Man in the Queue

by Robert Barnard

  The telephone buzzed. Grant took it up with an eagerness of which he was not conscious. It was Williams.

  “We’ve located him, sir. Would you like to come, or shall we carry on?”

  “Where is it?” Williams told him. “Have you got the exits all secured? No chance of failure if we hang on for a little?”

  “Oh, no sir. We’ve got him all right.”

  “In that case meet me at the Brixton Road end of Acre Lane in half an hour.”

  When he joined his subordinate he asked for details, and Williams supplied them as they went along. He had found his man through the house-agents. Lamont had engaged a furnished top flat—two small rooms—three days before the murder, and had moved in on the actual day of the murder, in the morning.

  Yes, thought Grant, that fitted Mrs. Everett’s story. “What name did he give?” he asked.

  “His own,” Williams said.

  “What! His own name?” repeated Grant incredulously, and was silent, vaguely troubled. “Well, you’ve done well, Williams, to run him down so soon. Shy bird, is he?”

  “He is,” said Williams, with emphasis. “Even yet I can’t get any one to say that they’ve seen him. Shy’s the word. Here we are, sir. The house is the fourth in the terrace from here.”

  “Good,” said Grant. “You and I will go up. Got a shooter in your pocket, in case? All right, come on.”

  They had no latchkey, and there was apparently no bell for the third floor. They had to ring several times before the inhabitants of the ground floor came grumbling to their rescue and admitted them. As they ascended the increasingly shabby stairs in the last of the daylight Grant’s spirits rose, as they always did at the point of action. There would be no more pottering round. He was about to come face to face with the Levantine, the man he had seen in the Strand, the man who had stuck Sorrell in the back. He knocked abruptly at the door in the shadows. The room beyond sounded hollow and empty; there was no answer. Again Grant knocked, with no result.

  “You might as well open it, Lamont. We’re police officers, and if you don’t open it we’ll have to burst it.”

  Still a complete silence. “You’re sure he’s here?” Grant asked Williams.

  “Well, he was here yesterday, sir, and no one’s seen him since. The house has been under observation since three this afternoon.”

  “We’ll burst the lock, then,” Grant said, “and don’t forget to stand back when the door goes in.” With their combined weight they attacked the door, which gave up the unequal struggle with a groaning crash, and Grant, with his right hand in his pocket, walked into the room.

  One glance round him told him the truth, and he suddenly knew that ever since he had arrived on the landing outside he had had a conviction that the rooms were empty. “The bird’s flown, Williams. We’ve missed him.”

  Williams was standing in the middle of the floor, with the expression of a child from whom a sweet has been taken. He swallowed painfully, and Grant, even in the middle of his own disappointment, found time to be sorry for him. It wasn’t Williams’ fault. He had been a little too sure, but he had done well to locate the man so quickly.

  “Well, he went in a hurry, sir,” said Williams, as if that fact were a palliative to his own hurt pride and disappointment. And certainly there was every evidence of haste. Food was left on the table, drawers were half open and obviously ransacked, clothing had been left behind, and many personal possessions. It was not a methodical getaway, it was a flight.

  “We’ll go through what he has left behind,” Grant said. “I’ll test for fingerprints before we have to light the lights. There seems to be nothing but the lamp for illumination.” He went round the two rooms with his light powder, but there were few surfaces in the flat on which a print was likely to show clear and unmistakable, and these were so patterned over with prints as to be unproductive. But fairly high up on the varnished wood of the door, where a person’s left hand would rest as his right took a coat from the hooks nailed there, were two good prints. A little consoled, Grant lit the lamp and went through the things Lamont had left behind. An exclamation from Williams in the bedroom took him there. Williams was holding a wad of Bank of England notes.

  “Got them at the back of this drawer, sir. He did go in a hurry!” Balm was flowing on Williams’ excoriated soul. “Won’t he be biting himself!”

  But Grant was searching in his own pocketbook, and presently produced a list of numbers, which he compared with those on the notes. Yes, there was no doubt about it, these were the notes that Lamont had drawn with the cheque he had had from Sorrell. And Lamont had been so hurried in his flight that he had actually forgotten a thing so vital. The whole amount was there, except for the twenty-five pounds sent for Sorrell’s burial. That was rather extraordinary. Why had the Levantine, as Grant continued to think of him, spent none of it in the ten days between the time he had received it and the murder? There had been no need of fear then, surely. The value of the notes was large, but that was no explanation. The man had drawn the money himself, and could have had the whole amount in Treasury notes if he had so wanted. Why had he spent none of it?

  There was little else in the flat to interest them. The man had a catholic taste in literature, Grant thought, looking along the single row of books that adorned the mantelpiece: Wells, O. Henry, Buchan, Owen Wister, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Sassoon’s poems, many volumes of the annual edition of Racing Up-to-Date, Barrie’s Little Minister. He took down one and opened it. On the fly-leaf, in the writing he had seen on the cheque at the bank, was the owner’s name: Albert Sorrell. He took down the others one by one. Nearly all of them had belonged to Sorrell. They had evidently been bequeathed to Lamont by Sorrell on his departure for the United States. Up to the last minute, then, these two men had been friendly. What had happened? Or was it only an outward friendship? Had Lamont always been a snake in the grass?

  And now there was the new problem of Lamont’s present hiding-place. Where would he be likely to go? He was in a hurry—a desperate hurry. It was no planned affair. That meant that he had probably had to take what refuge came his way. There was no need for them to consider any such possibility as an escape abroad in an elaborate disguise. He had not done that, certainly. He had almost certainly not gone out of London. He would, as he had done before, stick ratlike to the place he knew.

  Grant left instructions that the search was to go on as before, and went back to the Yard trying to put himself in the wanted man’s place in the hope of working out a line of flight. It was very late at night, and he was very weary, when at last he found light on the matter. The photographs of the prints he had found on the door were sent to him, and the prints were Mrs. Everett’s! There was no doubt of it. That first finger that had left a mark at the back of Sorrell’s photograph in the little room at Brightling Crescent belonged to the hand that had leaned against the door in the effort of reaching for something in Lamont’s room. Mrs. Everett. Good Heaven! talk of snakes in the grass! And he, Grant, should really retire. He had got to the stage of trusting people. It was incredible and humiliating, but he had believed Mrs. Everett was being straight with him. His putting a man to watch her had been the merest form. Well, it was a bad break, but he had his line on Lamont now. He would get him through Mrs. Everett. He did not doubt for a moment that it was information furnished by Mrs. Everett that had stirred Lamont into flight. She had probably gone straight to him after he had left her yesterday evening. She was gone before the watcher arrived, but he should have seen her come back; that would have to be looked into; Andrews was careless. And in all probability she had either suggested or provided the new hiding-place. He did not believe that a woman of her intelligence would be fool enough to believe that she could keep Lamont hidden at Brightling Crescent, therefore he had now to find out all about Mrs. Everett and all the ramifications of the Everett family. How should he do it? What was the best avenue of approach to a woman of Mrs. Everett’s moated and castellated type? No back-door business, an
yhow. She was not a door-gossiper, evidently, and now she was on her guard. That effort to stampede her into a show of emotion had been both futile and ill-advised. He might have known that she wasn’t the woman to give anything away in a back-door conversation. Well, what then? In what kind of society, on what kind of occasion, if any, did Mrs. Everett open out? He visualized her in various surroundings, and found her invariably grotesque. And then he suddenly had it. Church! The woman shrieked church-worker. She would be greatly respected by all the congregation, but very slightly unpopular because she kept herself to herself, a quality little beloved by the earnest members of work-parties and such Christian activities who, having provided a titbit such as a rumoured bankruptcy among the flock, expect to be offered a decently sized and tolerably luscious titbit in return. “Church” had placed her, and since she was most certainly not overpopular, her fellow-worshippers would be all the more ready to talk about her.

  As Grant’s eyes closed in sleep, he was deciding whom to send to investigate Mrs. Everett.

  10 THE BURST TO THE NORTH

  “SIMPSON,” SAID GRANT, “what were you yesterday when you were gathering information about the Ratcliffes?”

  “I was an ex-serviceman with writing-pads, sir.”

  “Oh, well, you can be an ex-serviceman again today. Very self-respecting, clean, with a collar, not a muffler, and out of a job. I want to know about a Mrs. Everett who lives at 98 Brightling Crescent, off the Fulham Road. I don’t want any door-to-door business. She’s shy of that, and you must be very careful. She looks as if she attends church. Try that. I think you should find it useful. Bar a club, it’s the gossipiest community I know of. I want to know, above all, where her friends and relations live. Never mind her correspondence. I can keep an eye on that myself, and, in any case, I have an idea that that isn’t likely to be useful. Mrs. Everett was not born yesterday. Get that into your head and remember it. Don’t work faster than you can with safety. If she spots you, it will mean that some one else will have to take over, and a promising line of investigation will be spoiled. The minute you get something, let me know, but don’t come back here until you’ve talked to me on the telephone first.”

  That was how Mr. Caldicott, the clergyman of the Brightlingside Congregational Church, pushing damply at the mower which jibbed at the tough grass of his front lawn and finding the March sun too prodigal of its blessing, became aware that his labours were being viewed by a stranger with a queer mixture of sympathy and envy. Seeing that he had been discovered, the stranger made a sketchy motion towards his cap, in deference evidently to the cloth, and said, “That’s hot work on a day like this, sir. Will you let me take a hand?”

  Now the clergyman was young and very fond of showing that he was not above a good day’s work. “Do you think I’m not able to do a job like that myself?” he asked, with a strong, brotherly smile.

  “Oh, no, sir. It isn’t that at all. It’s only that I’d be very glad to earn a copper or two for doing it for you.”

  “Oh?” said Mr. Caldicott, his professional instincts aroused. “Are you looking for work?”

  “That’s about it,” said the man.

  “Married?”

  “No, sir.” Simpson was about to add a pious thanksgiving, but stopped himself in time.

  “What kind of work are you looking for?”

  “Anything.”

  “Yes, but have you a trade?”

  “I can make shoes, sir,” said Simpson, thinking he might as well stick to the truth as far as it served him.

  “Well, perhaps it would be more sensible if you did the grass and I attended to other duties. Come in and have lunch with me at one o’clock.”

  But that was not at all what Simpson wanted. The kitchen was his objective, not the parsonical conversation of the dining-room. With a masterly confusion he turned hesitatingly from the mower on which he had already laid zealous hands, and stammered, “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather have a bite in the kitchen. You see—I’m not used to the other kind.”

  “Come, come,” began Mr. Caldicott in brotherly rallying, and Simpson, fearful that his chance of precious gossip was going to be taken from him, could have hit the reverend gentleman.

  “Please, sir, if you don’t mind—” he said, with such a wealth of conviction in his tone that the clergyman gave way.

  “Well, well,” he said half testily—had he not exhibited broadmindedness and the true spirit of brotherhood and had them discounted?—“if you really would prefer it.” He went away, but before very long he came back, and under pretext of hearing Simpson’s history—he catalogued his visitor in a completely unbrotherly fashion as a very respectable fellow—he remained on the pathway until lunchtime, gossiping cheerfully about the things that interested him. He talked about the War—he had been a C.F. at Rouen—about seedlings, and London soot, and shoeleather—this last as being of possible interest to his listener—and the difficulty he experienced in getting young men to come to church. When Simpson found that his last sermon had proved conclusively that God disapproved of betting, and that those who betted committed a sin against themselves, against their neighbour, and against God, he was not particularly surprised at the paucity of Mr. Caldicott’s youthful following.

  “Now you are young,” Mr. Caldicott said. “Can you tell me why young men do not like church?” But Simpson had no intention of leaving the clergyman’s house before evening if he could help it, so he refrained from instructing him, and merely shook his head sadly to indicate mournful disapproval. A consciousness of the weekly half-crown that went to enrich the bookmakers instead of the managers of the local Empire made him attack his work with a new zeal, but he was glad when a gong sounded in the house and the clergyman dismissed him with his blessing to the back regions. More than any meal to Simpson was the pursuit of the game he was engaged in.

  The clergyman—who, he learned, was a most eligible bachelor—had two maids: a cook-housekeeper and a “help,” who looked just like every stage and cinema Tweeny. They were delighted to welcome such a presentable male to their board, and in the hour that he took to his meal, Simpson learned more of lower-class suburbia than he had known in a whole lifetime spent among it. But beyond hearing that Mrs. Everett was a stuck-up widow who gave herself airs because her father had been a clergyman, he learned nothing that he wanted to know. When he asked if her father had been clergyman here, they said oh, no, that it had been somewhere in the north. Some one-horse place, he might be sure. Mrs. Everett went to all the church meetings and things, the cook opined, not because she was keen on church, but just to keep every one in mind that her father had been a clergyman. Revolving this really striking elucidation of human motive, Simpson went back to the garden to resume the mowing which was very nearly finished, and presently the clergyman joined him again. They were having a social meeting in the church hall that evening—would Simpson care to come? Simpson thanked him, and said with sincerity that he would be delighted. In that case there were chairs and such impedimenta to be carried from the church into the church hall—would Simpson like to help with them? If he went down after tea, he would find the ladies’ committee preparing for the event. A ladies’ committee was the thing above all that Simpson wanted to meet at the moment, and he again expressed his complete willingness, and the clergyman departed.

  After an afternoon of border-trimming and gossiping alternately with the cook and the “help,” who invented excuses to come and talk to him without apparently caring whether he believed the excuses or not, and a kitchen tea which, though more productive than the previous day’s one in Lemonora Road, lacked the spice provided by his colleague’s presence, Simpson betook himself to the church. The church he had already located—a red-brick building of a hideousness so complete that it was difficult to believe that it was accidental. The yellowish brown and ultramarine blue of the stained-glass windows was now decently shrouded by the kindly dusk, but evening had its own horror in the brightly lit church hall, wh
ere two or three women were rushing about in the aimless, excited fashion of hens, talking much and achieving little, since none of their number did a thing without one of the others suggesting an amendment, which resulted in the committee immediately going into session. Their debates were protracted beyond the limits of an ordinary man’s patience by their constant and insincere deferrings to each other, and after Simpson had watched them from the door for a little, very much as he had watched Mr. Caldicott’s efforts with a lawn-mower, he came slowly forward, cap in hand, and called attention to himself. “Are you looking for some one?” one of them said, and he explained that Mr. Caldicott had sent him down to assist. He was an immediate success. In fact, he was so sought after that he began to feel inordinately pleased with himself—a state of mind which has no business in a member of the Criminal Investigation Department, and which died a sudden death when later in the evening he met his rivals. Reporting them afterwards in camera to Mullins, he used a picturesqueness of phrase which I regret I cannot reproduce, but which left no doubt in Mullins’ mind as to the type of men who had attended that “social.” Altogether Simpson was rather bitter about that evening, though why he should have been, I cannot fathom. His red-fair hair and freckles were his passport to happiness—no one could resist them; the pink wash that adorned the walls—it was raspberry, with a touch of cochineal—did not presumably hurt him as it might have hurt more sensitive souls; he was by far the most popular male present; and the information he had come to seek was lying about in chunks waiting to be picked up. But the fact remains that, when the ploy was all over and Mullins said to him, “The boss is pleased with you about Brightling Crescent,” Simpson’s pleasant face twisted in a sneer that did not go with red hair and freckles, and he snarled, yes snarled, “Well, I sweated for it!”