John Creasey Box Set 1: First Came a Murder, Death Round the Corner, The Mark of the Crescent (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  The newspapers had reported that Rickett was partly French, on his mother’s side. It was possible that he had been born in France, and it was equally possible that it had been a paternal, not maternal, French ancestry.

  ‘In fact,’ Devenish said to himself, as he hummed past Kensington Gardens, ‘there’s a lot about Mr. Rickett that I’d like to know. And I’m going to know—hallo!’ He broke off, as a policeman stretched out a long arm towards him.

  He pulled into the kerb, and the policeman came up to him.

  ‘There’s a call out for your car, sir... You are Mr. Devenish?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘The call,’ explained the policeman, ‘is from Headquarters, sir, and will you please ring up the usual place.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Devenish, thoughtfully.

  He climbed out of the car, and walked quickly to a telephone booth on the other side of the road. For the second time that day he heard Craigie’s voice.

  ‘Now what’s the trouble?’ demanded Devenish.

  He heard Craigie’s sharp exclamation.

  ‘Are you all right?’ demanded the Chief of ‘Z’ Department.

  ‘So far as I know,’ answered Devenish, frowning. ‘Why?’

  ‘Had any trouble?’ asked Craigie.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Devenish, with a reminiscent smile. ‘But why all the mystery, old son? What’s the bother?’

  ‘The bother,’ said Craigie, grimly, ‘started when the Yard got a message that you were finished. I...’

  ‘Finished?’ echoed Devenish weakly. ‘You mean nailed up.’

  ‘On the way to it,’ said Craigie, ‘an Aston Martin caught fire at Hampstead, and it had your number plate on. You—or at least,’ corrected the Chief of ‘Z’ Department, with the ghost of a chuckle, ‘your dummy, was burned beyond recognition.’

  He paused.

  ‘I’ll be damned!’ breathed Devenish.

  ‘Well, it’s a fake job, thank God. We’ll talk about it later. When are you coming over?’

  ‘Pretty soon,’ said Devenish, ‘just to prove I’m still alive.’

  He replaced the receiver thoughtfully, and walked back to his car.

  He was still thoughtful half an hour later, as he pulled up outside one of the big houses in Regent’s Park. Among the things that had puzzled him more than he liked was Lord Aubrey Chester’s appearance in the cream-coloured Bentley in the neighbourhood of Wharncliff Hall. Always providing, of course, that it had been Aubrey whom he had glimpsed.

  A sober-visaged butler opened the door, and bowed solemnly as he went into the house.

  He waited until the man had closed the door, then asked mildly for Aubrey.

  The butler coughed deprecatingly.

  ‘Lord Aubrey has not been in since early this morning, sir. But I think her ladyship is in. I will announce you.’

  Devenish followed him across the hall. From either wall, portraits of Lord Aubrey’s ancestors gazed sternly down. There were few things in this house which were not redolent of the fame of the Chesters.

  Inside the wide, high-ceilinged drawing-room, Aubrey Chester’s wife, Diane, was leaning back on a brocade-covered settee. They had been married just three years. Tall and slim, with dark, laughing eyes, Diane was well-known for her charm and gaiety. But now, as Devenish approached her, he saw at once that there was something wrong. She looked up at him anxiously as he took her hand.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘Where’s Aubrey?’

  Diane shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know. I was hoping he was with you. He said he was going out for a spin ...’

  ‘What in?’ asked Devenish.

  ‘The Bentley. What do you know, Hugh?’

  ‘I thought I saw him in the Horsham district this morning,’ said Devenish. ‘Was it a cream Bentley?’

  ‘You do know something. What is it?’

  Devenish shook his head regretfully.

  ‘Nothing, apart from thinking I saw him in a cream-coloured Bentley this morning, scorching like blazes and...’

  Diane sighed.

  ‘I suppose he’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not like him, though, to go out for as long as this without phoning me. And he said he’d be back for lunch.’

  Devenish leaned forward and tugged Diane’s hair playfully.

  ‘Well, you are a fuss-pot, I must say. But if you’re really worried I’ll make an inquiry or two—though heaven only knows what old Aubrey will say when he hears about it.’

  ‘I wish you would,’ said Diane eagerly.

  Devenish moved to a telephone which was on a small table nearby, picked up the receiver and dialled the Yard. Although he was trying hard not to show it, he was in fact more than perturbed. Aubrey was too fond of his wife to worry her unnecessarily. Knowing the trouble that was in the air, and knowing that Aubrey had heard Riordon’s fatal slip when he had given away his knowledge of how Curruthers had been murdered, Devenish was doubly anxious. And it was peculiar, to say the least of it, about the cream Bentley incident.

  Nevertheless he smiled reassuringly at Diane as he asked first for the Chief Commissioner, who had gone home, and then for Superintendent Arthur Moore.

  Moore knew him well, and answered his query quickly.

  ‘I haven’t heard a thing, Hugh, but I’ll make sure. Just a minute ...’

  ‘If he doesn’t know anything,’ Devenish said to Diane, ‘there’s nothing to know. Hallo, Arthur—nothing reported? Be a good soul and try the Sussex and Hampshire people, will you?’

  They waited for half an hour, before the Superintendent came through with a negative report.

  ‘There you are,’ said Devenish, chucking Diane under the chin. ‘No smash. He’ll turn up.’

  But he was even more concerned when he left the house in Regent’s Park, and drove back to his flat in Clarges Street.

  11

  The Hon. Marcus Gets Cross

  On the morning after he had met Hugh Devenish at the Carilon Club Lord Aubrey Chester had felt worried about the events of the night before. He felt that something was wrong, and that the something concerned Riordon Junior, and after thinking it over he saw the incident beneath the Admiralty Arch in its true light.

  Consequently, a telegram purporting to come from Devenish, telephoned from the exchange, left him in no doubt as to his course of action.

  The telegram was cleverly worded—by the Hon. Marcus.

  For the love of Mike (it read) hop down to Wharncliff Hall, Sussex, and ask for me. And the signature was Hugh.

  Aubrey, always anxious not to alarm Diane, had decided to say nothing to her about it, in the hope that he would be back for lunch, sent for the Bentley, and drove down to Wharncliff. To his surprise he was greeted by the Hon. Marcus Riordon, and he realised that he had been tricked.

  ‘L-look here,’ he stammered, ‘I d-don’t know what the g-game is, but...’

  Marcus Riordon beamed brightly, but there was a gleam in his eyes that was the reverse of merriment.

  ‘Don’t you?’ he inquired. ‘Well—step in and see, Aubrey.’

  ‘I’m d-damned if I will!’ protested Chester fiercely. ‘Where’s Hughie, darn you?’

  The Hon. Marcus casually slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a small, dull grey automatic.

  ‘Step in and see,’ he insisted.

  Aubrey’s eyes dilated. He stood dead still.

  ‘Y-you fool! Y-you can’t get away with this ...’

  ‘I can try,’ said Marcus, scowling suddenly. ‘Get in, blast you!’

  He jabbed the gun into his visitor’s ribs, and Chester had no choice but to obey.

  Wharncliff Hall was as magnificently furnished as the house in Regent’s Park, but rather more sombre. Stepping nervously between grinning tigers and an occasional snarling panther, Aubrey went on, the gun still prodding his ribs. The Hon. Marcus turned into a small room, barely furnished, and lit, although it was morning, with electric light.

  Aubrey blinked abou
t him and noticed that there were no windows.

  ‘Sit down!’ ordered the Hon. Marcus, shoving the other into one of two leather-covered arm-chairs. ‘You’ll get some food—if you behave—and if you keep quiet.’

  He turned on his heel. Aubrey heard the key turn in the lock, and realised that he was as safely imprisoned as he would have been in Dartmoor.

  • • • • •

  There was no expression of benevolence on Marcus Riordon’s face when he spoke to the three men who sat with him at a small table in an upstairs room at Wharncliff Hall.

  His eyes glittered, and there was a cruel twist on his face, which seemed thinner than usual. From the tubby, genial little man whom the members of the Carilon Club, amongst others, knew so well, the Hon. Marcus seemed to have grown into a man of deep, evil power.

  Had Hugh Devenish seen him at that time, he would have immediately recognised Riordon’s unquestioned air of leadership. The three men with him were obviously subordinates. Riordon stood, figuratively, head and shoulders above them.

  On his right side was Samuel Benjamin Martin, sullen-faced, obviously squirming beneath Riordon’s anger. Martin played with the stub of a pencil all the time Riordon spoke, and he lit cigarette after cigarette, chain fashion.

  Between Martin and the third man was Sir Basil Riordon. He sat hunched up in his chair, more gaunt and wizened than ever; his eyes, normally glittering and alert, were lifeless. He said nothing, unless in reply to a direct question, and from time to time he removed his gaze away from his son, staring at a little packet in the middle of the polished, otherwise empty, table.

  Next to the financier was Octavius William Young—sometimes known as Charles Rickett, secretary of the Carilon Club. His dark face was expressionless, and his eyes were narrowed, inscrutable. Of the three, Rickett seemed the only one capable of standing against the Hon. Marcus.

  Marcus Riordon stopped speaking for a moment, and lit a cigarette which he stuck carefully into his long holder.

  The three men waited without speaking.

  Marcus puffed a stream of blue-grey smoke into the air, and looked coldly at Martin.

  ‘Well,’ he said evenly. ‘You’ve nothing to say, have you?’

  Martin’s dark eyes glinted in repressed anger.

  ‘What can I say?’ he grunted. ‘I—slipped up, Riordon. What’s done can’t be undone.’

  ‘What you mean,’ said the Hon. Marcus bitingly, ‘is that you haven’t the brains to put it right, blast you! That move with the Aston Martin was perfect, and you…’ he broke off with a high-pitched, mirthless laugh—‘you worked it a day too soon. Tomorrow we’d have had Devenish here—and the police would have thought he’d been burnt to death.’

  ‘Supposing you don’t manage to get hold of Devenish?’ muttered Martin. ‘He’s not easy…’

  ‘I’ll look after that part of it,’ snapped Riordon savagely.

  ‘You’ll have to,’ retorted Martin. ‘Anyhow. I could have sworn the note you sent said today…’

  Riordon’s eyes flashed viciously.

  ‘You’d swear black was blue, to save your skin,’ he snarled. ‘You’d better be more careful in future, Martin, or…’

  He left the sentence unfinished, but Martin flinched as though something had cut into his skin.

  The Hon. Marcus turned away from him, and looked cruelly at his father’s huddled figure.

  ‘As for you,’ he said in a curiously flat voice, ‘I reckon you’d be better out of the way. All you had to do was keep the girl here, and you let Devenish get her.’

  Sir Basil stared dully. Then his gaze dropped to the packet on the table. The Hon. Marcus sneered.

  ‘That’s all you think about,’ he said cruelly. ‘Fill you up with snow, and you’re happy…’

  The old man stirred. His lips twitched.

  ‘I must have it!’ he pleaded desperately. ‘I must, Marcus! Where would you be without me?’

  ‘I’ll show you one day.’

  Sir Basil’s eyes blazed for a moment, then went dull. Cocaine—or ‘snow’, as Marcus called it—kept him alive. Without it he was a hopeless, senile wreck. His son controlled his supplies very carefully. There were times when the old man’s financial genius was necessary, and then Marcus doled out the drug generously. At others, the financier went for days without it, his mind and body wracked, his son watching him callously in his torment.

  Rickett leaned forward and spoke in his even voice, with curiously clipped sentences.

  ‘You’d better let him feed,’ he said. ‘He needs it.’

  The Hon. Marcus sneered.

  ‘Since when have you been leading this outfit?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘You put Devenish on to it, damn you!’

  Rickett returned the other’s stare without flinching. It was true, of course, that he had made a bad slip, when killing Carruthers. The puncture in Carruthers’s neck instead of his arm had precluded any possibility of suicide.

  Rickett did not know that it was Marcus who had first awakened Hugh Devenish’s suspicions—and Riordon, confident though he was in his ability to control the others, felt a sneaking satisfaction at that. Rickett’s imperturbability disturbed him perhaps more than he admitted to himself; Rickett was deep.

  Rickett shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What is—is,’ he said. ‘But the old man needs snow. He’s got work—tomorrow.’

  The Hon. Marcus swallowed hard, and took the little packet between his fingers. It was no time now to quarrel with Rickett, and it was true enough that the old man had an important part to play in the carefully-planned plot.

  He tossed the packet across the table. Sir Basil clawed at it pitifully, his eyes glistening, his whole body quivering. Tearing at the paper with shaking, feverish hands, he poured a little of the powder it contained on to his palm . and threw it into his mouth. Then he dropped back in his chair like a dead man. Inside ten minutes, the others knew, he would be like a man resurrected, keen-eyed, alert.

  Rickett took a long, thin cigarette from a silver case and lit it.

  ‘What’s the next move?’ he asked.

  The Hon. Marcus narrowed his eyes.

  ‘We’ve got to get Devenish,’ he said, with an edge to his voice, ‘and we’ve got to get the girl back. She knows too much to be healthy.’

  ‘What if she’s already talked?’ queried Rickett.

  Riordon’s lips twisted; for a moment he looked what Marion Dare thought him—the cruellest man in the world.

  ‘If she has,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll flay her alive! For God’s sake, Rickett, don’t keep making trouble.’

  There was a flicker of scorn in Rickett’s eyes, but it passed in a moment.

  ‘You think Devenish will come—after Chester?’

  ‘He will, if I know Devenish,’ said Marcus craftily. ‘When he’s here, we’ll get the girl back.’

  ‘And then?’ queried Rickett, watching a smoke-ring disappear into the haze above the four men.

  Marcus tapped his fingers against the side of his chair in a ceaseless tattoo.

  ‘Then,’ he said softly, ‘we can start using Bleddon’s.’

  12

  Bleddon’s Bank

  The general manager of Bleddon’s Bank was a much worried man. Of recent years, the responsibility of the tremendous undertaking had rested more and more upon his shoulders, and if he could have controlled the thousand-and-one activities of the bank from start to finish, it was more than likely that he would have made a good job of it. Unfortunately, his control was limited. He did as he was told by Sir Basil Riordon; his income depended on so doing.

  On the morning of the fifteenth of September, he sat in his sumptuously furnished office and brooded. The Governing Director—Sir Basil—was due at the magnificent headquarters of Bleddon’s—situated in Lombard Street—and Macauly—the general manager—had a disturbing feeling that he would get instructions which he would be unable to view with a favourable eye.

  For more years than Macau
ly had lived, Bleddon’s had been the peak of banking. Its branches spread over the whole of the civilised world, its credit was inviolable, its honesty and fair dealing irreproachable. Nothing was more solid, in the mind of the Great British Public, than Bleddon’s Bank. No breath of scandal had ever been raised against it, and it was the only remaining private bank—its shares were not on the market, but were controlled by Sir Basil Riordon and a host of smaller directors who knew as well as Macauly that they were Riordon’s puppets.

  Even the Marritaba failure had brought no hornets about the ears of Bleddon’s. Macauly knew that the bank had really floated the shares—or Riordon had, which was the same thing—but this knowledge was not general.

  If Macauly could have believed that Marritabas were just one bad break in a long series of successful ones, he would have shrugged his shoulders and admitted that all men made mistakes. But he did not believe that. He suspected—more by inference and a knowledge of Riordon’s character than by any direct information—that Riordon had deliberately rigged the market.

  The very thought made Macauly go hot and cold. If the G.B.P. once got a whisper of that, there would be such a run on Bleddon’s as there had never been on a single bank in the history of economic finance. The result would be catastrophic.

  At half past eleven an electric buzzer on his desk warned Macauly that Sir Basil had arrived, and was stepping out of his car. In time-honoured fashion the general manager hurried out of his office towards the great revolving doors of the main entrance and stood on the pseudo-marble steps to welcome the Governing Director.

  He did not notice the three well-dressed men who were lounging outside the bank, for the simple reason that he was too intent on greeting Riordon. Had he noticed them, he would have found it hard to reconcile the men’s immaculate dress with their hard, brutal faces and watchful eyes glittering with that flintiness peculiar to the killer.

  As the two bank officials shook hands, the three loungers quietly closed in on the main entrance, their right hands thrust deep into their coat pockets.

  Sir Basil, thought Macauly, was looking better in health than he had for some time. The financier’s eyes were bright, and there was a slight flush of colour on his cheeks; he looked less gaunt than usual.