The Banker and the Debt

On Saturdays the bank in Marlow Cross was open until noon, and at half past eleven there was no one in the banking hall but old Mr Winch the clerk, who, seeing on the threshold the inspector from Bristol, Constable Doyle, and — strangest of all — Edwin Hale, whom the whole town had decided was sitting in a cell, dropped his date stamp on the floor.

Helen Frost came out to them herself. She wore the same navy suit, immaculate as ever. But Edwin, who had spent forty years looking at locks, noticed what no one else would have noticed: she had not locked her office door behind her. For the first time in twelve years. As if she knew there was nothing left to lock away.

"Inspector," she said. "I've been expecting you. Come in."

In the office she sat not at her desk but in the visitor's chair by the window, from which the square, the Crown and the spire of St Michael's could be seen. She kept her spectacles on. She folded her hands in her lap.

"You've come about Wednesday," she said, without waiting to be asked.

"I've come about Wednesday, madam," Grimshaw agreed gently. "And about August."

She gave a barely perceptible start. Her glance flicked to Edwin for an instant and came back.

"You've found Oscar's letter," she said. "About the wax on the key."

"We have."

Helen Frost looked out of the window for a long time. The town hall clock struck the three-quarters.

"I spent twenty years building this bank," she said at last, and her voice was as level as a line in a ledger. "When I came here it was a tiny branch with two clerks, and both of them believed a woman couldn't even be a cashier. Now it's the most profitable branch in the county. They hold me up as an example in Bristol. They've offered me a post in London." She smiled, and the smile was more terrible than tears. "All of it rests on trust, Inspector. One word in a newspaper, and this building becomes an empty box with a marble floor."

"Tell me about Lane."

"Tobias Lane owes this bank nine thousand four hundred pounds." She spoke the figure the way a doctor speaks a diagnosis. "Six loans in eight years. Secured on antiques. Silver, miniatures, clocks. I accepted the security personally. And every piece had a certificate of authenticity. Signed by Oscar Renwick."

Doyle whistled softly. Grimshaw looked at him, and he fell silent.

"In July," Helen went on, "a valuer came down from head office. The annual review of securities. He took two pieces from Lane's collateral to Bristol for examination. A week later a letter came: both were forgeries. Modern ones. Masterly, but forgeries." She clenched her fingers. "I went to see Lane that same evening. I threatened him with the courts, the police. He poured me a sherry and explained, very politely, the way one explains to a child: if he went down, the first to go down with him wouldn't be Oscar, or even himself. It would be me. The manager who for years had accepted nine thousand pounds' worth of forgeries as security and noticed nothing. Or — he actually said this — 'noticed, but kept quiet for a small consideration'. No one would believe it wasn't true. I shouldn't have believed it myself."

"What did he ask for?"

"At first — nothing. Only silence. Then in August he came and said Oscar had asked him to value the shop's collateral. The part that's kept in our vault, along with the key to the back room. He showed me a note, supposedly from Oscar. I…" She faltered for the first time. "I knew the note might be forged. I was almost certain of it. But I let him into the vault. Alone. For five minutes. Because I was afraid that otherwise he'd do what he'd threatened."

"And he took an impression of the key," said Edwin.

She looked at him — directly, for the first time in the whole conversation.

"I didn't know what he was going to do, Mr Hale. I swear it. I thought he wanted to make sure there were no papers against him in the box. I only learned about the wax when, on Wednesday, the day before he died, Oscar came in, asked me to open his box, looked at the key through a glass for a long time, and walked out without a word to me. He just looked at me. The way one looks at a person one no longer considers a person."

Grimshaw nodded, as though she had confirmed something he had long known.

"And now Wednesday, madam. Last Wednesday."

Helen Frost closed her eyes.

"He came to my house at twenty to eleven," she said quietly. "Not at eight. At twenty to eleven. My housekeeper had gone to bed. I opened the door myself. He was standing on the step in a wet coat, his trousers soaked to the knee, as though he'd come across the fields rather than by the streets. And his hands were shaking. I had never seen Tobias Lane's hands shake. He said, 'If anyone asks, I was here from eight. We were discussing a loan.' I asked what had happened. He said, 'Nothing that concerns you, Helen, as long as you keep quiet.' And he left. And in the morning I heard about Maureen Cobb."

The office was so quiet that they could hear Mr Winch shuffling papers in the hall beyond the door.

"And you confirmed his alibi all the same," said Grimshaw. Without reproach. Simply stating it.

"Yes." Helen opened her eyes. "Because by then I'd already kept quiet about the key and the wax for a week. I was already an accessory. I thought one more lie wouldn't change anything. I thought I was saving the bank." She suddenly leaned forward, and her immaculate mask cracked at last — only for a moment, only at the edge, the way ice cracks on a spring puddle. "And on Thursday morning, as I was walking past the shop, Miss Renwick ran out into the street, and her face… I understood that I wasn't saving the bank. I was saving a murderer. And that Maureen Cobb, who for twenty-two years brought her savings in here every month, a few shillings at a time, and always said 'Good morning, Mrs Frost' — that she was dead, and I had signed her death warrant with my silence in August."

She straightened. Took off her spectacles at last and laid them on the windowsill.

"I'll sign everything, Inspector. A written statement. About August, about Wednesday, about the loans, the forgeries. I understand this is the end of my career. Perhaps not only my career." She paused. "And there's something else you ought to know. Yesterday evening Lane withdrew everything that was left in his personal account. Four hundred pounds in cash. Mr Winch told me he saw a ticket in his wallet. Southern Railway, to Southampton. For Monday."

"Southampton," Grimshaw repeated. "The New York boats."

"On Friday evening," said Helen, "someone was standing under a window in the yard of Renwick's shop while Miss Renwick was reading the letter. Constable Doyle was telling everyone about it in the Crown over his evening pint." She looked at Doyle, and he went red to the ears. "In small towns, Constable, the walls have ears. And bar counters even more so."

* * *

They came out of the bank at half past twelve. Over the square the sky had cleared at last — the fog had lifted, and a pale October sun lay across the wet cobbles, the steps of the Crown, and the brass plaque by the church door, which at that moment the Reverend Pembry, standing on a stepladder, was unscrewing with his own hands.

Grimshaw stopped in the middle of the square and watched the vicar for a long time.

"Well, now," he said at last. "A bank manager withdrawing a false alibi. A vicar's evidence of a man in a lane. A boy whose note was steamed open. The murdered man's letter. A casting mould twenty-six years old. Nine thousand pounds of debt. A ticket for a steamer." He counted them off on his fingers. "Enough to arrest him, Mr Hale. But enough to hang him? I don't know. A jury's a strange beast. A good barrister will say Mrs Frost is taking revenge on a client who threatened her career. That the vicar is old and short-sighted. That the boy's a little thief. And that Oscar Renwick was a swindler settling scores with his old partner from beyond the grave." He shook his head. "I need an object he's held in his hands. The original probe he copied, or the mould he cast it in. Or the key made from the impression at the bank. The seventh key, Mr Hale. If we find that on Lane, no barrister on earth will help him."

"A search warrant?" asked Doyle.

"The magistrate has gone to his sister's in Cheltenham and won't be back until Monday evening. And on Monday morning Lane will be on the train." Grimshaw looked at Edwin. "You, Mr Hale, are released from custody. In writing. I'm satisfied of what Constable Doyle was sure of from the start. I'll ask you not to leave the town. And I'll ask you not to do anything foolish."

Edwin was silent for a long time, watching the vicar on the stepladder and the brass plaque, which swayed, came away from the wall at last and fell with a thin ring on to the cobbles.

"Inspector," he said. "The man who made the seventh key won't throw it away until he's got at that box. Because only in that box is there a mould with his initials on it and a letter that leads to the gallows. He knows the box is in the shop. He heard us find it. And on Monday he'll be gone for good." He turned to Grimshaw. "So he'll come tonight or tomorrow night. With the key to the yard door he took on Wednesday. And with that seventh key in his pocket — just in case."

"You're proposing a trap."

"I'm proposing to give him a reason to hurry," said Edwin. "And to give him a door he'll want to open."

Grimshaw looked at him for a long time with his pale, all-noticing eyes.

"I said nothing foolish, Mr Hale."

"You did," Edwin agreed. "But, with respect, this won't be foolish. It'll be a locksmith's job."

As he crossed the square on his way home, Jenkins the baker came out on to his doorstep, stood for a moment wiping his hands on his apron, and then silently held out a paper bag. In the bag was a loaf. The brownest one.