Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
“Not really. He kept himself to himself. Never in any trouble.”
“Was he married? Children?”
“No, sir. Lived alone. I do believe there was a wife on the scene once, but it’s my impression she left quite awhile ago.”
“Would you happen to know who his close friends were? What about this George Harris you mentioned?”
“He’s one of them,” said Young. “There’s a crowd who drink at the Hope and Anchor, bottom of main street, near the Helmthorpe Road. Belling, Harris, Doc Cruickshank, Ned Howard, a few others. It’s a bit upmarket. Most of the tourists take one look at the prices and head up the street to The Unicorn.”
“Keeps the riffraff out?”
“I suppose it does.”
The Hope and Anchor prided itself on being founded in the fourteenth century and proved to be a honeycomb of small snugs, bars, and narrow passages, with a few steps here and there just to try and trip up anyone who’d taken a drink too many. People probably got lost on their way to the gents. That lunchtime, there was a strange mood in the place, no doubt caused by Belling’s murder. Most of the rooms were full as the villagers gathered in a sort of stunned and impromptu wake.
In the largest room, Banks found a group of about ten people gathered around several tables shoved together. It was a typical upmarket pub, with Stubbs prints and horse brasses and photos of the old hunt on the whitewashed walls, solid round tables with cast-iron legs, a fine selection of single malts behind the bar, and a broad enough selection of real ales to satisfy even the staunchest member of CAMRA, even if the prices were a bit steep for the rucksack-and-anorak crowd.
Banks asked the barmaid if George Harris was in, and she pointed to a dapper man with thin lips and bushy eyebrows under a head of prematurely greying hair. Harris was wearing a white shirt and striped tie, his suit jacket hanging over the back of his chair. Banks bought himself a pint of Cock-a-Hoop, walked over to the group, and introduced himself to Harris, who nodded briefly and made space for him. Harris then introduced Banks to the rest of the group.
“I’d say ‘pleased to meet you,’” one of them said. “But under the circumstances... Anyway, Oliver Cruickshank. Dr. Oliver Cruickshank. At your service.” He stuck out his hand. Banks shook it. “I’m the local quack, in case you’re wondering.” Cruickshank lifted up his snifter of amber fluid and gulped some down. “Here’s to old Belling.” The others raised their glasses and mumbled a toast.
Cruickshank was a tall, athletic-looking man, probably in his early forties, with a charismatic, commanding manner. If the group had a leader, Banks guessed, this would be him. He had a brick-red complexion, a thick head of brown hair and a bristly moustache, and wore casual sports clothes. Casual but expensive, from what Banks could gather by the designers’ names on view. And he seemed like someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
“Had you known Max Belling for very long?” Banks asked Cruickshank.
“A good few years now,” the doctor answered. “I’ve been practising in Fortford since I first started out as a GP, in nineteen ninety-five, and Max arrived a couple of years later. He was my accountant.”
“Any ideas where he came from?”
“London, I think. He was something in the City.”
“Was he still working?”
“Semiretired. He kept on a few of his older clients but hadn’t taken on any new ones in some time.”
“Max always said life was too short to spend every hour God sent hunched over a column of figures,” added George Harris.
“Aye,” said the man next to him, whose name, Banks remembered, was Ned Howard. “Time to stop and smell the flowers, he said.”
“An admirable sentiment,” said Banks. “I don’t suppose we can put it down to foresight, though. Do any of you know anyone who might have had a reason to want to harm Max Belling?”
They all shook their heads.
“I think you’ll find, Chief Inspector,” said Dr. Cruickshank, “that Max Belling was well liked around these parts. I don’t mean to tell you your business, but it must have been someone from outside the village did this.”
“Did he know people outside the village?”
“I assume so. He made trips to London occasionally. Other places too. He was fond of the Scottish Highlands, a keen golfer and single-malt man. I shouldn’t think it could have been anyone who knew him, though. More likely the work of some passing maniac.”
“Or a tramp, perhaps?” said Banks.
“Don’t get many of them, these days.”
“Has anything unusual happened in the village lately?”
“Not that I can think of,” said George Harris, scratching his chin.
Ned Howard shook his head.
“Had Max Belling been behaving oddly? Did he seem worried, anxious, depressed, anything like that.”
They all looked down into their drinks muttering, “No.”
Banks didn’t feel he was going to get any further, so he finished his pint and left the pub. Perhaps it would be best to have them in an interview room one at a time later.
Banks was grateful for a breath of fresh air when he left the Hope and Anchor and headed up towards the village hall. The CSIs were still at work on the green in their white protective gear, the cordon still in place, though now that Belling’s body had been removed to the mortuary there was no need for the canvas screens anymore.
Before Banks had got far, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Dr. Cruickshank standing behind him.
“Sorry to bother you, old boy,” the doctor said. “I didn’t want to speak out in the pub. You understand, I’m sure. Mood of the occasion and all that. And I certainly have no wish to speak ill of the dead.”
“But you have something you’d like to tell me?”
“Well, yes, as it happens. But dammit, it’s difficult. Max was a mate, despite everything.”
Banks faced Dr. Cruickshank. “Surely if you helped us catch his killer, you’d be doing your mate proud?”
“Yes... well... seeing as you put it like that. I think Max had got himself mixed up with some rather dodgy people lately.”
“Financially?”
Cruickshank nodded. “That was his world. Yes. Though I don’t think it was a simple matter of handling their profit-and-loss statements.”
“What, then?”
“You have to understand that I don’t know any of this for certain. It’s partly guesswork, based on hints Max dropped. I think they may have been people he knew in London, from before he came up here.”
“And you think he’d got involved with them again?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think that?”
“As I said. Just little hints. And he was worried about something. Edgy, anxious. That wasn’t like Max. These are not very nice people, Chief Inspector.”
“What did Mr. Belling say?”
“He didn’t say anything directly. Just that he wished he hadn’t gone back to some reunion there, that they were dragging him into it again.”
“Into what?”
Cruickshank leaned closer, as if to share a confidence. “Money laundering, tax avoidance, offshore accounts, that sort of thing.”
“He told you this?”
“Not in so many words, perhaps, but that was the gist of it. He was always very cagey about his business trips, very vague if you asked him how they went, that sort of thing. Once he was even walking with a limp, as if someone had physically forced him into doing something.”
“How did he explain it?”
“Said he’d tripped and fallen on the edge of a pavement.”
“Any idea who these dodgy people might have been? Their names?”
Cruickshank shook his head.
“Ever see any of them up here?”