By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [62]
‘Criminal activity?’ Tommy looked surprised.
‘Oh yes, yes. No cloak and dagger. No espionage, no counter-espionage. No, plain criminal activity. He is a man who has so far as we can discover never performed a criminal act in his life. He has never stolen anything, he’s never forged anything, he’s never converted funds, we can’t get any kind of evidence against him. But all the same whenever there’s a big planned organized robbery, there we find, somewhere in the background, Mr Eccles leading a blameless life.’
‘Six years,’ said Tommy thoughtfully.
‘Possibly even longer than that. It took a little time, to get on to the pattern of things. Bank holdups, robberies of private jewels, all sorts of things where the big money was. They’re all jobs that followed a certain pattern. You couldn’t help feeling that the same mind had planned them. The people who directed them and who carried them out never had to do any planning at all. They went where they were told, they did what they were ordered, they never had to think. Somebody else was doing the thinking.’
‘And what made you hit on Eccles?’
Ivor Smith shook his head thoughtfully. ‘It would take too long to tell you. He’s a man who has a lot of acquaintances, a lot of friends. There are people he plays golf with, there are people who service his car, there are firms of stockbrokers who act for him. There are companies doing a blameless business in which he is interested. The plan is getting clearer but his part in it hasn’t got much clearer, except that he is very conspicuously absent on certain occasions. A big bank robbery cleverly planned (and no expense spared, mind you), consolidating the get-away and all the rest of it, and where’s Mr Eccles when it happens? Monte Carlo or Zurich or possibly even fishing for salmon in Norway. You can be quite sure Mr Eccles is never within a hundred miles of where criminal activities are happening.’
‘Yet you suspect him?’
‘Oh yes. I’m quite sure in my own mind. But whether we’ll ever catch him I don’t know. The man who tunnelled through the floor of a bank, the man who knocked out the night watchman, the cashier who was in it from the beginning, the bank manager who supplied the information, none of them know Eccles, probably they’ve never even seen him. There’s a long chain leading away–and no one seems to know more than just one link beyond themselves.’
‘The good old plan of the cell?’
‘More or less, yes, but there’s some original thinking. Some day we’ll get a chance. Somebody who oughtn’t to know anything, will know something. Something silly and trivial, perhaps, but something that strangely enough may be evidence at last.’
‘Is he married–got a family?’
‘No, he has never taken risks like that. He lives alone with a housekeeper and a gardener and a butler-valet. He entertains in a mild and pleasant way, and I dare swear that every single person who’s entered his house as his guest is beyond suspicion.’
‘And nobody’s getting rich?’
‘That’s a good point you’ve put your finger on, Thomas. Somebody ought to be getting rich. Somebody ought to be seen to be getting rich. But that part of it’s very cleverly arranged. Big wins on race courses, investments in stocks and shares, all things which are natural, just chancy enough to make big money at, and all apparently genuine transactions. There’s a lot of money stacked up abroad in different countries and different places. It’s a great big, vast, money-making concern–and the money’s always on the move–going from place to place.’
‘Well,’ said Tommy, ‘good luck to you. I hope you get your man.’
‘I think I shall, you know, some day. There might be a hope if one could jolt him out of his routine.’
‘Jolt him with what?’
‘Danger,’ said Ivor. ‘Make him feel he’s in danger. Make him feel someone’s on to him. Get him uneasy. If you once get a man uneasy, he may do something foolish. He may make a mistake. That’s the way you get chaps, you know. Take the cleverest man there is, who can plan brilliantly and never put a foot wrong. Let some little thing