Next day, Thursday, Tombe telephoned. As usual, he said a first gruff “Hello” until he was sure who he was talking to, then reverted to his normal voice. He was going down to Purley that night to see Dyer and would be staying over, so he wondered if Wheatley would like to go to Haymarket and have dinner with Dolly and a friend (a similar set up to the alibi dinner of almost exactly a year before). Wheatley knew Nancy would be angry if she found out, and this time he declined.
Nancy was down at Margate, and this worried Wheatley. “I knew full well,” he wrote, “that these few days out of my influence might easily destroy the patient work of months.” He knew Nancy loved him, but he knew it was “purely for my personality – that was all – ” and this made him insecure. Her love was safe, “providing only I could be present with her to make my influence felt.”
Characteristically, Wheatley felt his engagement to Nancy had been not only a delight but a “a battle – an up hill game”:
She had had so many love affairs, known so many men, had so many romances … I had to be ever watchful, ever alert, to catch the faintest signs, to soothe with my voice and encourage with a smile from my eyes – these were my only assets – one must remember that I had little or no money compared with that which her previous suitors had had, I was not tall or well dressed, as she liked men to be – I could not even dance well and that was her favourite pastime, almost her life before she met me – the life she had with me was alien [to her] … and she was only getting used to it gradually – with my insistence, because I knew it was the only possible life in which one could settle down to real peace and happiness. –
… she was suddenly cast back into the old environment and at Margate where of all places except perhaps Monte Carlo she had had more affairs, more dancing, more everything that was opposite to all that I desired – and I was forced to remain 75 miles away for a number of days – and my personality, all that I possessed, ceased entirely to have any influence with her.
Wheatley was as calculating and embattled as ever, even in love, and he wouldn’t have been Wheatley had he not also been aware that he was bagging an heiress.
He discussed this with Tombe, who assured him Nancy’s wealth actually made their relationship possible: the “boodle-fiend” was not going to make things difficult in this instance, “as having means herself, she can afford to ignore the lack of it in others.”
Wheatley was overjoyed to have Nancy back from Margate that Friday, not only for the pleasure of her presence but because “I felt that the only dangerous patch of our engagement had been safely tided over by her return to me in the same mental state as she had left.”
*
On Monday morning Ernest Dyer rang Wheatley at the office, sounding worried. Did Wheatley know where Eric was? No, said Wheatley; they hadn’t spoken since he said he was going to stay with Dyer. He had been down, said Dyer, “but we parted early so he didn’t stay the night … it’s an awful nuisance his dashing off like this without leaving any address, I want to see him about some business.”
Eric was always coming and going mysteriously, and Wheatley thought no more about it. Next day, however, Dyer rang again. Any news of Eric yet? “No,” said Wheatley, “hasn’t he turned up?” Dyer reminded him that Beatrice was due to arrive at Paddington with the children, and Eric always made preparations for their arrival. For the first time, this now struck Wheatley as odd, but he put a brave face on it: “There’s no need to worry,” he told Dyer, “you can bet he’ll be on the station to meet her with the usual flowers.”
“No,” said Dyer: “I don’t think he will.”
*
Dyer now revealed that he had received a telegram from Eric, the morning after seeing him down to Purley station, which read: “Going overseas back in Seven Days, look after things while I’m away. Eric.” Dyer was annoyed, because Tombe had sloped off just when he was needed for some important business, but Wheatley was reassured: “I was so used to his goings and comings, his wires, and the complicated arrangements of this quadruple life.”
That afternoon, Beatrice rang in a very agitated state. Where was Eric? Wheatley said he hadn’t seen him Wednesday. “Oh Dennis,” she said,
I’m dreadfully worried, dreadfully worried, I can’t imagine what happened to him. – you know he always writes to me every day when I am away, – well I had Thursday’s letter, on Friday and not a word more, – not a single word and I don’t know what to do – he hasn’t been to the Hotel for a week, then only his heavy luggage here – do you think anything’s gone wrong?
Wheatley did his best to reassure her, particularly since he didn’t want her to involve the police in Tombe’s affairs. “Dennis,” she said, “you’re not concealing anything from me are you?”
Wheatley was still not as worried as Dyer and Beatrice: “I knew far more of his complicated existence than either of the others, and therefore his sudden disappearance did not appear as strange to me as to them.” Wheatley assured himself Tombe would soon turn up, “with a plausible explanation for everybody and some remarkable tale (possibly the truth) for my private ear.”
Next day, Wheatley met Dyer and Beatrice at the Hyde Park Gate Hotel. Dyer was quiet, and Beatrice’s eyes were “violet lined” with unhappiness. She made Wheatley swear and swear again that he didn’t know where Eric was, and that he wasn’t concealing anything, and then she broke down:
Oh there must be another woman. – but why why? Why? Couldn’t he tell me – oh I don’t know what to do – Dennis, do you swear he has not gone off with another woman?
Wheatley swore that Eric was absolutely faithful to her, and that his last words at the tube station had been about how he missed her and was looking forward to her return.
As they went down to lunch it began to hit Wheatley that Eric might really not reappear. It was so unlike him not to meet Beatrice at the train, which he always did with presents for the children, having arranged for flowers at the hotel. And Eric wrote daily, and telephoned whenever possible: Wheatley remembered times when the two of them had been dining with other women, and Eric had slipped away from the table to make his daily call to Beatrice.
Dyer was morose and preoccupied, but he began to complain about Eric leaving him in the lurch. Since Wheatley knew their criminal dealings, he took this to be about the £2000 needed for the fraud on Stephens.
And then, as he looked at Dyer, something else occurred to him. Suppose he had lured Eric down to Purley on Thursday night, imprisoned him in a cellar and made him write a large cheque? Then, after the Stephens deal and the insurance had paid off, he could skip the country, “leaving Eric to find his way home as well as he could, confident that he could not give him away to the police since he was too deeply implicated himself.”
It was all horribly like a penny novelette, Wheatley thought – but there was no limit to what a desperate man like Dyer might do. He remembered Eric talking about him:
“There’s only one man who could really make me feel afraid, and that’s Bill – he’s such a bluff good hearted fellow that everybody likes him, but you watch his eyes, those deep black cruel eyes of his make me shudder sometimes, he’d be a murderous devil to be up against.”
Wheatley asked Dyer about the telegram. Dyer didn’t have it with him, but he said it was sent from a small office in a baker’s shop near Purley at 11 o’clock on the Friday morning, the day after he had last seen Eric.
This was odd in itself. Why was Eric still in Purley next day, if he had gone down to the station the night before? If he was going abroad, why hadn’t he sent it from Charing Cross or Victoria? Perhaps Dyer had drugged or chloroformed him, Wheatley thought, “and carried him down sleeping to the cellar of my imagination.”
Wheatley felt Eric would otherwise be capable of defending himself, and remembered his theories about how to use a stick or umbrella to deadliest effect by jabbing at the eyes, and how to use bottles in a fight (his notional favourite, due to its weight and thickness, was the broken champagne bottle).
Beatrice suggested that Eric’s bank account might hold clues, since he couldn’t survive long without money. Had he withdrawn a large sum before disappearing?
Beatrice could hardly go to the police without revealing that she was Eric’s mistress, and Wheatley was similarly tied, as Dyer would know, by the fact that “I … knew something of Eric’s questionable dealings and therefore for Eric’s sake should be extremely loath to go to the police.”
Unknown to Dyer, however, Wheatley had an unexpected card up his sleeve. About a year earlier, Tombe had given Wheatley power of attorney over his bank account, so Wheatley decided to see the manager.
Dyer walked back to wine merchant’s with Wheatley, and they talked about things they couldn’t mention in front of Beatrice. Thinking that “look after things for me while I am away” referred to Dolly and her friend at Haymarket, Dyer said he had sent them home and settled the bill. Dolly was used to Eric’s “anti-Bolshevik, Secret Service, Diplomat coming and going from the ends of the earth” and took it in her stride; she had already been expecting him to leave for Poland on the following Tuesday.
Wheatley asked Dyer what he really thought had happened to Eric, and, “in the Voice of a Master,” he assured Wheatley it must be a woman (“you can take it from me”). He had gone off with a woman and left Dyer in the lurch. Worse still, it made him sick to see what Tombe had done to Beatrice by disappearing:
he’s cleared out with some woman and let me down properly – this will break me, absolutely break me, – still I’m fond of Eric and there may be something in it that we don’t know about – still the way he’s treated Beatrice makes me sick, I tell you she was in the hell of a state last night, it absolutely broke my heart and that’s not easy.
If he was lying, thought Wheatley, “he was a consummate actor, and never have I seen a finer display of the histrionic art – even I was moved by it to feel tremendously sorry for him, despite the fact that I had it in the back of my head that he was the villain of the piece all the time, and had been told by Eric that he was the most wonderful actor that he had ever seen.”
Beatrice had said Dyer was “an angel,” and she didn’t know how she would have managed so far without him.
*
After parting from Dyer, Wheatley went round to Eric’s bank to see the manager, Mr Sampson, who remembered him from his visit with Eric about the power of attorney. Wheatley told him of Eric’s disappearance, and how very distressed his “sister” Beatrice was, and asked if his Power of Attorney was still valid. This was a difficult matter, said Mr Sampson: “You see, the power of attorney granted to you has been superseded by one granted elsewhere. And curiously enough only a few days ago.”
This was a surprise, and the conversation turned cagily to Dyer. What did Wheatley think of him? Cautiously, Wheatley said he didn’t altogether like or trust him, which didn’t surprise Sampson; “To be equally frank, Mr Wheatley,” he said, “I don’t think I’d care to trust Mr Dyer very far either – mind you I know nothing against him but we get a lot of funny characters here and he doesn’t strike me very favourably.”
Wheatley told him some of his suspicions, trying not to damage Eric’s reputation or Beatrice’s good name. In return, Sampson said he felt justified in telling Wheatley to whom the new power of attorney had been granted: it was Dyer.
It has been issued on Monday the 24th, four whole days after Eric’s disappearance. “Then perhaps there is something in my wild theory of the cellar and coercion,” said Wheatley, but things were more complicated. Tombe had asked Sampson in person, when he had called in on the preceding Wednesday or Thursday, to transfer a large sum to his bank in Paris.
Stranger still, they had spoken on the telephone on the Saturday; he had said he was sending the form, and it had arrived on Monday. “He spoke to you on Saturday,” said Wheatley – “That was two days after he disappeared – are you quite sure it was him?”
“Oh quite, you couldn’t mistake it over the telephone, could you, you know his voice is quite out of the ordinary. I always recognise it in a moment.”
“Well this is most extraordinary, you’ve no idea where he spoke from I suppose?”
“No, none, but I should think that it was in London, his voice was quite clear.”
Then they examined the Power of Attorney itself. It was typed from Yeoman House, but the interesting part was the signature: “it was his usual signature, but so jerky and irregular that it looked as if he had an attack of ague when he wrote it.” Wheatley thought it was either forged, or written under coercion, “when he had been starved or doped into an exceedingly weak condition”.
Even the unexcitable Mr Sampson had to agree there was something in this: “It is this signature which lends a certain amount of probability to your idea … of course since Mr Gordon Tombe spoke to me about it before hand I naturally concluded that it was alright – but I admit the signature is very shaky.”
Given their suspicions, Sampson declared that Wheatley’s Power of Attorney could still be considered valid since it had never been formally concluded. They then drafted a letter together, as from Wheatley to Sampson, requesting him to stop all cheques and cancel Dyer’s Power of Attorney until such time as Tombe might reinstate it in person.
*
Sampson had been helpful: he took a personal interest because, as he told Wheatley, he had a very strong liking for Tombe. Almost everyone liked Tombe, the two notable exceptions – who would have a decisive effect on Wheatley’s conduct in the case – being Wheatley’s father and Nancy.
Wheatley tried to discuss the disappearance with Nancy, but she wasn’t very interested. Wheatley felt she might even have been pleased. She had always suspected and distrusted Eric, and felt he must resent her taking away “the boon companion of his purple nights.” It was Eric’s nature to “encourage any deviation from path of virtue on my part” and Nancy instinctively recognised this; “therefore I could not wonder that she was not anxious for his reappearance …”
Nancy disapproved of Wheatley being involved in the case, and he began to feel a paralysing conflict of loyalties. As he puts it, “I adopted Eric’s “Masterly Policy of Inactivity” and shelved the affair.”
*
Wheatley was shaving next morning when his father called him to the phone. It was Beatrice, who had been awake all night. Wheatley arranged to see her at the Hyde Park Gate Hotel and slipped away from the office, supposedly to see customers.
Dyer had now borrowed money from Beatrice, suggesting that she virtually owed it to him, since Eric had defaulted on their deal. Her attitude to him had changed, and she was now sure he was holding Eric prisoner. Dyer was a desperate man, almost bankrupt, and he knew Eric had money. He also knew Eric had no relatives to miss him – or so he thought, along with Beatrice and Wheatley – and that he was too deeply involved in their criminal schemes to go to the police.
Beatrice had hardly slept, “but falling into a doze in the early hours she had seen Eric in a sort of vision – he was very pale and weak lying head up in a cellar at the bottom of a flight of stone stairs and he was calling to her to help him. She declared that she could see the whole thing as clear as daylight.”
Wheatley didn’t put too much faith in this dream. “Nevertheless – there was still a possibility that there might be something in it. I am by no means a disbeliever in thought transference particularly when it is between two people who have been very closely associated as had Eric and Beatrice.”
It still remained to account for Eric’s phone call to the bank manager. Could it have been done by Dyer himself ? “He was an excellent mimic and had heard Eric speak so many hundred times upon the phone that he could probably do it very efficiently, I felt myself that I could have quite well reproduced it, especially considering that he had so many curious characteristics in his way of speaking … ”
Wheatley and Beatrice were in a bind. They were reluctant to involve the police, for her sake and Eric’s. And as Wheatley added, there was still “the possibility that he had gone off of his own free will and might deeply resent the measures we were taking.” Finally they reached a compromise: they would put a private detective on the case.