“Does he want to see his brother?” he inquired, thinking it apparently a delicacy to refer the question to a third party.
Sutherland was embarrassed. “That’s up to Mr. Avery,” he said, as if the matter were outside his competence. They both looked at Avery.
“I don’t think so,” Avery said.
“There is one difficulty. About the identification,” Peersen said.
“Identification?” Avery repeated. “Of my brother?”
“You saw his passport,” Sutherland put in, “before you sent it up to me. What’s the difficulty?”
The policeman nodded. “Yes, yes.” Opening a drawer, he took out a handful of letters, a wallet and some photographs.
“His name was Malherbe,” he said. He spoke fluent English with a heavy American accent which somehow suited the cigar. “His passport was Malherbe. It was a good passport, wasn’t it?” Peersen glanced at Sutherland. For a second, Avery thought he detected in Sutherland’s clouded face a certain honest hesitation.
“Of course.”
Peersen began to sort through the letters, putting some in a file before him and returning others to the drawer. Every now and then, as he added to the pile, he muttered: “Ah, so,” or “Yes, yes.” Avery could feel the sweat running down his body; it drenched his clasped hands.
“And your brother’s name was Malherbe?” he asked again, when he had finished his sorting.
Avery nodded. “Of course.”
Peersen smiled. “Not of course,” he said, pointing his cigar and nodding in a friendly way as if he were making a debating point. “All his possessions, his letters, his clothes, driving license, all belong to Mr. Taylor. You know anything of Taylor?”
A dreadful block was forming in Avery’s mind. The envelope, what should he do with the envelope? Go to the lavatory, destroy it now before it was too late? He doubted whether it would work: the envelope was stiff and shiny. Even if he tore it, the pieces would float. He was aware of Peersen and Sutherland looking at him, waiting for him to speak, and all he could think of was the envelope weighing so heavily in his inside pocket.
He managed to say, “No, I don’t. My brother and I…” Stepbrother or half brother? “My brother and I did not have much to do with one another. He was older. We didn’t really grow up together. He had a lot of different jobs, he could never quite settle down to anything. Perhaps this Taylor was a friend of his … who …” Avery shrugged, bravely trying to imply that Malherbe had been something of a mystery to him also.
“How old are you?” Peersen asked. His respect for the bereaved seemed to be dwindling.
“Thirty-two.”
“And Malherbe?” he threw out conversationally. “He was how many years older, please?”
Sutherland and Peersen had seen his passport and knew his age. One remembers the age of people who die. Only Avery, his brother, had no idea how old the dead man was.
“Twelve,” he hazarded. “My brother was forty-four.” Why did he have to say so much?
Peersen raised his eyebrows. “Only forty-four? Then the passport is wrong as well.”
Peersen turned to Sutherland, poked his cigar toward the door at the far end of the room and said happily, as if he had ended an old argument between friends, “Now you are seeing why I have a problem about identification.”
Sutherland was looking very angry.
“It would be nice if Mr. Avery looked at the body,” Peersen suggested. “Then we can be sure.”
Sutherland said, “Inspector Peersen. The identity of Mr. Malherbe has been established from his passport. The Foreign Office in London has ascertained that Mr. Avery’s name was quoted by Mr. Malherbe as his next of kin. You tell me there is nothing suspicious about the circumstances of his death. The customary procedure is now for you to release his effects to me for custody pending the completion of formalities in the United Kingdom. Mr. Avery may presumably take charge of his brother’s body.”
Peersen seemed to deliberate. He extracted the remainder of Taylor’s papers from the steel drawer of his desk, added them to the pile already in front of him. He telephoned somebody and spoke in Finnish. After some minutes an orderly brought in an old leather suitcase with an inventory which Sutherland signed. Throughout all this, neither Avery nor Sutherland exchanged a word with the Inspector.