by John Creasey
“It—it is in my pocket.”
“Did Miss Murray know that you had it?”
Julian didn’t answer.
“Did she know, Mr. Anderson?”
“No,” admitted Julian hoarsely, “she didn’t know.” He stared at his father, but gave the impression that he was not doing that consciously, that he was looking at some figment of his imagination; at die ghost of Alice Murray? He moistened his lips. “No, she didn’t know.”
“Why did you have it?”
“I—” Julian broke off again, letting the pronoun hang in the air.
“Mr. Anderson, the quicker you answer my questions the better it will be for you,” Roger warned coldly. He wished that he had a sergeant here, taking notes; but if he sent for one it would break the present tension, and he wanted to hold that as taut as he could. “Why did you have the key?”
Anderson answered, hoarsely: “I loved her so much. I—I always believed that she would love me, that I would be able to win her round. I—I loved her so much. I couldn’t think about anything else or anyone else. I only wanted to be with her. I dreamt of being in her flat when she came home, I used to try to make myself go there and wait for her, I thought if she knew how much I loved her she would submit to me. Oh, God,” he breathed. “And she’s dead.”
“Were you at her flat last night?” Roger barked.
“I—”
“Were you?”
“No, no I wasn’t!”
“Were you at her flat last night?”
“No,” Julian whispered. “I swear I wasn’t.”
“When were you last there?”
“I—” Julian kept breaking off, but it was hard to say whether he was deliberately evasive, or whether he was genuinely suffering from shock.
“When were you there?” Each word was like a knife slash; and was meant to be.
Julian answered, dismally, despairingly: “I—I was in the street yesterday afternoon, yesterday evening rather. I hoped to meet her when she got home. She told me she was going straight there, she said that she was going to wash her hair, but—but she wouldn’t let me take her home in the car. She did, sometimes, if I was waiting for her outside the shop, but last night she wouldn’t let me. She said she wanted to do some shopping on the way. So I went to meet her as she reached her home but—she didn’t come. I waited until seven o’clock, and she still didn’t come, and—well, I’ve waited there before, and she’s been back very late. Sometimes—sometimes I’ve actually gone into the house but I couldn’t make myself go into her room. I thought—I thought she might misunderstand.”
“Did you go in last night?”
“No. No, I couldn’t wait out in the cold any longer, and I had some work to do.”
Roger asked: “What work?”
“I was making up some invoices,” Julian said, and then his face puckered up, and quite suddenly he started to cry. “Oh, God, not Alice, I can’t bear it.”
Roger wondered: “Can a man act like this?”
The tears in the man’s eyes were genuine enough. He fought against crying aloud, and choked back his sobs. Pulling out a pure white handkerchief, he began to dab at his eyes. It was less crying than snivelling. He used his right hand, Roger noticed; nothing suggested that he was left-handed.
“Mr. West, can’t you leave my son alone now?” asked old Anderson querulously. “He has suffered such a great shock, surely you can see that. Can’t you let him rest?”
Roger said: “I’m afraid not, Mr. Anderson. I want him to come with me.”
The old man exclaimed: “No!” He leaned forward from the bed, a scraggy hand stretched out, the sleeve of his pyjamas dragging back over the arm and baring it to the elbow; it was just brown, mottled skin and bone. “You’re not going to arrest him.”
“If Mr. Anderson can prove that he wasn’t at Miss Murray’s flat last night he has nothing to fear,” Roger said formally. “I want him to come along with me to the morgue to identify the body.”
“Oh, no,” breathed the old man. “No, don’t make him do that. Please don’t make him do that.”
“I understand that Miss Murray has no relatives in London,” Roger said, “and identification by some person who knew her well is necessary. Have you any objection, Mr. Anderson?”
Julian looked at him vaguely. “Objection—objection to what?”
“I would like you to come and identify the body.”
The man stared as if he did not really comprehend, and the shock had affected his mind and stultified it. The old man pleaded again, but there was neither vigour nor hope in his voice. At last Julian said: “I suppose—I suppose so.” Roger took him downstairs, where a car was waiting with a sergeant at the wheel. He did not speak to Julian, but said to the sergeant:
“The morgue where the Murray girl’s body is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Julian was staring straight ahead.
Roger had a feeling which seldom came to him these days; repugnance at what he was doing. One half of his mind was convinced that young Anderson was putting up an act, that all of this was being done in a tremendous effort to save himself from the consequences of the crime. The other, that this man was really grief stricken, and that he would be horrified and desolated by the sight of the dead girl.
The job had to be done.
The car pulled up outside the morgue next to the Chelsea police station. The sergeant jumped out. Moving automatically, Julian climbed out of the back of the car, and his legs seemed to be propelled by mechanism, not by any conscious effort of will. His cheeks had sagged. He kept blinking, rubbing his eyes, and sniffing.
The room where the body lay was cold. There were several empty stone slabs, and only one slab laden. A sheet covered the girl’s body, which looked pathetically slender and small under the white shroud. There was no sound except Julian Anderson’s sniffing. The morgue attendant was standing by the head of the girl. Roger went to the other side, with Julian close to him. He nodded to the man, who pulled back the sheet briskly, and Roger asked:“Is that Alice Murray?”
Julian seemed to choke. “Yes—” he gasped. “Yes, that—” Then his legs bent beneath him, and he would have pitched on to the body had Roger not held him up.
“Funny how some of them can’t take it,” the morgue attendant said. “He the husband?”
“No,” answered Roger.
A man could not make himself faint, he reasoned, and the suspect had been out dead cold. If Julian Anderson had murdered the girl in a fit of jealousy, or if his desire for her had reached an obsessional pitch, so that if he could not have her for himself he would prevent any other man from having her, collapse reaction now would be quite reasonable. The act of murder could shock a man so much that he would behave completely out of character. Awful repentance after it could explain such behaviour as this. Roger waited in the small office near the morgue, while Julian Anderson leaned back in a wooden armchair, coming round gradually, looking a dreadful colour.
The immediate question was whether to charge him.
If Roger did make a charge, there would be a chance of shocking this man into a confession, whereas if he were once given time to recover, his resistance might stiffen. He would undoubtedly get a good lawyer; his father would see to that. There was an odd fact to consider, too; neither of them had thought at once of sending for a lawyer, which might imply that they had in fact been taken by surprise. If Julian had anticipated a visit from the police, surely he would have decided well in advance what to do; and a man who had a sense of guilt would be ready to run to a lawyer.
That hadn’t occurred to Julian, apparently.
His eyes were open now, and he took out his handkerchief and dabbed his damp forehead. The attendant came in with a cup of steaming coffee and a bowl of brown sugar. Roger stirred in two spoonfu
ls of sugar and handed the cup to Julian, who gulped, took it in trembling fingers and began to sip. He went on sipping mechanically, he did everything mechanically. When the cup was half empty, he put it down.
“Thank you,” he said. “I won’t have any more.”
“Was it Miss Murray, Mr. Anderson?”
“Yes,” Julian answered in the husky, whispering voice.
“Mr. Anderson, can you tell me where you were between twelve midnight last night, and two o’clock this morning?”
Julian didn’t answer.
“Mr. Anderson, I know you have had a very severe shock, but it is essential that you answer my questions, for your own sake. Will you tell me where you were?”
“I—I was in my room,” Julian replied. “Where else do you think I was? I was in my room.”
There was a change in his manner; a kind of protective hardening.
Roger interpreted it as the transition from shock to fear. It showed in the glint in the little, buried eyes, in the way Julian’s body seemed to hunch up, as if in self defence. He realised suddenly how vulnerable he was, perhaps realised that if he could not prove where he had been during those vital hours, there would be a case against him. He stared intently and intelligently into Roger’s eyes, and there was no doubt at all that he was becoming more and more frightened.
“Can you prove that?” Roger asked.
Julian moistened his lips. “I—I went to bed at eleven o’clock, I didn’t see anyone else until seven thirty when Jennie brought in my morning tea.” He said all that almost gaspingly, as if he expected to be challenged, and he feared that it could be proved untrue.
“Very well, Mr. Anderson,” Roger said, and stood up briskly. “I shall have to make a number of inquiries and check your statements. It would be in everyone’s interest if you will co-operate in every way you can.”
“What do you want me to do?” Julian Anderson asked, almost humbly.
“I would like you to come along to New Scotland Yard with me, make a statement confirming what you have already said, allow your clothes to be examined, and allow us to take scrapings from your fingernails, a few hairs from your head, other things which may be helpful. At the moment you are under no compulsion to do these things. You would be, of course, if you were charged with the murder.”
Now, the man really understood the danger he was in.
“I’ll do anything you like,” he said huskily, “but I didn’t kill Alice.”
He did everything that Fox asked him. Scrapings were taken from his shoes, dust from the turnups of his trousers, a few hairs were plucked from his head and nose and ears. He handed over the key of the girl’s flat, which he admitted taking from her bag some weeks ago. His statement reiterated over and over again that he had been in love with Alice Murray, and that his unrequited love had almost driven him mad. And he talked of her meeting another man.
Roger studied the statement late that afternoon, and went along to the waiting room to see the suspect again. Julian was looking more collected, but very pale.
“Did you ever see this other man?” Roger asked.
“No”, answered Julian. “I used to follow Alice to try to find out who he was, but I didn’t want her to know what I was doing, and she kept getting away from me.”
“How do you know there was a man?”
“She changed,” Julian answered, very slowly. “She—she used to be quite willing to let me take her home, and now and again she would come to the pictures with me. But about six months ago all that was over. I could tell she was in love with someone else, there was no doubt about that, and—and it made me desperate. I was afraid I would never win her.”
If he were guilty, would he make such a statement as that?
And if he were guilty, surely he would have asked for a lawyer by now?
Did he realise how much the case against him would be weakened if the police could find this other man?
Roger knew that he would soon have to make up his mind whether to make a charge; this man had been here too long already. Roger asked him to wait for another ten minutes, and went up to his office, a small one overlooking the embankment. The lights of the traffic on Westminster Bridge showed up, and the lights of the bridge itself and of the embankment reflected on the swollen waters of the Thames. There had been flood warnings in the higher reaches, and a close watch was being kept on the river, but he gave that no thought as he thumbed through Julian’s statement again, and looked through the reports from the Division and the Yard men who had worked at Manville Street as well as at Anderson’s shop. The mass of statements and reports added nothing to what was already known. This other man seemed to exist, but only Jennifer Ling appeared to have seen him, and her description was never likely to help in evidence.
There was a tap at the door, and on his ‘come in’, Fox appeared. His bright eyes had an eager look, and Roger reminded himself that Fox might have ambitions to get away from his ‘dry-cleaning’. He carried two plastic envelopes, and put them on the desk in front of Roger; this was plainly a moment of triumph.
“Well,” Roger asked, and looked at several hairs inside one envelope, and two inside the other; they were short, grey and thin. “Whose?”
“Julian Anderson’s.”
“Positive?”
“Positive,” asserted Fox. “Exhibit A, plucked from his head. Exhibit B, taken from the pillow of Alice Murray’s bed. Exhibits C, D, E and F, on her clothes.”
“Well, well,” Roger said, and in that moment he felt as nearly certain as he could be that they had the right man in the unrequited lover. “Now all we want is to establish that he wasn’t in his own room all last night.”
“He wasn’t,” Fox said with satisfaction. “In that memo you asked me to send round the neighbourhood, I asked for any garage which might have supplied petrol. Found one on the Great West Road, sold him ten gallons about twelve fifteen last night. The description fits to a T, and they had the car number off pat—two K’s and three 2’s. So Julian A. was out and about! Going to charge him?”
“I think I will, now that I know he lied to me,” Roger said, and ignored the fact that fear could make a man He. Once a single lie was proved, it might be easier to make Julian admit to others. “Nice work, Charley, but do it my way in future, will you?”
“Your way?” Fox looked puzzled.
“If you want to add anything to an instruction, check with me first unless you can’t find me. Then be absolutely sure it’s the right thing to do.”
“I won’t forget,” Fox said. “Thanks, Mr. West.” He stood back as Roger stood up. “Like me to come along? My shorthand’s good.”
Chapter Eight
House For Sale
The Sunday morning newspapers were delivered to John Payne’s house about nine o’clock most Sundays, and the day after the family had slept so late he was up soon after eight o’clock. Gwen was still sleeping, although as he slid into his dressing gown, he thought that she stirred. He went downstairs, made himself tea, and kept looking out of the front room window, in the hope that the delivery boy would be earlier than usual. At a quarter to nine, he heard Maurice whistling, and at ten to nine, Gwen called out:
“Maurice, go downstairs and see if your father’s made tea.”
“Okay, Mum!” Maurice came hustling.
The timing was bad, because the newspapers would come when he was drinking a cup of tea to keep Gwen company, Payne thought, but it would look odd if he stayed downstairs. He was on edge, although he felt sure that nothing would really worry him now; he was past the moment of crisis.
Maurice banged open the kitchen door.
“Hi, Pop! Mum says—”
“I heard her,” Payne answered. “Put the kettle on, will you, and I’ll take the tea up.”
“Right-i-ho. Feel better this morning?”
“Much.”
“You looked as if you’d spent a night on the tiles last night,” Maurice said, and gave the kind of wink that he had learned from Gwen: he had Gwen’s droll way of raising an eyebrow, and her broad humour; Hilda was the least humorous of the family, just a nice girl with a tendency to be affected whenever she wanted to create an impression.
“I’ll give you night on the tiles,” said Payne. “If you talk to me like that—”
There was a sound at the front door; the newspapers.
“—tan your hide,” he finished. “You make that tea, I’ll see what the latest sensation is.”
“Never anything much in the papers on a Sunday,” Maurice declared. “Wonder if they’ve arrested that chap Anderson yet, though.” The murder had been a topic for eager family discussion last night.
There were two newspapers poking through the letterbox, and Payne hesitated before pulling them out. He felt almost as bad as he had once or twice yesterday; if this was going to keep on, it would make Gwen suspect some serious reason, and he must make sure that none of the family got that idea. Maurice’s ‘night on the tiles’ worried him; would Gwen jump to the same kind of conclusion? Was it possible that she would suspect that they had all been drugged?
He pulled the newspapers out, with a sharp clack of sound, and opened the Sunday Echo. He clenched his teeth, for on the front page there was a photograph of Alice, and beneath it another, larger one, of Julian Anderson – a studio portrait taken some years ago.
The headline read:
EMPLOYER CHARGED WITH SECRETARY’S MURDER
After the first moment, when it seemed to leap into his throat, Payne’s heart stopped pounding. He began to smile. After a few seconds, he felt completely free from any kind of fear, and in its place was a fierce kind of jubilation. Nothing could make him more secure than this. They must have a pretty strong case against Julian, and – it would take weeks, months, to get round to his trial! There was no need at all to worry, the heat was off for good.