A Game of Murder

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘How are you?’ Harry said, as they shook hands.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you, sir. I haven’t seen you here before. Is this one of your usual haunts?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid it isn’t. I’m meeting a friend. Is this your local?’

  ‘Yes, my shop’s just round the corner. Oh!’

  The little exclamation was caused by the appearance of a redheaded woman who had just come out of the ladies’ room. She was aged about thirty, with a strongly defined figure but rather hard features. When she saw Harry talking to Heaton she checked, then made up her mind to brazen it out. She walked towards the two men, smiling slightly.

  ‘I’m ready, duckie,’ she told Heaton, to his slight embarrassment. ‘Has Chow been behaving himself?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been as good as gold.’

  She took the cat and perched it on her own shoulder. ‘No tiddles, eh? Good boy.’

  Knowing that Harry was looking at her she directed her bold, professional stare right at him and smiled challengingly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Harry said. ‘Aren’t you a friend of Judy Black’s?’

  ‘Oh, forgive me,’ Heaton butted in. ‘I should have introduced you. This is Miss Linda Wade. Mr. Dawson – of Scotland Yard.’

  Linda was still meeting Harry’s eye. Her smile had not altered.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Did you say Judy Black? No. I don’t know anyone of that name.’

  ‘But surely you were with her last night – at a restaurant called Chez Maurice in Greek Street’

  ‘No. I’ve just told you,’ Linda said amicably, ‘I don’t know anyone of that name. Sorry.’ She turned and hooked her arm possessively through Heaton’s. ‘Come on, duckie. I’m getting hungry.’

  Heaton gave a smile which was half apologetic and half proud. His discomfiture at being surprised at his trysting place was superseded by the knowledge that the eyes of every man in the room were covertly watching Linda’s hip movement as she steered him out of the bar.

  Harry watched them go, then moved across to the bar. The velvet-jacketed barman moved swiftly to serve him.

  ‘A scotch and soda, please.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir. I couldn’t help hearing your name mentioned. It’s Mr. Dawson, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s been a phone message for you, sir, from a Mrs. Rogers. She’s very sorry. She won’t be able to keep the appointment.’

  Harry bit back an exclamation of annoyance. ‘When was this? When did she phone?’

  ‘Oh, about half an hour ago.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything else?’

  ‘Yes. She said she’d phone you later tonight, sir. At your flat.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  ‘Scotch and soda, you said, sir?’

  ‘Make it a double. No ice.’

  The phone was ringing inside the flat as Harry inserted his key in the door to the hall. He opened it quickly, burst through the hall and scooped up the receiver.

  ‘Hallo?’ No answer. ‘Hallo. Mrs. Rogers?’

  There was still no reply. Harry tapped the receiver with his finger-nails. Instantly the dialling tone began.

  ‘Oh, damn!’

  Harry slammed the receiver down and stood staring balefully at it. After a moment it started ringing again. He let it go on for about ten seconds, then picked it up. Once again the dialling tone recommenced.

  Fuming with annoyance he peeled off his overcoat and flung it across the settee. He took a cigarette from the box and lit it, half expecting the phone to ring again.

  When it didn’t he went out into the hall and pushed open the door of his own room, snapping on the light as he did so. He took off his jacket, opened the wardrobe door and reached for a coat hanger.

  The door swung open, the mirror fixed on the inside panning across the room like a cine-camera. It reached the bed, swung past it.

  Suddenly Harry grabbed the door, moved it back through twenty degrees. Reflected on its surface was a sight which he could not believe was real. Sprawled across his bed a bulky woman’s body lay face downwards. The hat with the plastic flowers had been knocked askew and her skirt had ridden up above her podgy knees. The ivory handle of a kitchen carving-knife stuck out from below her ribs.

  Harry had experienced this feeling before. It had been when he was in Yardley’s office at Scotland Yard. Now the sense of unreality made him wonder if he was dreaming. Here he was, sitting in his own flat, being questioned by his own Chief Superintendent. What was frightening was that, although he had all along stuck rigidly to the truth, his answers sounded so lame and false.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, if you don’t believe a word I say, there seems to be very little point in my saying anything.’

  He stood up to collect another cigarette from the box, his third since the police had arrived. Normally he was a very moderate smoker.

  ‘Now, wait a minute. Let’s get this straight.’ Yardley was watching him as he lit the cigarette, no doubt to see whether his hands were trembling. ‘I’m not disputing the fact that you went to this pub. In any case your story can be checked with the barman and this other man – Heaton, I think you said his name was. But what I don’t understand is why you had to go all the way up to the Golden Plough.’

  ‘But I’ve told you why I went there,’ Harry said with exasperated emphasis. ‘To meet Mrs. Rogers.’

  From where he was standing now he could see through into his own bedroom. It was thronged with members of the Murder Squad, all purposefully going through the routine with which Harry was all too familiar.

  ‘But why didn’t she come here to the flat?’ Yardley was checking over the notes he had made in his book. ‘What was the point of meeting in a pub in St. John’s Wood?’

  ‘I don’t know. The pub was her idea, sir. Not mine.’

  He turned his back on Yardley and walked over to the mantelpiece. In the centre of it stood a clock in a silver case with an inscription on the base. It was a tribute to his father from some boys’ organisation he had done a lot for. The world seemed to have gone mad since that morning Tom Dawson had set off for the Westgate Golf Club.

  ‘You asked her to come here and she refused.’ Yardley’s tone was ominously soothing. ‘So you arranged to meet her in the saloon bar at the Golden Plough. That’s your story, Dawson?’

  Harry swung round. He would have met Yardley’s eye if the big man had been looking at him. But the Superintendent was closing his book and putting it in his pocket.

  ‘That’s what happened, sir. It’s not just my story.’

  The hostile silence was broken by the appearance of Nat Fletcher in the doorway. His face wore a closed, unemotional expression which Harry could understand. The police officer who has to come to the scene of the murder, examine the corpse, watch the police doctor, the pathologist, the forensic expert going about their macabre duties has to detach himself emotionally from what he sees.

  ‘We’ve finished, sir. We’ve got everything we want.’

  Yardley grunted and began to heave himself forward in the deep armchair. ‘Right.’

  Nat turned to Harry, still with that strange, remote expression. ‘You’re certain, absolutely certain that you did not touch the body?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I did not touch anything. I did not even go near the bed.’

  ‘Good. Now, what about next of kin? Is there a Mr. Rogers?’

  ‘No. He died about ten years ago. She had no family; but there’s a nephew – Hubert Rogers. He works for the Storm Insurance Company.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  Yardley had finally got his weight on to his feet. ‘All right, leave that to me, Nat.’

  His eye caught the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Good heavens! We’ve been here nearly two hours! I’ll see you in the morning, Nat.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Yardley gave Harry a curt nod and walked ponderously out into the hall. Nat crossed to the chair on whic
h he had left his outdoor coat.

  ‘He doesn’t believe me, Nat,’ Harry said. ‘He just doesn’t believe a single word I say.’

  Nat slowly put his coat on, checked that he had not left any thing else in the room and only then did he look at Harry. His expression was puzzled and there was something there which Harry could not define. It was not exactly hostility or suspicion, but the old warmth, the old friendliness was gone.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you, Harry,’ he said and followed his superior out of the flat.

  Harry stayed in the sitting-room, smoking far more cigarettes than he really wanted, sipping at the coffee he had made for himself. He could hear the police and their assistants still working away in his bedroom, but he did not go through to see how they were getting on. These men were his colleagues and yet they were now on the other side of some invisible barrier. He was beginning to understand how a sane man might feel if he were certified for forced sequestration in a mental home.

  They seemed to take an unconscionable time getting finished with the job. It was midnight before the ambulance came to take away the mortal remains of Mrs. Rogers. Twenty minutes later the outer door slammed and he knew that he was alone in the flat.

  He had already decided to sleep in his father’s room rather than his own. Everything he would need was still there, shaving things, clean pyjamas, a made-up bed. Even the individual smell of his father still pervaded the room. Harry pulled the curtains aside and stared up at the night sky.

  The sound of the door-bell broke into his long reverie. He pulled the curtains back and with a sense of mounting resentent went to open the door. The time was twenty minutes to one. Probably one of those stolid detective sergeants had forgotten something.

  But the person who stood on his doormat was no dour policeman. It was Hubert Rogers; but a very different Hubert Rogers from the prim and correct gentleman who had called the day before. He had all the appearance of a man who has been hauled out of bed just as his beauty-sleep was beginning. His hair was hastily combed. He had pulled on a pair of old-fashioned grey flannel trousers and a green polo-necked sweater. His feet had been pushed into a pair of North African moccasins, probably purchased in a wild moment on some package tour.

  ‘Mr. Rogers,’ Harry said unnecessarily. Of course, he should have guessed that Hubert’s first reaction on hearing the news would be to rush round here. ‘You’d better come in.’

  ‘Dawson, is this true – about my aunt? Is it really true?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid it is.’

  Hubert came into the hall, glancing fearfully towards the now locked and sealed door of Harry’s bedroom.

  ‘My God, I just can’t believe it A man called Yardley – he must be the Superintendent Yardley you mentioned – came to see me. A big heavy chap.’

  ‘Yes. That’s him.’ Harry closed the door of the flat.

  ‘I was in bed. I make a point of having one early night a week and—’

  He broke off and to Harry’s astonishment seized him by the arm. ‘Dawson, what happened? What on earth happened?’

  ‘Come on into the living-room. Let me get you a drink. You look as if you could use one.’

  He put his hand on the dishevelled man’s shoulder to shepherd him past the murder room and into the living-room.

  ‘Now, what’ll it be? Whisky—’

  ‘I don’t drink,’ Hubert said doggedly. ‘Please tell me what happened.’

  ‘Didn’t the Superintendent tell you?’

  Harry had decided that even if Hubert Rogers was refusing a drink he was going to have one himself. He poured it at the cocktail cabinet while Hubert repeated what he had heard from Yardley.

  ‘Yes, that’s true. That’s exactly what happened.’

  ‘But I just don’t understand this.’ Hubert was staring at him with an expression in which there was both alarm and accusation. ‘When I spoke to my aunt—’

  ‘Rogers, please sit down,’ Harry cut in crisply. ‘There’s something I want to say to you.’

  Hubert looked round him and then decided on one of the upright chairs. Harry settled himself more comfortably in the chair Yardley had used.

  ‘I won’t deny that your aunt and I never really hit it off together. Frankly, I was not sorry when she decided to leave me. I never really liked her and I don’t think she liked me either. But I didn’t kill her, Rogers.’

  ‘Good God, I never thought you did,’ Hubert protested, moving uneasily on the chair. ‘Such a thing never entered my head. And you’re absolutely wrong when you say my aunt didn’t like you. She was very fond of you, Dawson – fond of both you and your father.’

  Hubert stood up and paced across the room, perhaps to get out of the line of Harry’s sceptical gaze.

  ‘But there’s something I don’t understand about tonight. Something that just doesn’t add up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harry prompted.

  ‘After I saw you I telephone my aunt and told her you’d got Zero’s collar back and that you were prepared to return it to her. She was delighted.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This afternoon she dropped in on me unexpectedly. She said she had spoken to you on the phone, you’d been charming to her and that she was coming round here this evening to see you.’

  Harry stood up in such surprise that he knocked his glass of whisky from the arm of the chair. It shattered on the carpet, spreading a small stain on the pile. He made no move to retrieve it.

  ‘She said she was coming here, to the flat?’

  ‘Yes. She said you had asked her round for a drink, some time this evening. The poor dear was really quite flattered.’

  ‘But – but this isn’t true!’

  There was obstinacy in the pale eyes that met Harry’s ‘That’s what she told me, Dawson.’

  Harry fought to hold down a rising sense of despair. ‘Did – did you tell the Superintendent this?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I did, my dear fellow. What else could I tell him?’

  Next morning Harry found it hard to concentrate on any thing for long. It might have helped to go out but he knew that sooner or later Yardley would turn up again and he wanted to get it over with. In the end he was glad that he had stayed in. It had resulted in him having a very interesting talk with Douglas Croft. He was still in the office at the back of the shop when he saw the police car draw up outside. Yardley swung his legs out and then used the top of the open door to haul himself upright. The slim and lithe figure of Nat had emerged from the opposite side.

  Harry turned to Liz. ‘Go and tell them I’m in here, Liz, will you?’

  Liz went running towards the street while Douglas Croft gathered up the samples he had been discussing with Harry. He was in a hurry to make himself scarce. Nat Fletcher had caught him before he left home that morning and subjected him to a series of quick-fire questions. He’d wound up feeling that he had been tied in knots.

  ‘May I sit down?’ was Yardley’s first remark as he came into the small office. ‘My feet are killing me this morning. You always hear these corny jokes about policemen and their feet, but, by God, they’re true!’

  He sat down in the metal-framed office chair Harry pulled forward. Nat remained standing, leaning one elbow on the top of a filing-cabinet.

  Yardley went straight to the point. ‘I saw Mr. Rogers last night – the nephew.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Then you know about his aunt calling in yesterday afternoon and what she said to him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Harry felt that the blood was draining from his face. He knew his voice was strained. ‘It’s not true, sir.’

  Yardley looked at him with his head on one side and then shot a look at Nat. Nat took the cue to come in on the questioning.

  ‘You mean, you don’t believe Rogers? You don’t believe his aunt did call and tell him—’

  ‘Yes, I think she did tell him that she was coming here but she was not telling the truth.’

  Yardley asked: ‘Why would she
tell a lie about a thing like that?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I wish I did. But she did lie and we’ve got proof of it.’

  ‘What sort of proof, Harry?’ The question came from Nat.

  ‘She telephoned the pub, and left a message for me. Why should she do that if we’d arranged to meet here in the first place?’

  ‘Someone telephoned the pub,’ Yardley corrected him. ‘We don’t know for certain it was Mrs. Rogers.’

  The telephone on the desk at which Harry was sitting started to ring.

  ‘The barman didn’t know her,’ Nat agreed. ‘It was just a voice on the phone, so far as he was concerned.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Nat, but if you’re going to doubt every—’ Harry broke off in annoyance. It was impossible to talk against the insistence of the bell, which had been set so that it was audible at the front of the shop. He picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hallo? . . . Yes, speaking ... Yes, he’s here. He’s just arrived.’

  He handed the instrument to Nat. ‘It’s your office.’

  To his surprise Nat did not take the phone.

  ‘Is there anywhere else I can take the call?’

  ‘Yes, if you go up those stairs and through the box-room you’ll find yourself in the living-room. I can switch the call through to you there.’

  He waited till Nat had clattered up the fire-escape, crossed the room above and picked up the phone. Then he put his own instrument down. The fact that Nat had not wanted to take the call in his presence emphasised brutally the rift which had opened up between him and the two police officers. He was not a colleague now; he was a suspect in a double murder case.

  He turned back to Yardley, waiting for the questions he knew would come. He must keep his head, stick to his story. In the end something would happen which would show that he was not lying.

  ‘Dawson, I think if I remember rightly you told me that Mrs. Rogers was working at the Royal Plaza.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I said.’

  Yardley shook his head, as if he was genuinely sorry to demolish yet another of Harry’s allegations. ‘She was staying there, as a guest. She had a room on the tenth floor. She’d booked it for five weeks. It was costing her twelve pounds a day – without meals.’