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

by John Creasey

  He gave a puzzled, deep-throated laugh, and offered her a cigarette.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I just don’t understand you.’

  Was it disbelief, or was it contempt in her eyes?

  ‘So you’re keeping it up,’ she said, and her voice was suddenly tired. ‘I’m—sorry. I thought you knew something about——’

  She broke off, quickly, and an expression which might have been dislike, or even fear, crossed her face. Kenyon said, quietly:

  ‘If there’s anything I can do, please tell me.’

  Then he turned lazily, to meet the approaching form of Mr. Arnold Serle. Serle was looking dejected. Only the keenness of his clear brown eyes belied that expression.

  ‘I say, Kenyon, have you another cigarette? Thanks. Darned nuisance not being able to get into the pavilion.’ He lit the cigarette at Kenyon’s lighter, and then seemed to realise for the first time that Mary Randall was there. ‘Oh, I say, Miss Randall. Can’t say how sorry I am.’

  ‘Please don’t trouble.’ There was a chill in Mary’s voice, and Kenyon guessed that she disliked the crack batsman.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Serle. He cocked a half-humorous eye at the big man, as if asking for silent sympathy. ‘Well, thanks for the cigarette, Kenyon. See you later, Miss Randall.’

  ‘We seem,’ said Kenyon, ‘to be standing here and watching everybody leave us. First the Colonel and now Serle. It looks as if Serle could do with a spot of the Colonel’s refreshment.’

  They were standing beneath the shadow of a spreading beech tree, and for a moment Kenyon seemed to forget everything but the loveliness of their surroundings and of Mary Randall.

  ‘You mean the Colonel is drinking too much,’ said Mary, flatly.

  ‘Hardly that,’ said Kenyon. ‘I seem to be putting my foot right into it…’

  ‘But you noticed he’d been drinking,’ said the girl. ‘He has been, for several weeks. I’ve been staying down here, and I’ve hated it. And he’s not the only one.’

  ‘No?’ said Kenyon. It was only just a question. ‘Mary, do you mind telling me who you think I am?’

  Mary moved her hand, and gripped Kenyon’s forearm. Through the thin material of his sleeve he could feel the pressure of her fingers.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, with vehemence, ‘but I heard him say that he would have to be careful of you, Roberts, and Knight, but he wasn’t certain of the Arrans. He’d known you in Delhi…’

  ‘Who’s “he”?’ Kenyon snapped the question.

  ‘Serle,’ answered Mary Randall, and shivered. ‘I oughtn’t to have said that. It’s not safe.’

  There were tears in her eyes, although she fought hard to keep them back.

  ‘That’s queer,’ Kenyon said, ‘to say the least of it. When was this?’

  ‘This morning,’ said Mary. ‘I was in the hall when he was reading the teams. The Colonel always sticks them up. He was surprised when he saw that you were playing.’

  He. He. He. Not once had the girl used Arnold Serle’s name. It was a small point, and Kenyon tucked it in the back of his mind. He was trying hard not to appear surprised, yet at the same time prevent himself from creating the impression that actually he did know something. It was often dangerous for others to know the personnel of Department Z; already he was worried about Mary Randall.

  ‘Who was Serle talking to?’ he asked.

  She hesitated, obviously wondering whether to trust him, wondering how far he could be relied on.

  He smiled. It was a smile which had instilled confidence into many people, and it had a magnetism that seemed to pass on something of his own self-confidence. He looked, Mary Randall thought, as if he was ready to take on any responsibility. She was looking over his shoulder, and again Kenyon sensed that antagonism in her eyes, this time directed against whoever was approaching.

  ‘He was talking to the Colonel, in the library,’ she answered. ‘The Colonel, as perhaps you know, is my uncle. As I said before, he’s been drinking heavily ever since Serle came down here, a month ago. So has…’

  ‘I’ve been looking all over the place for you,’ came the shrill, high-pitched voice of Mrs. Denbigh Morse. There was a hint of complaint in her tone. ‘Don’t you think you could come over and try and calm down all those poor women and…’

  ‘I’ll come,’ said Mary Randall, quickly, ‘Aunt, this is Mr. James Kenyon. My Aunt Maria, Mrs. Morse.’

  The cleric’s wife favoured Kenyon with a frosty smile, took Mary’s arm possessively and marched her off. Kenyon smiled after her determined figure, clad so hideously in red, as she went towards the Manor.

  He pushed his hand through his hair. Mary Randall had given food for thought for a dozen men, and concentrated it for his own especial benefit. She had confirmed everything Craigie had said. There was something sinister about Arnold Serle. It was possible to construe her words into an ugly significance. Arnold Serle had said ‘they’d have to be careful of you (meaning Kenyon), Roberts, and Knight’. So Serle had regarded Roberts as a potential danger…

  And Roberts was dead.

  ‘Take it slowly,’ Kenyon muttered to himself, as he turned away from the shade. ‘Things are piling on too fast, and you’ll be picking up the wrong string in a moment.’

  As he walked into the glare of the sun he blinked; and as he blinked he sniffed. There was a smell of burning, acrid and strong. His thoughts turned to gorse fires. There was a common beyond the Manor, stretching for miles. A fire on such an expanse would be serious.

  He looked sharply across country. There was no sign of smoke, but the smell was getting stronger. He looked towards the pavilion, which had been ringed off with boundary ropes and stakes. Timothy Arran was standing there and frowning. Ten yards from Arran Sam Driver was looking about him anxiously.

  Then Kenyon saw two things. First, a wisp of smoke curled out of the pavilion window; second, a man slinking through the shrubs on the far side of the pavilion.

  Kenyon broke into a run. He said nothing, but he tore towards that slinking figure of a man dressed in silver grey. As he passed the building which contained the body of Dickie Roberts he heard the fierce crackle of burning wood; behind the pavilion, and to windward, the smoke curled thickly.

  The place had been set on fire. The man who had ignited the fire had a thirty yards’ start. Over the heavy ground of the shrubbery that start was a big advantage. But Kenyon plunged on, until suddenly his quarry stopped and turned round. The big man caught a glimpse of a swarthy face, the face of an Italian or an Arab. Then he saw the spurt of flame spring from something in the other’s right hand. Without a second’s hesitation Kenyon flung himself to the ground.

  The bullet hummed above his head.

  Cautiously, he climbed to his knees, and peered across the waist-high shrubs. His quarry was fifty yards away, making for the road which ran across country. He disappeared. Kenyon moved again, more cautiously and keeping within easy reach of a row of elms lining the drive of the Manor, but soon he knew that to continue the chase would be useless. There came the sound of a high-powered engine, and the snort of an exhaust.

  Kenyon swore quietly and turned back—then gasped in dismay.

  The pavilion of Greylands was a flaming red mass against the sky! There was little or no smoke, only the angry fire, carrying a scorching heat which fanned his cheeks as he hurried towards the Manor.

  He knew what to expect; Timothy Arran’s woebegone expression served to confirm it.

  ‘Body gone too?’ demanded Kenyon.

  ‘Yes,’ said Timothy, drawling more than ever. ‘We tried to reach it, old boy, but the darned place went up like tinder.’

  ‘So we shall never know whether Roberts was poisoned.’

  ‘We’ll make a pretty good guess,’ said Timothy. ‘I’ve a nasty idea, Jim, that Roberts was…’

  ‘Our Number Eight,’ grunted Kenyon.

  ‘ ’Fraid so,’ said Arran.

  The brief silence which followed was Department Z’
s obituary to one of its members. Life was like that, in the Intelligence. But there was no irreverence in the hard gleam in Kenyon’s eyes, nor the glitter in Arran’s. The other side had drawn blood, but whenever the Department lost a man another took his place. Nothing could blot out the Department…

  But it was easy to blot out one man, or a dozen.

  3

  A Message From a Dark Gentleman

  Two days after the fire which destroyed the pavilion at Greylands, and burned the body of Roberts to ashes, James Kenyon (described in a certain august publication as: Gentleman, Winchester, Balliol, Clubs Carilon and Junior Cons., rec. cricket, rifle-shooting) walked along a narrow turning off Whitehall and up a short flight of steps leading to a door that opened to his touch. He found himself inside a hall, gloomy and dark despite the bright afternoon sunshine outside. A beam of light shot out from a door that opened silently, and Gordon Craigie called:

  ‘This way, Jim.’

  Kenyon mounted the stairs to the spot where Craigie stood. With his Chief he walked two further flights, to enter eventually a long, barely furnished room which served Craigie as an office and living-quarters.

  Department Z was a place of secrets; any normally conscientious housewife would have called it a place of shame, for at the end near the fireplace, where a small fire burned despite the warmth of that August day, there was the glorious untidiness that, to a certain kind of man, spells order. On that afternoon it was more pronounced than usual, because Craigie was making tea. His caddy stood precariously on the edge of a small table, and the electric kettle was sending vapour over a pat of butter already reduced almost to oil by the heat of the room. Newspapers, magazines, tobacco oddments, matches and a beautifully laundered collar vied with bread, ham, and the usual impedimenta of high tea for possession of the table. Kenyon particularly liked the position of the collar, noting that the slightest disturbance would plunge it into a pot of raspberry jam.

  ‘Clear that chair out and sit down,’ said Craigie. ‘I’m wondering whether toast…’

  ‘No toast this afternoon,’ said Kenyon firmly.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ agreed Craigie, a little wistfully. ‘I like toast. It’s a nuisance when there are two to make it for, though.’

  Craigie brewed tea. Like many bachelors, he believed that only men could brew tea properly. He was a tall, thin, spare-built man, with a remarkably acquiline face. Wispish grey hair brushed his high forehead. His lips were rather thin and were curved in the formation of an exaggerated cupid’s bow, and from them, even as he pottered about the table, drooped his meerschaum. That pipe was father, mother, brother and sister to Gordon Craigie, and in it he usually smoked black twist, although the empty tins of a dozen different brands of tobacco gave evidence of his willingness to improve. His chin was pointed and prominent; so was his nose. His eyes were grey, often thoughtful, sometimes quizzing, always shrewd and occasionally very hard.

  He was a Scot, without clue or accent; he had said, once, that the only things about him true to his race were his name and his birth certificate. As Gordon Craigie he was a likeable and kindly man. As Chief of Department Z he was clever far beyond the ordinary, and no man worked for him but grew, in time, to love him.

  ‘You’re that one who wants one-and-a-half lumps, aren’t you?’ grumbled Craigie, rooting in the sugar basin. ‘One—and there’s a half.’

  ‘So,’ he said, three minutes later, sitting back in an armchair and stirring his tea—Indian and strong—’you think Serle’s up to something.’

  ‘Sure of it,’ said Kenyon. He was used to Craigie’s abrupt changes of subject. ‘Apart from the girl’s story…’

  ‘I’ve had the report,’ murmured Craigie.

  ‘I’ve been followed by Serle ever since,’ Kenyon went on. ‘I think Roberts found something, and Serle made sure he didn’t speak.’

  ‘Someone made sure Rensham didn’t speak last year,’ said Craigie. ‘I must get the Yard to find out whether Rensham and Serle were ever connected. Yes?’

  ‘Greylands,’ Kenyon observed, ‘is a melting-pot. From the time of Serle’s first visit Wyett’s been drinking like a fish, and Denbigh Morse hasn’t been much better.’

  ‘The parson?’

  ‘Yes. And a nice fellow.’ Mary Randall was particularly fond of her clerical uncle. ‘He doesn’t show it so much as the Colonel, but it’s fairly noticeable.’

  ‘Any idea what’s worrying Morse and Wyett?’

  ‘No.’ Kenyon lit a cigarette. ‘Nor what’s worrying Mrs. Maria Morse—Denbigh’s wife, Wyett’s sister. She’s as jumpy as a kitten. Mary says that she’s changed so much in the past month that she’s getting a bad reputation in the village; and she used to be popular.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Craigie. ‘More tea?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Kenyon held out his cup. ‘I dug about a bit, but beyond the conversation Miss Randall overheard between Serle and Wyett—you read the report, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Craigie. ‘Nice girl, Mary Randall. When she was knee-high, we used to call her the Blimp.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Kenyon, with studied calm.

  ‘It was in the early war days,’ Craigie went on, ‘and she was so much like an observation balloon that Blimp fitted her. A nice girl, though.’

  ‘Like some toast?’ asked Kenyon, gently.

  Craigie grinned. The big man knew that his Chief was puzzling something out, and would be skittish until he’d solved his mystery, or shelved it. One or the other happened quickly.

  Craigie said: ‘No, thanks,’ and, ‘Nothing else at all?’

  ‘Just this.’

  Taking out his wallet, Kenyon handed over a slip of paper from it, and Craigie looked down on a list of names and addresses. There was nothing extraordinary about them to the casual eye, but:

  ‘All first-class cricketers,’ remarked Craigie.

  ‘And all visitors to Greylands this season. Most of ‘em in the last month, too. I know the Colonel gets some pretty good sides together for his August matches, but this year he’s gone mad. Look at him’—Kenyon leaned forward and pointed to a particularly prominent north of England player—’and him, and him.’ His forefinger moved up and down. ‘They’re top county men, Gordon. Fitzsimmons, there, hasn’t been out of a Loamshire match for three seasons, but he’s missed two this year in order to play for Wyett’s Eleven against some potty little small town side. Wrigley, too, the Kenton man. And there’s something else…’

  Craigie’s eyes were like pin-points.

  ‘Unless I’m mistaken,’ Kenyon told him, ‘each one of these men has been in a touring side during the past three years. India, Africa, West Indies, Australia, even as close home as Gibraltar. It’s not always been first-class touring, but…’

  ‘They’ve all been out of the country,’ interpolated Craigie.

  Kenyon nodded.

  Thoughtfully, the Chief of Department Z knocked out his pipe, and refilled it with black twist.

  ‘The Arrans are still with the Randalls?’

  ‘Yes. And the Randalls are still down at Greylands.’

  ‘Sir Michael, too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about Knight?’

  ‘He told me he’d been taken off Serle.’

  ‘So he has,’ said Craigie, ‘but he should have reported here this afternoon. Still time, I suppose.’

  Kenyon nodded and waited.

  ‘What’s my next move?’ he asked at last.

  ‘I want Serle watched, thoroughly,’ said Craigie. ‘I want him badgered. There are a couple of men on his tail, but if Serle’s what I think he is he’ll play with them. I want someone to get him worried; keep him watching. Follow me?’

  ‘When do I start?’

  ‘If Serle knows you, he’ll go all out to do the same as he did to Roberts,’ Craigie warned. ‘I’d have used Beresford or Storm, but the darned fools fell in love.’

  Annoyingly, Kenyon coloured.

  ‘And also married,’ said Craigie
. ‘We don’t use married men, of course.’

  ‘When do I start?’ demanded Kenyon, smiling but with some colour still mantling his face.

  Craigie stood up suddenly.

  ‘Right away,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t give you detailed instructions. I think—just think, mind you—that Serle is mixed up in dope running, but I also think that he’s mixed up with something else. God knows what. But three of our men have been watching Serle since Rensham died last year—and all three have gone.’

  Kenyon waited, his jaw thrust out aggressively.

  ‘You’ll let Serle know that you’re after him, and that the first slip he makes will be fatal. I wish I didn’t have to send you, but…’

  ‘Did you say,’ demanded Kenyon, apropos of nothing, ‘that you have to leave the service after marriage?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Craigie. ‘As bad as that, is it?’

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Kenyon, gently, ‘that it’s time you married. You’re getting nervous. ‘Bye, Gordon.’

  Just half an hour later Jim Kenyon was telling Stinger he had better look slippy. Stinger looked resentful. During the past week he had received three separate lots of ‘monthly’ instructions from his employer, and it now looked as if there was to be a fourth. He sighed, for he was a man—as he told Kenyon frequently—who had been used to better things.

  At other times he admitted the better things had not been strictly lawful. Jem Stinger had been a semi-expert cracksman. He had been jailed twice, a fact which made some of Kenyon’s friends apprehensive, but the big man was convinced that Stinger was now treading the paths of righteousness.

  To look at, Stinger was short, square-shouldered, rather gloomy of feature, and very fussy as to clothes. Since his reformation he had taken to black or clerical grey, and only a threat of physical violence had dissuaded him from wearing the clerical collar; on that point Kenyon had been insistent and Stinger resentful. For the rest, he was an excellent valet; he possessed for Jim Kenyon a devotion little short of hero-worship. He was also susceptible. The struggle between the spirit and the flesh, he told Kenyon gloomily and frequently, was the worst trial of his life.