by John Creasey
15
Whose Body Burned
Devenish went up the staircase more quickly than he had ever moved in his life. He could not be sure, but he judged that the cries came from a room leading from the landing, approached by one of the three doors which he had seen from the hall.
For the moment he forgot the Hon. Marcus, who had disappeared from sight.
He tried the handle of the first door. It opened easily, and he thrust it open, peering quickly into a large, well-furnished bedroom. But the room was empty. Devenish hurried along the landing to the second door. Again it opened at his touch.
But this time the room was not empty.
It was a bedroom, sumptuously furnished, but Devenish was not concerned with furniture. He stood for a moment, poised in the doorway and staring at the crumpled body of a woman in the middle of the floor.
She was lying full length, her arms wide-flung, her face turned upwards. Even as he saw her, Devenish knew that this was Lydia Crane. She was dressed in a vivid red afternoon gown, torn at the shoulder and revealing her creamy skin and firm, well-moulded flesh. But the thing which startled Devenish for a moment was the fact that her dress was badly burned at the hem.
He hurried across the room and bent over the woman, seeing an ugly bruise on her temple.
For a moment he wondered whether it would be best to revive her and force information from her.
Then he noticed a door leading from the bedroom. Devenish jumped across the floor towards it, and tried the handle. As he expected, it was locked.
The door was a stout one, and he knew that it would be useless to try and force it with his shoulder. He looked quickly round the room, and caught sight of a small, heavy oak table in one corner. Without hesitating he ran to it, lifted it from the floor with effortless ease, and carried it over his shoulder to the door. Then he stood for a moment, the table raised above him, his muscles flexed, the veins standing out like whipcord on his damp forehead. He drew in a deep breath, and smashed the table against the wooden panels.
The force of impact sent a thousand darts of pain along his arms and through his shoulders, but he hardly noticed them in his satisfaction as the door creaked, quivered beneath the onslaught, and shivered open.
He stepped across the threshold, frowning as he smelt a pungent burning.
Then his heart seemed to stop.
There was a thin haze of smoke in the room, and through it Devenish could see that a part of the room had been partitioned off with a brick-built wall in which was set one narrow, wooden door. The smoke came through the cracks in the frame of the door —and through the wood itself.
It did not take Devenish long to reason why.
Inside the bricked-off part of the room, a fire was raging. Already the door had been burned almost through, and the wood was charred in a dozen places, through which streams of smoke poured, thick and pungent. There must have been an inferno on the other side. And the thought filled Devenish with horror.
Was Chester in there?
He knew, even as he moved, that if he was, there was not the slightest chance of rescuing him. Even as he reached the door, there came a crash as part of the ceiling beyond thudded down. A panel of the door gave way at the same moment, falling to the floor in front of Devenish with a myriad of red-hot sparks and a fierce eddy of smoke which stung his eyes and caught in his nostrils.
He staggered back, coughing, gasping.
The flames, now that they had outlet, began to shoot through the broken panel, stretching yards across the room, fierce, blazing streamers of fire. The intensity of the fire scorched Devenish’s hands and face as he jumped back.
Try as he might, there was no going into that inferno. Whoever was in it was burned beyond recognition by now, and past all human aid.
And, Devenish thought, his blood running cold, unless there was an efficient system of fire-fighting installed in Wharncliff Hall, it would not be long before the whole building was a mass of flames.
The thought spurred him into action. For a few moments he had been stunned at the possibility of Chester being burned to death, but now he realised that the only possible thing to do was to get Lydia Crane to safety. Then he must lose no time in searching through the house—providing he was allowed to search.
Hurriedly Devenish retraced his steps—but as he turned to pick up the crumpled body, he was, once again, frozen to temporary immobility—the woman was not there!
He pushed his hand through his hair, and his eyes were hard. Riordon and his men had been active, even in the few minutes at their disposal.
Patting the gun which rested reassuringly in his pocket, Devenish hurried on to the landing, and looked about him.
There was no one in sight, save the two gangsters, who were still lying in the hall below, Rogers near the fireplace, Huggett at the foot of the stairs.
But along the landing Devenish could see a second, narrower staircase, leading to the top floor of the Hall, and he decided to explore the upper regions first. The fire, if it took the hold that he expected, would rise quickly, and soon the upper rooms would be unbearable.
His search yielded him little.
One room on the top floor he recognised as Marion Dare’s. There were several frocks and coats in a wardrobe, and a collection of toilet oddments on a dressing-table near the window, while one of the books in a small bookcase was signed across the flyleaf with her name.
Half a dozen other rooms revealed nothing, beyond the discovery that they had recently been occupied by the Riordons’ male servants. A number of razors and a medley of dirty collars, shirts and socks were on one communal dressing-table, and a round dozen issues of sporting papers littered the chairs and the floors. None of the beds had been slept in, Devenish noticed, and he was mildly surprised. If, as was likely, some of the men were on night duty, they had not slept much that day.
He hurried through the last of the rooms, then retraced his steps.
No one accosted him as he ran down the second staircase into the hall. There was something about the hall, however, which puzzled him. It was different from when he had seen it, ten minutes before.
He whistled suddenly and scowled.
Huggett was still at the foot of the stairs. But Rogers was missing!
‘Well, well, well!’ muttered Devenish to himself. ‘This is a house of surprises—and that reminds me!’
As he finished, he hurried up the stairs again, and closed all the doors leading from the first landing. The smoke from the fire was beginning to filter through into the hall, and once the flames took a hold, the banisters and furnishings of the landing and hall would be quickly in their grasp; by closing the doors, he kept them back for a few valuable minutes.
Downstairs again, he rapidly looked into the two rooms on the right and left of the hall. As he expected, they were empty.
That left only the kitchen quarters of the Hall, and the room beneath the staircase, for exploration. If Aubrey Chester was not there . . .
Devenish felt a clammy sensation at the back of his neck as he started the last search. Across his mind flashed a vivid picture of Diane Chester, waiting anxiously for news of her husband.
But he forgot his gloomy forebodings as he walked quickly along the passage running alongside the stairs, for as he moved, he saw the door beneath the staircase open a fraction of an inch!
Devenish jumped back against the wall.
Quietly, tensely, he crept towards the door. He could not see it now, but as he moved he heard it creaking faintly and he knew that it was being opened. With his gun held in front of him, he slid forward.
Then he let out a sudden heartfelt curse.
His right foot, barely off the ground, struck against the grinning jaws of a tiger-skin rug, sending the rug sliding across the floor. The crack of the impact echoed loudly through the silence, and a fraction of a second later the door banged tight.
Devenish dropped his caution and jumped forward, trying to kick the door open before it was
locked, but he heard the key turn. For a moment he drew away, scowling at the solid oak in front of him.
Suddenly, he pointed his gun at the lock. Time, now, was vital. Whoever it was beyond might be able to give him information which he badly needed, but he would have to get at him—or them—quickly. Already the passage and hall were filling with smoke which went deep down into his lungs, parching his lips and mouth and burning his nostrils.
His finger touched the trigger. Once, twice, three times, bullets battered into the wood round the lock.
Then he hunched his shoulders and threw himself at the door. It sagged inwards, creaking noisily, and only by straining every muscle in his body did he stop himself from hurtling into the room.
As it was, he caught a glimpse of a man’s strained face and staring eyes, a man who was hunched up against the far wall of the room.
‘G-great Scott!’ stammered Aubrey Chester. ‘I-it’s H-Hugh!’
• • • • •
‘So,’ said Hugh Devenish, five minutes later, ‘the only people you’ve seen since you’ve been here are Marcus and the woman?’
‘L-Lydia C-Crane,’ agreed Aubrey Chester. ‘She came in about ten minutes ago, Hugh, a-and left her b-bag. That’s how I h-had the k-key.’
‘The crack she had on the head made her forgetful,’ muttered Devenish. ‘It would have been nasty if she hadn’t left the key and I hadn’t happened along. This place,’ he added, sniffing, ‘is going to be a funeral pyre. Let’s get out.’
The two men moved along the passage and made their way towards the front hall.
They had lost five minutes, but not all of them in talking. Chester, weakened by his confinement, had promptly dropped into a dead faint after he had stammered Devenish’s name, and it was only between gasps, after Devenish had dosed him liberally with brandy from a small flask in his hip-pocket, that he had been able to give a brief sketch of his captivity.
Apart from a minimum of food and air, Aubrey had had little trouble. Whoever had uttered the cries which had sent Devenish pell-mell up the stairs, it had certainly not been him.
Chester grimaced when he saw Huggett’s body.
‘L-looks as th-though s-someone lost his t-temper,’ he muttered, with a sidelong glance at his friend.
Devenish grunted, striding towards the front door.
‘I did,’ he said grimly, ‘and I’m likely to do it again, so be careful. Open, darn you!’ he broke off, tugging at the solid oak door. ‘We don’t...’
He stopped speaking, suddenly, as the door resisted his efforts to open it. Quickly he glanced up and down—the bolts were drawn, and the handle turned easily enough.
But the door refused to budge, even when both men tugged at it.
Chester went pale as he looked anxiously at his friend.
‘I w-wonder w-what that means?’
Devenish scowled.
‘I’ve got a nasty idea,’ he commented grimly. ‘We’re in a bit of a fix, and don’t you make any mistake about it.’
The door, he thought, must be electrically controlled. Before Riordon and his gang had left the Hall, they had locked it—and in all probability had locked every other door as well. If it was electrical control, he thought, both of them were in a corner which would take a lot of escaping. Unless, of course, they could get through the windows. Even electricity, however powerful, could not prevent them from breaking through a pane of glass.
‘Better not touch them,’ he advised, as Aubrey approached the big windows of the library, into which they had hurried.
He picked up a stiff-backed chair, and swung it forward, staring through the window into the grounds of Wharncliff Hall. The chair crashed through the glass, sending splinters flying in all directions. One of them cut Lord Aubrey Chester’s cheek, but he hardly noticed it in his satisfaction.
‘Th-thank h-heavens we w-won’t be l-long now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I-I...’
And then Devenish, peering into the grounds, saw something which made him hurl himself sideways, sending Chester staggering away at the same time. Not actually a movement, more a suspicion of a movement, in the dark shadows outside.
An instant later a bullet cracked through the window, stubbing its lead nose against the far wall. A second spat viciously over their heads, then a third.
Chester looked at his friend anxiously, his face pale.
‘T-that’s b-bad,’ he muttered.
Devenish, keeping cautiously out of the line of fire, swore vividly.
‘It’s not only bad,’ he grunted, ‘it’s heavy odds against us. We can’t get out without being potted—I reckon Riordon’s got a ring of his thugs round the house—and ...’
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he went on, but there was no need to emphasize his meaning. Before he finished speaking, there came a tremendous crash above them, sending the pictures shivering on the walls, and a hundred books jumping in their shelves. A rumbling, cracking thunder followed.
The ceilings of the upstairs rooms had fallen, eaten by the flames. Soon the house would be a raging inferno.
And if they tried to escape, Riordon’s men were waiting to shoot them.
Their blood went cold as they stared at each other.
16
Death of a Club Member
After Hugh’s hurried departure, Marion Dare forced herself to sit down and pick up the fashion magazine—but she made no pretence at reading it. Hugh’s grim, set face seemed to hover in front of her as she leaned back, her eyes closed.
The Whitehall number she was to call if she heard nothing from Devenish by nine o’clock hummed in her mind insistently.
Twice in that ten minutes, Marion reached for the telephone. As often she drew back. He had said nine o’clock. She might do him more harm than good by calling before then.
She opened her eyes, and stood up, a little frown of anxiety on her face.
A moment later the front door bell rang.
According to custom, Pincher walked ponderously through the living-room, with a slight bow in Marion’s direction, according to another, newer custom, his pugilist brother-in-law followed him favouring her with a blatant wink.
Marion smiled. Wiggings was a characteristic Cockney and there were times when his humour almost made her cry with laughter.
There was another little custom, too. Marion had seen it enacted, with much admiration for the thoroughness with which Devenish worked, and the efficiency with which his instructions were carried out.
Pincher looked out of the window, into Clarges Street, before going to the door, to satisfy himself that there was no one lurking near who might have ideas of raiding the flat.
Now, apparently satisfied, Pincher went into the hall and opened the front door. Marion heard Diane Chester’s voice.
‘Is Mr. Devenish in?’ asked Diane.
‘No, your ladyship,’ said Pincher punctiliously, ‘but Miss Dare is here. Would you care to see her?’
Marion stood up, pleased at the thought of a talk with Aubrey’s wife. The two women had met twice, and had taken an immediate liking to each other.
Diane threw off her furs as she sank into a chair.
‘Any news?’ she asked anxiously.
Marion hesitated. Would it be wise to tell Diane of the message? She decided to compromise, and tell half of what Lydia Crane had written.
‘Yes,’ she said, watching the sudden light in Diane’s eyes. ‘It’s—well, Hugh’s gone down, to look round.’
‘Wharncliff?’ asked Diane, who knew part of the story.
‘Yes—Aubrey’s there.’
Diane closed her eyes.
‘Thank heaven he’s alive,’ she murmured. ‘Anything else?’
Marion shrugged her shoulders, worried and anxious.
‘Only that I’ve to call a certain number if he’s not back by nine.’
Diane leaned forward, patting the younger woman’s arm encouragingly. She could now see the anxiety in Marion’s eyes.
‘If an
yone can get through, Hugh can,’ Diane said with an assurance that she did not altogether feel. ‘He’s ...’
She broke off as the door bell rang again and Pincher made his dignified way to the window.
This time he was not so easily satisfied. He beckoned Wiggings, who stumped to the window cheerfully.
He saw, as Pincher saw, a long low-lying car twenty yards or so along the street, a heavily-built man in rough tweeds lounging against it, and two equally heavily-built men making their way towards No. 77a.
Pincher nodded his head slowly, thoughtfully. Wiggings spat on his palm.
‘Looks like ‘em,’ he muttered. ‘Shall we… ?’
He broke off abashed as he caught Pincher’s reproving glance.
Marion’s eyes sparkled.
‘What is it?’ she asked, with a hint of excitement in her voice.
Pincher turned to her, solemnly.
‘I had not intended to alarm you, Madam, but...’
‘Stow it!’ said Wiggings bluffly ‘Don’t you worrit yerselves, me ladies. There’s a coupla beaux on the dawstep what might turn nasty, but jus’ let me get at ‘em. I...’
Marion stood up quickly and hurried to the front door.
Diane, Wiggings and Pincher watched her as she peered through the letter-box.
It was an unusual letter-box, vertical instead of horizontal, and both surround and flap were made of a peculiar type of frosted glass. From the outside it looked solid enough but from the inside it was possible to get a clear, magnified view of all callers.
One man Marion did not recognise. He was thick-set, swarthy, with ‘racketeer’ written in his battered face, his cold, fishy eyes. He had his right hand in his coat pocket, and something bulged there. Marion guessed what it was.
But she recognised the second man, and her face hardened. He was tall and handsome, with heavily-lidded eyes. She had known him four years earlier as Samuel Benjamin Martin, director of Marritiband Development—the firm which had sent her to prison.
Marion turned away, joining the others silently, her face white.
‘It’s not safe to open the door,’ she said huskily.