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

by John Creasey

  He was seized suddenly with an idea, and broached it.

  “What’s going to happen if she’s still scared when you leave Paris?” he demanded. “Is she safe?”

  Timothy turned troubled eyes towards his friend.

  “Honest, old boy,” he said, “I don’t know. I’m not happy about it. I wish to heaven I’d found Lavering through someone else, and I don’t mind admitting it.”

  Beresford grunted. It was often impossible to reach an objective without the help of a woman, but the agents of Department Z preferred to deal with men. They felt safer, and they were never troubled by qualms such as the qualms which possessed Timothy Arran on the safety of Corinne. If the girl had betrayed one of the Montmartre rats—and she had—her life would be no sinecure.

  And then Beresford looked again at the glum face of his friend, and he grinned. To see Timothy Arran blue about the gills over a girl was unusual enough to be amusing, and Timothy, with a little gentle kidding, would see the funny side.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Beresford, straight-faced.

  “What?” demanded Timothy, suspecting a catch.

  “Take her home and put her in your harem,” said Beresford, “and get Toby to take a half-interest.”

  Timothy Arran made a comment which was unprintable, and turned a corner in the corridor. As he did so a dinner-jacketed Frenchman turned also. Timothy and the dinner-jacket’s middle button collided. Timothy gasped, the Frenchman spluttered, and Beresford soothed both ruffled tempers with a practised hand.

  “That just shows you,” he chided Timothy, as the latter unlocked the door of his apartment, “to look where you’re going and to keep your temper. Hallo,” he broke off as he stepped into the apartment. “The bird’s flown, has she?”

  Arran frowned, and looked round the room, furnished luxuriously as were all the rooms of the Royale. It seemed empty. It was empty. . . .

  “No, it isn’t,” said Beresford suddenly, and he placed his large forefinger over his lips. “The maid sleeps, Timothy, in yonder chair. Step softly, son.”

  The big man went towards a chair, the back of which was turned towards the door and over the top of which he had just seen the top of a head of raven hair, with an exaggerated caution which made Timothy Arran writhe. Beresford kept his companion away, holding him off at the length of his long arm, and thus it was Beresford who was the first to see what there was to see.

  Timothy Arran felt Beresford’s fingers tighten on his arm. He saw the sudden disappearance of the big man’s grin, and the glint in Beresford’s eyes. Something that was very near to fear shot through Timothy Arran. His lips went dry. The hair at the back of his neck seemed to stand on end.

  “W-what is it?” he demanded hoarsely, cursing the fact that Beresford’s height enabled him to see without trouble.

  Beresford turned towards him, white-faced.

  “It’s not nice,” he said in a voice that shook. “She’s been strangled. I don’t think there’s much chance, Tim, but hop down and collect a doctor, and have a strong whisky before you come up.”

  Timothy Arran stared at his friend for a second that seemed an eternity. The Twin’s face was pale, his eyes were wide open and unnaturally bright. There was the suspicion of a quiver on his lips and nostrils, which told Beresford more than anything else could have done that in twelve brief hours Timothy had learned of that thing called love.

  Then Arran turned on his heel.

  “All right,” he muttered, “all right.” But as he went out of the room, Beresford heard him muttering to himself, and the name on his lips was ‘Corinne’.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WILLIAMS

  AS Arran turned away, Beresford hurried round the chair and picked the dainty body of the dancer out of it, carrying her across the room and lying her full length on a settee. The sight of her face made him clench his teeth. It was blue and swollen, horribly distorted, and the tongue and the eyes were protruding. Around her neck was a single silken cord, twisted with fiendish tightness until it had squeezed every atom of breath from her bursting lungs. Round the cord, where it bit into her once-slender but now swollen throat, were the lacerated marks where she had torn pitifully at the cord, trying to ease the awful constriction, trying to breathe.

  She was dead. Beresford knew that no doctor in the world could bring her back to life. But he took her elbows in his hands and worked her arms gently, trying artificial respiration in case of the hundredth chance. The rise and fall of her breast sickened him, knowing as he did that it was only caused by the forced movement of her arms and shoulders, and he averted his eyes from her face.

  A doctor, happily unofficious and innocent of mannerisms, came up within five minutes, accompanied by a white-faced manager. Timothy Arran, Beresford found with relief, had not been able to steel himself to return.

  “No chance, is there?” Beresford asked of the medico.

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  “None at all, m’sieu. Life is quite extinct. If you had come ten minutes before, you might have saved her, but even that is doubtful. A terrible crime, m’sieu.”

  “And in the Hôtel Royale!” groaned the manager, wringing his plump hands. “It will be the ruin, messieurs, it will——”

  Beresford barked at him.

  “Cut that out, will you? Get downstairs and have every door locked, kitchen quarters as well. Telephone to the Sûreté and get M’sieu Picot to come here, and if he’s back yet, M’sieu l’Inspecteur Piquet. And ask M’sieu Arran to telephone me on the house line, but not to come up. Do you understand?”

  “Mais oui, m’sieu.” The manager turned away, cowed by the ferocity of the big man’s manner.

  Beresford turned to the doctor, who was still trying respiration, although both of them knew it was a matter of form.

  “One thing I can’t stand,” muttered Beresford, “is a ruddy ghoul like that cuss. Ruin be damned, and he with it!”

  The doctor gathered the drift and agreed with the sentiment. Moreover, Beresford’s knowledge of two of the most respected officials at the Sûreté impressed him, and he asked no questions. Beresford, glad to keep away from the still body on the settee, walked across the room and picked up a suitcase—Timothy Arran’s only luggage.

  The case was unlocked, and Beresford snapped his fingers. A quick glance told him that the contents of the case had been turned over in a hurry, as though someone had been looking for something—something which might have been in it. That meant, the big man told himself, that robbery played a part in the crime. Suddenly, too, he remembered the dinner-jacketed Frenchman. The man had turned out of the passage; he must have been hurrying, or he would not have banged into Arran.

  The telephone burred suddenly, loud and out of place in that chamber of death. Beresford hurried to it and muttered, “Hullo,” unconsciously keeping his voice low.

  “Want me?” asked Timothy Arran. There was a note of dejection in Timothy’s voice and his drawl was missing.

  “I was going to ask you to call up Craigie on the long-distance line,” said Beresford, “but before you do that, get round the smoking-room and the restaurant and see if you can discover the cove you walloped into just now. Got that?”

  “I’ll ring you back,” said Arran.

  But when he rang through again, it was to report that, with the help of the police, who had arrived quickly, he had seen every man in the place, from servants to temporary visitors, and that while he had examined many dinner-jackets, the vital one was not there. Beresford grunted, and promised to go downstairs within five minutes. He turned away from the telephone to Anton Piquet, who had luckily returned to Paris during the afternoon. Picot had arrived too, dressed for the theatre, and as self-conscious as ever. The hotel doctor had gone. The usual camera men and fingerprint experts were working, displaying more physical energy than their English counterparts would have done in the same circumstances, but saving little time, if any.

  Piquet was a slight
, wiry man, sallow-skinned and shrewd-eyed. He spoke flawless English with only the slightest suggestion of accent, and with little idiomatic effect.

  “This is a bad business, Beresford. Do you know much about it?”

  “Nothing more than Picot knows,” said Beresford. “Listen, Piquet. I’ve got to get back to England quickly, but I don’t want this murder to look like anything but a jealousy crime—crime passionelle, if you get me. The last thing I want is to be connected with it myself—or Arran, for that matter.”

  Piquet pulled his thin lips.

  “Well, for you, Beresford, I can do it. You will have to be careful with the newspaper men, hein? They are downstairs.”

  “I’ll dodge them,” said Beresford. “And if I get anything that will help you, I’ll telephone you from London. You know who the girl is, and you can be pretty sure that she’s been killed because she knew who poisoned Lavering, the American. Picot’s told you about that, hasn’t he?”

  “I conceived it my duty,” said the surgeon stiffly.

  Beresford smiled at him amicably.

  “Of course—you could have done nothing else.”

  “Although,” said Picot, plucking at a speck on his immaculate waistcoat, “it grieved me to betray my promise to a friend, but what else could I do?”

  The detective broke in.

  “Were you looking for Lavering, as well as M’sieu Arran?”

  “Yes,” said Beresford.

  There was a grim smile at the corners of the little man’s lips. A very human policeman was Anton Piquet.

  “One of those dangerous games you play for your fun, eh, Beresford?”

  “Exactly,” said the big man.

  He could have sworn that Piquet winked, for Piquet was understanding, as well as human, and Beresford had played many prominent parts in affairs which had not been confined to England.

  “Then,” said Piquet, “we will work together, and help each other where we can. Adieu, Beresford. I am sorry I did not meet you again in more happy times.”

  Beresford shook hands with the two Frenchmen, and experienced a queer tremor in his chest. There were times, he told himself philosophically, when nationality mattered little and men were men.

  When he reached the lounge, he was surprised to find that Toby Arran was with his brother. Toby had not lost much time in Oxford. Timothy had been drinking more than usual, and his lips were set in a straight line.

  “Tim’s told you?” asked Beresford of Tobias.

  “Yes,” said Toby, and swore.

  His brother cleared his throat, and Beresford hurried on to another subject.

  “What did you find out from Meiklejohn?” he demanded.

  “Williams saw him all right,” said Toby. “Your scholar got there at two o’clock, and left Trinity at three.”

  Beresford rubbed his chin.

  “But he didn’t get back to his flat until two o’clock in the morning. I’d like to find out more about that gentleman.”

  “You’ve plenty of opportunity,” Toby pointed out. “He lives in the same house.”

  “He did,” said Beresford, “but he might have flown.”

  Neither of the others appreciated the humour of this remark, and Beresford did not enlighten them. The affair of the ‘Air France’ trip and the wireless transmitter still rankled. Certainly, he told himself, he would investigate the activities of Mr. Nicholas Williams as soon as he got back to London. Providing that gentleman was still sure that his disguises had not been penetrated, Beresford would be able to turn the tables. When he tackled Mr. Williams he suspected that there would be a variety of odds and ends of information to show for it.

  The big man lit a cigarette and pondered the position. Timothy Arran was badly cut-up. He was not in a mental condition which would enable him to tackle any problem but that of the murder of Corinne the dancer; on the other hand, he was not fit to tackle even that problem with a clear mind. Yet he would kick, and naturally, if Beresford wanted him to return to England at that moment.

  The big man reached his decision as Timothy said:

  “What do you want me to do, Tony? Stay here?”

  Beresford noticed the harshness of the twin’s voice and the glint in his eyes. It would go hard with any man or woman whom Arran could prove was connected with the brutal murder at the Hôtel Royale.

  “Yes,” said Beresford, “you’d better stay in Paris, and Toby with you. Don’t work against the police. Have a talk with Piquet, upstairs; you’ll work well together, and he’ll keep it dark while they can. And listen, both of you. Don’t forget your big job is to find something on Leopold Gorman. Trace every line with that end in view, and report to Craigie daily anything you hear about him. All right?”

  The Arrans nodded.

  “Good,” said Beresford.

  He shook hands with Toby, and then with Timothy, and as he gripped the latter’s palm he said awkwardly:

  “Sorry, Tim, darned sorry. But don’t blame yourself. Blame the Department. It’s kill or be killed in our game, and death’s always round the corner. But the game must go on, taking rough and smooth together, and once we’re in it we can’t get out.”

  A gleam lit up the shadows of Timothy Arran’s eyes.

  “Thanks,” he said, and his voice shook. And then he averted his eyes, and Beresford left him.

  Beresford went to London on the night ’plane, and ran his maroon-painted Hispano from the Croydon garage, where he had left it, direct to Whitehall. It was nearing twelve when he reached Craigie’s office, but the Chief was still there, working on a mass of figures at his desk.

  As Beresford stepped through the door made by a sliding partition, Craigie stood up and walked towards him.

  “How’s Arran?” he asked quietly, as they shook hands.

  “Taking it hard, but taking it well,” grunted Beresford. “God! If I could get my hands round the swine who killed that kid I’d . . .”

  He broke off with a laugh which had no humour in it, and Craigie drew the armchairs up to the fire, saying nothing but fully understanding. Beresford realized the necessity for Craigie knowing every fact available and without loss of time, and he had telephoned Whitehall 63 before he had left the Royale, and had told the Chief that Arran had been hit by the murder. Craigie’s first question when they met concerned Arran; it was a typical gesture, but it moved Beresford strangely.

  “Well?” asked Craigie, after a pause.

  Beresford lit one cigarette from the stub of another.

  “I suppose we haven’t done so bad,” he said. “We’ve proved pretty well that the Lavering business is the Gorman business. The only thing we want to know is why Gorman tried to put Bob Lavering out of the way.”

  Craigie drew at his long pipe.

  “Did he?” he asked suddenly.

  “Well ...” began Beresford; and then his eyes widened. “Damn me for a mutton-head!” he jerked. “Of course he didn’t, or he would have done!”

  “That’s as I see it,” said Craigie. “Lavering was in that place——”

  “The Hôtel Divante.”

  “For nearly three days. If Gorman put him there—or Gorman’s men—he could have been killed and probably never discovered afterwards. And there’s another thing.”

  “You mean the arsenic?” muttered Beresford. “That puzzled me, Gordon. Why try to poison him, slowly, with arsenic? It didn’t run smoothly, somehow. The facts didn’t fit.”

  “They still don’t,” said Craigie, tapping his pipe against his strong teeth. “You saw Lavering was ill with arsenic. I’d say that if he’d been dosed with the stuff for the first time while he was in Paris, he’d have died. It doesn’t take much to kill a man, unless he’s used to it in small quantities.”

  Beresford crushed his cigarette between his fingers.

  “But, darn it, that suggests he’s been taking the stuff as a dope. I don’t think Bob Lavering would——”

  “He was probably dosed with it while he was in London, and for som
e weeks past. Gorman could get at him easily enough through the Fayne woman. I think,” added Craigie quietly, “that we can take it as read that Gorman didn’t want to kill Lavering, but only to put him out of the way for a while.”

  Beresford nodded, impressed by the reasoning.

  “So now we want to know why,” he said. “There’s another thing to remember. Timothy didn’t have a big job getting Lavering out of the mess. A sticky one, yes, but not up to Gorman standard. Why did Gorman go to all the trouble to catch Lavering alive, without taking him to some place more difficult to get at than the Montmartre Boulevard? It was like pinching a dollar and giving it back with interest.”

  Craigie grunted and rubbed his hawk nose.

  “Maybe,” he suggested, “Gorman wasn’t kept in close touch with the Paris end. Looking at it logically, this hotel in Montmartre was a fairly good hiding-place. You say Lavering wasn’t registered there under his own name?”

  “Not registered at all, from what I gathered.”

  “Then the only way of finding Lavering was the way Arran did it. And remember, Gorman probably thought his quarry was safe in Paris. He didn’t expect you’d send Arran over there, because he didn’t know we were interested in Lavering. I probably wouldn’t have connected Lavering up at all if you hadn’t noticed his fiancée dancing with Leopold Gorman at the Two-Step.”

  “There’s another thing, too,” said Beresford thoughtfully.

  He spoke quickly and gave an unvarnished account of his adventure in the air-liner. Craigie chuckled. Beresford scowled, then chuckled too. In retrospect, the trick was as funny as it was clever.

  “I fancy,” Beresford said, “that Williams didn’t altogether expect I’d send him on to Lyons. He probably reckoned on my pinching his wireless, but thought he’d be able to follow me to Paris, where he would have learned that Timothy Arran was already there. And while I was arguing it out with the Customs, he would probably have been working another disguise of sorts.”

  “He seems a useful man at that job,” said Craigie.

  “Good, but not perfect. He can’t disguise his eyes, except with glasses, and he forgot to alter his voice when I tackled him first time on the liner.”