first widow’s daughter by her first marriage. Her name’s Fell – Sophy Fell. My father was the youngest of the family-’ He broke off, laughed, and said, ‘I’m not awfully firm on the family history really, but I did spend my holidays at Bourne until my grandfather died.’

Sir George nodded again.

‘You’d know pretty well everyone in the village and round about.’

‘I used to. I expect there are a good many changes.’

‘How long is it since you were there?’

‘My grandfather died when I was twenty-two. I’m twenty-seven. I’ve been down two or three times to see Aunt Sophy – only once since the war.’

‘Villages don’t change very much,’ said Sir George. ‘The boys and girls will be off in the Services and the factories, but it’s the old people who are the village. They’ll remember you, and they’ll talk because they remember you. They won’t talk to a stranger.’

He sat back a little in his writing-chair and sent a very direct glance across the plain, solid table – a man in his fifties, smart and well set-up, with dark hair grey on the temples. He held a pencil between the second and third fingers of his right hand and set it twirling.

Garth Albany said quickly, ‘What do you want them to talk about?’

The direct glance dwelt on him. ‘Ever hear of a man called Michael Harsch?’

‘I don’t think so-’ Then, with a quick frown, ‘I don’t know – I seem to have seen the name somewhere-’

Sir George’s pencil twirled. ‘There’s going to be an inquest on him at Bourne tomorrow.’

‘Yes – I remember. I saw the name in the papers, but I didn’t connect it with Bourne. I’d have taken more notice if I had. Who was he?’

‘The inventor of harschite.’

‘Harschite – that’s why I didn’t connect him with Bourne. I didn’t know he was dead. There was a paragraph about this stuff harschite – about a fortnight ago. Yes, that was it – harschite – some sort of explosive.’

Sir George nodded. ‘If we’d any sense or logic we’d take the man who wrote that paragraph and the editor who passed it and shoot them out of hand. Here we’ve been going on like cats on hot bricks about the damned stuff, and out comes a footling penny-a-lining paragraph and gives the show away.’

‘It was pretty vague, sir – I can’t say I got much out of it.’

‘Because you didn’t know enough to put two and two together. But someone did, and so there’s an inquest on Michael Harsch. You see, we had been in touch with him for some time. He was a refugee – Austrian-Jewish extraction. I don’t know how much Jew, but enough to queer his pitch in Germany. He got away about five years ago. His wife and daughter weren’t so lucky. The daughter was sent to a concentration camp, where she died. The wife was turned out of her house in the middle of a winter’s night and never got over it. He got away with his brains and practically nothing else. I saw him because he had an introduction from old Baer. He talked to me about this stuff of his. He swore it would knock spots out of anything we’d got. Frankly, I thought it was a fairy tale, but I liked the man, and I wanted to oblige old Baer, so I told him to come back. That was four years ago. He used to come back once a year and report progress. I began to believe in the stuff. I went down, and he showed me what it could do. It was terrific. But there was a snag. The stuff was unstable – too easily affected by weather conditions – impossible to store or transport in any quantity. Then he turned up again. He said he had overcome the instability. He walked up and down this very room in a tremendous state of excitement, waving his arms and saying, “Harschite – that is what I have called it! It is my message that I send back to those who have let the devil loose to serve him, and it is such a message that he will hear it and go back to the hell where he belongs!” Then he calmed down a little and said, “There is only one more step – one small, small step – and I will take it any day now. It is the last experiment, and it will not fail. I am so sure of it that I can give you my word. In a week I shall ring you up and tell you that all is well – that the experiment has succeeded.” Well, he did ring me up to say just that. That was on the Tuesday. I was to go down the next day, but on Wednesday morning I was rung up to be told that Harsch was dead.’

‘How?’

‘Found shot – in the church of all places in the world. It seems he used to go down and play the organ – had a key, and used to go in just when he liked. He was living out at a house called Prior’s End with Madoc, the concentrated food man. It was he who rang me up. He said Harsch had supper with them – there’s a sister, Miss Madoc, and a girl secretary – and after that he went out. Madoc said he always did unless the weather was too bad – he liked walking at night. Odd taste, but I daresay it helped him to sleep, poor chap. When he wasn’t back by half-past ten, they didn’t do anything. Of course, it’s easy to say that they should have, but – well, they didn’t. Madoc and his sister went to bed. They said Harsch had a key, and they never thought that anything could have happened to him.’

‘Well, sir, you don’t do you?’

‘I suppose not. Anyhow they went to bed. But the girl sat up. By half-past eleven she was really frightened. She took a torch and walked down into the village. No sign of Harsch. She knocked up the verger and made him come along to the church with her. She said she thought Harsch might have been taken ill. Well, they found him fallen down by the organ, shot through the head – pistol just where it might have fallen from his hand. I went down and found everyone quite sure he’d shot himself. I am quite sure he didn’t.’

Garth Albany said, ‘Why?’

Sir George stopped twirling the pencil and put it down. ‘Because I don’t think he would. He’d made an appointment with me, and he was always very punctilious about keeping his appointments. He was going to hand over the formula and his notes. I wasn’t going down alone either – I was taking Burlton and Wing. He wouldn’t have walked out on us like that.’

Garth Albany nodded. ‘He might have had a comeover. You know how it is – people do.’

‘ “Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed”!’ Sir George quoted the words with irony. ‘That’s what the verdict at the inquest will be.’ He brought his fist down suddenly on the table. ‘It’s damnably probable, quite irrefutable, and damnably untrue. Harsch was murdered. I want to find out who murdered him and see that he doesn’t get away with it. And that’s not just the natural reaction to murder. It goes a lot deeper. If Harsch was murdered, it was because someone had a motive for getting him out of the way at just this time. Not six months ago when harschite was still in the unstable stage, not a month ago when he was in good hope that he had overcome the instability and still had to put his hopes to the proof, but a few hours after the proof had been achieved, and within a few hours of his demonstrating it to me. Is that a likely time for a man to commit suicide? Isn’t it a likely time for a man to be murdered? Some strong interest was engaged to prevent the transfer of harschite.’

Major Albany looked up. ‘I don’t know. He’d been working on the stuff for a long time, you know. I expect it kept him going. Then when he’d finished he might have felt there was nothing to go on for. And as to his being murdered to stop your getting the formula – well, it doesn’t stop it, does it?’

Sir George picked up the pencil again.

‘That, my dear Garth, is exactly what it does do. Because three years ago Michael Harsch made a will which named Madoc his sole executor and sole legatee. He hadn’t anything to leave except his notes, his papers, the results of any discoveries or inventions he might make. It’s a pretty big exception, you see.’

‘But surely Madoc-’

Sir George laughed without amusement.

‘It’s evident that you don’t know Madoc. He’s a crank with an infinite capacity for going to the stake for his opinions – he asks for nothing better. If no one will oblige him with a stake, he will find one for himself, pile up the faggots, and hold his right hand in the fire in the best traditions of martyrdom. He is one of the most belligerent pacifists in England. I wouldn’t mind backing him for the world’s championship myself. He naturally won’t have anything to do with the war effort, and only pursues his very valuable researches into Food Concentrates because he feels it is a duty to be prepared for a period of post-war starvation on the Continent. Now do you see him handing over the formula of harschite?’

‘Do you mean he won’t?’

‘I mean he’ll see us all at Jericho first.’