“I’ll see the A.C. at once,” ‘Wharton said. His fingers were at the papers on his desk, but he didn’t make a move.
“You’ve heard about Mrs. Allbeck?”
“A bad business,” he said. “A bad business.”
“No more information?”
“None,” he said. “I had a look at her soon after she died and there wasn’t a bruise on her body. One on her head where she struck the bottom stair when she fell.”
“You mean she wasn’t thrown down the stairs. And didn’t fall down?”
“She was killed where she was found,” he said. “And as soon as she’d closed the door on that caller.”
“A powerful thrust, was it?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Anyone could have done it. The knife was razor sharp at the point. Just an ordinary kitchen knife. The old black-handled kind with a triangular blade.”
He got to his feet, and I rose too.
“If you do question Dane, I’d like to be there,” I said.
“I think you ought to be there,” he told me with a touch of reproof. “I doubt if it will be before the late afternoon at the earliest.”
“Any time will suit me,” I said. “I’ll be at the flat from after lunch onwards.”
A minute or two later I was making my way towards Kenray’s shop. It was Wharton who had put the thought into my mind, for when he had spoken of a bad business, he had echoed the very words that Tom Fulcher had used the previous night. Somehow too, I felt I ought to say something to Kenray. Just what I didn’t know. Words may be more than an intrusion in the personal grief of others, and yet I thought that Kenray would understand.
A constable was by the shop and keeping the curious on the move. I went past him to the shop door, but it was locked. Inside I could see Tom Fulcher, and when he saw me he let me in.
“Morning, Tom,” I said. “Mr. Kenray in?”
“No, sir,” he said, and almost caught my eyes. “He’s at the hospital.”
I wrote a few words of condolence on the back of a visiting card—and bleak enough they looked—and gave it to Tom to hand to him. All the words I could find for Tom were his own.
“A bad business, Tom.”
“It is that, sir,” he said. “I daren’t think about it, sir, and that’s a fact. If I did, I’d . . . well, I reckon I’d sit down and cry like a school kid.”
“I know,” I said. “And Mr. Kenray, how’s he taking it?”
“He don’t say much, sir, but I reckon it’s finished him.”
“How?”
“Reckon he’ll give up the business, sir. That’s what he says. Besides, sir, we can’t carry on without her. I can’t run this shop and Mr. Kenray he have to be away.”
“He didn’t say what he was going to do?”
“Well, sir, he did and he didn’t. I reckon he mean goin’ back to the old home, sir.”
“And you’d go with him?”
“Yes, sir. I’d go with him,” He drew himself up with a queer natural dignity. “I’ve been with him all these years and I reckon I’ll be with him as long as he wants me.”
“Even down there you won’t forget her,” I said, and then knew I should have kept my foolish mouth shut. “She was a fine character,” I went hastily on. “You couldn’t be in her company without feeling that at once.”
“You never really knew her,” he said. “Ever since Master Hugh got killed, she was never the same. Picked up a bit for a month or two and then she let it get right a hold of her. Used to snap my head off sometimes—not that I didn’t deserve it. Then she’d apologize. Sometimes after a day or two it would be.”
Then he was suddenly looking up at me.
“Wait a minute, sir, and I’ll show you something.”
I heard him going up the shop stairs and into the room above. It was his own room that he must have gone to, for it was a matter of minutes before he came down, and he was handing me a photograph.
“There you are, sir! That’s how she was when she’d just left school and reckoned she was goin’ in for paintin’. I found it some little time ago in some stuff she’d thrown away.”
It was a picture of a radiant girl, and taken in full summer. A man had his arm in hers and a hand on one of the balustrades of the fountains of the Eiffel Tower, and the Tower itself was the immediate background.
“In Gay Paree, that’s where that was taken,” Tom said.
“You don’t know who the man is?”
“One o’ them painters, I wouldn’t be surprised.” But it was a thought of his own and he was busy with it, rather than my question.
“Gay Paree,” he said. “She was a gay one too. Up to all manner o’ tricks when she was home.” He gave me a sideways nod and then looked up at me again. “Regular fooled her old father once, she did. I know the old Reverend was a bit short-sighted, and his hearin’ wasn’t what it was, but she fooled him real proper. April Fools’ Day it was, and what must she do but get hold of some curate’s clothes from somewhere and put her hair up and so on and knock at the door, bold as brass. I reckon the maid was in the know, but howsomever she showed her in and darn me if the old Reverend didn’t talk with her for quite a time till she give herself away by bustin’ out laughin’.”
“And how did her father take it?”
“They reckon he was pretty riled at first. Then he had to laugh.” He gave that sideways nod again. “Don’t reckon anyone could be angry with her very long.”
It was a happy note and I knew that it was on that that I should leave him. I was smiling as I held out my hand.
“Well, I must be getting along, Tom. I shall see you again soon, I hope.”
“I hope so, sir,” he told me.
“Good,” I said, and at the door: “Don’t forget to give Mr. Kenray my card.”
“I won’t forget, sir,” he told me.
I stood for a moment or two on the pavement, wondering whether to lunch in or out. Then I decided to lunch at the flat, and, if Wharton hadn’t rung, to spend the afternoon on a long letter to my wife. The wind cut chill as I moved away, and as I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my overcoat, there was a something strange that I felt. I pulled it out, and it was that photograph of Tom Fulcher’s.
Chapter XVI
OUT OF THE DARK
It was getting on for five o’clock when Wharton rang me, and he was afraid he’d still have to keep me hanging around. There had been complications, he said, and it mightn’t be till eight o’clock or so that we’d be able to see Bertram Dane.
“What’s happened to Leverton?” I asked. “Has he done any talking?”
“Not he,” Wharton said. “He’ll be out on bail tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll be able to hold him longer.”
“And Mrs. B.?”
“Funny thing about her,” he said. “She shut that office of hers at midday and went home. She was still there when I last heard.”
“What’s the idea? Going to try a getaway?”
“Where can she get to?” George said and snorted.
“What about watching her?” I said. “Is that possible in the black-out?”
“It can’t be done,” he told me. “All we could do was to get hold of the manager. The first sign of her clearing out and he’ll let us know.”
I went out then for a breath of air, just a short walk before the black-out. When I came back I ordered dinner and then looked through the evening paper I’d bought. There was only a brief paragraph about Grace Allbeck. It said she had died in the early hours of the morning and that the police had new and vital information. Developments were to be expected at any hour.
That afternoon I had been very much of a fool. I should have rid my mind of the case by going to a cinema, and instead I had written that long letter to my wife, and, as requested, I had told her about Grace Allbeck; and so, what with that and reading that paragraph in the paper, my mind was filled with the very things which I should have done better to avoid. For there comes a time in every case —and I�
��m told it comes to a novelist near the end of his book—when one sees so far ahead that the mind is filled with an intolerable anticipation. The novelist eats his book, drinks it and sleeps it, and until the last word is written, he is beset with the very frenzy of work.
That was how I was feeling about the case. It was true that I could not foresee the very last word, but at least I was out of my private tunnel and there was light ahead. I knew too that George and I were working on parallel lines, and that sooner or later a tremendous divergence must come. And as I realized that, I suddenly made up my mind that I would see just where I stood. So I took a sheet of paper and began jotting down the things that had occurred to me since that curious moment when I had remembered George’s theory that Mavin had intended to put a sleeping draught in Pelle’s coffee.
By the time I had finished, dinner was brought up. You may not see much point in all the things I had done. I had studied carefully, for instance, the trains from Charing Cross and Pangley; I had read the article on Jewellery in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and under a strong glass I had studied that photograph which I had found in my overcoat pocket. I had even rung up an acquaintance at a private detective agency and, not trusting George’s opinion, had asked his views about tailing a suspect in the black-out.
On my sheet of paper was a jumble of oddments and I propped it against the half-empty beer-bottle and began trying to sort the vital from the irrelevant. Then the telephone went. It was a message from George. I was to meet him at a quarter to nine outside St. John’s Wood Station.
I hurriedly finished my meal and calculated that I had ten minutes before I need start. The very knowledge brought an urgency, and then a slow anger began to take its place. Laverton out on bail, and fixing things, for a clean bill of health. Complications, George had said, about Bertram Dane, and it looked as if he too was going to wriggle clear. Marion Blaketon at her flat since midday, and the black-out making a getaway the easiest thing in the world. And even if she stayed put, in the morning she and Leverton would be putting their heads together and forging a series of steel-clad alibis.
But, my God! I told myself, whoever got clear, she should not. And then I began to think, and as I stood there with my glasses in my hands, thought had never been more clear. There was not even a word to write down of the things I must say, or the order in which they should be said.
Another moment or two and I was dialling a number. So furious had been that sudden gust of anger that now, in the few seconds of waiting, an even cooler iciness of thought had come and my pulse had never a quickness of beat. Three minutes later, when I laid the receiver down, it was racing like a mad thing.
The night was clear. The stars were shining and a young moon was in the sky. I turned over my loose change for luck and then, just as I went into Leicester Square Station, I heard a siren.
It must have been the first, for there were no signs of a raid as I made my way down the escalator, and the train I took seemed more than half empty. It was about five minutes short of the rendezvous time when I came out at St. John’s Wood, and then there wasn’t much doubt about a raid being on. Away to the east the barrage was terrific and while I stood there waiting for George, it began to the south-west. There was no shrapnel falling at the moment, but I wished I’d had the sense to bring a tin hat.
A dark saloon car drew in and George stepped out.
“There you are then,” he said and in his voice was a considerable relief. “I was just going to look for you. What do you think we’d better do? Take the car or leave it here?”
“I don’t mind,” I said, and then heard the first patter of falling shrapnel. George grabbed my arm and fairly hustled me in.
“Push on” he told the driver. “When you get inside the gate, draw in under those trees.”
I gathered he’d been reconnoitring, and I asked him bluntly if he’d come by car because he was expecting to take Dane back.
“No, worse luck,” he said. “All we’ve got to do is give him a thorough questioning. If he won’t talk or explain his movements that night, then he’ll be asked to come to the Yard to-morrow. While he’s there we may have a search of his house.”
“Getting a bit thick, isn’t it?” he said, and told the driver to pull in for a moment. Even while he was talking there was a heavy crump not too far off to the east, and our car felt the blast. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the kerb a voice said, “Look!” and there almost above us was a plane held in a cone of lights. The noise around was deafening and not too far off I heard the whine of a falling bomb, and I shot my head in and cringed to my corner. Once more the car shuddered, though the bomb had been farther than I’d thought.
“Just the night there would be a raid,” George said peevishly.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, about fifty times more bravely than I felt. “If my name’s on one, it’ll get me.”
“Push on,” Wharton told the driver, and on we moved. We must have been fairly close to the house for it was no more than a minute before we turned into the open gateway. The driver flashed on his lights for a split second and then nosed the car under the trees. A voice called, “Put out those lights!” and a warden was making his way across.
“Oh, it’s you, sir,” he said to Wharton. “Thickened up a bit since you left.”
He said no more, for barely a quarter of a mile away was a crump and a crash.
“Getting a bit too near,” Wharton said, and as he told me to come on he must have nodded back to me in the dark.
“Keep in close,” he told me. “There’s a short cut round by this wall.”
“Has Dane got a shelter?” I whispered.
“Not he,” he said. “He’s a fatalist, like some more I know.”
I swallowed the implied reproof and reached out to feel him in the pitch black by that shrubbery wall. Then right on us, so it seemed, was the first whine of a falling bomb. It seemed to gather momentum as we threw ourselves to the ground, and suddenly there was the flash and the roar, and the sound of falling glass.
“Better get under the end of the house,” George growled at me. “A bit too close for my liking.”
My knees and elbows felt sodden and chill as I moved on after him, and it was then that we heard the whistle of bombs again. Things happened so quickly that they had no real sequence. I seem to remember that I was about to throw myself flat again. The crescendo whine of a bomb seemed on the very top of my skull and then just ahead was a tremendous flash and in the sudden glare was a kind of general disintegration. I didn’t even feel what hit me. It was like that time in 1915 when at one moment I was talking to my sergeant and at the next I was opening my eyes in a clearing station. Now when I opened my eyes I knew I was somewhere in bed. My glasses must have been smashed for what I could see was a blur of light out of which there moved a figure.
“What’s happened,” I said, and as I moved I felt a pain like a red-hot needle piercing my skull. My hand went up and I touched a bandage. Something closed round my hand and drew it away.
“Drink this,” a voice said gently, and I felt an arm beneath my neck and something cold on my lips. It tasted bitter, and all at once I was beginning to remember.
“What happened?” I said again. “What happened to Wharton?”
“Just lie quietly,” she said and the arm drew gently away. That pain shot through my skull again and then it seemed that the blur of light went away.
When I opened my eyes again I knew it was daylight. A sister must have been watching me, for as I stirred she moved away. A moment or two and I heard a Voice that I seemed to recognize, and as I tried to raise myself on my elbows, there was the same old pain in my skull.
“Well, how are we now?” the voice said.
“Wroce, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” he said, and his fingers closed about my pulse. “How’re you feeling in yourself?”
“Not too bad,” I said. “In fact I think I’m devilish hungry.” I stirred in the bed as things came
back. “What happened exactly?”
“You got knocked over by blast,” he said. “There’re twelve stitches in your skull. Nothing to worry about at all.”
“And Wharton?” I said. “Superintendent Wharton?”
“He’s all right,” he said. “He was ringing only a few minutes ago to ask how you were.” He tucked my arm in again. “Now we might see about a little something to eat.”
“How long before I can get out of here?” I wanted to know.
“Two or three days—with luck,” he said, and then I had a sudden alarm.
“My eyes are all right?”
“Why not?” he said. “Your glasses were smashed and your eyebrows cut a bit, that’s all.”
Before my meal came they had got me my spare glasses from the flat. Maybe I’d have had more sense not to have seen that meal, for I loathe boiled cod and have no great passion for rice-pudding—not that there was much of either. But after it I did feel a tremendous urge to sleep, and though I woke once or twice in the night, when I really awoke was at about ten o’clock on the Thursday morning. There was no particular twinge when I moved my head, and when Wroce came the first thing I asked him was when I could go home.
“Maybe to-morrow,” he told me airily. “Your visitor’s coming this afternoon.”
“Wharton?”
He nodded. “But only for ten minutes. The first sign of a temperature and in here you stay.”
Perhaps that was why the sister tucked me in and told me to stay put just before George arrived.
“Well, well, well,” he said, and looked down at me. “And how are you feeling?”
“Very much of a fool,” I told him.
“The doctors know best,” he told me oracularly, and drew his chair in. “Got your bandages off, I see. A nasty crack that was.”
He gave me a whimsical look and I knew he was itching to tell me that only a skull as thick as mine could have survived. I told him so.
“Well, you had a lucky squeak,” he said. “An inch lower and you mightn’t have been here. I was luckier still. Got blown into one of those laurel bushes. Tore my overcoat a bit, and that’s all.”
The Case of the Corporal's Leave: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 20