by John Creasey
Taxis were two-a-penny at that hour of the morning, and she hailed one, directing the driver to 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea.
“Do you know them?” she asked.
“Do I know the shape of me nose?” demanded the cabby. “I’ll ’ave yer there in no time, miss. ’Op in.”
Number 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, was a large terrace house near the Embankment, one of the many which were split up into a dozen or more flats for those with enough money to live in comfort as well as at an ‘address’. Quickly—but not until she had paid and tipped the cabby and seen him drive off—she turned into the house and made with the assurance of familiarity for a flat on the third floor. She knocked twice on the gargoyle-shaped iron knocker, and rang the electric bell three times—short, sharp rings.
There was a shuffle of feet on the other side of the door, which was opened suddenly, after Valerie had heard the click of a released lock. An old woman peered short-sightedly round the door, grunting as she saw the visitor.
“Oh, it’s ye back agen, is it? Well, he’s out.”
“I’ll wait for him,” said the younger woman, stepping across the threshold.
The other made way reluctantly. At second sight she was more middle-aged than old, but prematurely white hair and a thin, lined face created the latter impression, and only the careful observer would have noticed that her hands were full-fleshed, with none of the blue veins of age, that the whites of her eyes were clear and bold, and that she carried herself upright and with a vigour which few people over fifty could have shown. Her dress was nondescript. A loose-fitting brown frock was tied at the waist with a black leather belt, her brown lisle stockings wrinkled at the ankles, showing what Beresford would have called poor and insufficient suspension, and her flat-heeled button-and-strap shoes were unfastened. Her near-white hair was drawn severely back from her forehead to meet at the nape of the neck in an old-fashioned bun.
“What time do you expect him back?” demanded Valerie.
“The same time as usual—when he comes.” The elder woman’s voice was sharp, and her lips twitched in bad humour. Valerie Lester told herself that she was looking at a discontented, prematurely aged woman who could not prevent her quarrel with fate from revealing itself in ordinary conversation.
But she knew that the woman was on the right side of forty, that there were times when she could laugh and joke with the best, when her hair was brown, not white, and when the wrinkles on her face were non-existent. She knew that the woman was rehearsing a part which she was to play within the next few days, and that even in her flat, talking with someone who knew her as she was, she maintained that discontented air, the high-pitched, complaining voice, so that when the time came for her to be tested out she would not be found wanting. Valerie dropped wearily into an armchair by the fireplace of the first room which she entered, and watched the other woman walk across the room into the kitchen quarters. Looking round the apartment, the American told herself that it looked what it was supposed to be—the home of a middle-aged bachelor who was rich enough to afford a housekeeper, but well satisfied with the furniture which had lasted him for fifteen or twenty years. Nothing was new in the room, not even the pictures. The only sign of the nineteen-thirties was a wireless set in one corner, an up-to-date and expensive product. For the rest, there was an old oak sideboard, a dining-table of the gate-leg variety, four stiff-backed chairs, two easies, and a large oil-painting set in gilt framework on each wall.
And yet, Valerie Lester knew, it was a room of secrets.
She closed her eyes, wondering how long the man whom she had come to visit would keep her waiting.
It was twelve o’clock when he arrived, and he looked exactly what would have been expected for the owner of that room. A man of rather less than medium height, his hair was greying at the sides and temples, he affected a close-trimmed moustache, nearer white than grey, and his complexion was red, almost florid. He was not fat, but he looked sleek and well-filled. His eyes were light blue in colour, and he blinked rather more than seemed necessary in the poor light of the room, the windows of which were hung with heavy red plush curtains.
His voice was the one thing about him which did not fit in with the room. If Beresford had heard it he would have wrinkled his nose in surprise. For the man’s voice was pitched on a high key, and it was a hundred per cent. American!—tough American!
“ ’Lo, you,” he said. “Yo’ back early. Did you see de big fella?”
“Sure I saw him.” Valerie Lester’s voice would have surprised Beresford too. It was more twangy than that to which he had grown accustomed, and she slurred the vowels more in accordance with New York’s West Side than its East.
“Did he bite it?” demanded the man, whose namer as it was known to the postal authorities, was Josiah Long.
“I—I think so.”
“Think?” Long blinked quickly, like a nervous man asking for more money from his boss. “We can’t think in dis game, sister, we gotta know. Did he bite?”
Valerie Lester drew a deep breath.
“Yes, he bit all right.”
“Fine!” Mr. Josiah Long dropped into a chair and lit a Camel cigarette. “Did yuh catch anything?”
“No—only that he’s fighting Gorman.”
“Sho’ thing he’s fighting Gorman. I knew dat de day we started dis game, sister. Anything else?”
“Not yet. I didn’t ask questions.”
Long sprayed grey smoke about the room.
“Better not run him too fast at first,” he acknowledged. “But I wanna know all ’bout Big Beresford,” Long went on. “When’s yo’ next date?”
“To-night.”
“Lay it on thick and heavy,” said Long. “What’s he like? Clever?”
“I should think,” said Valerie Lester, “that he’s very clever. And he’s careful. He had a detective put on my trail to make sure that Gorman didn’t try to rush me.”
Long looked down his nose.
“A dick, eh? Did you shake him off?”
“Yes, at Piccadilly.”
Long blinked at her, still with that false impression of nervousness.
“Say, sister, yuh don’t seem so keen on dis job as you was on de udder side. What’s tickling you?”
The girl stood up suddenly and walked to the window. For a moment she stood there with her back to Josiah Long, and stared out across the sluggishly moving Thames. Long looked at her, but did not move, and he said nothing. She turned round at last, and eyed him frankly.
“No,” she said, and her voice was now the voice that Tony Beresford knew, “I don’t like the job so much. I wish I hadn’t tackled it. There’s something about Beresford which—well, there is.”
Mr. Josiah Long stared at the girl for a full minute. And when he spoke he echoed, unconsciously, Gordon Craigie’s words to Tony Beresford of a few hours before.
“Like that, is it? Well, maybe you’re right. But we can’t let up now. Beresford’s our man, sister. I don’t know who he is, but I’ve a mighty close idea that he’s in the Service, and if he is, and he’s working against Gorman, he’ll be the best man to give us our meat. Pecker up, kid. De woild ain’t all black crape, not by a long way. Keep me in touch, and if Beresford’s got any idea o’ yo’ getting at him, skedaddle like a Christmas turkey!”
CHAPTER XII
NOSEY DEAN—DECEASED
THE bullet which had killed the genuine Nicholas Williams was a .32 Webley—an unusual size and pattern—and it had been fired from a revolver whose bore, the experts told Horace Miller at Scotland Yard, had scratched the bullet slightly, and would scratch any other bullet fired from it. There was only one other clue as to the identity of the murderer—a fingerprint on Williams’ toe-cap. The print was a good one, although all the others on the shoes had been blurred and unprintable, made when the killer had dragged the scholar into the empty house—or had shifted the body.
The bullet gave Miller little assistance, but the print gave an entirely u
nexpected result. Its double was found beneath the photograph of a stool-pigeon and small crook named Nosey Dean. Nosey, a rat-faced, undersized individual, was well known as a betrayer of secrets, and he was the last man in the world whom Miller would have suspected of complicity in a murder, unless it was a gang-killing, when Nosey would probably have turned King’s Evidence.
Then Miller found Nosey Dean.
Nosey Dean’s body was picked out of the Thames at Woolwich. He had been shot through the heart by a bullet from the same revolver as had been used in killing Williams!
“He’d got it coming to him,” the Super said when he heard the news. “Find out where he’s been seen in the past week, whether he’s been flinging money about lately, and if he’s shown any big money, get hold of the notes.”
He was in his small office at Scotland Yard when he gave these instructions to an assistant-inspector by the name of Rogerson, and Rogerson, who scented big stuff behind these two killings, told himself that he had his chance at last. Miller, worried more than usual, telephoned Craigie; but Craigie for once was out. Miller then tried Beresford, who was in his flat, and the big man visited Scotland Yard.
This was on the afternoon of Valerie Lester’s breakfast visit, and Beresford was in no very good humour. He realized, however, that the Nosey Dean element was unusual and might, because Nosey was well known amongst the smaller fry of the criminal classes—provide a line of inquiry.
Rogerson, the Assistant-Inspector, got to work so quickly that before Beresford had left the Yard the telephone burred out in Miller’s office, with a call from him.
Miller grunted, and told Rogerson to keep where he was. The red-faced Super’s blue eyes were bright as he turned away from the instrument.
“Rogerson’s found a woman in Wapping who was with Nosey Dean the night before last. Will you come over with me?”
“Women again,” grunted Beresford. “Yes, old son. I’d like to.”
The two men travelled in the maroon Hispano to the house in Wapping—Number 79, Frisk Street. The big car excited comment and not a little ribaldry; and Beresford, who had more than a sneaking liking for the born-and-bred Londoner, whatever his morals, was in a much better temper when he reached the place than he had been when he had called on Miller.
Leaving the roadster in Frisk Street, they entered Number 79, which, Beresford said with truth, stank. It was one of the filthiest places that he had ever entered, and he felt sorry for Assistant-Inspector Rogerson, who had been forced to stay there for over an hour. As he walked through the narrow passage, brushing against wallpaper which hung in ribbons from the wall, he saw into the front room, which was furnished with one long bench table and narrow wooden forms.
“A doss-house,” Beresford muttered, “and one of the worst.”
“You don’t know this part of the world as well as you think you do,” said Miller dryly. “Ah—here’s Rogerson.”
The lean-flanked Assistant lost no time in talking. He nodded perfunctorily to Beresford, whom he had not met before, and addressed his superior.
“She’s in the back kitchen, sir—throwing a faint. I’ve got a couple of men in with her.”
“Is she known at all?”
“She’s new here, sir, but this place has been under observation for some time.”
“For hygienic or moral reasons?” asked Beresford, grimacing at the stench from the kitchen as they neared it.
Rogerson shot the big man a suspicious glance. He had no sense of humour, Beresford discovered, but he was a go-ahead graduate from the College.
“Both, Mr. Beresford.”
“What’s her name?” demanded Miller.
“Higson,” said Rogerson. “I don’t know her other name.”
Beresford snorted at this, but Rogerson was too eager to show his prize catch to notice the snort.
The woman, who was recovering from her faint, was a slattern who looked near the seventy mark. She stared aggrievedly at the three policemen, as though complaining that the world was against her. Lines of discontent ran from her lips almost to her eyes. Her hair was white, and her eyes screwed up to narrow, suspicious slits. Beresford noticed that her vigour, for a woman of her age, was exceptional, and her voice, although mournful, was strong.
“I ain’t done nothin’ to be ashamed of, mister,” she moaned as Miller entered the room. “I’m a n’ard-workin’ wumman, an’ hit’s a crime ter——”
“Did you know Dean well?” Miller asked quietly, motioning the two plain-clothes men out of the kitchen: four was a crowd.
“I don’t know no one well,” grumbled the slattern; “I ’ad a bit o’ luck with the gees, Inspector, an’ I bought this plice. I only bin in it a coupla’ days——”
“And you didn’t know Dean before that?” asked Beresford.
“No, I never!”
“You naughty girl,” said the big man waggishly.
The slattern turned on him, quivering with sudden rage.
“Oo the ’ell are you forking to, you big lump? I ’as rooms ’ere to let orf an’ I ’as a lot o’ beds. Keep yer ruddy marf shut——”
Beresford chuckled, but took the hint and said nothing. It occurred to him, however, that Rogerson’s original “a woman who was with Nosey Dean the night before last” seemed—and he afterwards learned was—an exaggeration.
“Dean slept here the night before last, did he?” Miller asked.
“I dunno ’is nime,” said the woman, with a scowl, “but yer boy friend showed me a photer——”
Rogerson stepped forward, like a well-trained adjutant, and Miller looked at the photograph of Nosey Dean. It was a good likeness. Beresford, who had known the stool-pigeon slightly, recognized the long nose flattened against the left cheek, the sloping forehead and the weak chin.
“And you’re sure he was here?” demanded Miller.
“I wouldn’t sye so if I wasn’t.”
“And the night before?”
“Yus.”
“That was the first time you took the house over, was it?”
“Yus.” The answer came grudgingly.
“Was he a regular boarder?”
“I—I fink so.”
“Don’t you keep a register?” snapped Miller.
“Yus,” snapped the slattern, “but I ain’t ’ad no noo ’uns since I came ’ere.”
“Humph,” grunted Miller.
He was thinking, and Beresford could almost see the process of his thoughts, that there wasn’t a great deal to learn from the doss-house keeper. Nevertheless, Nosey Dean had definitely been at the house since the murder of Williams three days before. Question after question would have to be hurled at the slut whose ‘luck with the gees’ had enabled her to buy the doss-house; Beresford himself wanted something more substantial than a knowledge of what Nosey Dean looked and acted like the night of the murder in which, it seemed, he had been implicated.
He turned away, and as he moved the woman brushed her hand across her forehead. For a moment her sleeve, which had been dropping over her hand, was pushed back. He saw the firmness of the flesh. Something inside him seemed to crack a warning. Without batting an eye, he said:
“I’m going to get a breath of air, Miller. You’ll come out as soon as you’ve finished?”
Miller grunted, and told himself that Beresford wasn’t being so thorough on this job as he had been on others. For the next twenty minutes Miller and Rogerson turned the woman, mentally, inside out. When at last Miller came out of the house, glad to breathe the comparatively clean air of Wapping’s Frisk Street, the big man was pretending sleep at the wheel of the Hispano. Miller groused loudly on the subject of over-eating.
“Horace,” said Beresford out of the blue, “how old was that woman in there?”
Miller’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Sixty—sixty-five, I suppose.”
“What’s your guess?” Beresford demanded of Rogerson.
“I should say exactly what the Superintendent says,” Ro
gerson answered stiffly.
“Then you’re both as blind as bats,” said Beresford affably. “Her hair was white and her face lined, but the lines would come out in the wash. Did you notice her hands?”
“The fingers were filthy,” said Miller.
“The back of them,” said Beresford.
“No-o. Her sleeves hung over them.”
“They were the hands of a woman of thirty-five to forty,” said Beresford, “and I’ll bet you both a night out at the Two-Step that Miss-or-Mrs. Higson knows a darned sight more than she pretends to.”
Neither of the policemen spoke for a moment. Rogerson moved suddenly, turning towards the house. Beresford stopped him with a low-voiced:
“Where the blazes are you going, Rogerson?”
The Assistant-Inspector looked offended.
“To look at her hands,” he said.
“Don’t act like a ruddy goat,” snapped Beresford, and Miller chuckled to himself. Rogerson would learn a great deal from Beresford’s rough handling—considerably more than the Police College could ever teach him. “Watch her, and watch where she goes. How many men have you got here?”
“Two,” said Rogerson frigidly. “They were in the yard at the back of the house.”
“Fetch ’em out,” said Beresford, “and tell ’em to make sure that woman doesn’t go anywhere without being reported.”
Rogerson opened his lips, then turned towards his Super.
“Is that your order, sir?”
“Yes,” said Miller, his eyes unwinking.
Three hours later, Tony Beresford picked up the telephone in his flat, and heard the gruff voice of Horace Miller at the other end of the wire.
“The Wapping woman?” demanded Beresford, jerking his thumb at Samuel Tricker, who moved with the deftness of long practice into the kitchen quarters.
“Yes,” said Miller. “She went out and telephoned a Chelsea number twenty minutes ago. Rogerson was watching her himself, and when he saw her enter the booth he dived into a shop, borrowed a telephone, and got the Exchange to trace the call from the call-box while it was still engaged.”