The Worm of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  “Quite possible. And then?”

  They had made love several times. After this, Sharon crept downstairs, let herself out at the back door, so as to avoid passing the study. In the passage leading past the surgery to the garden she stopped a moment, blinded by the fog, wondering if she would be able to get home; also, because she felt dazed by what had happened, and wished to find her own mental bearings again.

  “I got my stockings wet,” she absently remarked.

  “Stockings wet?”

  “Yes. I was standing just where the waste-pipe runs down the wall into a drain, and it splashed me.”

  “This was at 10.30?”

  “Near enough.”

  The splashing water had made her move on, through the garden, into the garage yard. She could just see that both cars were in the garage. The yard doors were closed, but not bolted.

  “I wonder who was having a bath,” said Nigel idly.

  “Graham, I expect. No, how stupid of me. It was the waste-pipe from Dr. Piers’s bathroom.” Sharon’s eyes started wide open as she realised what she had said. “God! That never occurred to me! What does it mean? He must have been alive still, at half past ten.”

  Nigel was eyeing her with an attentiveness she found disquieting.

  “Well, say something, Nigel. Don’t you believe me? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that waste-pipe provides two pretty alibis. For Graham and yourself.”

  “Oh, damn you! So you believe I’ve made all this up.”

  “You’ve made up so much—well, forget that: how do you know the water didn’t come from some other bathroom?”

  “Because it doesn’t. When Dr. Piers had his bedroom and bathroom built above the annexe, the plumbers fixed up a separate pipe to take the outflow.”

  “Ex-model’s innocence established by waste-pipe. Wonderful!”

  “Why can’t you be serious? You never thought I killed the old man, did you?”

  “I keep an open mind.”

  Sharon was sitting bolt upright now in the bed. Her clenched fists beat on the coverlet. “Oh, why won’t you believe me! I swear I’ve been telling the truth.”

  “But I do believe you,” said Nigel mildly. “Every word. You haven’t the imagination to make up all that about you and Graham—what he said and the impression he gave you. How long was it from the time you left him till you got your stockings wet?”

  “A minute. Less than two, anyway.”

  “I suppose you’ve washed those stockings since?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pity. They might have helped to establish an alibi for Graham.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re not really interested, are you, in what happens to Graham?”

  “Why should I be? He’s been avoiding me since that night—hardly spoken a word to me. Not that I wanted him to. Honestly, it was all so queer, it gives me the willies to remember it.”

  “Are you afraid of him now?”

  “Perhaps I am. I don’t know—why should I be? It’s just that he’s not quite human. Like you,” she added, smiling provocatively at Nigel.

  “You’re not afraid he’ll force you to buy more records?”

  “Records? Oh, I see. Records and ant-hills. No, what I’m afraid of is what they might do if they found I’d been talking about that little racket of his.”

  “‘They?’ Him and his associates you mean?”

  “Yes. Whoever they are.”

  “Well, I won’t tell them.”

  Sharon got gracefully out of bed, her long legs exposed to the thighs by the short nightie she wore, and rummaged in a drawer. She moved close to him, holding out a pair of sheer stockings. “Now,” she said, looking up at him through her long eyelashes, “strangle me with a stocking. Wouldn’t you like to?”

  “I’ve felt like it sometimes.”

  “Why must you play hard to get?”

  “Because I am hard to get.”

  “Don’t boast. You and I would be dynamite, and you know it. Shall I light the fuse?”

  “And blow up Harold?”

  “As if I cared?”

  Sharon gazed at him meditatively for a few moments.

  “Oh, get out then, and keep your damned virtue!”

  CHAPTER X

  Whiffs from the Past

  “IF SHE TOOK part in the murder and got blood on them, she’d destroy them,” said Clare later that evening. “If she told you the truth and just got them wetted by the outflow pipe, then I don’t see——”

  “There’s another way she could have got blood on her stockings,” said Nigel inscrutably.

  “This sphinx act is tiresome.”

  “You yourself made a suggestion a few days ago, about how Dr. Piers might have died. . . . Now do you see?”

  Clare’s eyes had lit up. “Oh! Yes. Then Graham wouldn’t have an alibi for that period?”

  “No. Nor Sharon, of course. But his alibi would only be partial, anyway—if she told me the truth; and I think she did for once.”

  “So either Dr. Piers was alive at 10.30, and had just had a bath, or——”

  “Exactly.”

  Clare looked puzzled. “I still can’t see those two as accomplices. What motive would they have—as a couple, I mean—for killing Dr. Piers?”

  “If he’d found out about the drug racket?”

  “Would that be really strong enough? For Graham, perhaps. But surely not for her?”

  “I think I agree. No, I don’t see them as accomplices. There’s something Sharon said, though, while she was talking to me this evening——”

  Nigel told her what it was. Clare stared at him, chewing her lip. “Well, that’s a nasty thought, isn’t it, one way and another.”

  “Yes,” Nigel slowly replied.

  “But then, why move the body? Or rather, who moved it?”

  “The why reveals the who.”

  “Oh, come off it, darling.”

  “I think I know who put the body in the river.”

  “Well, come on, tell me.”

  He told her, and why, at some length. “But this doesn’t help us much towards the identity of the murderer. We’ve still got Graham, and Rebecca and Walt Barn; and Harold, just possibly—though it’d be hard to get round his knowing the time of that trunk call: and of course, just possibly, James Loudron.”

  “And just possibly Dr. Piers himself?”

  “Yes indeed. That’s the trouble. But for the medical evidence, I’d go for suicide every time. I don’t mind there being no exploratory cuts. But the equal depth of the two cuts—how does one get round that? He’d have had the resolution, but how could he have had the strength to make the second one——?”

  “How could he have had the strength to make the second cut?” Nigel inquired of Graham Loudron’s impassive face.

  It was the following day. Wright had telephoned to say that the search of Harold’s Jaguar had proved negative; the firm which cleaned it the previous week had noticed no suspicious stains on the upholstery or mats, and the occupants of the Pelton Road houses near which the car was parked had not heard any sound of its being driven away on the night of Dr. Piers’s death.

  Now, in Graham’s tidy and impersonal room at Number 6, Nigel faced what promised to be one of the most difficult interviews he had ever undertaken.

  “So the police are baffled,” murmured Graham in his sub-acid way.

  “For the time being. As I say, but for that one bit of medical evidence, they would probably accept suicide.”

  “And the dead body walked to the river and threw itself in?”

  “What makes you think Dr. Piers killed himself in this house?”

  Graham looked a trifle confused. “But I thought that was all settled. Harold’s idea about his having had a brainstorm and walked out to the river—do the police still believe that possible?”

  “Does it seem to you any more improbable than that someone here should have found your father dead and gone to the troubl
e of dumping his body in the river?”

  Graham considered it. “Well, I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It might be rather an embarrassment, professionally, for a body to be found in the house.”

  “If Dr. Piers’s suicide would damage the practice, I don’t see it could matter where the body was found.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Graham indifferently.

  Nigel got up, paced about the room, absently trying the locked doors of the cupboards, then walked over to the window, aware all the time of Graham’s eyes following him.

  “This tree must be lovely in summer,” he said, looking out into the branches of the towering lime, where a troupe of sparrows were bickering.

  Graham’s mouth moved in a faint, disagreeable smile. He said nothing.

  “Why do you keep everything locked?” asked Nigel, trying a cupboard handle again.

  “It’s my room. I suppose I can do what I like.”

  “You had no privacy in that hideous orphanage, or whatever it was they sent you to after your mother died. And all the kids stole anything they could lay hands on. No doubt those are the main reasons.”

  “You are a student of psychology?” the young man inquired, with polite sarcasm.

  “Didn’t it ever occur to you that Dr. Piers was your real father?”

  “Why should it?”

  “But you’re not surprised at the suggestion?”

  “All I knew about my father—I don’t remember my mother ever talking about him—was that he let her down: when I say ‘knew’ I mean ‘guessed.’ I never believed that stuff about his having been killed in the war. Anyway, it was obvious some man had let her down. I was a bastard, she had to go on the streets.”

  Graham’s voice held no emotion; his eyes were still expressionless.

  “Do you really believe Dr. Piers was that sort of man?”

  “No. I suppose that’s why it never occurred to me he could be my father.” The small fleshy mouth in the triangular face pushed out meditatively. “Of course that would explain one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Soon after I came here, I overheard James and Rebecca talking about their mother. I can’t remember how it arose, but they mentioned a quarrel their mother had had with their father. It was about some letters Janet had intercepted and kept from him. Dr. Piers found out somehow that his wife had done this. He made a flaming row, and never spoke to Janet again except asking her to pass the salt. She died about a year afterwards.”

  “So that’s why you said to James the other day that his mother had died of neglect?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think those letters might have been from your mother, appealing to Dr. Piers for money, telling him she was very ill?”

  “Well, it could be. Though, as I say, it hadn’t occurred to me before.”

  “Really not?”

  “I’ve just said so. Twice.”

  “Although Nelly talked to you about your mother, and told you Millie had written one or two letters to the father of her child, imploring him for money? You never linked up the two things in your mind?”

  “So you’ve been worming information out of that old bag?”

  “Do you despise everyone except yourself?” said Nigel, nettled.

  “Don’t preach at me,” Graham coldly replied. “I take people as I find them, and——”

  “You took Sharon as you found her, all right.”

  Graham’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”

  “You just walked into this room and raped her.”

  The young man grinned sourly at him. “The lady was only too willing.”

  “But otherwise my statement is correct?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Yet you told the police that you were already in this room when she arrived.”

  “I don’t see the point.”

  “Now you agree that you walked in and found her here. Walked in from where?”

  Graham laughed, stretching his arms up behind his head. “Oh, I see. I thought your phrase about walking in was metaphorical.”

  “Not a bit. Sharon tells me she waited for you here about ten minutes before you came in.”

  “She’s congenitally incapable of telling the truth. Anyway, all this is immaterial, isn’t it? Oh, I see! During those ten minutes she alleges she waited here, I’m supposed to have been killing my adopted father?” Graham said it lightly, but his eyes were sticking to Nigel’s with that limpet-like fixity again.

  “You might have been. At any rate, there’s ten minutes lopped off your alibi, if Sharon is telling the truth.”

  “She isn’t.”

  “Why should she lie about that and be truthful about the rest of the episode?”

  “Search me.” Graham smiled, with a sudden and unusual charm, as if to take the offence out of his words. “Perhaps she was wielding the razor during those ten minutes.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Of course not. My sister-in-law is much too lady-like for that sort of thing.”

  “What, in fact, did she come here for that night?”

  “Not for what she got,” replied Graham, his mouth reminiscently twitching.

  “Well, what then? A nice chat?”

  “You know damn’ well what she came for,” said Graham after a pause.

  “The ‘record’ you’d promised her? A neat little parcel of——”

  “You’re saying it, not me.”

  “Did Dr. Piers ever tax her with taking drugs?”

  “I’ve no idea. Why not ask her?”

  “He was a first-rate diagnostician. He must have noticed the signs. And then he’d start wondering who supplied her.”

  “This conversation is privileged, as the needle-noses say. I should of course deny that it ever took place,” said Graham smoothly.

  “And of course they’d take your word rather than mine? Not that the police could do much about it, unless they found drugs in your possession, or Sharon blew the gaff to them. You’ve had plenty of time to cover your traces. And Dr. Piers is dead.”

  “All this is rather tedious. Supposing that I had supplied Sharon with drugs, which I do not admit, and supposing that Dr. Piers had found this out, d’you really think he’d have gone to the police about it? He was far too keen on the honour of the family.”

  “I dare say you’re right. What really interests me is why you tried to make Sharon contract the drug habit.”

  Graham, watching Nigel, offered no comment, except the faint look of derision on his face.

  “It could be,” Nigel went on, as if to himself, “that after your unfortunate boyhood you feel a need to exercise power over other people, and Sharon was an obvious victim with her craving for new kicks. On the other hand, it may be that you have a vindictive nature, and a strong motive for causing what havoc you can in the Loudron family: your grudge against Dr. Piers could easily extend over his children. Well, we shall find out in due course.”

  During this chill analysis, the fruit-bat face betrayed a certain covert animation. Graham evidently felt more gratified to be the subject of discussion than offended by the terms in which Nigel had spoken.

  “When you went with Rebecca to look for your father, the morning after he’d disappeared, was she very upset?”

  “Well, in a bit of a flap, yes.”

  “You looked in the bedroom. Then you both went into the bathroom?”

  “No. I went by myself.”

  “Did you get the impression that Rebecca was nervous—apprehensive about going into the bathroom? Did she hang back?”

  Graham gave him a calculating look before replying, “I can’t honestly be sure about that.”

  “Well then, when you told her Dr. Piers was not in the bathroom, how did Rebecca react?”

  “I don’t remember that she said anything particular. She did look a bit stunned, I thought.”

  “But you wouldn’t say she was afraid to enter the bathroom?”

&nb
sp; “I—honestly, I can’t tell you. At that time we weren’t badly worried about my father’s disappearance. It was still possible he’d gone out on an emergency call. We were just doing what the cops call a routine search.”

  “I see. And the night before, when—according to your story—you were sitting in this room and Sharon came in, what was her state of mind?”

  “Good God, I’m not a mind-reader. If you mean, did she look as if she’d just come from slitting my father’s wrists, the answer is no.” Graham’s voice turned oddly peevish. “I simply can’t understand why she should have told you I wasn’t here when she came in. It’s such a pointless lie. What do the police make of it?”

  “She’s not told them that bit yet, as far as I know. And just after she’d left you that night”—Nigel, moving to the window, looked out at the waste-pipe running down the outside of the wall from Dr. Piers’s bathroom on his right—“did you hear water splashing into the drain from that pipe?”

  “Not that I remember,” said the young man after a pause. “I doubt if I could have, with my window shut. Why?”

  “You realise that’s the waste-pipe from your father’s bathroom?”

  “Of course. But Sharon left about half past ten. He was dead by then.”

  “How do you know?”

  Graham seemed unperturbed by this shattering question. “I don’t know. I assumed it. After all, the old boy would hardly have got up again at 10.15 or so and run a bath, when he’d taken a sleeping draught and gone to bed immediately dinner was over. Anyway, he always had his bath in the morning.”

  “Did he? That’s interesting. You know, you’re the one who has inherited Dr. Piers’s brains. Why on earth don’t you do something with them, instead of these dead-end jobs you take up and drop?”

  “I’m only twenty. Why should I, anyway? I don’t owe society anything—not after the way it treated me for the first thirteen years of my life.”

  “But it must be so boring. Don’t you have any ambitions?”

  “Not now,” replied Graham.

  “But you used to?”

  “Oh yes. One ambition,” said Graham with a secret smile.

  “What was that?”

  “To be a first-rate jazz pianist and have my own band.”