by John Creasey
‘It is,’ said Roger grimly, and hardly recovered from his surprise. ‘Sloan – the injured sergeant – telephoned here for an appointment earlier in the evening. Someone made it for you.’
‘Look here, darling,’ said Fluff Michison quietly, ‘I’m only in the way, and you can tell me all about it later. I can see the Inspector is going to ask you questions but doesn’t like to because I’m here, and I promised to go downstairs and see Mabel as soon as we came back. Will that be all right?’ she added, smiling at Roger.
‘You won’t leave the building, will you?’
‘No.’ She sounded dubious. ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?’
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t.’
‘Well, I always like to make everyone happy,’ said Fluff. ‘Don’t make Lionel promise not to tell me what it’s all about. He won’t keep the promise, so it would be a waste of time. How long will you be with him?’
‘About half an hour,’ said Roger.
‘Now that you’ve managed to dissect me between you, I’ll put a word in,’ said Michison drily. ‘Mabel can wait, Fluff. You may as well hear what West has to say, and it’ll save me going over it again.’
‘Oh, well, if you really insist.’ Fluff was obviously delighted. Before Roger could start, however, the ambulance and another sergeant from the Yard arrived. Roger gave the man brief instructions, leaving him after the doctor had given orders to the ambulance driver and the stewards. The confusion at the flat died away quite soon, although there were occasional noises when the photographers and fingerprint men entered and began their work.
Roger was intrigued by the calm way in which the Michisons took the intrusions. He even wondered if they were not a little too calm, but preferred to think that they were adept at accepting things as they came. Fluff’s manner, light-hearted, and so reminiscent of Janet’s, was natural enough, and Michison gave the impression of being puzzled but not perturbed; that too was natural. The fact that he knew the police were interested in him probably explained something of the calmness with which he accepted the invasion of the flat.
Roger spoke when they were all sitting in the modern easy chairs. ‘I’ll be as brief as I can,’ he said. ‘I understand that the man Riordon, who is wanted by us for several reasons, came to Broadcasting House to see you two days ago. Or three days,’ he added, realising that he was not quite certain of his facts.
Michison shook his head slowly. ‘He didn’t.’
Roger said: ‘No one having once seen him could forget Riordon.’ He gave a brief word picture, watching the others closely all the time, but except that Fluff made a moue once or twice they showed no expression. Towards the end of his recital he had an uncomfortable feeling that Michison was right and that Riordon had not been to see him. Yet the evidence that Riordon had entered his room came from a reliable police officer, as a result of the interrogation of lesser officials at Broadcasting House.
‘I’ll admit I wouldn’t have forgotten that fellow if he came to see me,’ said Michison. ‘But as I told your sergeant no one came to my office that evening. I’d given orders that I wasn’t to be disturbed unless it was something of exceptional importance, you see. I was working on a script needed the next morning,’ he added with a smile, ‘and it had to be ready in time. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.’
‘Apparently,’ said Roger heavily.
‘Aren’t policemen lucky?’ demanded Fluff in dulcet tones. ‘If anyone else said anything like that Lionel would punch him on the nose for calling him a liar.’
Involuntarily Roger smiled. ‘He’s a nicer appreciation of the situation, I hope! I’ve been battered about quite enough tonight. Well, now . . .’
He told them again of the interview which Sloan had arranged, and the inescapable evidence that someone had been at the flat to take the message. Moreover Riordon and the little dwarf (whom he did not mention) had undoubtedly been in possession and made themselves completely at home.
At that juncture, Fluff interrupted: ‘Darling, I haven’t looked in my jewel case.’
‘I don’t think Riordon is that kind of visitor,’ said Roger.
Fluff was not satisfied, however, until the three of them had been in the main bedroom, unlocked a drawer of the dressing table, and examined some small oddments of jewellery, all untouched. Fluff fingered them with relief. ‘They’re not exactly the Crown Jewels,’ she said, ‘but I’m rather fond of them.’ She put them back, locked the box and then relocked the drawer, and led the way back to the lounge.
‘I wonder why Riordon had chosen me for his particular kind of joke,’ Michison said. ‘What sort of a customer is he?’
Roger said: ‘Not nice in any way.’
‘I’d gathered that, but—’ Michison broke off. ‘There isn’t a lot I can do about it, but I wish I knew the beggar who told you that he’d been to see me. He might have been at Broadcasting House, of course, and someone may have mistaken the room he went into. Er – had he any right to be there? I mean, had he a pass or anything like that?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Then he must have had an acquaintance there,’ said Michison. ‘Getting inside is like getting into a holy of holies, but somewhat more rigid. You don’t think he’s likely to trouble us again, do you?’
Roger said quickly: ‘I’d say he’s done all he wants to do here. And I hope my fellows have, too.’
He went out, to find that the men from the Yard had finished their work and had made a fairly good job of cleaning the carpet where it had been stained with Sloan’s blood.
Roger saw them off the premises, and then returned to the lounge.
He could not help feeling that there was something at the flat which would help him, if he could only discover what it was. The evidence that Riordon had not seen Michison whoever else he had visited at Broadcasting House, confused the trails far more effectively than anything else had done, and he found Michison’s story convincing. There was no reliable evidence, now, that either Morris at the Admiralty or Bennett at the Home Office were implicated.
‘It looks as if all I have to do now is to say “sorry”, and add thanks for the way you’ve taken the intrusion.’ Roger smiled apologetically. ‘Except – there’s just a chance that you might find out for me whom Riordon did visit. I’d prefer the inquiries to be discreet, and you may not feel like making them.’
‘I’ve no objection,’ said Michison, ‘especially if it’s helping you people. I propose to find out who put you on to me, in any case. It’s no use asking you to give me the name of your informant, I suppose?’
‘Offhand, I can’t tell you,’ said Roger truthfully. ‘But if you will make a few discreet inquiries I’ll be grateful. Oh, by the way – do you know the man who broadcasts on the harmonica occasionally?’
Michison stared: ‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’
‘Riordon’s signature tune is played on the instrument,’ said Roger, and stepped to the radiogram unexpectedly. ‘Do you mind?’ He raised the lid, and saw that a record was in place; he read the little paper disc stuck to it. It was the right record, for it said: ‘Warsaw Concerto – Reggie Bright – Harmonica’.
He switched on and put the needle into position; neither of the Michisons moved, but stared towards him in bewilderment. The tune began very softly but increasing in volume, carrying with it a queer, almost nostalgic memory. Roger stood listening with compressed lips, until startled by a ring at the front door bell.
‘Oh damn!’ said Fluff, who was on the far side of the room. She opened the door, and, after a pause and a mutter of voices, called out: ‘It’s a man who says he wants to see you, Inspector.’
Roger went quickly towards the open door, wondering who had come back and assuming that it was one of the men from the Yard, when an explosion came. It was not deafening but loud enough
to make him jump; and he felt the blast from it. He staggered against the wall, then turned in time to see Michison falling to the floor, smoke pouring from the radiogram and a few red stabs of flame shooting up amongst it. Pieces of the records were flying about the room, some of them in flames.
News of Marion Byrne
Roger went forward as soon as he regained his balance, to see Michison gasping, his face twisted in pain. Roger raised his voice to summon the man from the door, and Fluff appeared. She said nothing but flew towards the two men.
‘Get a fire extinguisher,’ Roger called.
The smell of burning in the room was growing pungent, and the pile of the carpet was alight in several places, each outbreak sending up a little wisp of smoke and stab of flame. Roger eased Michison up and half-carried, half-dragged him out of the room. Fluff was tense-faced but self-possessed. She told a plain-clothes man who put in a startled appearance where to find a fire extinguisher. Leaving Michison in an easy chair doubled up, gasping, and with a cut on his forehead which was bleeding freely, Roger hurried to the landing for the extinguisher.
By then the plain-clothes man, one of the fingerprint experts, began using another; an evil-smelling chemical from it filled the flat.
Gradually they subdued the flames.
The fire had not been serious, although had the action been less prompt, had the only people in the flat been injured by the explosion, there would have been little chance of saving the contents of the room, while the whole flat might have been gutted. As it was, twenty minutes later there was only the smell of smoke, little pools of water, and a drenched carpet, a few slightly damaged chairs, and the wreckage of the radiogram. The top part of it had been blown out, and the wood of the case split and twisted by the flames.
Michison had been struck in the stomach by a piece of debris, but had suffered no other injury beyond the scratch on his forehead. About the walls of the lounge gramophone needles were sticking out, blown there by the blast. To Roger this freak effect had much in common with the whole affair. He could see no sense in it, could not understand why it had been necessary, unless Riordon had expected him to be standing near the instrument at the moment of the explosion.
Even then there was no certainty that the eruption would have killed him, and had Riordon wanted him dead he would surely have chosen a more reliable method, so that Roger could not have defended himself.
He arranged for a police guard at the flat, assured himself that the Michisons were not unduly perturbed, and went back to the Yard. On the way, driving Sloan’s car and with the fingerprint man alongside him, he felt a heavy sense of depression.
He considered that there was cause for it.
He had left for three interviews, from none of which had he expected much information, but all of which might have helped him to fit some pieces into the puzzle. He had left the Yard with Sloan as buoyant and confident as he himself; and Sloan, even if he did not succumb to his injuries, would be off duty for months and might not fully recover from the effect of the attack.
The Michison angle had led him to a further confusion of trails, too. There seemed no purpose in what Riordon had done, but the man was not one to act purposelessly; it had all been carefully calculated to cause a required effect; Roger’s anxiety to find out just what the effect was had probably been foreseen.
‘Why did you come back, Thomas?’ he asked his driver suddenly.
‘I left some of my kit behind, sir, and wasn’t quite sure whether you wanted me to get prints of the lady and gentleman there. I thought I’d better have a word with you about that.’
‘I see,’ said Roger.
The remarks set him wondering whether the Michisons were as innocent as they appeared; their cool acceptance of abnormal conditions was praiseworthy in one way, but it might well be suspicious. He was more than a little suspicious of people whose background appeared quite innocent, and who had no apparent motive for the crime, nor any known association with Riordon.
There was one possibility which worried him. Riordon had made a great ado about getting the map.
Roger started: the man had asked him where it was that evening, making out that he had not got it. Was it possible that the map had been taken from Chatsworth by someone working against Riordon but not with the police?
It was just possible, Roger admitted grudgingly, but he disliked the thought that there were any factions of this affair unknown to the police.
There was another possibility.
Riordon might be making the play about the map to confuse the issues. He had ‘led them’ to Michison and the men at the Admiralty and the Home Office, but there was nothing to support the contention that he had interviewed Michison, and the same would probably apply to the other men. Those men, thought Roger gloomily, had been waiting up for him to visit them: Riordon could not have been at all three places, and there was reason enough to believe that he had left the sailor and the Home Office official alone for that night.
Had they telephoned to tell Riordon of the appointments?
Roger drew a deep breath.
The so-far unknown Morris and Bennett might have told Riordon of the interviews, but Michison could not have done had he been out of London until nearly ten o’clock. But if Michison had not passed on the message, if he had not taken Sloan’s call from the Yard, how had Riordon ever guessed that Roger would be making the calls at all?
He had been blinding himself, taking it for granted that Riordon had taken the call, because he had been in possession of the Michison flat all the evening: why should he have been there if he were not associated with Michison?
‘I don’t know whether I’m making mountains out of molehills or not,’ Roger confided to himself. ‘I do know I’m getting a headache.’
Headache or not, he was very active when he returned to the Yard. He sent men to the flats of Commander Morris and Sir William Bennett respectively, with instructions to watch them throughout the night and to find out whether either of them had had callers the previous evening. Routine precautions were already being taken, and a complete dossier on the two men would be available in the morning.
He put into motion further inquiries about Reggie Bright, of harmonica repute, and called for the names and addresses of circus proprietors and theatrical agents, all of whom might put him in touch with someone who knew a dwarf who was also adept on the harmonica. The one consolation of the night’s misadventures was that he had seen the dwarf, and thus understood how Riordon managed to get the Warsaw Concerto warning. It was simple, thought Roger, concentrating on the good facet of news and feeling his depression lifting. It might even be possible for the dwarf to get into the Yard; he could have been in Sloan’s room when Sloan had made those appointments.
‘At least the uncanny element has gone,’ Roger reassured himself, rubbing his tired eyes. ‘If I don’t get some sleep soon I shall feel as bad as ever in the morning.’ He yawned, stood up, and then went downstairs to the basement, where one large room was used as a dormitory for men who needed to stay at the Yard overnight. There were partitions which gave some privacy, and Roger kept a spare set of pyjamas, a toothbrush and other toilet accessories there. He had brushed his teeth, washed, and was changing into pyjamas when another question flashed across his mind.
The dwarf had been inside the room: how had he known that the Michisons had been on the way up the stairs?
‘My God!’ thought Roger. ‘And I said it was no longer uncanny!’
His depression grew deeper when the corollary to the question, one which he should have seen much earlier, occurred to him. Why had Riordon been so anxious to avoid the Michisons? Surely he could have handled them as easily as he had Roger?
Roger could not settle for sleep until he had gone upstairs again and sent two detective constables to strengthen the watch which he had set outside the Michisons’ house. He d
etermined that his first inquiry the next morning would be into that charming compère and his vivacious wife.
As he was between waking and sleeping he thought guiltily that he had spared hardly a thought for Janet since he had left Hinton Magna.
About the time that Roger and Sloan walked up the stairs of the dingy house near Portland Place, Paula Dean leaned across Janet, and switched off the radio: there was a talk by a dreary-voiced professor, who faded abruptly.
Paula tucked in loose strands of auburn hair, and said sharply: ‘If you two weren’t bad enough, he would have driven me crazy. Mark, I know Marion will turn up, nothing happens to a girl like Marion. It stands to reason.’
‘Does it?’ asked Mark, and tried to smile. ‘If I had more time, I’d work out the logic of that, but just now it would be too much for me. I wonder how Roger’s getting on?’
At that moment the phone rang and Janet dashed to answer it. Her voice came clearly from the hall.
‘Who?’ she said, and paused. ‘Who? No, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you very well. Yes, please, spell it.’ There was another pause, and then the first letter came. ‘M,’ she called, ‘A – R – I—’ then she broke off abruptly, and shouted: ‘Mark, come quickly! Yes, yes, I can hear you, Marion – Mark, come on!’
Mark was already on his feet and moving towards the door when Paula, two yards away from him, raised her voice and shouted: ‘Mark, it’s Marion. Hurry!’
Janet’s eyes were glistening as she held the receiver towards Mark and spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Yes, he’s just coming but I can’t hear you very well – here he is, hold on.’ In a lower voice to Mark, she added: ‘She’s very faint, but she seems to be hearing me all right.’
‘Bless you,’ murmured Mark, and took the receiver. ‘Hallo,’ he said, in a low-pitched voice, speaking close to the telephone. ‘Is that all right?’ He paused. ‘Good, yes, I can hear you clearly, my darling.’ That slipped out so casually that Janet hardly noticed it. ‘Where did you say? Reading – yes, I heard all right, Woodhill, near Reading, yes – but are you all right?’ He paused again, and Paula came into the hall, putting an arm about Janet’s waist and staring at Mark as keenly as Janet. ‘You’re sure?’ said Mark. He listened for some minutes. ‘Well, it takes some believing – no, I mean understanding! Of course I believe you . . . what? . . . you stay there, and don’t move out of that pub. Someone will be along during the night or early in the morning, just stay put. You’ve really had me scared! Yes, scared!’ He laughed again, as if light-heartedly. ‘Yes, first thing – what’s the number? . . . Woodhill 35. Yes, if I can’t get there myself I’ll telephone early in the morning. All right, Marion, goodbye for now.’