The Worm of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  “I admit it’s a bit odd—Graham Loudron consorting with a lascar,” said Nigel. “But there’s no evidence that either of them is in the dope trade. Even if they are, you’ll have a job finding it—presumably Graham would have passed the stuff on by now.”

  “Well, there’s no trace of it in any of those locked cupboards of his. And Jackson has had a good look in the obvious place——”

  “Obvious place?” asked Clare.

  “Dr. Loudron’s dispensary. Hide illicit drugs amongst the lawful ones. No sign of it. Jackson’s investigating the cellars at Number 6 now—tapping and measuring the walls—all that caper. Might be a secret cache.”

  “All of which, if Graham is in the dope-racket, will tell him he’s been rumbled,” said Nigel.

  “Oh no. Jackson’s given out that he’s searching for the missing diary pages. By the way, only two sets of prints on that case-book—Dr. James’s and his father’s.”

  “Why should Graham go in for that sort of thing?” asked Clare slowly. “Not for money—he got a good allowance from his father.”

  “Excitement? Sense of power?” Nigel replied. “He had a bloody time as a boy, kicked around by everyone. You could get your own back on society by corrupting individuals.”

  “Maybe. But it’s not strong enough as a motive, is it? for killing his father, I mean?”

  “Why not?” said Wright. “Dr. Piers would have cut his daughter off with a shilling if she’d married Walter Barn. Wouldn’t he have done the same to his adopted son if he’d found out that Graham was dealing in hemp?”

  “I’m not so sure,” Nigel frowned. “The old man had shown Graham such a special indulgence in the past—when he was sacked from school and walked out of one job after another. Still, you may be right. If only we knew what he wrote on those diary pages!—perhaps that he’d found out about Graham; and somebody else discovered the diary and salted away those missing pages to blackmail Graham with.”

  At this point the telephone rang. A message for Chief Inspector Wright. He came back looking pleased with himself.

  “Another of our friends not where he was supposed to be.”

  Inquiries at the exchange had disclosed that, on the night of Dr. Piers’s death, a long-distance call had come for Harold Loudron’s number at 9.25, but there had been no reply from his house.

  “Now that really is something,” said Wright.

  “Particularly as the Fraud squad tell me Harold’s business affairs smell very fishy indeed.”

  “Have you given his car a going-over?”

  “It’s the next job. We’ll make that Jaguar wish it had never been born.”

  Harold Loudron received them in the room overlooking the river. It seemed to Nigel even more unreal, even more like a room left over from some Ideal-Home-for-the-up-to-date exhibition, than when he had first seen it. Looking left from the window, he observed the mast and rigging of Harold’s derelict barge, with the green wreck flag dangling from its yard.

  “You told me, Mr. Loudron, that on the night your father died you were here with your wife,” said Wright in his flintiest tones.

  “Since then,” Harold answered, with an absurd attempt to stand on his dignity, “my wife has informed you, I understand, that this was not entirely correct.”

  “She paid a visit to your father’s house?”

  “She was out of this house from nine o’clock till about 10.45. I have no evidence where she went.”

  “Come, come, Mr. Loudron. Didn’t she tell you where she was going, or where she had been?”

  “I didn’t know that you accepted hearsay evidence, Inspector.”

  “I’m not a court of law, sir. Please don’t prevaricate with me.”

  “Well then, my wife did say she’d pop along to No. 6.”

  “Were you not surprised at her venturing out in such a bad fog? Had she some urgent reason for visiting your father?”

  Harold’s eyes flickered. He got up and, walking to the mantelshelf, lit a cigarette with an expensive table-lighter which stood there. “That is an embarrassing question, Inspector.”

  “You mean, because it was not your father whom Mrs. Loudron went to see?”

  Harold looked genuinely astonished, and for a moment his curiously anonymous personality came to life. “Not my father? I simply don’t understand you.”

  It became evident to Nigel that Sharon had told Harold a story different from the one she had told Wright.

  “Your wife had an urgent reason, then, for visiting your father—something that couldn’t be communicated by telephone or deferred till the next morning?”

  “That is so, Inspector. Frankly, she thought she might be able to persuade him, if she saw him personally—he had a soft spot for her, you know—to help me out over the—er—temporary financial difficulties I have already spoken to you about.”

  “But she was unsuccessful?”

  Harold nodded.

  “She saw your father and he refused?”

  “I presume she saw him,” Harold cautiously replied. “When she got back, she said ‘it was no go.’ Those were her words.”

  “All her words?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite——”

  “You’re telling me you had no further discussion with Mrs. Loudron about the interview with her father-in-law?”

  Harold looked more than a little uncomfortable. “My wife was very tired when she got back, and not—er—very communicative. I could see she did not wish to discuss the matter, so I did not press her.”

  “But the next day, Mr. Loudron—surely, at some time since that night, you have talked over her interview with Dr. Piers?”

  “Actually, no.” Harold’s expression was stubborn. “His disappearance and so on—they put it out of my head.”

  “But has it not occurred to you,” Wright patiently asked, “that your wife may have been the last person to see your father alive—that her evidence is vital to this case?”

  “Frankly,” replied Harold, a boyish, almost shy look appearing on his face, “that is why we—why I decided to give a somewhat—er—simplified account of our movements that night. My wife is very highly-strung, and I hoped to protect her from the distressing experience of——”

  “Of having to tell the truth?” Wright’s voice cracked like a whip, and Harold positively winced.

  “I resent the tone of that remark,” he said, recovering his normal pomposity. No one, thought Nigel, can be so absurdly pompous as a pompous young man.

  “Well then,” said Wright. “Going back to your ‘somewhat simplified account’ of your movements—while your wife was out, you were here, in this house?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the time?”

  “I’ve already said so.”

  “Yet a trunk-call was put through to your number, and there was no reply,” said Wright, who had been watching Harold, slit-eyed and tense as a cat about to pounce.

  Harold swallowed. “Oh, it was a trunk-call, was it?”

  “So you heard the bell ringing?”

  “Of course. I’m not deaf.”

  “But you didn’t answer it?”

  “No. I had a great deal on my mind. I was concentrating on business problems, and I didn’t wish to be interrupted.”

  “Do you happen to remember what time it was that the telephone bell rang?” asked Wright casually.

  “Yes, just before 9.30. No, my watch was a few minutes fast. It would have been 9.25, I’d say.”

  Wright’s saturnine hatchet face gave no inkling that he had just seen an apparently broken alibi rendered intact again by a few words. “May I use your telephone?”

  “By all means. It’s in the hall.”

  Wright went out.

  “What does he want now?” asked Harold querulously.

  “I imagine he’s ringing up the exchange to find out if anyone has rung them from this house inquiring whether they had a trunk call fo
r you that night, and if so, at what time.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, he’ll be disappointed. It’s really most unpleasant, living in an atmosphere of suspicion like this.”

  “It must be. But you’ve rather brought it on yourselves, you two, haven’t you?”

  “I cannot accept that,” said Harold stiffly. “It’s quite natural for one to wish to protect one’s wife from——”

  “Are you only human when you’re sailing boats or talking about them? Can’t you come out from behind that façade?”

  Nigel’s deliberate provocation had its effect.

  “Human? What the devil d’you mean? I love my wife, and——”

  “And by fabricating this ridiculous tissue of fairy-tales, you’ve let her in for a far worse gruelling from the police than if you’d told the truth at the start. How d’you expect me to help you if I can’t rely on a word either of you says?”

  “Judging from my family’s experiences so far,” returned Harold sulkily, “we should be unwise to anticipate any assistance from your quarter.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, stop talking like the chairman at an annual general meeting! I just haven’t time for all this managerial jargon. It may go down all right with the pinstriped types in the City, but——”

  “How dare you talk to me like that! I will not have these damned insulting remarks! Get out!” Harold’s suave surface had at last begun to crack all over.

  “That’s more like it,” said Nigel equably; and to Inspector Wright, who had just come in, “I was pinching Mr. Loudron to see if I was only dreaming him.”

  “Mr. Strangeways appears to have taken leave of his senses, Inspector.”

  “Ah yes, sir. He does give that impression at times. May I have the keys of your car?”

  Harold’s bewilderment could not have been more total if he had been confronted by the whole gang of goons. However, he finally handed over the keys, informing Wright that the Jaguar had been washed and cleaned inside by the East Greenwich Garage a week ago, and that he kept the car parked in Pelton Road, having no garage. Wright, in return, told him that the exchange had received no inquiries about the trunk-call, except from the police.

  “So that lets me out, I take it?” said Harold, glancing apprehensively at Nigel, who was looking as if he had been struck over the head with a mallet. It was, in point of fact, an exceedingly bizarre idea which had struck Nigel.

  “I’d like to have a word with Mrs. Loudron,” he said.

  “She’s in bed, I’m afraid. A bit out of sorts.”

  “Be a good chap and ask her if she’ll see me.”

  Wright went off to get his men to work on the Jaguar—a tiresome job of elimination that had to be done, even though it was almost certainly too late or unnecessary. It was only two days ago that Wright had been called in, and he could hardly have been blamed for not putting Harold’s car high on his list of priorities. Nevertheless, he did blame himself; and self-blame had the same effect upon Wright as a release of adrenalin—he drove his men and himself with yet greater energy through the tasks to be done. One man was sent to inquire whether the cleaners at the East Greenwich Garage had found any stains on the Jaguar’s upholstery or mats; and while the experts worked on the car, Wright himself began to inquire at the houses near which it had been parked that foggy night.

  Meanwhile, a rather disgruntled Harold had told Nigel that Sharon would see him, and took him up to her room. Its combination of the functional and the luxurious, of modishness and sluttishness, made him recall by contrast the cluttered, dated, spotlessly clean bedroom of Rebecca Loudron. If Sharon was out of sorts, she certainly put a good face on it, sitting propped up in the huge, low divan bed, bronze hair waterfalling about her shoulders, the pallor of her cheeks without make-up revealing the beautiful bone-structure which Dr. Piers had commented on. Like many lovely women, in bed she looked curiously un-sexy, defenceless and ingenuous.

  “You were foul to me yesterday,” she said as soon as they were alone. “Well, don’t stand about looking sheepish.” She pushed a heap of glossy magazines off the bed on to the floor. “Come and make it up.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not well,” said Nigel, sitting down on the bed.

  “Oh, I’m all right really. I took to my bed to avoid any more scenes with that inspector of yours. Now I rather wish I hadn’t—Harold is so damned solicitous, it sends me up the wall. He thinks you’re mad, by the way. Are you?”

  “Well, I have been getting some peculiar ideas.”

  Sharon’s eyes brushed over his face with the insolent, incurious glance of the spoilt beauty. “Oh?” she said, uninterested.

  “Yes. For instance, that you never went to your father-in-law’s house at all, the night he died.”

  “My dear man, if that’s a sample of your peculiar ideas, I really shall have a headache. After having had it dragged out of me that I did go there——”

  “According to Harold, you went there to see if you could persuade his father to cough up a large sum of money to rescue Harold from some financial disaster. Was that true? It sounds madly unlikely to me.”

  “Does it? Why?” she drawled. “Don’t you think I’m capable of doing something to help my husband?”

  “Oh yes; and of course you’d be helping yourself too, wouldn’t you?”

  “What? Oh, saving myself from the breadline?” Sharon dismissed it with a petulant gesture. “It’s not as bad as that. I could always have gone back to my job—modelling. But why do you say I never went to Dr. Piers’s house?”

  Nigel’s pale blue eyes gazed dispassionately at her. “It was your husband who went to see him. You stayed at home. That’s how Harold knows the exact time the trunk-call came through that night.”

  “Trunk call? Now what are you talking about?” Sharon looked genuinely mystified.

  Nigel explained, adding, “It’s Harold’s only alibi. And very nice too, considering he had the strongest reason of you all for wanting Dr. Piers dead. I only hope you are telling the truth: the police will chivvy you like fury if they think you and Harold cooked up this tale between you.”

  “But why the hell shouldn’t I be telling the truth? It wasn’t much fun having to admit I’d been with Graham.”

  “Women are only interested in the truth when they can take advantage of it.”

  Sharon’s green eyes stared boldly at him. “So you’re an authority on the sex, are you?”

  “I’ve made a life-long study of it.”

  “In theory, maybe. What you need is a few practical lessons. Lock the door and take off your clothes.”

  “Is that what you said to Graham?”

  “Ah, you’re shocked, aren’t you?” the husky voice jeered. “Frightened of getting involved in something you can’t tie down with a string of platitudes?”

  “So you did seduce Graham that night? Another scalp for you. I congratulate you.”

  Stung by Nigel’s scathing tone, she cried, “Seduce? He’s worth ten of you. He goes for what he wants.”

  “Meaning that I want you and daren’t?—your vanity is pathological. Yes, I shouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t made up all this about yourself and Graham, just to gratify it.”

  “You ask him then.”

  “I’d rather ask you. If you can convince me you went to Number 6 that night, and slept with Graham, you’d probably convince the police too. Come on, tell me exactly what happened. You didn’t go there to wheedle money out of your father-in-law, I take it? That story was just to keep Harold quiet?”

  “You really are the most extraordinary man.”

  “And you’re a tremendously attractive woman. Let’s take all that as read.”

  “You infuriate me, but I don’t seem able to stay infuriated. Kiss and make up.”

  Nigel put his hands on her bare shoulders, which shivered under them, and kissed her hard, once. “Now, girl, to business. You went there to meet Graham. Secretly and for some urgent reason, on a foggy night like that.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, sir.”

  “What reason?”

  “He had something for me.” Sharon was gazing into his eyes as if they hypnotised her.

  “Had what? Apart from his youthful charm?”

  “That’s a secret. Give you three guesses.”

  “I’d only need one.”

  She winced a little, then gave him a defiant look. “Well, it’s my affair, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. And it’d be my affair if I lay down on an ant-hill and allowed myself to be eaten alive. Which is just about what you’ve been doing to yourself.”

  “Actually, I’m going to give up my ant-hill.”

  “Good. Well, you went to the house——?”

  She had let herself in at the front door, gone straight up to Graham’s room, unobserved and seeing nobody. About ten minutes later, Graham came into the room. “He seemed—I don’t know how to say it—madly above himself: you know what a cold number he usually is. It gave me quite a turn.”

  “Manic?”

  “Yes. I’d never thought of him as—well, a lover. Honestly. He just locked the door, and grinned at me like a boy who has brought off a dare, and the next moment he’d sent me sprawling on to the bed. I couldn’t do anything. I was so—so surprised. I told him so, afterwards.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “I don’t remember. He hardly talked at all. There was no tenderness. He made me feel as if—as if I was just a sort of instrument he was playing some triumphal march on. Or as if he was taking revenge on me for something somebody else had done to him. A bit of both, perhaps. It was awfully queer. But exciting. I hate men to be respectful in bed—well, you know what I mean. Oh yes, he did mutter something about his mother having been a tart. Yes, that never occurred to me: he was getting his own back on me, for her—treating me like one. Is that possible?”