Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“Phil, you could spend the rest of the day explaining and I daresay I still wouldn’t have a clue why you’re excited about it. Remember ‘nature study’ was the only science we had at school.”
“Nature study! That’s not science. I suppose you were learning to pour tea properly instead. Yes, thanks, I’ll have another cup. And boys’ schools teach Latin and Greek instead of physics and chemistry. Just think how advanced we’d be if—”
“Please, Phil, another time. You claimed to be in a hurry to get to Bristol, and I’m dying to know what you found out at your club.”
“Oh, well, it wasn’t all that much, really. Some of the fellows were playing billiards and someone started talking about Teddy Devenish, wondering whether his heirs would be selling his car for a song, wanting to get rid of it.”
“How callous!”
“It is the RAC, you know, old dear. All the fellows are frightfully keen on cars or they wouldn’t be members, and Teddy’s was a 1927 Mercedes-Benz S-Type Sportwagen with a supercharger clutch and—”
“Phil!”
“Oh, sorry. Anyway, they were calling him ‘poor devil’ so they weren’t completely callous.
Though none of them sounded as if they liked him much, I must say.
He was always kicking up larks—Well,” Phillip said tolerantly, “all young fellows do, and of course, it goes without saying, there were plenty to egg him on. No one ever proposed a bet he didn’t accept, I gather.
The thing is, he always managed to do it in a way that caused the most inconvenience to everyone else. ”
“Such as?”
“They were all laughing about the time he set loose half a dozen monkeys in Harrods. He put numbered collars on them, but left out number one, so even once they’d collared the lot, they thought one was missing.”
“I did hear something about that, though I didn’t know it was Teddy.” Daisy tried not to giggle. “It must have been pretty funny.”
“I daresay, if he hadn’t picked the week before Christmas, when everyone’s doing their Christmas shopping. Lots of customers left to shop elsewhere. It must have been quite a big loss for Harrods.”
“All the same, if that’s the worst they had to say—”
“Not by a long shot. One of the chaps blamed him for leading this other young fellow astray.”
“Which young fellow?”
“Ricky, they called him. Not a member, I gathered. Not anyone I know. One of the chaps was a great pal of his older brother, Lord Somebody, it seems. And at one time Devenish used to bring him—the younger brother—to the club now and then, so several of them were acquainted with him.”
“Ricky? Is that his surname?”
“I don’t believe so. A lot of the young chaps call each other by ridiculous nicknames. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”
“If it never comes to anything worse than that,” Daisy said pointedly, “it’ll be in good shape. But what was Ricky’s surname?”
“I never heard it, and I didn’t care to ask. Thought Fletcher wouldn’t be any too pleased with me if I let on I was interested.”
“Nor his brother’s title, I take it.”
“I’ve forgotten,” Phillip apologised. “It was something very ordinary and it didn’t stick in my head.”
“Too full of automotive glass, I suppose. Blast! Ricky sounds like a good candidate. Did they say in what way Teddy led Ricky astray?”
“It seems to have started with gambling. First the gees, then when he lost, lent him a bit and suggested he could pay it back by winning big on the illegal stuff.”
“Of course he lost.”
“Of course. All those games are rigged. Beats me how anyone can expect to beat the house. If he’d been a gentleman, Devenish would have told him to forget the debt and stay away from both the tables and the horses.
Instead— Mind you, old thing, I’m just putting all this together from snippets I overheard. Don’t go telling Fletcher it’s gospel.”
“I won’t, Phil. But do go on, it’s fascinating in a morbid sort of way and it fits to a T what I know of Teddy.”
“It does? No wonder someone bumped him off.”
“He must have had a down on poor Ricky for some slight, very likely imaginary. Getting even for things most people would barely notice seems to have been his modus operandi.”
“I thought your education excluded Latin,” Phillip said suspiciously, “as well as maths and science.”
“It did. That’s just one of those phrases one hears. Go on, about Teddy and Ricky.”
“Ricky got to the point where he moved out of his rooms and into a cheap lodging house. Even so, he had to hock anything worth a few pounds, including his best clothes. He’d been a medical student, but he dropped out when he couldn’t afford the fees, and without decent clothes he couldn’t get a decent job.
Devenish found him some sort of job to tide him over, so that he could redeem his togs and look about for something better. ”
“Did they happen to mention what the job was?”
“I gather Devenish was very secretive about it, wouldn’t drop a hint.”
“I suspect I know, then.” By this time Daisy was convinced “Ricky” was Miss Fanshawe’s Ray Richmond, alias Mr. hyphen-Clark.
Richard something-Clark, she presumed. “I must say, Phil, you’re making a beautifully dramatic story out of your few overheard snippets.
I never knew you had such narrative skills. ”
“Yes, well, I was thinking about it on the drive up from Sunderland, putting it all together, because I knew you’d want to know as soon as I got back.”
“How right you were, except that Alec wanted to know the day before yesterday. Did you gather whether Ricky appealed to his family for help?”
“No, but he’d worn out his welcome among his friends, having never repaid the odd fiver, so I daresay it was the same with the family.”
“Very likely. Besides, if he was very down-at-heel, he was probably ashamed to go home or to approach his friends in person, and a begging letter never goes down well. I suppose with so much to gossip about, no one said anything about his being an athletic type.”
“As a matter of fact, they did. One of the fellows said Ricky was hopeless at billiards, which was odd because he was a demon at squash.”
“It all fits together.” Daisy frowned in thought. “He’s Mr. hyphen-Clark all right. But it doesn’t answer the main question.”
“Mr. what?” asked Phillip, baffled.
“Mr. hyphen-Clark. It’s all we have—all Alec has of the name of a suspect. One of many, however. Still, it should help them find him. Do have some more shortbread and another cup of tea?”
“Yes please. Dash it, old girl, the fellow can’t be a murderer. He’s a gentleman even if he’s on his uppers. He’ll be a lord when his brother dies.”
“Really, Phil, you are na?ve!”
The comment provoked a childish squabble that took Daisy back to the days when Phillip was her big brother’s best friend and tried to lord it over her on the basis of his five years’ advantage.