Edgar’s flat was on the first floor. It was, Skelton was pleased to note, a well-kept building. The stair carpet had been recently brushed, the bannister polished and it didn’t have the smell of cooking that you often find in the communal areas of even the most respectable mansion blocks.
Skelton rang the doorbell. Mila had wanted to bring flowers but Skelton, worried that even white roses might clash with Edgar’s precise colour schemes, had suggested that chocolates might be a more suitable housewarming gift, so they bore a box of Charbonnel et Walker’s lavender creams. Edgar’s favourites.
Thirty seconds or so went by without a sound from the flat. 356
‘You’re sure he said three-thirty?’ Mila asked.
‘Yes, of course.’ Skelton pressed the buzzer a second time and was immediately answered by Edgar’s voice.
‘Who is that?’
Skelton and Mila exchanged a puzzled glance. Had Edgar forgotten they were coming?
The door opened a crack and Edgar appeared, pulling wild faces and gesticulating with his head to indicate that all was not well inside.
‘What is it, old chap?’ Skelton asked.
Edgar opened the door a little wider to reveal that Harold Musgrave was standing behind him, holding a revolver.
‘A very great pleasure to meet you, Mr Skelton,’ Musgrave said. ‘And Mrs Skelton, I believe. It’s an honour. Do come in. Sorry about the gun but desperate times do call for desperate measures, don’t they? Shall we go into the sitting room? This is your first visit, is it? Well, I’m sure you’ll agree Mr Hobbes has done it up quite beautifully and very much in keeping with modern fashions in interior decoration.’
The sitting room, the only reception room, had to serve the dual functions of sitting and dining. It was desperately overfurnished. Edgar had grown too excited about more things than he had room for. The four of them had to weave their way carefully through the beige sofas and bleached oak side tables.
Though quite small, the dominant feature of the room was the Czech cubist cocktail cabinet. It was certainly arresting, anyway, and either, Skelton supposed, the height 357of exquisite taste or a disgusting monstrosity, depending on whether you were a keen aficionado of modern cocktail cabinet design.
‘Perhaps you and Mrs Skelton would like to sit there.’ Musgrave indicated two high-backed dining chairs. ‘And if you wouldn’t mind putting your hands behind the backs of the chairs. And Mr Hobbes, if I could ask you to take these …’ he produced two thick Indiarubber bands from his pocket, ‘and secure Mr and Mrs Skelton’s hands to the chairs. Double the band over to make it tight but do be careful not to cut off the circulation.’
Edgar did as he was told.
‘They’re drive belts from an Auto-Vac-It 250,’ Musgrave continued, ‘in case you were wondering. Guaranteed for five years. It is, I agree, a horrible indignity to impose on a man of your standing, Mr Skelton, and a disgustingly unchivalrous thing to do to a lady, but it is terribly difficult to keep three people covered by a single pistol and the worry is that I might catch some sudden movement out of the corner of my eye and shoot instinctively before enquiring as to the nature and purpose of the movement. And I know you are something of a swordswoman, Mrs Skelton, and I saw you looking at that stick over there as you came in, wondering whether it could be pressed into service – what is it, by the way?’
‘It’s a yardstick,’ Edgar said. ‘The man who came to measure up for the blinds left it behind.’
Musgrave looked at the curtains and nodded. ‘They are 358somewhat out of keeping, aren’t they? Lovely big windows. Roller or Venetian?’
‘Well, shutters, really, but with Venetian style inserts.’
‘I saw something like that once on a house near Leamington Spa,’ Musgrave said. ‘They looked very nice.’
Musgrave pulled out a third dining chair and placed it next to Skelton’s. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit there, Mr Hobbes. I won’t bind your hands, because I have things I need you to do for me in a moment.’ He pulled out the fourth chair and positioned it to face the other three. ‘And I’ll sit here.’
He was silent, setting his thoughts in order. Then he wriggled his shoulders and leant forward.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘before the war, I’m told I worked in a soap factory. I say, “I’m told” because I actually have very little memory of it and what memory I do have more than likely isn’t really memory at all, just scraps I’ve assembled from things that people have told me. I had a mother and father. But I have no memory of them either. They died of the Spanish Flu just before Armistice Day. I probably have uncles and aunties and heaven knows who else, but I’ve never had a wish to find them, and I expect the lack of curiosity is reciprocated. Anyway, then I became a soldier and sometime after that, I became nobody. Because of this.’
He pointed to the lump at the side of his head. ‘You’ve read all about that in my medical reports, haven’t you? How they wrote me off for dead, but it turned out I wasn’t. Well, that’s a curious thing to happen to anybody, isn’t it? To wake up a blank. I didn’t know how to talk. Did it say that in the 359reports? I had to learn all over again. Then things came back, but patchy. I could remember my name, and how to read and write and count. Ask me to take away 17s. 11d. from £3. 14s. 6d. and I’d be on it like a shot – £2. 16s. 7d. Six sevens are forty-two. I suppose I must have gone to school and positively shone as a scholar. Spelling impeccable. L-I-B-R-A-R-Y. Funny how many people have trouble spelling a simple word like that. B-I-C-Y-C-L-E. A lot of people get the “I” and the “Y” the wrong way round. Hastings, 1066. Agincourt, 1415. Trafalgar, 1805. You see? All shipshape and Bristol fashion in the scholarship department. No slacking there. “Thirty days hath September …” I knew all the rhymes. “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder treason, should ever be forgot.” That’s one that’s taken on a weighty significance, hasn’t it? Eh? That was supposed to be the date of my second imaginary death. Anyway, these doctors in these hospitals I was in, they seemed very keen on restoring my memory back to what it was. And I couldn’t see any sense at all in that. What spirited human being could? Why would I want to remember working in a soap factory and being a soldier? How boring could that be, eh? How unremittingly humdrum. Enough to make a man ashamed. Why would I want to do a thing like that when I could have any memories I wanted? I could be anybody I wanted. So, each time I met one of these doctors in these hospitals, I’d tell them it was all coming back to me now. Before the war I was a skating policeman chasing criminals along the frozen canals of Amsterdam. “They’re too 360fast for me,” the Dutch bobbies would say. “Only one man could catch criminals that fast. Send for Musgrave.” Or I was the Professor of Ancient Languages at the University of Bologna and could speak Chaldean, as well as any inhabitant of Ur. “Rishti minnie bracktoo oof simmi goot.” There you are. I just said, “I hope I find you in good health.”
‘This confused the doctors for a while. Then it amused them. They let me go on like this for a few weeks, making up new stories until the day came when they let me go off into the outside world to seek my fortune. Electric vacuum cleaners were the coming thing, then, weren’t they? After the war. And Auto-Vac-It was just starting up in Coventry, so I went to see them. Told them I’d had some success selling electric irons in Canada before the war, but then came home to do my duty. I told them I’d been a lieutenant in the Prince of Wales Dragoons. Well, for all I could remember I might well have been, and it does afford respect, doesn’t it? Officer class. They had no reason to disbelieve me. Officer class is as officer class does.
‘Then – this is where the story takes something of a turn – this chap approached me. I won’t tell you his name. He caught me one day just as I was leaving the factory in Coventry and took me for a walk. Very commanding sort of chap, he was. Top drawer. And he told me that one of the doctors I’d been seeing had put him on to me as a chap who can spin a yarn and stick to it come what may. He asked me about how much I loved my country and my political affiliations and so on. And I told him I did love 361my country, but I didn’t have any political affiliations and that seemed to suit him down to the ground. He told me he worked for Military Intelligence and they were looking for chaps like me to work undercover. I was chary at first, but when he reassured me about the money side of things, I agreed to sign up. Not that you sign anything. God forbid. Putting your actual name on a document would be mistake number one. Anyway, I’ve been involved in this secret work ever since. I can’t tell you the exact nature of the work because that would be treason, but I can tell you that if it wasn’t for me and my colleagues this country would now be in the hands of the Bolsheviks. But they were on to me, you see. The Russian Bolsheviks. So, I had to fake my own suicide. It was essential for the sake of national security. It was a great pity that the tramp had to die, but he was just another of the many thousands who have given their lives for their country in recent years. “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.” You’re barking up the wrong tree with Walter Gale, by the way. The man I set fire to was Sidney something. A tramp. Those pictures you got looked nothing like him. To be honest, I think that German professor might have pulled a fast one on you.
‘I knew this lady called Mrs Paterson in Battersea. You might have read about her. Very nice lady. One of my favourite ladies in the world, to be honest. And I had it all arranged with her. With the £1,250 we were going to go away somewhere, start a new life. We might have done, too, 362except the Russian Bolsheviks were on to me in spades by this time. Then Mrs Paterson began to suspect I wasn’t being absolutely straight with her about various things. Anyway, she threatened to call the police, so she had to sacrifice her life for King and Country, too. It’s hard, I know, but this is essential work in which I am engaged, and I can assure you that the death of one tramp and one woman is as nothing when compared to the unendurable hardship this country would suffer under the Bolshevik yoke.’
Musgrave paused and looked slowly from Edgar, to Skelton to Mila. He smiled. ‘Any questions, by the way, feel free to dive in.’
Skelton, Edgar and Mila exchanged glances; the way people do at the end of a lecture when the ‘any questions’ bit crops up.
Mila broke the silence. ‘What exactly do you want from us?’
‘That’s simple. I read in the Graphic that you were generously rewarded for your efforts. I want the two thousand pounds the Daily Graphic gave you. I want your car and I want him.’ He gestured with his gun towards Edgar.
‘I don’t see how I can get you the money,’ Skelton said. ‘The banks are closed and—’
‘You write me a cheque.’
‘But surely you realise that I could stop the cheque at—’
‘That’s why I want him. I’m going to … doesn’t matter as long as it’s civilised and remote enough so they can’t come and get me. I’ll just get the first boat that’s sailing. And he’s 363coming with me. Any funny business and he gets it.’
There was an astonished silence.
‘Sorry,’ Edgar said. ‘I might have misunderstood. You want me to come with you to … where? … Rio de Janeiro or Shanghai … on a boat, a journey that could take weeks and you’ll be holding me at gunpoint the whole time?’
‘I might bind you and gag you and put you in a cabin trunk.’
‘He gets sick in cars,’ Skelton said. ‘God knows what he’d be like on the high seas.’
‘You couldn’t leave me bound and gagged in a cabin trunk for weeks,’ Edgar said.
‘I’ll think of something,’ Musgrave said. ‘I always think of something. It’s my forte. Thinking on my feet, sizing up the situation, formulating a solution.’
‘Why can’t you ask MI5 or somebody to help you?’
‘Because they would deny all knowledge of me. Of course they would. Secrecy is everything.’
‘How did you find my address, anyway?’ Edgar asked.
‘Stroke of luck. Mrs Stewart – your housekeeper, I take it – filled in one of the forms in Woman’s Life magazine, saying she wanted to take advantage of the two-week trial with no obligation to purchase we offer on the 250 and 260 models. Had to fill in the name and business of the head of household “Mr E. Hobbes, Barrister’s Clerk”. We only get three or four of those forms a week, and all the ones from the Midlands and the South-East come to me, and I was booked in for a visit. “Mr E. Hobbes, Barrister’s Clerk.” 364Said in the paper that the “Man Who Refuses to Lose” had a clerk called Edgar Hobbes. Does Mrs Stewart do your trousers?’
Edgar looked down at the creases. Even in such trying circumstances, he found it impossible to dim the glow of pride. ‘The knack is to pin them to the ironing board.’
‘Is that how she manages it?’
‘I think there’s probably more to it than that,’ Edgar said. ‘Some fluid perhaps that stiffens the cloth.’
‘How’s she getting on with the Auto-Vac-It, by the way? It was a 260, wasn’t it, with the disinfecting pad that charges the air with a germicidal fragrance. Does she like it?’
‘No.’
Musgrave reeled back in his chair with a great show of horror and astonishment.
‘She says it’s all right on the carpets,’ Edgar continued, ‘but no good on the parquet.’
‘She can’t be using it right, then. Either that or the fools have delivered the 200 rather than the 260. Show me.’
‘What?’
‘Show me the vac.’
Musgrave stood and glanced over at Skelton and Mila. They’d be all right for a moment tied in their chairs. He repeated, ‘Show me the vac.’
Edgar not quite able to believe that he was being forced at gunpoint to show a man the way to his broom cupboard, led the way into the hall.
When he was sure they were out of whisper range, Skelton 365turned to Mila, said, ‘Shhh!’ and showed her his unbound hands.
‘Mr Pilsudski had nothing but praise for my long, slim, pianist’s fingers,’ he said.
‘Get me loose,’ Mila said. Skelton did. ‘And pass me that yardstick. I’ll conceal it behind my back. If we pretend we’re still bound, we’ll have the element of surprise on our side and I’ll have him disarmed and disabled before he knows what’s hit him.’
‘I was thinking I might just phone the police,’ Skelton said.
‘He’ll hear.’
There came, from the hallway, the whine of the Auto-Vac-It 260. It was a noisy machine.
Skelton got through to the operator and asked to be put through to the police station, which, he knew, was just a few hundred yards away on the corner of Downshire Hill.
From the hallway, they heard Musgrave saying, or rather shouting over the noise of the 260, ‘And this little lever disconnects the beater mechanism. Has your Mrs Stewart been disconnecting the beater mechanism?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘Because if she hasn’t, it’s hardly surprising that its performance on the parquet has been disappointing.’
Skelton sat back in his chair. ‘Mad, would you say?’
‘Probably not asylum mad,’ Mila said, ‘but certainly flapping with the hinges very loose indeed.’
The vacuum cleaner was switched off. Skelton went back 366to his chair, noticed that the Indiarubber bands were lying on the floor and whisked them into his pocket. Both he and Mila took up their helplessly bound positions.
Edgar and Musgrave came back. Edgar was carrying the Auto-Vac-It, now with a little brush on the end of a tube attached.
Musgrave held the gun steady. ‘I did notice it as a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘and may I say what a striking piece it is.’ They were standing one either side of the cocktail cabinet. ‘But I can promise you that the upholstery brush will make short work of the dusting. Now, is there an electrical socket? Oh yes. Excellent.’
Supervised by Musgrave, Edgar began to dust the cocktail cabinet with the Auto-Vac-It’s upholstery attachment.
‘You see,’ Musgrave said, ‘every nook and cranny it just magics the dust away.’
It was true. Skelton noted that the deepest recesses were turning from a dingy grey to the beige of the bird’s-eye maple and deep brown of the rosewood.
The door buzzer sounded.
‘Switch it off,’ Musgrave said, and before Edgar could find the switch, kicked at the wire dislodging the plug from the socket. ‘Were you expecting anyone?’
‘It might be the postman,’ Edgar said.
Musgrave waggled the pistol to indicate that any funny business would result in a bullet to the heart.
Edgar called out with fairy-tale sweetness, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s the police.’ 367
Musgrave whirled round. At the same moment, Mila disarmed him with the yard ruler. The gun went off as it fell to the ground and the bullet reduced a good-sized bit of the cocktail cabinet to splinters.
At the sound of the shot, the police abandoned restraint and started kicking at the door.
Mila, in Three Musketeers’ pose, was repeatedly smacking Musgrave’s head and shoulders and poking him with the ruler.
Musgrave edged over to the window, saw his chance, found the catch, flung it open and jumped out.
It wasn’t much of a drop. They were on the first floor. All the same, he landed badly. From the window, Mila saw him try to stand and wince with pain as his ankle gave way. Two constables gently pushed him to the ground and got the handcuffs out.
‘They’ve got him,’ Mila said.
Edgar was examining the shattered cocktail cabinet.
‘At the very moment,’ he said, ‘that one learnt of its dustability …this.’