Murder Somewhere in This City

by Maurice Procter

  Then Starling saw the strap, and his courage ebbed. A new rope for every murderer, but not a new strap. The thing of brass and leather was like a symbol. The hangman’s assistant moved behind him with the strap, and at a signal pinioned his shaking hands with one adroit jerk. The remaining length of leather was put over his shoulder, and the extra buckle dangled close to his chest.

  More of Starling’s resolve deserted him. He had convinced himself that he could meet death calmly, but that was yesterday and the day before. Now was the time. Now he was going to die. And he found that he was afraid of the ordeal of dying.

  He heard himself whisper: “Will it hurt?”

  The hangman shook his head. “Not a bit. You’ll be all right.”

  They were ready. The Walk began: a prison officer on each side of Starling, the chaplain behind, the executioners last.

  They went out of the cell, and through a doorway which led to the execution shed. They passed an opening, beyond which some trees and flowers grew. Among the trees were small birds which twittered heedlessly.

  Starling never heard the birds, never saw the flowers. He did not take a last look at the soft gray sky. An instinct, the most powerful of instincts, had sent its most desperate appeal to his brain. It was self-preservation, the parent of avarice, cowardice, discretion and last-resort bravery. “You must not die!” the instinct clamored. “You are not ready to die!”

  The instinct totally displaced the reason which told him that it was useless to struggle or plead. But it did not entirely vanquish pride. Some vestige of self-respect kept Starling walking, in silence. He would not ask for mercy.

  In the execution shed there waited the fortunate people who were privileged to witness an execution, and the less fortunate who were compelled to witness it. Outside the prison gates, a considerable crowd waited to see the posting of the notice which would say that justice had been done. In the rows of cells, convicts gnawed their knuckles and waited for the spark of hysteria, the single shout which could start a riot.

  Starling’s pride did not carry him up the steps of the scaffold. The executioners had to assist him. “Stick to it. You’re doing all right,” murmured the hangman, who understood.

  The encouragement helped Starling. In his extremity it made him the hangman’s creature. He did as he was told. He managed to make his shaking legs support him when they stood him on the three-way trapdoor.

  Now was the time for speed. The hangman slipped a white hood over Starling’s head, then he adjusted the rope with quick professional care. The assistant took the remaining length of the strap and began to secure it around Starling’s ankles. But his adroitness seemed to have left him. He fumbled.

  Starling realized that the last moment was near. It was suffocating knowledge. His heart pounded and he could hardly breathe. The moment would come when the assistant had fastened his ankles and moved away. It would be the last agony of waiting for the drop. Starling knew he could never bear it. He would lose all control. He would scream, hop from the trap, fall over.

  “You’re doing fine,” came a reassuring whisper.

  A half second later the hangman extended his mercy to the condemned man. While his assistant still crouched fumbling on the trap, he pressed the release. The trap fell away and Starling dropped. And according to plan the assistant dropped too, onto the soft sand beneath the scaffold. Starling had been spared the last brief time of dreadful waiting. Before he could know that moment, he was beyond knowledge and beyond pain.

  The prison clock began to boom the hour of nine. The condemned man had died with fortitude.

  PART VI Martineau

  1

  The day—the January day—of Don Starling’s execution was the day before Harry Martineau was due to return to duty after a long disablement and convalescence. In the morning he arose at eight-thirty and prepared to breakfast at leisure, but he knew what day it was and his mood was somber.

  “Are we going to have another day like yesterday?” his wife wanted to know.

  Yesterday had been a bad day too. He had been oppressed by the knowledge that it was Starling’s last. In the evening he had gone out for a drink—the first in months—and it had led to many more. He had come home late, and Julia had been angry. She was still angry.

  He picked up the morning paper, and the first item he read—his glance was drawn to it as if by a magnet—was a small announcement that Starling would be executed at Farways Prison that morning. He threw the paper down.

  He looked at the clock. Five minutes to nine. Five minutes to go. He found that he had no appetite. Pushing away his plate, he reached for the coffeepot. Julia frowned.

  At two minutes to nine he closed his eyes and prayed silently. It was a prayer for Don Starling, but Martineau did not mention any names even to God, because he did not know what to ask God to do about Starling. He simply repeated the Lord’s Prayer in his mind until the minute hand of the clock was well past the hour. Julia watched him with an enigmatic gaze. No one could have told whether there was amusement, scorn, or sympathy for him in her expression. Normally, neither of them was religious.

  Julia may have wondered why her husband allowed himself to be distressed by this matter of Don Starling. It was not the first time he had helped to send a man to the gallows, and never before had such an occurrence made him miss a meal or lose a wink of sleep. He had detested Starling, and Starling had deserved to be hanged, so what was all the fuss about? Certainly she could not see why there was any need for him to go out last night and get a lot of drink. She failed to understand why a man could not be sorry in a decent way, without going out and hitting the bottle. She did not agree with that at all, and she was determined not to tolerate any more of it in silence.

  Martineau did not notice her expression. He was thinking about Starling. Queer, he reflected, how a man could feel the loss of an old enemy almost as much as if he had been a friend. Starling had had a place in his life. Now there was an emptiness.

  He guessed it was time he went back to work. There were plenty more thieves and fiddlers in the world. Enough to keep a man busy, leaving him no time to think about what had happened to a murderer.

  The other three still had a chance of escaping the hangman. Roach, Jakes and Laurie Lovett had appealed, and it was possible that for them the death sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment. Starling had not appealed. If he could have escaped death for the murder of Cicely Wainwright he would have been hanged for the murder of Silver Steele.

  A bad do, that, Martineau thought. A lovely young life snuffed out like a candle flame. And to no purpose. Starling had lost his head on that occasion. He had muffed it. His nerves must have been getting pretty worn.

  Young Devery had taken it very badly. Martineau had asked his wife to send a note of sympathy from him to the younger man. He had received in return a civil acknowledgment and the hope of a quick recovery. But the young fellow had not been to see him in the hospital. Well, there could be a very good reason for that. Besides his own troubles, Devery may have thought that it would look rather like lickspittling for a P.C. to go sick-visiting an inspector. Anyway, somebody would have been sure to say that it was lickspittling.

  Old Furnisher Steele seemed to have taken it badly too. He had shut up his shop and never opened it since. Those broken windows on the top floor had never been repaired. Poor old boy.

  Julia interrupted the unhappy train of thought. “What are you doing this morning?” she asked.

  “I think I’ll go down to Headquarters and see what’s stirring,” he said. “I’ll get ready for starting tomorrow.”

  She nodded her approval. Two weeks ago the Watch Committee had promoted him. He was a Chief Inspector now. He would have a lot of administrative work to do. He would he able to do it, but it was a good idea to have a preliminary look at it.

  “You’ll be back for lunch?” she asked.

  He thought about that. He did not expect to be at Headquarters for more than an hour or two.
/>   “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  “Be sure you’re not later than one o’clock,” she said, but not aggressively, because she was still pleased with him for having been made a Chief Inspector.

  He nodded. He was a good husband in one respect; his intentions were usually good.

  He went to Headquarters. Julia went to the fishmonger for a piece of halibut, because Martineau liked halibut. She hoped he would be at home to eat it. If he were detained in town—she could see no reason why he should be—he could phone in time to save the halibut from the frying pan.

  But if he started his old larks—if he didn’t come home or phone—there would be trouble. She wasn’t going to let him start pub-crawling again as soon as he went back to duty. He might be a big man in the police, but at home he was just another husband. An absent husband. Out all day and coming home last thing at night and playing that damned piano. No, Julia wasn’t having any more of that. She was determined to make a firm stand against it right at the beginning of this new stage of his career.

  2

  At Headquarters Martineau talked with Superintendent Clay about his new duties. Then he gossiped for a while in the main C.I.D. office. Then he looked at his own new office and decided what small changes he would make when he had settled in. He began to feel more cheerful.

  But when he was leaving the office just before noon he met Devery.

  “Glad to see you back, sir,” the young man said. He offered his hand hesitantly—there was now a vast difference in their ranks—and Martineau took it.

  “How are things with you?” he asked.

  “Oh, I just keep on keeping on.”

  “That’s the spirit. You do a good job, Devery. I’ve watched you. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a bit of promotion one of these fine days.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Devery. But his superior thought that the sparkle had gone out of him. Tragedy had sobered him. He had grown up. Ah well, he would get over his unhappiness in time. Time helped.

  Martineau strolled to the bus terminus. The meeting with Devery had brought a return of his depressed mood. Both of them had avoided mentioning either Silver Steele or Starling. Too carefully they had kept away from the subject of dead people.

  Dead. Starling’s body would already have gone the way of all murderers’ bodies: buried in quicklime in a nameless grave, according to the ancient and relentless custom of the law.

  The chief inspector shrugged under his overcoat, trying to throw off the irk of returning melancholy. He started to cross Lacy Street. The wintry sun was shining, and there was a happy hustle of people and traffic.

  Starling had said that Martineau would be the Chief of Police in Hell by the time he—Starling—got there. That had been just one more mistake in a short but mistaken life. It was Starling who would now be showing his credentials to the Prince of Darkness. What saving graces had he? Courage, no doubt, and loyalty of a sort. And on the devil’s side a host of sins, deadly and otherwise.

  “Well, we’re none of us so marvelous,” said Martineau.

  He stopped on the corner. He did not want to take his depression home just yet. He needed company, masculine company; football talk, gossip, jokes.

  “I’ll have a drink. Just one,” he decided.

  He walked along to the Stag’s Head and entered. For a while he did not find the company he sought. He stood alone at the bar and drank two half pints of beer, and the laughing and droning groups of men around him made him feel set apart. He stared into his beer and argued against his own mood. “What’s the matter with you, man?” he asked himself. “You’ve got your promotion, so what the deuce have you got to worry about?”

  That was it. In a way he had profited by Starling’s death. That was the thing which worried him.

  Gus Hawkins entered the bar and saw him.

  “Hello hello,” said the bookmaker, approaching and offering his hand. “You better?”

  Martineau nodded as he took the hand. “And you?”

  “Yes, I’m all right. A bit of a headache sometimes, that’s all. It was a right good swing I stopped. What’re you drinking?”

  “Beer. I’ll get ’em. What’s yours?”

  “Beer? Nonsense. I owe you a decent drink. You got my money back. George, two double White Labels, please.” Martineau accepted the whiskey. He raised his glass silently.

  “Cheers,” said Gus. “Absent friends. Your pal Starling. He’ll be a long way from the land of the living now.”

  Martineau drank three-quarters of his whiskey. “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  “Little you care, eh?”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “Me neither. He might have killed me. What a business! I wonder how old Purchas likes it at Dartmoor. Seven years in that place! Serves him right. You take pity on a man and give him a job, and he stabs you in the back.”

  “He did well to get off with seven,” said Martineau.

  “He sure did. Have another?”

  “Yes. I’ll get ’em.”

  “Oh no you won’t,” said Gus vigorously. “Two more of the same, George.”

  Martineau looked at his watch. “Excuse me, I’ll be back,” he said. He sought a telephone, and dialed his home number. “I won’t be in to lunch,” he said. “I’m staying in town.”

  “Oh, I’ve just put the halibut on!” cried Julia. “Can’t you come home?”

  “Sorry, no,” he said. “I’ll have the halibut for my tea.”

  “Where are you lunching?”

  “Nowhere. I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ll be ill again! You’re drinking, I suppose. Who with?”

  “I’m with Gus Hawkins. We have a lot of things to talk about.”

  “A lot of things to talk about with a bookmaker? Harry Martineau, you come home at once!”

  “No. Not yet,” he said. “Good-by.”

  He put down the receiver and returned to the bar. More trouble. But he was not going home to sit staring at the fire all afternoon. He had done too much of that lately.

  He returned to Gus, but two minutes later a voice paged him on the hotel intercom. There was a loudspeaker above the bar.

  “Mr. Martineau,” said the voice. “Mr. Martineau, wanted on the telephone.”

  That was Julia, he knew. She had guessed where he was. Anyone else but Julia would have asked for Chief Inspector Martineau, but she would not want to have his rank shouted up and down a hotel. That was sensible, he had to admit.

  “Aren’t you going to the phone?” asked Gus in surprise.

  “No,” said Martineau.

  “That sounds like domestic evasion,” said Gus. “Dearie me, these wives!” Then he grinned. “I got rid of mine, you know.”

  The manner of the announcement made Martineau raise his eyebrows, but Gus was not abashed. He laughed.

  “Gentlemen don’t talk about their wives, eh?” he said. “But they talk disrespectfully about bags and trollops, don’t they? My wife is one of those. I found that out. There was the late Mr. Starling and a few more. Oh, I was upset, but I got over it. I give her something to live on. More than she’s worth. Some day she’ll start living with some fellow, and then I’ll get completely rid of her. A queer woman is like a queer horse. You can’t cure ’em. The only thing to do is get shut of ’em.”

  “Did you have trouble?” Martineau asked, in spite of a desire to seem uninterested.

  “A little,” said Gus, with a slight growl in his voice. “She had about as much pride as a spaniel bitch. She wept and begged. But I knew too much. I couldn’t live with it. So she went.”

  “And are you happy?”

  “As the day is long,” said Gus, looking at his whiskey before he swallowed it.

  3

  At half past one Gus went into the grill for a meal. Martineau declined the invitation to go with him, and remained at the bar. Gloom drank with him. That, and the shade of the man who had been executed that day. He was not superstitious, but
he wryly reflected that if hatred could bring an elemental soul back to the physical world to haunt a man, then the specter of Don Starling was due to arrive at any moment.

  At three o’clock Martineau decided to return to Headquarters. To go home smelling of whiskey immediately after closing time was bad tactics. It would be better to spend an hour at the office, and then go home to tea like a worker.

  He went into the C.I.D. and picked up the new file of the Police Gazette and took it into his office. Whatever work he would be doing, administrative or otherwise, it was as well for him to know what was going on in the criminal world. The office was pleasantly warm. It would be a comfortable work place, he decided. He browsed through the file for half an hour. Nobody disturbed him. He began to feel sleepy.

  He thought it would be a good thing for him to have a brief slumber. If he went home and fell asleep in front of the fire, Julia would say that he had been drinking heavily, and he would have to admit that she was right. He could sleep here in the office. Half an hour would do. He would not sleep longer than that.

  Sitting at the desk he laid his head on his arms.

  His slumber had an uneasy, distorted background. He dreamed. He was a boy late for school, and all kinds of obstacles prevented him from getting there. At the same time, somehow, he was a youth transporting money for the bank, and he could not get the money to its destination. Also, apparently, he was a young constable on a beat, and he was unable to be at the right places at the right times.

  When he awoke, the room was quite dark. He sat up and shivered, though the place was still quite warm. He sneezed, and came fully awake. Yawning, he found the switches and turned on the lights. He looked at his watch.