At the top the light had failed. From the landing below Roger clicked the switch once or twice hopefully but nothing happened. Clasping the banister rail firmly he heaved himself upwards into the black darkness. At the top he paused to get his breath back. Cuchulain came and stood by his side. In the darkness he could hear him panting too. He put down his hand and tickled the top of his head.
For a moment he could not remember the lay-out of the landing. But at last his eyes got used to the lack of light and he was able to make out the squares of the panes in a small window. He remembered it from previous visits, perpetually jammed shut and thick with matted dust.
The memory brought back the rest of the geography of the landing to him. He felt his way expertly to the flat door and knocked on it hard.
The door gave half an inch.
Cuchulain nosed his way in and Roger followed.
‘It’s me,’ he shouted, ‘and my dog. Don’t come out. You left the latch off.’
The little hallway of the flat was also in darkness. Roger fumbled for the switch and put the light on. He closed the front door and released the snib on the lock. The catch clicked back into place.
Eric still had not replied. It was possible that he had slipped round the corner to buy some stout. Roger went forward into the sitting-room. Again no light. He stood on the threshold and felt at the wall for the switch. He found it in a moment and snapped it on.
Eric had not gone out for some stout. Eric was dead.
Chapter Four
Not dead drunk, but dead.
There could be no doubt about it.
Although Eric was sprawled in the big broad armchair, which in the winter he kept nearer the fire than the window, and although there was an opened bottle of stout on the low table at his side and a glass lying at his feet, there was no possibility of mistaking death for a drunken stupor. There was a rigidity about the limbs which put anything else out of the question.
Cuchulain knew it at once. He sat down on his haunches, lifted up his scraggy neck and softly keened.
Roger stood in silence beside him looking fixedly at the body of the man he had known for the past three years as Eric Smith.
At last he put his hand for an instant on Cuchulain’s shaggy head and then cautiously stepped nearer the body and examined it. The left hand was protruding beyond the armchair with the hand concealed. Protruding, not dangling. Eric’s body was not relaxed.
Leaning right over, Roger was able to see that Eric’s concealed hand was clutching a small white pasteboard card. For a moment Roger pondered. Then he crossed over to Eric’s desk and looked in the small oval brass tray on the top of it.
Cuchulain stopped his keening and turned his head to watch him. Perplexedly.
In the tray were two ball-point pens, a dirty stub of india-rubber, a pencil without a point, half a dozen paperclips, a single black shoelace, and a pair of scissors.
Roger took the scissors and returned to the big sagging armchair. He leant over it again and very carefully, using the blades of the scissors as tongs, he tweaked the card out of his dead friend’s hand.
He straightened himself up and rubbed the small of his back.
Still holding the card between the blades of the scissors he turned it over so that he could read what was on the front.
The colour in his face, which the effort of retrieving the card had brought heavily up, was drained away.
Sucked back.
The card was printed like an ordinary visiting card. First the name:
J. Parkinson Crowle
And under it in slightly smaller type in the same rather ornate jobbing printer’s face three words:
The Southampton Rapist
And in much smaller type in a different face in the bottom right-hand corner two more words:
By Appointment
Roger put the scissors and the card down on the low table beside the broad-bottomed armchair. He clenched his fists.
For nearly ten minutes he stood without moving, looking down at Eric’s body lying rigidly in the big armchair and at the low table beside it, on which there were three objects – an empty bottle of stout, a pair of scissors and a white visiting card with three lines of black type on it.
Then he stooped quickly and picked up the card. He took no precautions now to avoid touching it. He simply held it up, looked at it one last time and carefully put it in his wallet. Then he restored the scissors to the oval brass tray on the desk. The telephone was on the other side of the desk. He picked up the receiver and asked for the nearest Guards barracks.
Within ten minutes there came a heavy knock at the front door. Cuchulain started into life and stood bristling and growling.
Roger went out into the little hall. He opened the front door and found himself face to face with the same tall Guard he and Eric had seen outside the little grocer’s shop round the corner.
‘Did you ring the barracks?’ the man asked.
‘I did.’
‘Inspector Murphy will be round directly. In the meantime you’re not to touch anything.’
‘That’s all right,’ Roger answered. ‘I thought that would be the right thing to do. I haven’t touched a thing.’
He opened the sitting-room door, went hurriedly across to the bristling Cuchulain and put a hand through his collar. The Guard came into the room. Roger could feel Cuchulain’s muscles tauten against the dark leather of the collar. The Guard went across to Eric’s body and felt the still wrist.
‘You were after coming in here and you saw him like this, was that it?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Roger.
He hesitated.
‘That is –’
The Guard looked at him sharply. Keen eyes in the big red weather-beaten face.
‘That is I saw the body as soon as I came in, but I didn’t ring the barracks straight away.’
‘Why would that be?’ the Guard asked.
Before Roger could reply he added:
‘You’re English, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am. I live over here though. I came over about three years ago.’
‘Well,’ the Guard said, ‘I mustn’t be asking you questions when the inspector’s coming round himself. But you tell him why you didn’t get on to the barracks right away, mind.’
‘Yes. I will, certainly.’
They waited in awkward silence, standing just by the door of the sitting-room. After a while Roger took his hand out of Cuchulain’s collar. The Guard clicked his tongue at him. The big dog sniffed at the Guard’s massive boot but was too uneasy to be friendly.
At last they heard steps on the stairs. The Guard hurried forward and let in Inspector Murphy with a police surgeon and two detectives in plain clothes. The inspector formed a curious contrast to the hulking figure of the red-faced Guard. He was a small man, probably as small as the regulations permitted, and his face had an unhealthy office paleness. He left the examination of the body to the doctor and asked Roger to tell him exactly what had happened.
‘I was coming to supper,’ Roger said. ‘The door was open. I let myself in with the dog. The room was in darkness. I switched on the light. I saw Eric. I made sure he was dead and then I telephoned you. Or, to be accurate, I telephoned you after several minutes. I wanted to think.’
The inspector looked at him sharply with his pale ferret’s face.
‘What about?’ he asked.
‘About Eric. About why he should be dead.’
‘Very natural, God rest him. And did you come to any conclusions?’
‘No,’ Roger said. ‘He looked as if he had been poisoned or something, but I suppose it could have been a heart attack. Though he never told me he suffered from anything. He always seemed very fit. He played squash and tennis and whatnot.’
The inspector turned abruptly and crossed the room to the big armchair where the doctor was still examining the body. He leant over beside him and said something in a voice too low for Roger to hear.
‘O
h yes, definitely. No doubt about that at all,’ the doctor said.
The inspector straightened up and came back to Roger.
‘Death by some form of poison,’ he said. ‘Now, you say you knew the deceased fairly well?’
‘Yes, we were friends. We came over from England together to work at the School of Further Studies.’
The inspector looked at him sharply.
‘Did you now?’ he said.
‘About three years ago.’
‘I see. So you’d very likely know if the deceased had expressed any intention of taking his own life, or had troubles or anything of that nature?’
‘I might. But I didn’t see as much of him as you might think. His interests were rather different from mine.’
‘All the same, did he say anything about suicide ever?’
Roger took his time over his answer.
‘No,’ he said, ‘though I had thought recently that he had been a bit worried. I don’t know what about.’
Again the sharp ferret’s look.
‘No idea?’
‘No.’
‘And nothing actually said about suicide?’
‘No. Not even anything like a broad hint.’
‘I see. Now I take it the deceased wasn’t married. There’s no sign of a matrimonial home at all.’
‘No, he wasn’t married.’
‘Was he a wealthy man at all?’
Roger looked round the flat. The slightly dilapidated furniture that went with it, the decorations overdue for renewal.
‘There’s some live in worse places than this that have money enough in the bank,’ Inspector Murphy said.
‘Yes, yes, I suppose so. But I’m sure Eric didn’t have any income except what he earned at the School.’
‘And that isn’t all that much, eh? It isn’t there that you’ll be making your fortune for all that it’s so well spoken of.’
Roger smiled a little. ‘No.’ he said.
‘I see. Now, did you handle or touch anything at all while you were waiting for Guard O’Casey to get round here?’
‘No, I didn’t. Though of course I’ve handled things in the flat on previous visits.’
Guard O’Casey, standing outside the open front door, said in a loud voice:
‘I made certain he didn’t, inspector, so far as I was able.’
‘Good.’
The inspector looked down at his shoes. They were highly polished and the toes were unexpectedly pointed for a policeman’s.
‘There wasn’t anything at all in the form of a note?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Roger without hesitation, ‘I’d have told you if there had been. You asked me if I touched anything.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Inspector Murphy soothingly. ‘It’s just that it’s pretty usual for a suicide to leave a note. They almost all do it. But if there wasn’t one, there wasn’t one. Sure, it may turn up somewhere yet. Now, if you’ll give Sergeant Boyle there your address I think you needn’t wait any longer, Mr Farrar. Good night to you.’
Roger gave Sergeant Boyle, one of the plainclothes men, his address and left.
Cuchulain trotting down the chill stairs in front of him, his tail between his legs.
Late in the afternoon of the next day Inspector Murphy called on Roger at the School. There was nobody else working in the library and Roger said that they might as well sit there in comfort.
‘They don’t give you much in the way of accommodation, I dare say,’ the inspector said.
‘It’s sparse but adequate,’ Roger replied. ‘The trouble is we need central heating. We’ve a good fire here, but anywhere else is apt to be perishing.’
‘I see you have that fuel they make from the turf. I often wonder is it any good at all.’
‘Oh, we’re comfortable here all right. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Well,’ said Inspector Murphy, ‘it looks like your Mr Smith committed suicide all right. He had poison in his stout. Bitter stuff enough, but I dare say you could take it in stout and not be after noticing it too much.’
‘Was it the sort of stuff that someone could have slipped into his glass?’ Roger asked.
‘I suppose they might,’ Inspector Murphy said. ‘But there’s no evidence at all that anybody would be wanting to do a thing like that. As far as we can find out so far he had little enough money, there was no sign of robbery, he had no entanglements with women. He had acquaintances in plenty – he’ll be sorely missed – but no close friends in the city besides yourself.’
‘Yes, that’s probably true,’ Roger said.
‘Now, I’d like to get any evidence I can about the state of his mind. You said last night that you had thought he had been a bit depressed like in the past half year or so, wasn’t that it?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. But I can’t tell you any more. He seemed a bit irritable on occasion. Other people must have noticed it. Ask them here. Ask his lab assistant.’
‘I’m after doing that,’ said Inspector Murphy. ‘He did remember an incident two or three months back when Mr Smith smashed a test tube or something like that. He thought he did it in a rage.’
‘Yes, I think I remember the incident too. It was just one sign that Eric was unusually irritable.’
‘Normally he was a calm sort of person then?’
‘No, not exactly calm. He could get very excited about things. But he had a cheerful temperament. He didn’t get upset.’
‘But in the past half year he has been worried, although you had no knowledge what the trouble was?’
‘That’s it exactly.’
‘I see.’
Inspector Murphy looked up quickly. Sharp eyes in the pale face.
‘You can’t pin down anything that happened some time in the summer that would account for it?’
‘No.’
An unequivocal statement.
‘I see. Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No letter received here or at his home?’
‘If there had been I’d have been unlikely to know.’
‘Of course, of course.’
The inspector stood up. He looked at the glowing turf fire as if reluctant to leave it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s not as satisfactory as I’d like but if I can’t do any better before the inquest that’ll have to be it. We’ll inform you when the inquest’s to be held. You’ll be wanted to give evidence. He seemed to have no relations at all so far as we can find out.’
Roger walked across to the door with the inspector. As he put his hand on the handle the inspector said:
‘Ah. One thing more. Notes. There wasn’t one here for you, was there by any chance?’
‘No, there was nothing.’
‘Ah well. And nothing at your flat?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’
He went out into the chilly hall.
‘And nothing at Mr Smith’s flat? Nothing that you might have forgotten last night?’
‘No, nothing whatsoever.’
‘Good night so.’
‘Good evening.’
The inspector swung the wide front door of the School open just enough for his slim body to slip through. He closed it behind him slowly and quietly.
The academic calm of the cold hall under the fine plasterwork ceiling.
Roger stood lost in thought.
The motionless figure with the stooping shoulders, thickening waist and unlikely fair hair. The chill calm of the classically proportioned hall. The silence of the still air.
The inner turbulence. The whirling thoughts. The hunched determined rider forcing his dark steed onwards through the turmoil of the black storm.
It was three days later, on the Thursday, that Roger became aware that he was being followed.
He had left the School about five in the evening and was walking part of the way home to call in at a dry cleaner’s in Grafton Street to collect a suit he had left there. There were plenty of people about with o
ffice workers leaving to go home and shoppers intent on making last purchases. For this reason presumably the man following Roger had had to risk getting quite close in case his quarry should go into one of the bigger shops and come out by a second entrance.
He was a squat man with immensely broad shoulders and a thin pointed face wedged deeply between them. He wore an old flat cap. In spite of the cold he had no overcoat. His greasy-looking jacket was buttoned tight and at his throat he had a knotted scarf. He might have been a docker.
Roger had first noticed him at the moment he left the School. He was standing on the other side of the square and would normally have been invisible at that time of the evening as he had chosen a pitch between two street lamps. But just at the moment that Roger had come out of the School a car on the far side of the square had switched on its full headlights. The beams had fallen full on the man for perhaps three seconds, and in that time they had shown him in an unmistakable all-black silhouette. There was something misproportioned about him that marked him out, something to do with the immense width of the shoulders and the narrowness of the wedge-shaped head between them.
Roger had thought no more about him and had certainly not noticed him again until a few yards into Grafton Street his attention had been caught by a display in a shop window. Under a painted sign saying ‘Medical Hall’, flanked by two flask-shaped bottles of red and green liquid there was a tall pyramid of a new slimming product. Roger spent some time reading the accompanying advertisement. The crowds were thick at this point and the docker must have had to close in.
Abruptly Roger decided that he was not after all really fat. He turned to go, only to find that a mother wheeling a pram had pushed it right up against the shop window in his path. To get clear he had to turn and face back in the direction he had come from. He caught the docker under the full light of a street lamp, standing waiting.
But it was not until he went into the cleaner’s to fetch his suit that it occurred to him that the man’s presence was more than a coincidence. He was in the shop a long time. Something had gone wrong about his ticket. The counterfoil he had handed in corresponded to a violently striped Italian-style jacket and a long search proved necessary to locate his own dark grey suit.
The Dog It Was That Died Page 4