by J F Straker
‘She had to kill her, Mr Herrod. It was the girl or her. I can see that.’
‘Suppose you tell me about it,’ Herrod said. ‘I’d like to see it too.’
‘She left Eastbourne because she thought the police would be looking for her there. In case they were watching the station she took a bus out of the town and started walking along the Brighton road, hoping for a lift. Presently a car passed her, slowing down. It stopped up the road, and when she caught up with it a girl was leaning over the bonnet. There wasn’t much wrong, Cathie said; a lead shorting across the engine. She put it right, and the girl agreed to give her a lift.
‘Cathie got in the back. She was tired, she wanted to sleep. But she didn’t sleep. Not when she saw the girl’s expensive-looking suitcase and the clothes she was wearing.’ He sighed. ‘Cathie is crazy about clothes. Maybe if I could afford more —’
‘She killed the girl for her clothes?’ Herrod asked.
‘No!’ Wilkes said earnestly. ‘Oh, no. She put the gun against the girl’s back and made her turn off the road. You know where. Then she told her to get out and strip, and gave her the trousers and jersey to put on instead.
‘It was when the girl had changed that Cathie realised the danger she was in. As soon as she had gone the girl would phone the police; Cathie wouldn’t have a chance. She had to kill her.’
Herrod shuddered, recalling how he had warmed to Cathie Wilkes’s beauty and vitality and charm. How incongruous, how appallingly wrong, that they should cloak such a vile monstrosity. And Wilkes? What sort of a creature was he? ‘She had to kill her.’ Did he really believe that?
Wilkes was droning on, anxious to be done. He was very tired. He knew now that he could do no more for Cathie, that this was the end.
‘She put the girl’s clothes in the suitcase, had a look inside the handbag’ — Watson’s map must have fallen out then, Herrod thought, the detective in him alert despite his repugnance — ‘and drove away. She spent the night in the car, and went on to Brighton the next morning. When she got a room at the Coniston she registered as Mrs Tait because of the girl’s initials. They were on the bag and the suitcase.’
Wilkes paused. It seemed that he had finished, and Herrod said sharply, ‘How about Taylor?’
Wilkes had been staring at the floor. Now he looked up.
‘Who’s Taylor?’ he asked, as he had at the beginning. He did not sound greatly interested.
Herrod told him.
‘That wouldn’t be Cathie’s doing,’ Wilkes said. ‘She’d have told me. Unless she forgot.’
The Superintendent tried to envisage someone who could commit a murder and forget it two days later. Even for Cathie Wilkes that seemed impossible. Yet if the girl had not killed Taylor, who had? Watson? Watson had been infatuated with Taylor’s wife, had been partly responsible for her disappearance. Or thought he had. And Taylor had confronted him with an impossible dilemma by threatening to go to the police.
Yes, Watson had had more reason than the girl to kill Taylor. She, to his knowledge, had had no reason at all. But what significance was there in that? Over-excitement, a man getting fresh with her, envy of another girl’s clothes; were those reasons for murder?
‘You spoke to your sister last night?’ he said. ‘It was then she told you about Landor and the others?’
‘Yes.’
The quiet monosyllable caused Herrod to explode.
‘And you did nothing? Good God, man, you’re as much a murderer as she is!’
His wrath was infectious. ‘What the hell could I do?’ Wilkes said heatedly. ‘She wouldn’t come away with me; she was having too good a time, she said. I couldn’t carry her off by force, could I?’
‘Be damned to that! You should have informed the police.’
‘And what then? They’d have said she was insane, they’d have shut her up for life. Do you think I’d do that to Cathie? No ruddy fear.’ His voice rose hysterically. ‘Why, I’d rather shoot her myself.’
Herrod turned away in disgust. The fellow’s as crazy as his damned sister, he thought. Then, remembering, he wheeled sharply.
‘Did you engineer Vanne’s accident this morning?’
‘No, I did not.’
‘Another of your sister’s little pranks, eh?’
‘Perhaps. She didn’t say.’
‘Too insignificant, I suppose,’ Herrod said. ‘But if you didn’t know the car had been tampered with why were you following it? Where were you going?’
‘To look for Landor’s body,’ Wilkes said harshly. ‘If I could bury it in some unlikely spot before you or anyone else found it I knew Cathie would still have a chance. But her directions were too vague. You got there first.’
The room was hot and stuffy. Herrod nodded to Wood and the Inspector and walked out. He needed fresh air to clear his head, a cool breeze to blow away some of the filth that Watson and Wilkes seemed to have brought with them into the station. There was no more to be done in there. No more — until they found Catherine Wilkes. Or Vanne.
He opened the heavy door and went out to stand in Norton Street. The breeze was there, it blew up Fourth Avenue from the sea. Down there the lights were twinkling on Kingsway, couples were strolling along the front or down on the beach.
Were Vanne and the girl among them? Or were they in some more secret place?
The heavy door opened again, and Wood came to stand beside him.
‘It’s been quite a day,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I shan’t be sorry when they pick those two up.’
‘No use getting impatient,’ Herrod said, ignoring his own impatience. ‘If they’re out for the evening, and if young Vanne doesn’t do anything his mother wouldn’t like him to do, we may have to wait some hours yet.’
‘I hope not. What put you wise to the girl, Mr Herrod? I’ve been so busy chasing Wilkes all afternoon and evening that I haven’t had a chance to ask you before.’
‘Well, I suppose it was really Vanne’s account of their visit to Cardiff Street. You remember they said that the girl was at the gate until Vanne had disappeared inside the building. Then, she said, she left her post to climb the steps, but was back at the gate in time to warn Vanne when he reappeared on the balcony.
‘There was a flaw there; I wonder Vanne wasn’t alive to it. Since they were positive that no one had entered the yard while Vanne was on view, how could this supposed gunman have known he was there? And if he didn’t know Vanne had gone into the building why should he be waiting for him to come out?
‘Another thing. Why only one shot? If it had been Landor or one of Watson’s gang he’d have gone on banging away until he got him. Or until Vanne escaped. A second shot while Vanne was on the balcony, perhaps, another as he hit the shed roof, another as he went through the gate.
‘But the girl dare not risk that. She couldn’t be sure what Vanne would do. A two-five is not normally a lethal weapon except at close range and in the hands of an expert. If she went on firing and missing Vanne would reach the gate before her. That meant he would rumble her for certain.
‘I couldn’t be sure, of course. Not then. But when I found that photograph of Mrs Taylor in her bedroom, and knew that Wilkes had been lying —’
‘Mr Herrod, sir!’
The two detectives turned quickly. It was the station sergeant.
‘A call has just come through from Brighton, sir. A man has been shot up at St Anns Well.’
15
‘No, I don’t hate her,’ Toby said. ‘Even when — when it happened I don’t think I hated her. I guess I was too terrified to feel any other emotion.’ He looked at Wilkes’s haggard, unhappy face. ‘I — I sure am sorry. For you, I mean,’ he said awkwardly.
They stood beside one of the several police cars that ringed St Anns Well. All down Nizells Avenue and Somerhill Road, as far as they could see, were policemen. Toby supposed there were other cars and other policemen on the far side of the garden, on Furze Hill.
Outside the cordon of police spectators
stood in groups, some silent, some talkative, their numbers growing as the news spread. One such group had gathered on the pavement behind Toby and Wilkes; with every newcomer came the same questions, the same answers, the same excited speculation. Toby knew himself to be the cynosure of many pairs of eyes, and was duly embarrassed. He was glad that so far no one seemed to have probed Wilkes’s identity.
He scarcely felt the wound in his arm, where the bullet had nicked the flesh; the second shot had missed. At the sound of the shooting people had come running to his aid, but none had ventured inside the garden. A woman from one of the houses opposite had deftly bandaged his arm; her husband had telephoned for the police. They had wanted to send for an ambulance, but Toby would not let them. He wanted to be there when the police arrived to see, not to be told, the end of the affair.
The police had come almost before the woman had finished attending to his arm. Superintendent Herrod had not been one of the first; but when he did come he had asked Toby a few crisp questions, and had then left him with Wilkes. A couple of large policemen stood beside them. Toby supposed they were there to keep an eye on Wilkes, not on himself.
Wilkes seemed oblivious to all that went on around him. He had spoken freely to Toby, telling him of his sister in short, jerky sentences. But all the time his eyes never left the dark interior of the garden. Was she still there? wondered Toby. Quick as the police had been, might there not have been time for her to escape?
That, he supposed, was what Wilkes was praying for — if a man such as Wilkes knew how to pray. Toby found himself adding his own prayer. He did not want her to be caught. Despite the death he had so narrowly escaped, he could not bear to think of her within the cold, narrow confines of a prison cell. Later, perhaps, he might think differently. All he knew now was that he wanted her to be free.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘She was so sure of herself, so — so real in the part she was playing. She was Crossetta Tait. Even the name ...’ He told Wilkes the explanation the girl had given him. ‘Could she have invented that on the spur of the moment? The way she said it, it sounded so convincing.’
‘She loved to dramatize herself,’ Wilkes said, still staring at the dark trees. Toby wondered at the past tense. Did the man think of her as already dead? ‘That would be why she chose the role of a widow. Did she wear a wedding ring?’
‘Yes.’
‘She must have taken it from the dead girl.’
He showed no emotion in referring to his sister’s victim. Toby’s sympathy began to wane.
Superintendent Herrod came up to them, walking briskly, other police officers with him. ‘I’m taking a loud-speaker car through the gates,’ he said to Wilkes. ‘I’m going to appeal to your sister to give herself up. If she’s still in there she can’t hope to get away. But she may listen to you where she won’t listen to me. I want you to come with me.’
Wilkes nodded.
‘We’re going now,’ Herrod said. ‘Come.’
Toby watched the police car nose its way through the entrance, another following. They reached the pavilion and then stopped, parking obliquely, so that the headlights probed the darkness of the tree-studded garden.
He strained his eyes, endeavouring to see even beyond the light.
A crackling sound came from the loudspeaker on the leading car. The watching crowd was suddenly silent, tense with the expectation of drama (or would it be tragedy?) about to unfold before them.
Herrod’s voice blared out into the night.
‘Catherine Wilkes, this is Superintendent Herrod speaking. I want you to put down your gun and come out here with your arms above your head. You cannot escape from the garden; the whole area is surrounded. Do as I tell you and no one will harm you.’
The voice ceased. The silence was uncanny. Hundreds of pairs of eyes were fixed intently on the area of light, their owners scarce daring to breathe lest they should miss an instant glimpse of the hunted girl.
But no voice answered, no slim figure showed itself in the light. Gradually, at first in whispers and then more loudly, talk began again — only to die away as once more the loud-speaker challenged the night.
It was Wilkes’s voice.
‘Cathie, this is Nat. I want you to do as the Superintendent has told you. If there were any chance of escape I’d tell you to take it — and be damned to the police. But there isn’t, Cathie. There’s no way out but this.
‘Come out, Cathie dear. Put down the gun and come out into the light where I can see you. I’m here, in the first car; I’ll see that no one hurts you. You trust me, don’t you?
‘Please, Cathie! For my sake.’
The harsh voice ceased. But through the harshness the anguish and despair had been poignantly evident to the waiting crowd, and they were slow to break the silence.
Then, like a small breeze that suddenly blows up from nowhere on a still summer’s day, a sibilant whisper rippled along the pavement, growing in volume as it went. A woman screamed.
Cathie Wilkes, gun in hand, walked slowly into the fringe of light. Her voice came faintly to those in Somerhill Road. Only the men inside the garden could catch the words.
‘I want to talk to Nat,’ she said. ‘If anyone else comes near me I’ll shoot.’
For a few seconds she stood there. Then she was lost in the shadows.
Inside the leading car Herrod looked doubtfully at Wilkes.
‘Better let me go,’ Wilkes said. ‘I’ll be safe enough.’
The Superintendent hesitated. This was a job for the police. They could rush her. In the darkness they could close in on her with little risk to themselves. She might have time to fire once, perhaps twice, before they got her. And it would be wild, haphazard shooting. She would probably miss.
But she might not. Had he the right to risk men’s lives if an alternative offered?
‘Very well,’ he said curtly. ‘Go ahead. If you can persuade her to hand over the gun, put it on the ground where we can see it. But no funny business, Wilkes. One false move and we’ll rush the pair of you. And if we do that — well, someone is liable to get hurt.’
Without a word Nat Wilkes left the car and walked slowly over the grass to where Cathie had stood. As he got nearer he could see her waiting for him in the shadows. She still held the gun.
He stopped a few feet away, beckoning her into the light.
‘Cathie!’ he said. ‘You little fool! Why did you do it?’
‘Shoot Toby, you mean?’ Her voice was untroubled. ‘He tried to make love to me. It — it was disgusting.’
She frowned at the recollection.
‘But why did you stay here?’ he asked desperately. ‘Why didn’t you go before the police came?’
‘I got confused. It was dark, and there seemed to be so many paths.’ She looked past him to the waiting cars. ‘Do they know everything, Nat? The others as well as Toby?’
‘They know about Landor and the girl,’ he told her. ‘And the man at Forest Row. They say you killed the girl’s husband too. Did you, Cathie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I forgot.’
‘Will you tell me now?’
He did not really want to know. What could it matter to him how Taylor died? But now that he was with her he wanted to keep her there, to watch her and listen to her voice, to delay — for ever, if possible — the dread moment of return.
‘It was on the Monday, I think,’ she said, wrinkling her brows. ‘Watson took him to the station, and I followed in Toby’s car. Watson didn’t wait to see him off, so I thought I’d find out which train he took. It was all part of the adventure, you see. I stood next to him at the bookstall. He didn’t take any notice of me until he saw the handbag. This one.’ She held it up, and the gilt initials glinted in the light. ‘Then he grabbed my arm and accused me of stealing it. He said it belonged to his wife.
‘People were watching us. I told him I could explain, and took
him out to the car. I said his wife was a friend of mine, that she had lent me the bag. He got very excited, and wanted me to take him to her. So I said I would.
‘I drove along the front. I didn’t know where we were going, and when we came to a town I drove through it until we came to a quiet place. Then I stopped the car and told him that was where his wife was staying.
‘I shot him as he got out of the car. I took his wallet — I thought that might hamper the police — and pushed him into a ditch. I threw the wallet over the cliff on my way back.’
He had listened to her — and yet he had not listened. He had been hearing her voice, watching her face, imprinting her on his memory as though he were seeing her for the last time.
She sighed. ‘Nat — what will they do to me?’
‘Nothing, Cathie.’ The hint of fear in her voice was like a dagger in his heart. ‘I won’t let them hurt you.’
‘I don’t mean now. But after? Will they put me in prison?’
‘Yes. For a little while. But I shall be allowed to see you.’
‘And — after that?’
He did not answer. He could not bear to think of ‘after that’.
‘I don’t mind dying,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t mean anything. One’s just — dead. But I’m frightened, Nat. They’ll say I’m mad, they’ll shut me up in prison, in an asylum. I’ll be there forever.’
He tried to comfort her, but she would not be comforted. She was not crying, but she came to him and gripped his arm, and he could feel her body trembling.
‘I tried to shoot myself, Nat. But I couldn’t. Isn’t that funny?’ She gave a little hysterical laugh that was half a sob. ‘That was why I wanted to see you. I want you to do it for me. Will you, Nat?’
‘Cathie! I’m not a murderer!’
Instantly he regretted the words. But there was no bitterness in her voice as she said, ‘Aren’t you? I am.’
‘But you’re my sister, Cathie.’
‘Yes. That’s why I thought you would do it for me. No one else would.’
‘Cathie, I can’t. You don’t know what you’re asking, I —’