The Chelsea Murders

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Chris! Not yet, for goodness’ sake,’ Mooney said. ‘I said I’ll call you … Sure. You’ll get it. Maybe in half an hour … Wow!’ she said, hanging up, ‘I tell you! Stand by for revelations, Steve. Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Well, not unless –‘

  ‘I do,’ Mooney said. She made two.

  ‘Has a revolution broken out somewhere?’ Steve said.

  ‘It will,’ Mooney said. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers. Where?’ Steve said.’

  Mooney spreadeagled herself down, jeans-clad limbs straggling. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t till Artie gets here, anyway. Where is he?’

  ‘He’s in a lot of places,’ Steve said. ‘In a modest way we’ve got a news item of our own.’

  ‘So he said. Where’s Frank?’

  ‘Is Frank coming?’

  ‘I hope not. I mean – where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. Isn’t it his library day? What is it, Mary?’

  ‘What it is,’ Mooney said, taking a glug, ‘is something you had better fasten seat-belts about … I really need Artie’s reaction. Still, no harm in telling you, I suppose. Do you want a refill?’

  ‘Okay,’ Steve said.

  Mooney got two refills.

  ‘What I’m talking about,’ she said, ‘is a little house in a place called Sevastopol Street, which you won’t have heard of, but which, by Christ, and by virtue of my office, you will, and so will everybody else. Are you sitting comfortably, Steve?’

  ‘So far,’ Steve said.

  ‘Well, this same little house, in Sevastopol Street, is the headquarters,’ Mooney said, making three pronouncements of the phrase – she had got a bit light-headed suddenly with her second drink – ‘of Murder Inc., British style. It sounds right, doesn’t it – Sevastopol Street?’

  ‘It does. What kind of murders?’ Steve said.

  ‘The Chelsea Murders. They were planned there,’ Mooney said. ‘I found it. I did. Together with the evidence. I mean, damn it, it’s just a little house, and he had a room in it – and you could look for a year and never find it. Needle in a haystack. And I found it.’

  ‘Well, wonderful,’ Steve said. ‘Why don’t you get yourself another drink, and tell me about it. What evidence?’

  ‘Well,’ Mooney said, pouring her third, ‘it’s long and labyrinthine, and rather wonderful.’

  ‘Not too long?’ Steve said, as he looked at his watch. It was a few minutes to one.

  ‘I’ll try and keep it short.’

  It still came out long. By one o’clock, she still hadn’t got to her piece of evidence. Steve was restive. ‘Isn’t Artie due?’ he broke in.

  ‘He said he might be late. Hang on, the best is yet to come.’

  ‘Damn it, show me it. You’re driving me mad.’

  ‘Patience – So this old cow,’ Mooney said, ‘kept yelling and sneezing upstairs, and he kept trying to get rid of me …’

  At ten-past one, she had actually got to the thing.

  Steve quietly watched her.

  ‘So what is the relevance?’ he said.

  ‘Christ – can’t you see? If he’d seen this black dumping stuff in Colston Street, what’s he doing writing about it in Sevastopol Street, a good three miles away? And trying it out in different kinds of handwriting. It’s a draft. And if he’s sent the police the finished copy, which presumably was the intention, well damn it – I’ve got the only link, and it’s got to be him, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Well, yes,’ Steve said. ‘I suppose so. How about getting us some more drinks, then? And you can show me the thing now.’

  ‘How many have I had?’

  ‘Two,’ Steve said.

  ‘Liar. Give me your glass – well, it’s almost full.’

  ‘Top it up. Where is the stuff? Among this rubbish?’

  ‘Leave that alone. That rubbish is a first class little bio of Frank and his Dad. Poor Frank – he must have flipped. Oh, well, truth comes first. Stop messing about with that stuff. You’ll see it when Artie comes.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mary. You’ve worked me up,’ Steve said. ‘Let’s have a glimpse, and you can hide it again, and I won’t bat an eye when you tell it.’

  ‘It isn’t there, so keep your hands off,’ Mooney said. ‘It’s in the drawer, you clot. Hang on.’

  She gave him a drink and got the stuff out of the drawer. It was in a folder now, and she handled it delicately.

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ Mooney said, ‘and I know I’ve had one too many. Don’t touch – it has to be photographed …’

  She assembled it herself, carefully moving her drink out of the way. The paper was fragile, but she got it in order.

  ‘These are his earlier inventions, see?’ she said, showing the almost identical fragments.

  ‘Yes,’ Steve said.

  ‘What the – what are you doing?’ Mooney said.

  Steve had crumpled up all the delicate fragments in his hand.

  ‘I’ve got another invention here, Mary,’ Steve said.

  From his pocket he had taken a plastic bag.

  ‘Steve – are you crazy?’ Mooney said.

  ‘Maybe a little. It won’t take a minute, Mary,’ Steve said.

  She threw her glass in his face. He came at her with the plastic bag. It was something he had taken from the plastic bag. She found the bottle and hit him with it. It struck him hard on the forehead, spilling, but it didn’t break, and it didn’t stop him. He didn’t even seem to feel it. He hadn’t flinched, and he kept Smiling, The wall buzzer sounded, and she tried to get to it – in a matter of seconds absolutely terrified, suddenly realizing everything, including the fact that she was half drunk and her limbs not working properly. She didn’t get to the wall buzzer. He just jumped over the sofa and pinned her there. He got her turned round, facing the wall. She was bigger than him, much bigger, but he seemed made of coiled steel, and he had her round the throat with a pad over her face. She thought she knocked the receiver off its hook, but that was no good, wouldn’t open the door that way, no good at all …

  *

  Artie waited some seconds below, and tried again. He just kept his finger on the button and shouted ‘Mary!’ into the grill.

  Oh Jesus, he thought, he was too late. But he couldn’t accept that he was too late. There was too much energy shaking in him. He pressed Tizack’s button, and heard the door click immediately, and pushed it in and ran up the stairs. He went past Tizack’s landing and up the next flight, and banged on Mooney’s door.

  No sound there. Jesus.

  The bastard had come and taken her away.

  He pounded the door and put his ear to it. He could hear a sound in there somewhere, and pounded harder. ‘Mary!’ he called. Perhaps in some inner room, the bathroom … The bastard had somehow got wind that they’d pulled him in and had run away. And Mary had waited here fruitlessly. ‘Mary!’ Artie called. Oh, Jesus.

  He didn’t know whether to break the door in.

  He definitely heard something. There were footsteps. The door opened, and Steve stood there.

  ‘Artie,’ Steve said anxiously. ‘There’s something the matter with her. I don’t know what it is.’

  Steve was looking small and pale and fragile; also very frightened.

  ‘She just passed out!’ he said.

  ‘Hello, then,’ Artie said.

  ‘Come in.’

  ‘Good day to you,’ Artie said.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Sing hey to you,’ Artie said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Artie right away knocked him down. He couldn’t control himself. He caught him a most colossal blow above the right eye, and, snarling, bent and picked him up and hit him in exactly the same place again.

  ‘Artie!’ Steve said.

  Artie just pounded him. His intention was to smash him completely. He hit him several times in the same place, and then concentrated on the mouth and the nose. He wanted t
o obliterate the face. He held him with his left hand, and with the right had hit him perhaps thirty or forty times, very fast, like a piston, Steve’s face turning this way and that under the blows, like a pale and tortured young St Sebastian, before the plain-clothes men, pounding up the stairs, swarmed over him.

  Mr Tizack, his receptionist, and a shoeless patient watched, alarmed, from the landing below.

  36

  QUITE hideous in his triumph, Warton put up a virtuoso performance of courtliness and grace. ‘Want to call a lawyer, ng? Don’t have to say a word now if you don’t want. Cup of tea, rest, take your time, ng?’

  ‘Quike orrike, Chief,’ Steve said nodding. ‘Ake ik or gown.’

  He nodded at Summers who was waiting to take it all down.

  Teeth had gone; his face was an ill-defined mess; but the cockiness remained.

  ‘Will have to ask you, in that case,’ Warton said, studying the face more raptly, and bearing in mind future interpretational niceties, ‘to sign every page.’

  Okay, Guv, it’s a fair cop, Steve wanted to tell him. But this was beyond him.

  At about eight o’clock he began signing pages, though.

  *

  About this time, Mooney came to, and said she felt like death. ‘Not death, dear,’ Jack said. ‘You don’t feel anything when you’re dead. You feel a lot now. You’ll feel even more later.’

  She raised a hand to her head, and a small flash immediately went off and she saw that a photographer was behind it. Blearily she observed that Chris was there, too, and also a large policeman. ‘Where am I?’ she said.

  ‘That’s a question,’ Jack said, ‘with important bearings. I wanted you to be at the London Clinic, courtesy of the Globe, but you’re actually at St Stephen’s, courtesy of the police. That man at the door, I don’t know if you can see him, is a policeman. We got in first only because we love you. At the other side of the door I spotted people from the Express, Sun, Mirror, Mail, Times, Telegraph and Guardian. Also, I think, the Evening News and Standard.’

  ‘Reuter and U.P., too,’ Chris said. ‘I saw them.’

  The photographer said he’d noticed Keystone and A.P.

  ‘Christ, I feel sick,’ Mooney said.

  ‘Darling, do you?’ Jack said. ‘Well, if I were you, when those people come in and start asking questions or trying to take photographs, I should just be sick. As often as you want,’ he added. ‘And I’m this moment going to see the administration about this scandalous state of affairs. Hounding patients in a public hospital. Try just two more to be certain,’ he advised the photographer, as he set off to do this.

  *

  Mrs Bulstrode came to about the same time. She felt perky after her doze, and it struck her that she wouldn’t mind beans on toast. The earlier toast had been fine. She couldn’t remember for a moment where she kept her canned stuff – memory definitely going – but found it in the end. The thing in the bowl was in the same cupboard. The young pansy – she shouldn’t call him that, really, since he’d been so useful – had filled a bowl with paraffin to try and ease the locked mechanism. It was the automatic bit of the grill that had stuck. The paraffin seemed to be the source of the smell so she poured it down the sink. She’d never used automatic, anyway.

  *

  At Sanderstead much later – actually at about three in the morning – Rose, in her dressing-gown, brought Warton up a cup.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Your cocoa, dear.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll have another Scotch.’

  ‘Oh, Teddy. You’ve had enough.’

  ‘What’s up, Rosie?’ Warton said, somewhat slurred. ‘Not every day, you know! Last of that bloody rubbish, I tell you. They can stand on their heads. I tell you!’

  ‘All right,’ Rose said, not anxious to be told again, and brought him another.

  ‘Clever little devil,’ Warton said. ‘Really was. Foxed me. Well, he could have foxed anyone.’

  ‘Of course he could,’ Rose said. ‘Half-past three, dear. Are you thinking of going up there in the morning?’

  *

  Warton took the statement to the C.C. and stood by for explanation.

  But there wasn’t much to explain.

  Most had already been explained, and a good part deduced.

  Steve had got himself a photo-copy of the List of Residents and had seen what Detective Mason had seen. He had sent off his first quotation as a joke, but when it drew no response he had decided to take it a stage further.

  He said his idea was to goad the police into publicizing the joke murder messages. He could foresee the huge newspaper treatment that would follow. His own joke murder film was at that time stalled for lack of funds. With the right publicity climate, the small offbeat production might easily mushroom into a timely and audacious entertainment that could bring kudos and fortune.

  That had been the idea, anyway. But a number of developments had turned it into different directions.

  The first was his palming, some weeks before, of what he thought was a bottle of laughing gas. This had been at the chemical laboratories where they had been discussing a laughing-gas scene. In his flat he had experimentally tried a small amount and had chloroformed himself.

  He decided to use the chloroform for his joke attack on Mrs Honey, and then realized he would need a disguise as well. As it happened, he already had this, too. After the night-shooting he found that he had crammed into his bag, along with things of his own, the discarded mask, and had so far forgotten to mention it.

  He realized that he’d better not keep these things in his flat and that he needed an extra room.

  When he got the room – perhaps even before he got it – the really major development occurred.

  He said that in reply to the box number in the Gazette he had signed himself ‘Freer’, and as soon as he’d done it he felt freer. He realized he’d probably had in mind some echo of ‘Greer’ – Colbert-Greer: so he’d got himself a pair of plain glasses like Colbert-Greer’s. And then everything had changed. In Freer he had another person, as separate from himself as the film. The film could play out any fantasy it wanted. So could Freer.

  ‘Jekyll and Hyde, eh?’ the C.C. said.

  ‘Something like that,’ Warton said. ‘Codswallop of all sorts. You’ll see it there. Stuff about the earthquake – how nobody cared about the thousands of dead. How they could be made to care about a couple of mystery deaths. Society sick. All a game. Ought to be shown up. By him and his mate Freer.’

  Steve hadn’t only seen how he and Freer could show up society. He had also seen how they could pick up some money as well as making a monkey out of the police, none of which could be bad for the film. Bad things wouldn’t be his doing, anyway. Freer was the one who did bad things.

  The first bad thing Freer decided to do was kill Wu.

  Steve made arrangements. He had bought the supplies: cotton wool, plastic bags, rubber bands.

  ‘In the next bit, he shows his talent,’ Warton said. ‘Timing.’

  In the next bit, Steve had smartly knocked up the caretaker at the student hostel, told him he was back and was there a registered letter for him? There was and the man gave him it. But Steve hadn’t just arrived: he was just leaving. He’d got a taxi in the King’s Road the moment he left the shop, and he took one immediately back. Into the bargain, he’d already visited

  Sevastopol Street, just behind the hostel, for his supplies. In the King’s Road, he watched the shop until Chen left and then went and rang the doorbell himself. Wu, mystified, had let him in, and the moment he was seated at his desk, Steve had taken the soaked pad out of the plastic bag and chloroformed him. As soon as Wu succumbed, trapped in his chair, he had fixed the bag over his head and left him to suffocate while he got the block and tackle.

  Wu’s pockets had produced the keys, and a brisk survey below the cashbox. Of the $2,500 in it, he had taken $2,000, leaving the 500 as well as the drugs against a probable police search: his idea to show that
the murder was not for money – a thief wouldn’t have left any – and to discredit Chen’s possible hints on this score.

  He’d then left by the back door, dumped the pad, posted off the dollars to Sevastopol Street, and had been propping up the bar at The Potters for twenty minutes when Artie at length arrived: all timing properly certified by caretakers and barmen.

  ‘Class, you see,’ Warton said. ‘And it nearly worked. Well, it did work. But Artie loused it up.’

  Artie had certainly done this. His lifting of the remaining $500 had provided a colossal and lasting complication.

  The dollars had gone to Liverpool (Artie’s idea), and after them had gone Artie, attracting police attention, and also something worse; something much worse, something absolutely hellish.

  Years before at the art school (actually in their first year) Steve Giffard had been amused by the pious possibilities of Letraset Gothic, a quantity of which he had stolen together with the cartridge paper which was used to mount it. This had somehow hung around in his general mess of papers, and when the idea of sending the police a joke message had occurred, he had hunted it out: it had seemed right for ‘The Blessed Damozel’.

  Unfortunately for him, in that first year at the art school he had shared a flat with Artie. And for the lavatory of the flat he had made a sign, God Bless This Crapper, out of the same type mounted on the same paper.

  He hadn’t forgotten the sign. He had thought he’d ditched it when they’d left the flat. But he hadn’t. In some way it had been packed up with Artie’s things and had found its way to Liverpool. And when Artie had gone up after the dollars he had found it again; and had nostalgically mentioned it to Steve when he came back.

  This threw Steve into a panic.

  The only links between him and the murder were the messages. He had sent the police three now (Germaine, Honey, Wu). Artie was the only one who could make the connection, and Artie was rash and capable of getting into all kinds of trouble. He thought something had better be done about Artie.

  Steve was a planner and he didn’t like playing things by ear. But he had to now. On a chance visit to the restaurant (a mess-up to do with editing gear) he had seen a cleaver and stolen it.