CHAPTER 24
ROUTINE WORK
When Bobby reached the Park Lane flats he found the general routine of such affairs in full progress, and he also soon found that he himself had been sent for in such haste through a misunderstanding. As soon as it was known that Lawrence had been seen leaving the flat shortly before the discovery of Norris’s death, someone had mentioned that Lawrence was well known to Sergeant Owen, and someone else had at once suggested that Sergeant Owen should be sent for to provide a further description of the wanted man. Only after the message had been sent off had it been realized that of Lawrence, an ex-convict, a perfectly good description, photograph and fingerprint record included, was already in existence.
However, as he was there, he was told on his arrival to stand by in case he was wanted, and from one of the others present he learned that radio instructions had already been sent out for Lawrence to be found and brought to the Yard for questioning. Bobby’s informant added:
“I was out chasing round after Magotty Meg when I got word to turn up here. The old girl’s been at it again.”
“Has she?” Bobby asked, interested. “What is it this time?”
“Pinching a suitcase in a bus,” the other answered. “Lady getting out at Cannon Street found her suitcase missing, and then the conductor remembered Magotty Meg had been a passenger. Lively old girl, isn’t she? The conductor knew her because he had been in court once as a witness against her, though he hadn’t been able to place her at first, not till the lady complained. By the time we pick her up Meg will have got rid of the suitcase and everything identifiable, and butter won’t melt in her mouth.”
“Was there anything valuable in the suitcase?” Bobby asked.
“No; she’s not got much this time. A library book, some knitting, and a few odds and ends.”
“Curious,” Bobby muttered, and the other nodded agreement.
“The old girl generally does better,” he said. “Got a keener nose for a good thing as a rule – most likely she just saw a chance and took it. Not one of her thought-out do’s. I might just as well have gone on having a try to land the old lady before she got rid of the stuff. There’s nothing to this case; not much to it when a bird with Lawrence’s record is seen leaving a flat and a dead man is found in it half an hour later.”
“How do they know it was Lawrence?” Bobby asked. “Did someone recognize him?”
“Gave his name to one of the porters when he was asking for the flat,” was the reply. “Said he had an appointment with Mr. Norris and would they phone up and see if Mr. Norris was in, and Norris phoned back to send Mr. Lawrence up.”
“Then he gave his name himself quite openly?” Bobby remarked.
“Well, most likely he didn’t come meaning to do Norris in,” the other answered. “You know Lawrence’s record?
Got the cat in jail for an assault on a warder.”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby answered. “I thought it would be interesting to get particulars. I got a man I know to write a chap he knows who was a warder at the time. There ought to be a reply soon.”
“What particulars?” his colleague inquired. “It was just that he went for a warder and tried to kill him, that’s all. Some of them try it till they find it only means the cat. Pretty tough record Lawrence has all round, from what I can make out. And now this.”
“They found Norris dead in his bath, didn’t they?” Bobby inquired.
“Yes. No answer when they knocked, and they made sure he had got word he was wanted and made a getaway. But they hammered a bit more, and some of the staff came along. Didn’t like it one little bit; scared of their lives of a scandal and the other tenants not appreciating it and leaving, and then their going themselves, too, because the management blames it all on them and sacks the lot. But our people told them they had to get in, so the manager was sent for, and he opened the door with his key. Everything looked a bit upset, and when they went into the bathroom, there was Norris, in the bath, dead. And the first man who tried to get him out was nearly a deader, too.”
“Why? How?” Bobby asked.
“The sunray lamp at one end of the bath had fallen into the water and it was charged with electricity; current running through it. Rummy stuff, electricity. First man took a bad knock – nearly a knockout. Second man didn’t even know what was the matter. He had rubber soles to his shoes.”
“Nothing to show how the lamp got into the water?” Bobby asked.
“No. Norris had one hand on it as if he had taken hold of it for some reason – to lift it somewhere out of the way perhaps. But the flat people swear the thing was securely bolted down, and could only have been loosened on purpose and with the aid of tools.”
“Was that what caused death, do you know?” Bobby asked. “Electric shock, I mean?”
“They don’t seem sure. I suppose they’ll find out at the post mortem. His head was under water all right, but it seems a question whether the shock killed him or the drowning. The doctor said perhaps they would never know for certain.”
The speaker’s name was called just then, and he vanished on some errand. Bobby, standing by as he had been instructed, but keeping out of sight as much as possible for fear of being told he was not needed, continued to watch unobtrusively the progress of the investigation, and to pick up as many details as he could from what he could overhear.
He learned that Norris’s evening clothes had been found laid out in the bedroom, so that apparently he had been having a bath before dressing for dinner. The first idea entertained, therefore, that he had perhaps committed suicide, on hearing in some way that his arrest was contemplated, seemed to be disposed of. A man intending to commit suicide would hardly take the trouble to get out dinner jacket and dress shirt first. There remained the possibility of accident, but against that was the fact of the presence in the water of the electrical apparatus that according to the testimony of the flat management could not be there as the result of any mischance, and the further fact that the flat showed signs of having been hastily ransacked, apparently for documents, since such signs were plainest in the disturbed contents of the drawers of the writing table and of a deed-box of which the lock had been broken. A cupboard and other drawers looked as if they had been searched, too, but whether anything had been taken it was, of course, impossible to say as yet. A careful examination of the rooms was still in progress, and fingerprint experts were busy.
“We know Lawrence was here,” one of them remarked to Bobby; “there’s the evidence of the staff of the flats for that. But he may have had pals. There’s a girl works in his office with him; she may have been here, too. Though if she were she’ll have worn gloves. They all do that all right.” Another of the searchers had made a discovery – an insurance policy for a large amount; £20,000 in fact.
“Here’s what it was done for,” he exclaimed excitedly. “Twenty thousand pounds again; always the same amount.” Then he gave a low whistle. “Oh, lumme,” he said, “it’s only for an accident caused to a train or other public vehicle in which policyholder was a fare-paying passenger. That knocks it clean out for this business.”
Looking very dissatisfied, he continued his inspection of the different letters and papers he found; and then the senior officer in charge noticed Bobby, asked him what he was doing there, and told him to get off and take part in the general hunt for Lawrence that was now on foot.
“Nothing you are wanted for here,” he said. “Oh, wait a moment. It is you who reported on a man named Beale – Dr. Beale, isn’t it? A professor or something. You know his address?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Bobby. “Dr. Ambrose Beale. I don’t think he is a professor, as I understand it; he is a writer on philosophy. I think he is busy with a new book now. He was talking about investing money through the Berry, Quick Syndicate – £20,000 – and apparently they wanted him to insure his life for that amount as a protection against loss. The local police have been asked to watch and report if he comes to town, in case of any
danger.”
“In case he was meant to be the next,” observed the senior officer. “Yes, I remember. Ring up the local people and ask if they have anything to report, and if he has been at home today. He may be able to give us some information.”
Bobby went to carry out these instructions, but it took him some time to get through. When he did succeed, he received an emphatic reply to the general effect that Dr. Beale had been working in his study as usual. He had not been seen to leave the house at any time all the day. He had been seen once or twice leaning out of the window and smoking his pipe, or sometimes a cigarette, as was his custom, and his typewriter had been heard going continuously. At the moment of phoning – for by now it was late – his lamp was burning, and his shadow could at times be distinguished on the blind as, in his usual way, when presumably thinking how to frame his next sentence, he paced up and down the floor of his room between lamp and window. Bobby suggested they might take steps to assure themselves it was in fact Dr. Beale who was there, and they grumbled back that it was quite unnecessary but they would do so all the same. And in fact, an hour after Bobby had gone, a message came through from them to the effect that one of their men had made an excuse to look up Dr. Beale on some pretence of an automobile accident of which it was thought he might have been a witness. Dr. Beale had been very annoyed at being bothered at such a late hour, knew, of course, nothing of the imaginary accident, and had not accepted too graciously the apologies profusely offered for his having been troubled. But at any rate it was quite certain that it was Dr. Beale in person who had been seen and spoken to.
Before this piece of information came through, however, Bobby had departed homewards, though not before he had learned that the search for Lawrence had so far been unsuccessful. It was known that he had gone to his lodgings after leaving the Norris flat, for his landlady had been questioned and had said that he had been in for supper as usual, and as usual had gone out afterwards. Also one of the patrolling police-cars had seen him on the accustomed route of his evening walks, well on the way to Acton, but had lost sight of him in the traffic through a change of the control lights that had released a flow of cars between it and him. After that he had vanished, presumably having realized that he was being looked out for, and so having changed the ordinary routine of his walk.
“We’ll pick him up all right, though, sooner or later, and more likely sooner than later,” declared Bobby’s informant, and Bobby agreed, and, returning home, found the letter waiting for him which he had been expecting, giving full details of the assault upon a warder for which Lawrence had been punished while serving his sentence.
Bobby read it with interest, and sat down for a time to think. Then he got up, and, late as the hour was, went out and, finding a late taxi prowling homewards in the direction of the Edgware Road, bargained for a cheap ride thither.
“Bit late out, aren’t you?” remarked the taximan, who knew Bobby by sight, taximen having a wide acquaintance with the police. “Looking out for someone?”
“That’s it,” said Bobby, gave the man his promised shilling, and from the Edgware Road turned into the street where Lawrence lived.
There was no one watching, for it was not thought likely that if Lawrence knew of the search being made for him he would return home, while if he did not know he would be safely there in the morning. But when Bobby got to the house he saw there was still a light in one of the rooms, and, when he knocked softly, it was Lawrence himself who came at once to the door.
“It’s you, is it?” he said, recognizing Bobby. “You’ve come about Mr. Norris’s murder, I suppose?” The light from the hall lamp shone on his face, showing it clearly. He was smiling to himself, his worn and tortured features, as it were, entirely changed, so that they seemed to show an infinite content. “Come in a moment while I get my hat and I won’t keep you,” he said.
Bobby said to him:
“How did you know Norris had been murdered?”
CHAPTER 25
RESURRECTION
Bobby followed Lawrence into the sitting room where he had gone to get his hat. Did he live entirely in his memories, Bobby asked himself; and Lawrence, who had picked up his hat from the old horsehair sofa that stood limpingly on but three sound legs, said to him:
“I’m ready.”
Bobby turned his attention from the room to its tenant. He looked thinner even than when Bobby had seen him before, his eyes more deeply sunk, the black rings round them more clearly marked, his cheeks more hollow. The expression Miss Hewitt had used – “living corpse” – returned to Bobby’s mind with a fresh impact of appropriateness, so remote from life Lawrence seemed, so far removed from all contact with the things around.
“I want to ask you some questions,” Bobby said.
“Questions?” repeated Lawrence vaguely, as if wondering what they were. “Why? I shan’t answer,” he added, not with any air of defiance, but simply as stating a fact for which he himself had no responsibility.
“Not even if I ask you how you knew Dick Norris had been murdered?”
Lawrence’s small, indifferent shake of the head was so slight as to be hardly visible.
“You seem to want to get yourself hanged,” Bobby snapped out angrily.
Lawrence let this drift by him as though he had not even heard it, as though it concerned him not at all.
“You see,” Bobby went on, “my trouble is this. I happen to be fairly sure you had nothing to do with Norris’s murder.”
But to this statement, too, Lawrence paid no attention; it affected not in the very least that terrible aloofness from every human concern that seemed to be ingrained in all his being. He merely said:
“I’m ready if you want me to come with you.”
“You’ve no right to play the silly fool like this,” Bobby almost shouted, his temper quite gone, and this time Lawrence was moved to show a faint surprise, as if a little astonished at the other’s vehemence.
“Well, why not?” he asked.
“I’ve been making a few inquiries about you,” Bobby said. “I’ve got to know quite a lot.”
“Your duty, I suppose,” Lawrence said.
Bobby, who had sat down on one of the slippery horsehair chairs, jumped to his feet. His face red with anger, he said furiously:
“For two pins I’d punch you one in the eye, and what would you do then?”
Lawrence appeared to be considering the question, which apparently had interested him enough to get below the armour of his indifference.
“I shouldn’t do anything,” he decided at last. “Why should you mind a punch in the eye when you’ve had a dozen strokes with the cat-o’-nine-tails?”
Very greatly relieved, Bobby sat down again on his slippery chair.
“Now we’re getting on,” he said with satisfaction. “I had a letter about you tonight. You were sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for embezzling money. You were a bank clerk at the time, so you had every opportunity, and the judge said you had betrayed the confidence of your employers.”
‘‘He was quite right,” Lawrence said. “So I had.”
“You pleaded guilty at the trial and you didn’t say anything in explanation or excuse. It’s no excuse, of course, but you had taken the money because the girl you were engaged to had been flashing around and had got herself into the hands of moneylenders. She had been doing a bit of forging on her own account, hadn’t she? And if you hadn’t found that five hundred for her, she would have gone to prison and not you.”
Lawrence said harshly and angrily:
“What business is that of yours?”
“Other people’s business is a detective’s business pretty often,” retorted Bobby. “While you were doing time, the young lady concerned married someone else. A good match, too. It was the manager of the bank where you had worked. She got him by playing a broken heart at her discovery of your wicked dishonesty. He felt it was up to him to mend what one of his staff had broken, and she felt his salary of a th
ousand a year or so would do the trick all right, and anyhow was a jolly sight better than waiting five years for an ex-convict.”
Bobby paused then, and Lawrence said very slowly:
“I never expected her to wait. I knew it was finished – an ex-convict. She acted – sensibly.”
“While you were in prison,” Bobby went on, “your mother – died. She was found drowned. The coroner made some remarks about recent distressing experiences she had passed through. The verdict was a kindly one – ‘temporary insanity.’ ”
Lawrence’s face was livid now. All his indifference had gone. It had become human again, by a paradox, human through the awful animal ferocity it showed. He said, muttering the words through firmly clenched teeth:
“Take care – take care.”
“I’m a bigger man than you,” Bobby answered dispassionately, “and I’m in training, and your condition – well, rotten, isn’t it? If I have to, I’ll knock you down and sit on you while I finish what I have to say. I could get away with it, too. ‘Resisting the police in the execution of their duty,’ I should put in my report. That’s like charity. It covers a multitude of – incidents.”
Lawrence, standing opposite, stared bewilderedly at Bobby.
“You are police, I suppose, aren’t you?” he asked. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“What I’m getting at,” retorted Bobby, “is that you can’t put the Embankment trick over on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the fellow you scared on the Embankment by looking at him,” Bobby answered. “I’ve heard about that, too. But it won’t go with me. Never mind that, though. Let’s get on. I ought to be hauling you off to the Yard, but there’s a lot I want to say first. While you were in prison, you assaulted a warder; nearly killed him. You got the cat for it.”
“Would you like to see the marks on my back?” Lawrence asked.
“No,” Bobby answered slowly, “for I do not think those are the marks that matter.”
The Bath Mysteries Page 19