A Game of Murder

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘Yes, of course I know her. Don’t know her very well but—’ She paused, then looked him in the eye. ‘She stayed the night with me, the night Newton died.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I don’t know, duckie. And that’s the truth. Honestly, I don’t know.’

  There was a faint tang of cigarette smoke in the air and half a dozen cork-tipped cigarette ends had been crushed in the Venetian glass ash-tray; some of them had been only half smoked.

  Harry took out his case and offered it to Linda.

  ‘I don’t smoke, thanks. But you go ahead.’

  Harry lit up and then turned to her appealingly. ‘Look. I’m going to be frank with you. I’m in a spot. I’ve got to find Judy and I’ve got to find her before—’

  ‘Sweetie, I’ve just told you, I don’t know where she is. I haven’t a clue. I haven’t seen her since she did a bunk that night.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  Linda drew her scarlet-tipped finger across a well-defined bosom. ‘Cross my heart—’

  Harry allowed his eyes to be drawn to the cleavage between her breasts. He smiled wryly in acceptance of her statement and gave her arm a squeeze.

  ‘Okay . . . Okay, I believe you.’

  Confident now that like all men he had become more interested in her physical attributes than anything else, Linda reacted to the squeeze with a little squirm of sensuous pleasure.

  ‘In any case, you’re barking up the wrong tree. She didn’t kill Newton. He was her meal ticket, so why should she kill him?’

  ‘They had a row that night.’

  ‘So what?’ Linda laughed. ‘I’m always having rows but I haven’t knocked anybody off. Not yet.’

  ‘Did you know Newton?’

  ‘Yes. I knew him.’ Linda turned the corners of her mouth down. ‘Didn’t like him very much. Altogether too much of a smoothie for my liking. Always used to think he was a queer, as a matter of fact, but turned out he wasn’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry you can’t help me.’ He nodded towards the bar. ‘Sorry about the drink too. Some other time, perhaps?’

  ‘Why not? We’re always open!’

  ‘Open to offers?’ Harry suggested.

  ‘I meant the bar.’ Linda pretended to be mildly shocked, then put on the come-hither expression she had been wearing when she took Sidney Heaton out of the Golden Plough. ‘But we’re open to offers too, sweetie.’

  Harry echoed her, laugh and bent to stub his cigarette out in the ash-tray. He moved out into the hallway.

  ‘I’ll drop in again, if I may. One evening, perhaps? After you’ve been to the hairdresser’s.’

  ‘You do that. But give me a ring first. And I’m sorry I could not be more helpful – about Judy, I mean. But you’re wasting you time, duckie, you really are. She didn’t kill Newton.’

  Harry stopped and turned round. In the sitting-room the telephone had started to ring.

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t Judy. Listen, I must answer that phone.’

  ‘All right. I can let myself out.’

  ‘See you.’

  Linda started towards the living-room. Harry put his hand up to twist the knob of the Yale lock and as he did so he slipped up the button which would put it on the latch. Turning at the door of the living-room, Linda was able to see the door of the flat close on him.

  Outside on the landing Harry stood for a moment, holding the door to by the handle of the knocker. He could faintly hear Linda’s voice and knew that she was now at the telephone, but he could not hear what she said.

  He pushed the front door open, re-entered the hall, quietly released the latch and closed the door. He could now quite clearly hear what she was saying.

  ‘He’s just left . . . Yes, I did . . . It would have looked a hell of a lot fishier if I hadn’t asked him in . . . No, I played it cool . . . What? . . . Well, she’s all right, but a bit nervous . . . Yes, I think it’s very good, the photograph’s excellent . . . No, he didn’t. I’m picking the ticket up myself . . . Tam, listen . . .’ Linda’s voice became pleading. ‘Do you always have to send Marty? Couldn’t it be someone else, just for once? . . . Do I like him? He’s a flaming monster!’

  Harry sensed that the conversation was coming to an end. He cautiously opened one of the doors leading off the hall. It was a bathroom. He slipped inside and pushed the door till it touched the jamb but did not click shut.

  Linda had finished her telephone call. He could hear her footsteps on the floor of the hall outside. She seemed to be fussed about something. Harry guessed that she was searching for her handbag or her purse. Once she came right up to the door of the bathroom and he could hear her muttering to herself.

  Then she changed her mind and his heart-beats slowed down again. A few seconds later he heard the front door close.

  He gave her half a minute, then pulled his door open and slipped out into the hallway. Beyond the door of the flat the lift doors clattered.

  Although he was now the only person in the flat some instinct made him move cautiously and silently. He stood for a moment in the centre of the living-room letting his eyes roam methodically around. ‘Give your eyes a chance,’ was a well-known police adage.

  The Venetian ash-tray was the first item to receive his closer scrutiny. He picked up one of the tipped cigarettes he had noticed. It was a Piccadilly, the brand which Judy Black had been smoking that night in St. James’s Park.

  Next he moved to the desk. He quickly opened and shut a number of drawers, rifling rapidly through their contents. In the fourth drawer he found what he was looking for, a British passport. He took it to the window.

  The number was N 35645, which indicated that it had probably been issued about five years ago. The name in the panel at the top was Miss Stella Morgan. He turned to the third page where a photograph had been pasted into the square marked ‘bearer’. The face was familiar, yet strange. The features were those of Judy Black, but the hair was dark and arranged in a completely different, rather severe style. She was wearing heavy horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Judy.’

  Staring at that face whose attractive innocence shone even through the harsh passport photograph, he realised that he had involuntarily spoken her name aloud.

  He was examining the page headed ‘Description/Signalement’ when he thought he heard a faint noise from the adjoining bedroom. It had sounded like somebody stealthily opening a sash window.

  He slipped the passport into his jacket pocket and moved swiftly to the bedroom door. It had been ajar while he was talking to Linda and he thought it had been opened slightly.

  He thrust the double panels of the door away from him with such force that they swung back and hit the walls behind. In one quick sweeping glance he took in the features of Linda’s bedchamber, or at least the chamber which she used when she was entertaining guests – the broad divan bed, the huge wardrobe with the swinging mirror door, the heavy shaded table lamps, the suggestive pictures on the walls.

  But it was the window which riveted his attention. The bottom half had been pulled right up and a faint breeze was blowing the frilly curtains out into the room. He crossed to it quickly and leaned out.

  The low sill gave on to an iron fire-escape erected at the back of Defoe Mansions. Three storeys below, in the back yard of the Mansions, two cars and a van were parked. There was no one on the fire-escape.

  Craning his head to look upwards he saw that the stairway finished at roof level only one storey above him. He scrambled quickly over the sill and ran up the remaining two sections to the roof.

  The roof of Defoe Mansions was flat, broken by chimney stacks and those humped-shaped columns which contain a door leading to the house below. They were probably no longer used but none the less they provided plenty of hiding places.

  He walked slowly along the roof, taking care not to trip over pipes, odd bricks and patches of roofing felt. If he quartered the roof methodically he wou
ld force anyone hiding there to change position. And if he kept the top of the fire-escape under surveillance they could not escape. The roof of Defoe Mansions was high above the houses flanking it.

  As he reached the end of the roof and turned to come back along the other side he heard a sound like someone tripping over a loose plank. He spun round and caught a flash of colour as a figure moved behind a chimney breast.

  Harry moved fast now, like a hawk that has spotted the quarry. He came round the end of the chimney stack and pulled up short.

  Judy was standing at the edge of the roof, a foot-high parapet separating her from the drop beyond. Her dark tinted hair hung down at the side of her pale face. Behind the plain glass lenses of her spectacles her eyes were wild. She was panting, either with fear or the exertion of her climb, and in her hand she clutched a small, snub-nosed automatic.

  Harry stood very still, not so much for fear of the gun, though she looked perfectly capable of using it, but for the fear that if he advanced she might step back and go over the edge.

  ‘Hallo, Judy.’ He spoke in a conversational tone, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

  She did not answer. Beyond her the backcloth of roofs and chimney stacks was sharply outlined by the sunlight.

  ‘You’re getting careless, you know, leaving such obvious traces of yourself in Linda’s flat. And this too—’ He pulled the passport from his pocket. ‘It’s not a very good photograph, is it? Still, it’s not a very good passport either, if it comes to that. Who gave you this useless piece of cardboard, Judy? Tam Owen, was it?’

  ‘Give it to me,’ Judy said tensely.

  ‘Sure.’

  Harry tossed the passport on to the ground between them. To pick it up she would have to move away from the edge of the roof. So long as she stood where she was he dared not try to rush her in case she involuntarily stepped backwards.

  She came forward and stooped to pick up the passport, but the gun barrel never went off aim. In her highly emotional state of mind she was probably quite capable of pulling the trigger, so all he did was move slightly to her flank.

  He said: ‘Do you know what I’d do with that, if I were you? I’d burn it.’

  ‘I’m not interested in what you would do with it.’

  ‘Aren’t you, Judy?’ Harry took another step sideways. He nodded at the gun. ‘Is that the gun you shot Peter Newton with?’

  ‘I didn’t shoot Peter.’

  ‘Then why are you running away?’

  ‘Don’t you know why?’

  ‘Yes. I know. You’re running because someone has convinced you that we’re going to charge you with the murder, whether you did it or not. It isn’t true, Judy. I told you the other night, if you tell the truth you’ve nothing to worry about.’

  The heavy glasses were a size too big for her. They kept slipping down the bridge of her nose and every now and again she had to put up a hand to push them back.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Even if you accepted my story, Nat Fletcher wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t Nat believe you?’ Harry was genuinely puzzled by her statement.

  Judy ignored his question. ‘I want you to go back down to the flat now.’

  ‘Judy, listen to me! I took a risk the other night when I agreed to stop that taxi and—’

  ‘You heard what I said.’ Her voice had a hint of hysteria in it. She was gripping the gun so tightly that her knuckles were white. ‘Go back!’

  Harry let his shoulders slump in defeat. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Judy. If you use that passport and then we pick you up—’

  ‘Do as I tell you!’ Judy almost shouted. ‘Go back to the flat!’

  Harry gave a hopeless shrug.

  ‘All right, Judy,’ he said submissively.

  As he turned away he saw her free hand move to readjust her spectacles. He chose that instant to turn and launch himself at her, hoping to deflect the barrel of the gun downwards before she could press the trigger.

  For a fraction of a second she hesitated, surprised by his sudden move or perhaps in her heart of hearts reluctant to carry out her threat. Then she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

  The automatic leaped in her hand, surprising her by its re-coil. The report, so close to her ears, seemed deafening. She opened her eyes and saw Harry crashing to the ground at her feet. In horror she recoiled backwards. The low parapet was waiting to trip her by the legs. As she felt herself begin to lose balance she grabbed wildly at the air in front of her for support. For a split second she was outlined against the sky like a crazy-marionette jerked on the end of a string. Then she toppled backwards over the edge of the roof, and as she fell her scream of terror floated up from below.

  Chapter 3

  It was the sound of the sirens that made Marty Smith put down the remains of his pint and hurry out into Carrington Road. A couple of fire engines, a police car and an ambulance tore past in quick succession. Opposite Defoe Mansions a crowd had collected on the pavement and were staring upwards.

  Marty followed their line of sight and a shiver of pleasurable excitement ran through him. High up on top of Defoe Mansions he could make out the shape of two people, a man and a woman. They were clinging, or rather the man was clinging to the ridge of a dormer window in the roof of the new section which had been added when Defoe Mansions was converted. With his free hand the man was holding the waist-belt of the woman. By the lifeless way her body was slumped she must be either unconscious or dead.

  Marty could see what had happened. She must have fallen from the main roof and slithered down the roof of the extension. If the dormer window had not been on the line of her fall, she must have plunged to the pavement far below. There was only one way the man could have reached her. He must have slid down the roof after her.

  The mere thought was enough to make Marty shiver. He moved closer.

  The fire brigade wasted no time in running an extending ladder up to the dormer window. The helmeted fireman, assisted by the man on the roof, got the woman over his shoulder and began to descend. The man edged over until he could get a foot on the top rung and then descended after them. The police had to hold the crowd back as the inert body was placed on a stretcher and swiftly loaded into the ambulance. The white vehicle, its blue light flashing and siren sounding, dashed away up the street.

  Pushing reporters, police and onlookers aside, the man who had been on the roof raced towards a green Austin 1100 parked by the kerb. He jumped inside and set off in pursuit of the ambulance, whilst the police patrolmen piled into their own car to follow.

  A buzz of excited speculation rose from the astonished onlookers. Marty Smith ran for the Rose and Crown, feeling in his pocket to see if he had the coins he would need for the telephone.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, relax, Harry! They’ve already told you she’s going to be all right.’ Nat spun the upright chair round and sat down, straddling it with his legs and leaning his arms on the back frame. ‘My God, if I were you I’d be out celebrating instead of worrying about a little tramp that tried to shoot the hell out of me.’

  Harry said nothing. Nat glared at him accusingly and then pointed in the direction where they both knew the mortuary was.

  ‘You could be out there, chum. Don’t you realise that? If you hadn’t reacted quickly enough to dive under the bullet you could be out there lying on a slab for all she cares.’

  Harry was leaning with his back to the radiator. He was too restless to sit down and in any case the chairs in the hospital waiting-room were not very inviting. He had reached the hospital in time to see Judy being taken through the doors of the casualty department. The vague reassurances of the doctor on duty had not allayed his anxiety and he had decided to sit it out till she recovered consciousness. Within ten minutes Nat had joined him in the waiting-room.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Harry said, his expression still obstinate. ‘I know that’s what it must look like, Nat. But I’m sorry. I don’t share your opinion of this girl. I nev
er have done.’

  Nat’s face registered his amazement. ‘What is this, Harry? Are you falling for her?’

  ‘Don’t be a damn fool!’

  ‘Well, are you?’ Nat rose angrily from the chair. ‘Let me tell you something about this outfit. Let me really put you in the picture. Ever since those photographs were found I’ve been checking up on Mister Peter Newton and Miss Judy Black.’

  Nat came up close to Harry, almost as if he was putting the pressure on one of his own subjects.

  ‘Sergeant Quilter and I must have talked to half the prostitutes in London, to say nothing of the ponces. We’re up to our eyebrows in sex, Quilter and me. Right now, my idea of a swell night out would be a nice juicy apple and a couple of hours Bingo.’

  ‘What did you find out about Judy?’

  ‘Newton worked for a man called Tam Owen.’ Nat turned and began to pace the room. ‘Don’t ask me who Tam is because I don’t know. Ostensibly he works the usual call-girl racket but in fact there’s more to it than that. A wealthy man comes to Town in search of fun and games. He calls a certain number and talks to a charming girl called Judy Black. She finds out who he is and passes him over to Peter Newton – or rather she did. Newton provides the glamour pants and within twenty-four hours the poor sucker finds himself buying a very nice set of highly revealing photographs from our Mr. Owen.’

  ‘You’re forgetting that it was Judy who first told us about Tam Owen. Why should she do that if she was part of the set up?’

  ‘It’s pretty obvious why. She thought she had the skids under her and she was frightened of you, Harry.’

  ‘I don’t agree. It’s not me she’s frightened of, Nat. It’s you.’

  ‘Me?’ Nat halted in his pacing and stared at Harry in astonishment. ‘But I’ve never met the girl.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘No, never. What makes you think I have?’

  ‘It’s not important.’ The window opposite Harry looked across to a corridor running parallel to the building they were in. He could see two male nurses pushing a mobile stretcher towards the operating theatre, but the person lying on it was below his line of sight. ‘The thing is, where do we go from here?’