Sting of Death

by Shelley Smith

  “Ah,” said Inspector Trevor, withdrawing from the pile a small crumpled sheet, much scribbled over. “This, for instance.”

  From where he sat Ivor could recognize his own writing, and his heart began painfully to thud. “You might like to have a look at it,” said Inspector Trevor, handing it across to him.

  He read:

  Just knowing you has altered my whole life, darling. That had been crossed out and underneath was written: Linda, why don’t you trust me? How can you believe I would do anything to harm you? Edmund’s last words to me yesterday were –

  And again that last sentence had been scratched over. Similar sentences went running on down the page.

  “Why, this is just scribble,” said Ivor. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Not that side, Mr. Campion.”

  He turned the page over. On that side too a letter had been begun and abandoned. It must have been fished out of the waste paper at some time. It was intended for Edmund, but he had changed his mind about sending it halfway through and never finished it.

  Patience, patience, dear coz! You shall be rid of her. But it takes time. The rather elaborate preliminaries are now concluded. In a very short while, I judge, the fatal step will be taken – or I am not the man you take me for, or that I take myself for either.

  Ivor said feebly:

  “This was a joke of course. Not very funny, I agree. But you can’t really imagine that this indicates a plan to dispose of Edmund’s poor wife. Is it likely I would have mentioned it on paper if there had been such a plan?”

  “Some people do queer things,” said the inspector stolidly. “Still, we should welcome an explanation. Perhaps you could make us see the joke.” He added with undisguised grimness: “It seems serious enough to us.”

  It was not a very pretty story that Ivor had to tell; but he was obliged to tell it. It began with running into Edmund in Bond Street, by chance, soon after the end of the war in Europe. They had a drink and a talk about old times, in the course of which Ivor was asked what he was doing, and he said, nothing. Edmund seemed preoccupied and restless, seemed scarcely to know why he was in London or how his family were. But the next time they met he was in quite a different mood and he wanted to talk about himself. He told Ivor frankly all his troubles: That he was ruined and would have to sell his home. That Linda was largely to blame. That they had become wretchedly incompatible. That he wanted his freedom. That Linda refused to divorce him, though she knew he was in love with someone else. That it seemed the best thing he could do was to slip under a bus. That everything was hopeless, hopeless. His future was blacker than it had been at any time during the war. And the whole train of disaster hung from Linda’s shoulders. If he were free to marry the woman he loved everything would be all right; she was very rich.

  And Ivor asked idly: “Can’t you divorce her?”

  Edmund said, By God, didn’t he just wish he could. No grounds. She had never looked at another man. She wasn’t that sort of girl.

  Sergeant Drake was scribbling in the corner.

  Ivor said rather sheepishly:

  “I said, in the idiotic way one does: ‘I’d better have a go at her – Ivor the Irresistible.’ I only meant it as a joke, because I used to have a terrific success with a certain type of woman. I’d only seen Linda once or twice, years ago, when she was just a pretty kid. I honestly meant nothing by it. But Edmund lighted up. He swore he’d give a hundred pounds to the man who could seduce her. He said if he could get evidence of adultery, he’d pay the co-respondent two hundred pounds. He asked me – and I suppose he was serious – whether he could hire a man to do the job. I laughed, and said I was broke to the wide myself. I offered to do it for two-fifty. To my amazement, he said: ‘Done! How long will it take you?’ I still half thought he must be joking. But he wasn’t. If the husband was willing, it seemed priggish to back out. He came to fetch me the next day and took me down to Hawkswood. I was glad to go because I needed building up; not even a blind old maid would have looked at me as I was then. However, I meant to do my best to keep my part of the bargain, too. I thought it would amuse me. It was far tougher than anything I had imagined. Poor Linda was what is known as a good girl, and she happened to be in love with her husband. She could not be got to believe that he no longer loved her and would never love her again. Since she could never get him back, I hoped I might provide a little fun for her by way of compensation. It was very hard work, and slow work, and Edmund with creditors at his heels was naturally getting a bit impatient: Was I going to bring it off or not? This unfinished letter was to tell him that I thought I was.”

  “And the letters you wrote to her were all just – ”

  “A part of the campaign. She was so – almost prudish, that I was obliged to pretend I was deeply in love with her, and even then the notion shocked her. Luckily, I mean luckily for me, she had a strong vein of jealousy in her; all women are dog-in-the-mangerish about letting another woman have something they don’t want themselves, and I found I could quickly rouse her feelings if I feigned an undue interest in Mrs. Hauser’s attraction.”

  “Did you ever see the woman yourself?”

  “Edmund’s girl? No. Cagey old devil, trust him! All he told me was that she was an American and fabulously rich.”

  “You don’t know her name or where she was staying?”

  “I know nothing more than I have told you.”

  *

  “It looks rather as if they’ve done a bunk together,” said Inspector Trevor to his sergeant, when the saturnine young gentleman had been dismissed. “Or at least it would do if there was any way for him to leave this right little, tight little island. Unless he’s managed to get himself some sort of job which permits him to leave these shores.”

  It was as he replaced the slip of crumpled, scribbled-on paper in the file that his eye fell on Mrs. Potter’s statement in which she mentioned that a lady had called on the morning of the 10th to see Mrs. Campion...

  “I didn’t see her meself,” said Nanny Potter, spreading her capacious lap. “It was Lionel, I think, who mentioned it to me. Ever so excited he was about the car.”

  Lionel remembered the car very well and described it enthusiastically. At school they collected cars. He had been awarded ten points for this one because it had an American number plate. Yes, he remembered the number plate, too. He had not had as much time to look it over as he would have liked because his sickening little kid sister had made a big show of herself and knocked their brother down, and he, Lionel, had been obliged to drag him away before they started a fight.

  “Good boy!” commended Inspector Trevor, flicking a silver coin into the air. “Jane, do you remember the lady who came in the big car?”

  “She had a dear little birdie on her head. I wish she’d given it to me.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Yes, she was. She said: ‘Hallo, Jane!’”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Hallo!’”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Mummy came and tooken her away.”

  “And you didn’t see the lady again?”

  Jane shook her head.

  “Then the horrible man came.”

  She leaned up against Nanny and hid her forehead on Nanny’s hand.

  Trevor picked up a child’s A.B.C. and stared at the pictures absorbedly. He said, in an absent, lackadaisical sort of voice: “What horrid man was that, I wonder?”

  “A horrible soljer, he was, and he had a horrible face, and he comed down the ladder and he frightened me.”

  “No, I don’t know him.”

  “I fort it was Daddy.”

  Her plump cheeks whitened at the recollection and she began to tremble.

  Nanny Potter said: “There, there, my lamb! It was only a nasty dream. It didn’t really happen. It was a nightmare she had, sir. I had nightmares like that when I was a little girl.”

&nbs
p; It sounded like a nightmare but Trevor didn’t think it was. If Priscilla had been there, she might have enlightened him. Still, Jane’s mention of the ladder brought to mind the memory of her crying fit the evening her mother was killed, when she had flung herself down on the ground sooner than be dragged under the ladder. That incident hardly bespoke nightmare. And it was true that the ladder did provide a convenient entrance or exit. Odd that he hadn’t thought of it before.

  *

  At Edmund’s club they had very little to tell the police. He was last seen there on Tuesday, when he had come in, collected his letters, and changed his clothes. He had been staying there intermittently for the last four months. He returned to the club to sleep most nights, coming in usually at a late hour and sleeping correspondingly late in the morning. He had left no instructions about forwarding his letters, nor had he given up his “chambers.” There was a soldierly bareness about his room, few accoutrements, few clothes. Yet clearly he had not packed any. Why fly off without your clothes? That seemed almost as if his disappearance had been involuntary. There were no letters lying about, not a scrap of writing. Nothing in his pockets. No betraying addresses. No photographs. Nothing that gave any hint of personality. That was queer enough surely. And it seemed that unless he returned to collect his clothes, they had arrived at a dead end.

  There was, then, nothing for it but to send out a description to all stations, asking for him to be detained for questioning.

  They also inserted a piece in the daily papers.

  CHAPTER 11

  Edmund was dazed with the shock of finding Genevieve dead. For a long time he knelt beside her stupidly, the ancient words “She should have died hereafter” running round his mind, over and over, like a faulted disc.

  She lay there clumsily with her head crooked against the trunk at an unconvincing angle. She did not look beautiful now. He did not feel sorry for her, he did not feel for her anything at all, he was only ponderously preoccupied with what he should do.

  He ought to get away at once.

  Only, as with Linda, he was the first person they would think of in connection with Genevieve’s death. He must be known to visit her. No one had seen him come this evening, though. But the maid, who had heard them quarrelling earlier, knew her mistress had suddenly decided to pack and leave.

  Yes, that was it: she had packed and left, after all...

  He got stiffly to his feet. His limbs ached with cold, as if he had been kneeling a long while in a marble chapel. He locked the door of the bedroom and went into the dining room and poured himself half a tumbler of neat brandy. It was then ten past nine and it took him nearly forty minutes to work out satisfactorily all the moves ahead. The only person who could spoil his plans was the girl, Alice. She would have to go.

  He had to hunt around to find the things he wanted, the scissors, the sealing wax, the adhesive tape...

  In the maid’s room he found a brown trunk with the initials A.C. on the front in black. She had not many possessions fortunately. He was just scrutinizing a cheap navy linen button-through frock when she came in. She stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, regarding him furiously.

  “What do you think you’re doing with my things?”

  He looked up and said coolly:

  “That’s no way to speak to me.”

  She went nearer and caught hold of the dress.

  “Here, you give that to me,” she said indignantly.

  He stared at her across the dress.

  “You get out of my room,” she said. “Go on! Hop it!” There was fear underlying the words.

  “Alice, don’t be such a silly girl!” he said; but she pulled her hand away and ran through the other rooms toward the bedroom.

  She could see a line of light under the door, and she turned the handle; but the door was locked.

  “Madam!” she cried, rapping wildly. “Madam! ... Oh, madam, madam, madam, madam!”

  She really could not be allowed to shriek like that, even though it was the top floor of an empty building. She died, what is fairly called, instantaneously. She lay heaped outside the door like an obedient dog.

  Edmund burned the piece of string; the slow flame climbing illumined his face ominously from below. Then he unlocked the door and carried the dead girl into the bedroom. Then he went back to her room and fetched the brown trunk. That, too, was taken into the bedroom and the contents dumped on the floor. Only the navy linen dress with the white buttons down the front was put on one side. He began to undress Alice Cole...

  It was five to eleven when he came out of the bedroom to knock back another stiff brandy. He was trembling with nerves and exhaustion, but the brandy encouraged him. The worst, he told himself, was now behind him. He tidied every room in the flat. Then he finished Genevieve’s packing and locked the suitcases. Her handbag had fallen between the wall and the bed and it was only the happy chance of pulling out the bed to unmake it that caused him to spot it. He pushed it into one of the valises. At last he carried the luggage downstairs and stowed it in the back of the car. The brown trunk with the black initials A.C. was locked in the boot.

  One final look round the empty flat to make sure nothing was forgotten, and then lights out and the door slammed.

  It was then a quarter after midnight.

  His idea was to put the luggage (except for Alice’s trunk) into a depository, but naturally that could not be done for another ten or twelve hours. Till then he proposed to leave it in the Left-Luggage office at Victoria Station. After the luggage was deposited he meant to put the Packard into a garage to be “laid up” for the winter months. By that time he might have found a discreet customer to buy it.

  He drove right into the station. A yawny porter stacked the luggage on a truck and wheeled it away with Edmund following in its clattering wake. Because of the initials on Genevieve’s baggage, he took out a receipt in the name of George Hallam. He tipped the sleepy porter and went back to the dark drive-in to collect the Packard.

  Only to find it was no longer there.

  That was a worse moment for Edmund than any he had yet had – worse even than the moment when he realized that Genevieve was dead. He damned nearly lost control of himself. His nerves were so raw that if anyone had spoken to him at that moment he would have screamed. He went on standing there idiotically because he did not know what to do next. Clearly he could not notify the police of the theft. He would just have to wait and lie low and see what happened. He covered his eyes...

  *

  The Packard was driven to a garage near the Embankment. They fitted it with new number plates, working fast. The man who had driven it in walked round and round it admiringly. He touched it with gloved fingers, testing various parts. When he found the boot was locked he opened it with a slender steel hook, more from idle curiosity than anything else. He slid the trunk forward.

  “Here! A.C. Something for you to take home to the missus, Lefty. Same initials.”

  Lefty stood up from where he was crouching to have a look. By the flare of the blowlamp in his left hand he saw gleaming a strand of yellow floss from the hinge of the trunk. Then he saw that it was hair. He thought, human hair.

  He struck the locks two sharp blows with the point of the lamp and they jumped open.

  “Go on,” he said. “Push back the lid! You got gloves on.”

  “Christ!” said the other, going green round the chops. “It’s a dead doll!” He slammed down the lid again in terror and shoved the trunk back into the boot. He stared at Lefty with white-rimmed eyes, “It’s hot, Lefty! What’ll we do? The boss’ll murder me for this, and I’m not to blame. Am I, Lefty? I couldn’t know. Best thing I can do is to take the whole dump out and lose it, damn quick. I’ll pick up something else.”

  “Yer can’t take it out with one plate on and one off. And the boss wants this job done for tomorrow. If it ain’t ready, he’ll raise Cain. You tell him what’s happened. He’ll have to know. Go on, you tel
l him.”

  As Lefty had foreseen, the boss could not afford to lose the Packard now. The boss smiled. The boss said: “Dispose of it; you got all night, ain’t yer? Simple!” No need to panic; it was no business of theirs.

  Soon after nine A.M. the Packard was driven out by a man who might have been a chauffeur in a dark suit and a peaked chauffeur’s cap. At Westminster Bridge he drew up beside two quietly dressed men; one was small and scrawny with a hard red face like a groom; the other was also short, but thick-set, with alert eyes in a bloated olivine face. They didn’t wait for the chauffeur to get out and open the door for them, or he didn’t bother to do so; they were in the car almost before it had come to a standstill. The car slid away up Whitehall and swung left. None of the men spoke. They sat bolt stiff against the soft leather upholstery; only their eyes flicked warily from side to side.

  It was still too early in the morning for the pavements in that very fashionable street to be crowded—as they would be in two hours’ time. The Packard drew into the curb, its engine gently throbbing. The short thickset man got out, with quicker movements than you would have supposed from his appearance, and slammed the door. From then on it was a matter of timing.

  There were only two customers in the jeweller’s shop and they were both women: one had brought in a watch to be mended and the other to collect her pearls after restringing. The thickset man asked to see diamond bracelets...

  Inside the Packard the scrawny red-faced man who might have been a groom sat looking at his watch. Then he leaned forward and opened the door with his left hand; his right was in his pocket. The man who might have been a chauffeur muttered, “Okay, Rats!” And Rats darted across the pavement and dived over the threshold of the jeweller’s shop.

  “Get together there!” he said sharply, motioning them with his gun. “Bunch up! Bunch up!”

  One of the women saw the gun in his hand and screamed. He drove his fist into her teeth casually, with a slow-seeming gesture, but with great effect.