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I’m not sure of my memory on this point, but I think I started the book with the idea that, as well as being a departure from the straight Whodunit form, it would also be easier to write. If I did think this, I was sadly mistaken. It was, in its own demonic way, every bit as tough to do. Because, after all, when the author (or policeman, if it comes to that) is faced with a clever and careful and motiveless killer, how does he set about uncovering him?
But the book got finished somehow and was very well received,
so I suppose I did all right by the theme, which is, after all, timeless. An interesting point, however, did occur to me while I was going over it; a point which might be worth some elaboration.
It concerns the present-day preoccupation with the psyche and all its widely bandied but only dimly understood -iatrys and -opaths and -ologies. If I were to be writing this book today, I believe I would feel bound to probe at length into the subconscious past of the murderer (in search, so to speak, of the psora and trauma of that dark district) so that I could eventually reveal that the whole trouble was caused by the fact that, at an early age, this unfortunate homicidal maniac (like the character in Cold Comfort Farm) had seen something nasty in the woodshed.
But, in the days when I did write Murder Gone Mad I felt no such compulsion. It was enough, then, that the murderer was mentally unhinged; that the murderer was killing without sane motive; that the murderer was eventually caught …
That was the way we used to do it—and I’m not at all sure we weren’t right …
This leaves Rynox. As I have already intimated, it is a much lighter book than the others; lighter in every way. Writing it was really a sort of busman’s holiday; and, at the time, I almost had fun working on it, particularly since it satirized several persons and institutions in the London of that time—
I have just caught myself wondering whether the satire, unrecognizable here and now, was the only reason for the book doing as well as it did. And this means, I fear, that I’m back with my conditioned reflexes and had better stop, before I start saying, ‘It isn’t good enough for me to have written,’ and thereby open the door temptingly wide for any critic who might feel like adding the words, ‘or anyone else’ …
PHILIP MACDONALD
in Three for Midnight, 1963
EPILOGUE (#ulink_dfa1449a-71f0-50a2-940a-d33e533ac457)
1
GEORGE surveyed the Crickford’s man and the package with pompous disapproval.
‘Bringing a thing like that to the front!’ said George. ‘Oughter know better. If you take your van down Tagger’s Lane at the side there, you’ll find our back entrance.’
George may have been impressive; was, indeed, to a great many people. But the vanman was not impressed. He evidently cared little for George’s bottle-green cloth and gilt braid; less for George’s fiercely-waxed moustache, or George’s chest, medals or no medals.
‘This unprintable lot,’ said the vanman, ‘’as got this ’ere obscene label on it. My job ain’t to stand ’ere chewin’ the unsavoury rag with any o’ you scoutmasters! My job’s to deliver. Are you or are you not medically goin’ to take unclean delivery?’
The normal purple of George’s cheeks turned slowly to a rich black. George could not speak.
‘If you don’t,’ said the vanman, ‘gory well ’urry, off we go with the lot.’ He stooped and looked at the label. ‘And it’s addressed to one of your big noises … F. MacDowell Salisbury, Essquire. President: Naval, Military and Cosmo … Cosmos … whatever the ’ell it is, Assurance. That’s you, ain’t it?’
He held out a grimy thin-leaved book, together with a quarter-inch stub of unpointed pencil. A dark thumb pointed to the foot of the open page.
‘You signs,’ said the vanman, ‘along dotted line ’ere, if you can write. Otherwise you’d better put your mark and I’ll write somethink against it for yer. ’Urry up now!’
It will always be matter for conjecture as to what George would have done at this stage had not at this moment the car of F. MacDowell Salisbury drawn up immediately behind the Crickford’s van. This left George only one course. Quickly he signed. Quickly he laid hold of the unwieldy package, which consisted of two large and heavy sacks tied together at the tops. With considerable exertion of his great strength he managed to drag them up the two remaining steps and in through the swing doors of glittering glass and mahogany. Just as, puffing, he had rested them against a corner of the panelled wall, the President came up the steps. George got to the door just in time; held it open; touched his cap; strove to keep his laboured breathing silent.
‘’Morning, George!’ said the President.
George touched his cap again. He could not speak yet. The President was in good humour. Instead of striding straightway down the marble-floored corridor to the lift, he halted, his head on one side. He surveyed George.
‘George,’ he said, ‘you look hot.’
‘I am—fuf—sir!’
The President’s eyes strayed to the unwieldy sacks. ‘Weightlifting, George?’
‘Yessir. Just as you come, sir, I was telling the Crickford’s man that he ought to ’ve took the lot round to the Lane entrance, but I saw it’s for you, sir, so I brought it in this side.’
‘For me?’ The President’s tone and his eyebrows went up.
‘Yessir, according to the label.’
‘Extraordinary thing!’ The President walked over to the corner, bent down over the sacks and lifted the label. ‘Extraordinary thing!’ he said again. He put a podgy white hand to the joined sacks and tried their weight. ‘Feels heavy,’ he said.
‘Heavy, sir,’ said George, ‘it is!’
Again the President stooped to the label. Yes, it bore his name; also, in red ink and capital letters—staring capitals—the words:
‘EXTREMELY PRIVATE AND
CONFIDENTIAL
PERSONAL FOR MR SALISBURY ONLY.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ said the President. ‘Better get a couple of men and have it brought up to my office.’
2
The President, with fat white forefinger, pressed the third of the bell pushes upon his desk.
‘Miss Winter,’ he said, to the bell’s genie, ‘have they brought up those sacks?’
‘The sacks have just come, Mr Salisbury.’
‘Right! Just give the fellows a bob each out of the Petty Cash and then I’ll come out. Most extraordinary-looking thing, isn’t it, Miss Winter?’
‘Yes, Mr Salisbury.’
Miss Winter, very severe, very neat, most efficient, went back to the outer office. The President, walking slowly after her, saw her distribution of largesse; saw the porters touching clean hats with dirty forefingers; saw the door close behind them; went out into Miss Winter’s room.
Very untidily heaped in its very tidy centre were the sacks. Miss Winter was bending down, reading the label.
‘Got a knife?’ said the President.
Miss Winter had a knife. Miss Winter always had everything.
‘Just see,’ said the President, ‘whether you can cut the string.’
Miss Winter could cut the string and did. The sacks fell apart. The President stirred one with his toe. The contents were hard, yet yielding.
‘I can’t make it out!’ said the President.
‘Shall I open a sack?’ said Miss Winter. A very practical woman.
‘Yes, yes. Let’s have a look.’
Once more Miss Winter stooped; once more the penknife came into play as it ripped the stout thread which kept the mouth of the sack closed. Miss Winter inserted a hand …
‘Good God!’ said the President.
He took two short steps and stood at Miss Winter’s shoulder. Upright again, she was holding between her hands a thick elastic-bound wad of one-pound Bank of England notes.
‘Good God!’ said the President again.
He bent himself over the mouth of the open sack and thrust in his own arm. His hand came away with yet another package …
He let the sack lie flat upon the floor, bent over it, caught it a little way down from its top and shook. Other packets fell from it upon the floor …
He looked into the sack …
There could be no doubt! The sack—it looked like a hundredweight-and-a-half corn sack—was filled, crammed, with bundles of one-pound Bank of England notes. They were not new, these notes. The bundles did not bear that solid, block-like appearance of unused paper money, but, although neat, were creased, and numbered—as Miss Winter at once was to find—in anything but series.
‘Good God!’ said the President. Himself, with Miss Winter’s knife, he cut the threads which bound the mouth of the other sack. And this second sack was as its brother. If, indeed, there was any difference, it was that this second sack held still more bundles than the first. The President stood in the middle of the floor. Round his feet there lay, grotesque and untidy, little disordered heaps of money.
The President looked at Miss Winter. Miss Winter looked at the President.
‘I suppose,’ said the President, ‘that I am at the office, Miss Winter? I’m not by any chance at home, in bed and fast asleep?’
Miss Winter did not smile. ‘You certainly are at the office, Mr Salisbury.’
‘And would you mind telling me, Miss Winter, what these things are that I’m treading on?’
‘Certainly, Mr Salisbury. Bundles of one-pound notes, not very clean, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m going back to my room to sit down,’ said the President. ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming in again in a few minutes, Miss Winter, and telling me all over again what there is in those sacks, I should be very much obliged. Also you might empty the sacks and find out if there is anything else in them except … except … well, except bundles of one-pound notes!’
‘Very well, Mr Salisbury. And would it not be as well, perhaps, if I also ring up Crickford’s and see whether I can ascertain who is the sender of this, er … of this, er …’ Even Miss Winter for once was at a loss for words.
‘Do! Do!’ said the President. ‘And don’t forget: come in and tell me all about it all over again!’
‘Very well, Mr Salisbury.’
3
‘If,’ said F. MacDowell Salisbury to his friend Thurston Mitchell, who was Vice-President of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation, ‘you can beat that, I shall be much surprised.’
Mr Mitchell could not beat it. He said so. ‘If I hadn’t,’ said Mr Mitchell, ‘seen the damn’ stuff with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe you now, Salisbury … What did Crickford’s say when Winter got on to them?’
‘Crickford’s,’ said Mr Salisbury, ‘agreed to make inquiries of their branches. They did. This package was delivered yesterday evening at their Balham Receiving Office. The customer, who did not give his name, paid the proper rate for delivery, asked when that delivery would be made, and …’ Mr Salisbury shrugged his plump shoulders despairingly, ‘… just went.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘According to what Crickford’s managing director told me on the phone, the clerk said that the sender was a “tall, foreign-looking gentleman.” Little beard, broken English, rather exaggerated clothes—that sort of thing. Came in a car.’
‘Car, did he?’ said Mr Mitchell. ‘Now did they …’
Mr Salisbury shook his head sadly. ‘Mitchell, they did not. They couldn’t tell me whether that car was blue or green, open or closed, English or American. They couldn’t tell anything. After all, poor devils, why should they?’
Mr Thurston Mitchell paced the Presidential room with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, and a frown drawing his eyebrows together into a rigid bar across his high-bridged nose. He said:
‘And there wasn’t anything, Salisbury? Nothing in those sacks except money?’
‘Nothing,’ said the President. ‘Nothing, Mitchell, of any description—except one grain of corn which I have here upon my desk. I thought I’d better keep it as a souvenir.’
‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the Vice-President.
‘Quite,’ said the President, ‘probably … Yes, Miss Winter, what is it?’
Miss Winter came to the Presidential desk. There was about her a certain excitement, intensely restrained, but discernible nevertheless. She bore, rather in the manner of an inexperienced but imaginative recruit carrying a bomb, a small, oblong brown-paper parcel. She placed it upon the Presidential table. She said:
‘This has just come, Mr Salisbury. By registered post. I thought I’d better let you have it at once because … well, because I fancy that the printing on it is the same as the printing on the sack label.’
The President stared. The Vice-President came to his shoulder and did the same thing.
‘By Jove!’ said the President. ‘It is! Here, Mitchell, you open it. You haven’t had a thrill today.’
The Vice-President, having borrowed Miss Winter’s penknife, cut the parcel string, unwrapped three separate coverings of brown paper and found at last a stout, small, deal box. It had a sliding lid like a child’s pencil-box. The Vice-President slid away the lid. He looked, and put the box down before the President. He said:
‘Look here, Salisbury, if any more of this goes on, I shall go and see a doctor. Look at that!’
Mr Salisbury looked at that. What he saw was a sheet of white paper, and in the centre of the sheet of white paper a new halfpenny …
‘Don’t,’ said the Vice-President, ‘look like that, Salisbury. Damn it, you don’t want any more money!’
The President removed the halfpenny and the sheet of paper. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, ‘whether I want it or not!’
Underneath the sheet of paper were, in three lines of little round stacks, forty-six new pennies. They were counted, with a composure really terrific, by Miss Winter. And underneath them was another piece of plain white paper. But this piece of plain white paper bore in its centre—neatly printed with a thick pen and in thick black ink:
‘THIS IS THE BALANCE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
Total: £287,499 3s. 10½d …
(Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety-nine pounds, three shillings and tenpence halfpenny.)
N.B.—Not for Personal Use. For the coffers of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation.’
The President looked at the Vice-President. Both looked at Miss Winter.
‘Miss Winter,’ said the President, ‘would you be so very kind as to leave the room? I’m sure that in one moment Mr Mitchell will say something which it would be better for you not to hear.’
END OF EPILOGUE
REEL ONE (#ulink_1c37613b-b78c-5c20-8107-903a0e2cbf29)
