Counterfeit corpse, p.5
Counterfeit Corpse, page 5
“Police station in Tombury, this morning when I asked where you lived. Why did you get rid of it? Trying to change your appearance?”
“Certainly,” I said. “I think I look much better without it, don’t you?”
Just then Judy came into the room and I introduced them. Judy murmured something about cleaning up the bedrooms, and disappeared around the corner. We heard her go up the steps.
“Well, it’s this way, Mr. Ivy,” Roamer began at last. “In our outfit we like to keep track of things and get rid of trouble before it happens. Now it just so happens that you have a reputation for being a pretty good counterfeiter, and that’s—”
“That’s true,” I said. “I used to be the best. But that was ten years ago. Since then—”
“All right,” he said. “You used to be the best. But I haven’t heard of anybody since then who is any better than you were. You were so good you even counterfeited your way right out of Dartmoor Prison and got decorated to boot. Now we don’t care about what you did in England. Over here we don’t allow anyone to make queer money, and if they do we usually catch them pretty fast.”
“You’ve got me wrong, Mr. Roamer,” I said. “I have all the money I need and every bit of it in legitimate investments. You’ve got nothing on me and you aren’t going to get anything, either. Honest Donald Ivy, that’s me.”
I still didn’t get a smile out of him.
“Over here we don’t even allow anyone to have any tools for making counterfeit money,” he went on as though I hadn’t said a word. “We especially don’t allow them to have any plates or dies, for example.”
“So?” I said, knowing what was coming.
“I understand you have a set of plates for making ten-pound English banknotes,” he said. “If that’s true, I’d like to have them. We think you might be able to cause us trouble with them if you keep them.”
“Mr. Roamer,” I said, getting to my feet, “unless you have a warrant to search my house, or some reason for arresting me—which you don’t—I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave. I have a great deal of work to do this morning, and we have wasted too much time already.”
Much to my surprise, he left. He was as polite as an English detective, and as cold as blue ice, and probably a lot tougher than he acted. His almost-mechanical manner had gotten under my skin and made me a little nervous.
I decided to work it off with the rake.
There weren’t any bodies in the leaves this time and by lunch I had the yard raked all around the house, and even out to the road. Actually, I went out there to see where the accident had been. The skid marks were still there, and the chalk marks the police had drawn around the big brown stain showed where the body had been. Wusky’s shoes were lying about ten feet away; evidently the police had overlooked them in the dark. I picked them up and took them back and put them in the kitchen.
I also looked for Judy’s footprints, and sure enough there were some around the garbage can; and the garbage was in the can, too, proving she had been there. But I couldn’t find her prints in the drive, because the surface was covered with gravel, nor could I find them anywhere near where Wusky had been hit. And she had come running up the front walk and into the front door. So it appeared that she must be telling the truth.
When I got the leaves gathered up it was time to eat, but there wasn’t any food in the house. Judy and I got into the Triumph and drove into Tombury to the supermarket. That girl knew good food, but it didn’t surprise me. All the Ivys have been good eaters. Anyhow, the supermarket just about convinced me she was the real McIvy. At least it was the last test I could think of.
We got home with a pair of lobsters for lunch, which I steamed in the Chinese fashion. As we finished, I said that we’d better call Martha right now, before some other interruption came along.
“Come on,” she said, and ran into the living room ahead of me and picked up the phone. She gave the operator a Springfield number, and after a while a bright smile came over her face and she said, “Hello, Mother, this is Judy. How are you…? Oh, yes, I’m fine. I got here yesterday afternoon, but so much has happened since I got here that we just haven’t had time to call you … Yes, he’s fine. He’s standing right here and he wants to talk to you.” She handed the phone to me.
“Hello, Martha,” I said. “Long time no see or hear. How are you?” Her voice came back to me, young and clear, asking me how I was and what I thought of Judy and all that. I told her I thought Judy was the most wonderful girl in the world and promised to take good care of her, and Martha promised to come down as soon as she could, and I promised to come to see her as soon as I could. It was a typical long distance call.
“Judy, darling,” I said, “I feel better, knowing you really are Judy Thames and not somebody who just moved in to take advantage of an old and infirm man, living alone with his dreams and stuff. Now let’s go outside and soak up some of this fresh sunshine and warm spring air.”
“Didn’t you really believe I was me until you talked to mother?” she asked. “What would you do if I wasn’t? You don’t need to answer that question.”
She ran upstairs to get a scarf to tie around her head, and we went for a long walk over the Ivy acres, all seventeen of them. By the time we got back to the house the sun was low in the west.
We were sitting around after dinner, talking about things, and Judy wondered what was happening in the Iverson murder trial, in Chicago, and I remembered I hadn’t seen a newspaper for two days. I had completely forgotten it at noon when we had been shopping. I volunteered to dash in and get a paper and Judy said she would stay and do the dishes.
“A girl in a million,” I thought as I drove along. “I wonder how long I can get her to stay here, and what nice things would be proper for me to do for her. She only has one suitcase, maybe it would be all right for me to take her to New York and buy her some clothes. I’ll just call Martha again and find out.”
I drove down to the railroad station and got my paper and then found a phone booth and told the operator that I wanted to talk to Mrs. Martha Thames in Springfield, and gave her the street address. Pretty soon, after a lot of palaver and depositing of small coins, I heard a strange voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello, Martha,” I said, “hello, hello. This is Donald again. Martha, is that you?”
“This is Martha,” the voice said. “Is that you, Donald? Donald, it’s good to hear your voice again after all these years. Where are you?”
When we finally finished talking I stood up slowly, opened the door and walked slowly out to the Triumph, and drove slowly home. I wanted to get there in a hurry, and at the same time I didn’t want to get home ever at all. I was all mixed up inside.
Judy, of course, was in Springfield with her mother.
CHAPTER 7
There was nobody in the kitchen when I walked in at the back door, which was standing open. I closed it. Some of the dinner dishes were still in the sink. Every drawer was open and the contents of some of them had been scattered on the floor. The living room was in worse condition; not only were the drawers pulled out, but books had been thrown from shelves, upholstery ripped, and pictures taken off the walls.
Somebody had been through the place with the well-known fine tooth comb. And I knew who it was.
Upstairs was as bad as downstairs but, strangely enough, as far as I could judge, she had left all of her clothes and things behind. She—and I still thought of her as Judy—was nowhere around, of course.
She seemed to be the only thing that was gone, though. Even though everything I owned had been disturbed and dislocated, there didn’t seem to be anything missing. I don’t have so much that I can’t tell, almost at a glance, whether or not the inventory is complete.
Maybe something of Judy’s was gone. I couldn’t be sure of that. The suitcase was still there, and the red dress, and the hat and coat she had been wearing when she arrived, and the scarf she had worn when we went walking the day before. I carefully inspected all her things, just to see if I could find a clue as to who she might have been.
Her handbag was on the bureau, but there were no identification cards or even driver’s license anywhere in it. She had about fifty dollars in bills and some small change, and a compact and lipstick, and a cigarette lighter, and that was about all, except for a newspaper clipping. I unfolded that, saw that it was torn from the Sunday Magazine Section of a Boston newspaper, and then the headline caught my eye:
MASTER FORGER BACK HOME
Donald Ivy Living Life Of
Country Squire In New England
I glanced at the date. It had been published the Sunday before Wusky turned up at my house, and that had been on Wednesday. The article was not a syndicated feature, as far as I could see, which meant that it had only appeared in this one paper. Wusky, then, must have written his note to me as soon as he had read the story, then spent some time locating the house before coming to my door.
I hurried back to my own bedroom and looked for his note in the pocket of my jacket, where I had left it. It was still there, with the envelope with the smudged postmark, but as far as I could make out it had been mailed from Boston on Monday. If anyone was trying to trace Wusky’s movements they would do well to start in Boston, I thought.
Then I read the rest of the story, and a lot of things became clearer to me.
MASTER FORGER BACK HOME
Donald Ivy Living Life Of
Country Squire In New England
By Perry Patterson
Donald Ivy, a name that once struck terror to Scotland Yard’s ace operators, but which was eventually written on the list of Britain’s war-time heroes, has returned to the United States and is living on the old Ivy estate in Tombury, according to information which this reporter has received.
Few people in this country, except middle-age residents of Tombury, will remember Donald Ivy. As far as is known, he has never committed any crimes in America and he has no police record here.
Abroad, however, the story is a different one. Donald Ivy went to Europe in the middle 1930’s to study art in Paris. He was then a young man with very little money and, as it turned out, very little talent as an artist. He was a copyist and a mechanic, and could turn out reproductions of the works of others while he lacked the ability to originate anything worthwhile. The paintings he did were worthless and, as Donald himself is reported to have said, “People didn’t want Ivy on their walls.”
In order to live, Ivy was forced to rely on his skill in copying. He also became a master engraver and in a short time he is said to have begun combining these two abilities and engraving plates that produced near-perfect copies of money. Although he lived and worked in Paris during most of this time, there is no evidence that he ever counterfeited any French money, but it is almost certain that he made monies of other nations. It is said that he took particular delight in supplying counterfeit marks free of charge to German refugees who had to bribe their way out of Hitler’s Reich.
Although Ivy was never apprehended in France, his reputation increased to such an extent that he was forced to leave … After a year or two of travel …he settled in London. When the war broke out in Europe he was in England, but when France fell he left England and returned to the continent. Somehow, or other he got back to Paris and was soon masterminding a gang of Parisian counterfeiters, who turned out more practically undetectable counterfeit German marks. Ivy made the plates and supervised the printing.
Shortly thereafter Ivy prepared a set of plates for franc notes. The money was supposed to be used for bribes in connection with smuggling French refugees out of France. Eventually the Germans closed in on the money-making ring. Ivy was captured but escaped, bribing his way past German guards with money he had made himself … Back in England he was arrested for counterfeiting five-pound notes, and sentenced to a term in England’s famous Dartmoor prison.
So great were his talents, however, that the British Intelligence Service soon called on him for assistance in forging identification for British agents who were being parachuted into enemy-held territory. He was even commissioned to prepare a set of ten-pound-note plates, which would print the money used for paying off spies and foreign informers who demanded British pounds. These were so carefully made that, except for one tiny and deliberate flaw known only to Ivy and a few people in British Intelligence, it is still impossible to distinguish them from the genuine notes.
For his services, at the end of the war Ivy was given a full pardon and decorated by the British government. He was also allowed to keep his perfect plates in accordance with a private and undisclosed arrangement with the British authorities …
I’ve left a lot out of the article, which went on to follow me down through Lisbon and Tangier and back to Tombury. The author put a pretty factual story together, and I could see why everybody and his brother was trooping through my house trying to find my ten-pound plates. Well, I was bound that I was going to keep those plates because I was proud of them. And even though the house had been thoroughly searched, I noticed that the plates were still where I had put them.
I went downstairs and picked up the telephone to call the police and tell them what had happened, but the phone was dead. It had been ripped from the wall.
I went out, locking the doors and windows behind me, and drove up Eddystone Road until I came to an Esso station that was still open. While the operator was filling the Triumph, I used his phone and called state police headquarters and talked to Sullivan. He said he’d be right over. I didn’t tell him about Judy being a fake. I just told him she had disappeared and the house had been turned upside down and the phone pulled out.
He got to the house about ten minutes after I did, looked it over from top to bottom, and finally sat down in the living room with a cigarette in his hand.
“Ivy,” he said, letting smoke trickle out of his nose, “let’s stop trying to kid each other, huh? I’ll admit the place is a mess and that dame is gone. I don’t know what the hell your game is, but I’m going to find out right now. To begin with, you know damned well that blonde you had here the other day is no more your dear little niece than I am.”
“Sullivan,” I said, “I swear that when she first came here I thought she was what she said she was. It wasn’t until later that I began to suspect. Today after lunch we called her mother, I thought, and I talked to her myself. I called Martha again tonight, from Tombury, and got the straight story. And I don’t know who the hell she was. While she was here I treated her as though she was my niece.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll proceed on that assumption, though I’m not giving you an inch, Ivy. You got a reputation for being smart and I guess you earned it.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a sheet of yellow paper, which he handed to me. “I’m going to keep checking until I find out who killed Henri Grennet,” he said, “but you get to keep the house and lot. Read it.”
I took the copy of a radiogram from him. NO RECORD DONALD IVY CONVICTIONS OR SENTENCES HERE HOPE YOU HAVE BETTER LUCK. It was signed INSP BRISK CID. I gave it back to Sullivan with a smile.
“Sergeant,” I said, “did you by any chance see that story about me in last Sunday’s Boston paper?”
“Sure,” he said, “I saw it. I guess every cop in this part of the world saw it, even Kilgore. How did you think I knew to ask you the questions I did when I was here yesterday morning?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” I said. “Now I know. And I know why all hands and the ship’s cook have been coming to see me, from blondes to the F.B.I. But how did you know that girl wasn’t my niece?”
“I’d seen her somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember where. But when she came into this room last night I had the idea I knew her. Funny thing, though, I thought I knew her from Springfield. I was stationed up there about seven years ago and knew a lot of people and their kids. So it might have been your niece, for all I knew. But then this morning I called up Chief Zimmer and asked him to get the straight dope for me, without disturbing anyone. He called me back and said Judy Thames was at home.”
“Why didn’t you call me up and tell me?” I asked.
“I figured to give you all the rope you wanted, and then I was going to help you hang yourself with it.”
“You don’t like me, do you?”
“I don’t like any crooks,” he said, “no matter what the hell kind of arrangements they manage to make with the British government. They don’t make arrangements with me, that’s a cinch!”
“So what are you going to do about Judy—the one who’s missing from here?” I asked.
“Why should I do anything? Did she steal something before she left? Did she take your beautiful ten-pound plates, Ivy? Actually, I see no reason why I should stay up half the night looking for her. Do you?” He looked at me, just daring me to think up a reason.
“No, I said, “I guess not. But do you know who she was? What’s her name?”
“I don’t know that, either,” he said, “but it’ll come to me one of these days. If you don’t mind, Ivy, I think I’ll go now. I’ve wasted enough time here. There’s nothing for me to do.” He started to get up.
“Wait a minute, Sullivan,” I said. “You remember last night when Judy told you she was in the kitchen when Wusky Andrews got hit? Well, she was lying to you. She was outside the house, near the road, and she saw the whole damn thing.”
He was interested now. I saw his eyes light up. “How do you know?” he asked.
“She told me so. She was going out to dump the garbage when it happened. I heard the brakes, like I told you, and at first I thought a car had hit her. I yelled and she wasn’t in the house. I opened the front door and yelled for her again, and she came running in, saying there had been an accident. Later on she told me that a short man had been hit, even though the only time she ever saw him, as far as I know, is when he was sitting down.”
