“Didn’t I?” said the old man. “Well, it made no difference. James Dragon was their star and their ‘draw’, Arthur Dragon was their manager—without either, the company couldn’t undertake the tour. But of course it was Arthur; who on earth could have thought otherwise?”
“No one,” agreed Cockie. “He said as much to her in the dressing-room. ‘If you’re referring to me…’ and, ‘We were all wild and silly in those days before the war…’ That was the 1914 war, of course; all this happened thirty years ago. But in the days before the 1914 war, James Dragon would have been a child; he was born at the turn of the century—far too young to be sent to prison, anyway.
“You would keep referring to these people by their stage names,” said Cockie. “It was muddling. We came to think of the Clown as the Clown, and not as Arthur Dragon, James Dragon’s father—and manager and producer for Dragon Productions. ‘I am taking the company to America…’ It was not for James Dragon to say that; he was their star, but his father was their manager, it was he who ‘took’ the company here or there…And, ‘You can come if you like—playing Celia.’ It was not for James Dragon to say that; it was for Arthur Dragon, their producer, to assign the parts to the company…
“It was the dressing-gown, I think, that started me off on it,” said Inspector Cockrill, thoughtfully. “You see—as one of them said, the profession is not fussy about the conventional modesties. Would Glenda Croy’s husband really have knocked?—rushing in there, mad with rage and anxiety, would he really have paused to knock politely at his wife’s door? And she—would she really have waited to put on a dressing-gown over her ample petticoat, to receive him? For her father-in-law, perhaps, yes; we are speaking of many years ago. But for her husband…? Well, I wouldn’t know. But it started me wondering.
“At any rate—he killed her. She could break up their tour, she could throw mud at their great name; and he had everything to lose, an ageing actor who had given up his own career for the company. He killed her; and a devoted family and loyal, and ‘not disinterested’ company, hatched up a plot to save him from the consequences of what none of them greatly deplored. We made our mistake, I think,” said Cockie, handsomely including himself in the mistake, “in supposing that it would be an elaborate plot. It wasn’t. These people were actors and not used to writing their own plots; it was in fact an incredibly simple plot. ‘Let’s all put on our greasepaint again and create as much delay as possible while, under the Clown make-up, the red mark fades. And the best way to draw attention from the Clown, will be to draw it towards Othello.’ No doubt they will have added civilly, ‘James—is that all right with you?’
“And so,” said Inspector Cockrill, “we come back again to James Dragon. Within the past hour he had had a somewhat difficult time. Within the past hour his company had been gravely threatened and by the treachery of his own wife; within the past hour his wife had been strangled and his father had become a self-confessed murderer…And now he was to act, without rehearsal and without lines, a part which might yet bring him to the Old Bailey and under sentence of death. It was no wonder, perhaps, that when the greasepaint was wiped away from his face that night, our friend thought he seemed to have aged…” If, he added, their friend really had thought so at the time and was not now being wise after the event.
He was able to make this addition because their friend had just got up and, with a murmured excuse, had left the room. In search of a white rabbit, perhaps?
Sometimes the Blind…
Nicholas Blake
Like Christianna Brand, Nicholas Blake was a writer of distinction who earned election to the Detection Club early in his career. During his lifetime, he was even more celebrated as a poet, under his real name, Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72); perhaps today he is best-known as the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and film-maker Tamasin Day-Lewis. Born in Ireland, he was brought up in London and was educated at Sherborne and Oxford, where he was Professor of Poetry from 1951–55. A few years as a Communist Party member in the 1930s culminated in severe disillusionment.
In order to supplement his income, he wrote the first Nicholas Blake novel, A Question of Proof (1935), which was set in a private school. The book introduced Nigel Strangeways, a gifted private detective, who became a series character. The Beast Must Die (1938) is widely regarded as one of the most notable British detective novels of the 1930s, and Strangeways’ career lasted for about thirty years. Blake did not write much about police detectives; this story is an exception which was first published in the Evening Standard in 1963.
***
They talk about all the unsolved crimes. People don’t realise how many cases the police know who the criminal is, but can’t collect enough evidence to prosecute—because they, you, the dear old British Public, are too windy to come forward as witnesses, or too blind to have seen something that was happening under their noses…
Our train was delayed by fog that morning, and crowded worse than ever; the guard had even let some passengers travel in his van.
We traced these later, but not one of them had noticed someone poisoning the blind man’s dog in the van—they thought it had gone to sleep.
I’d seen the blind man often at the terminus—being helped out by the guard and a tall, fair chap, and putting the harness on his dog. Today the three of them stood on the platform, at a loss, while the commuters jostled past, sheep making for a gate.
A cynical friend of mine, walking along that platform with me once in the rush-hour, remarked, “The human race seems to be divided into men, women, and office workers.”
Well, I’m one of the latter myself: I have an office in New Scotland Yard. So I had to do something about the dead dog—names, addresses, the usual caper. Finally, the blind man, a pasty-faced fellow of thirty called Arthur Lightly, was led away by his tall companion, James Smith. They were cousins, lived in the same street over Bromley way.
When I came out of the station a couple of minutes later, I saw a bus standing askew across the busy street, traffic piling up behind it.
I forced my way through the crowd. A body lay in the road, its head shattered, blood everywhere, and the British Public swarming around like blowflies.
Near me the blind man was calling out, “Jimmy! What’s happened? Where are you, Jimmy?” James Smith was unable to answer, for it was he lying dead there.
***
The verdict at the inquest was Accidental Death, with the bus driver exonerated. The crowd from the station had, as usual, been playing Last Across, against the signals of the man on point duty.
Arthur Lightly said he’d been pushed by people behind him, stumbled against his cousin, and must have knocked him in front of the bus. The driver agreed this could have been how it happened.
The other witnesses might have been as blind as Arthur, for all the use they were; one of them said he’d heard a woman scream, “He tried to push him,” while another had got the impression that the dead man was pulling the blind one across the path of the bus.
Well, there it was—till some nasty wrote us an anonymous letter to say that James Smith had been carrying on with Mrs Lightly, and the baby would not be her husband’s. We had to pay a bit of attention.
You see, James Smith had been a chemist, with access to the poison which killed the guide-dog. And Arthur’s life was quite heavily insured. An “accident,” crossing a busy street, would get James his cousin’s wife and the money. You can’t charge a dead man with attempted murder; but suppose Mrs Lightly had been in the plot, too?
My Super sent me down to Bromley. Mrs Lightly was a small woman, pretty but nervous; a schoolmistress.
“I’m sorry my husband is out,” she said.
I had made sure he was.
“I’m glad he can get about again,” I said.
“Oh, he has a new guide-dog. Though it’ll never be quite the same as Peter, I’m afraid—his first one. He r
eally loved Peter. They were quite inseparable. He wouldn’t let anyone else feed him, even.”
“He must miss his cousin very much. Shocking business.”
“We both do. But I’m hoping the baby will make up to him for it. Of course, poor Jimmy was devoted to Arthur. He used to take him for walks in the country and tell him all the things he could see; and to football matches and the dogs. Last month he showed Arthur his dispensary. Yes, Jimmy really tried so hard to be Arthur’s eyes.”
We chatted over cups of tea. The woman seemed to shed her nervousness as she got used to me. Could she be a guilty woman—this pretty, talkative straight-eyed creature? Well, the guilty sometimes show it by being garrulous, not warily on the defensive.
I learned that Arthur Lightly had lost his sight three years ago. He’d woken up one morning with blurred vision. They did not have a telephone then, so his cousin had offered to go for the doctor on his way to work. The doctor being out at a confinement, James had left a message.
Unfortunately, it was discovered that Arthur had a condition—detached retinas—which leads inevitably to blindness unless it is treated within a few hours. By the time they got him to an eye-surgeon, it was too late.
“Well, your husband has adapted himself marvellously,” I said.
“Yes, hasn’t he?” She smiled proudly. “They’ve taken him back at the office: not charity—lots of jobs he can do. Why, he gets—he used to get quite annoyed with Jimmy pointing everything out. You develop an extraordinary sense of hearing when you’re blind: as if you could see through your ears, almost.”
That’s a thing we have to learn in the CID, too. You listen to a suspect’s tone—his hesitations, evasions, fulsome agreements, or protests. And the naturalness with which Mrs Lightly talked about the dead man rang true. I could not believe she had had an affair with him, let alone been involved in a conspiracy against her husband’s life.
“It was an accident, wasn’t it?” she asked presently, with a candid look.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Oh, Peter being poisoned—it was such a filthy thing to do—a guide-dog.”
We talked a bit longer. Then I rose to go. “By the way,” I asked, “you said he wouldn’t let anyone else feed him. Who wouldn’t?”
“Why, Peter of course.” She broke off, staring at me in consternation.
So the dog wouldn’t let anyone but his master feed him. So it was Arthur who had given his dog the poisoned meat in the guard’s van. So that Jimmy had to lead Arthur across the dangerous street. And Arthur’s acute sense of hearing would tell him the exact moment to stage the “accident”—an accident which might well look as if it had been contrived by James himself, but killed the wrong person.
And why? Your cousin fails to get a doctor in time to save you from blindness.
Then he turns the knife in the wound by forever leading you around describing all the things he can see and you can’t—even into the dispensary where the poisons are kept.
And I feel sure the nasty who wrote us that anonymous letter could not have resisted telephoning Arthur to say his wife was carrying on with his cousin.
Oh, Arthur had a basinful all right. Well, what would you have done in my place? Turned a blind eye? I’m a policeman, and not allowed to. We ferreted around for a bit, but never found enough evidence for the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring a case.
***
When I last visited the Lightlys, they were very cheerful. Arthur changed the baby’s nappy with the deftest skill, while pretty Mrs Lightly smiled at me over his head.
The Chief Witness
John Creasey
John Creasey (1908–1973) was a driven man who, according to The John Creasey Online Resource “published 562 books following 743 rejection slips, with worldwide sales in November 1971 of over 80 million copies in at least 5000 different editions in 28 different languages”. For good measure, in November 1953, he founded the Crime Writers’ Association, which flourishes to this day, as well as The John Creasey Mystery Magazine, in which this story first appeared in 1957. As if that were not enough for a single lifetime, he founded a political party, the All Party Alliance, and stood for Parliament repeatedly, albeit with no success.
This story features one of his most popular characters, the policeman Roger West, who was (like Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn) one of classic crime fiction’s most handsome police officers. West first appeared in a novel in 1942, and the series ran for more than thirty years. Creasey’s most famous police detective, George Gideon, a hard-working family man, appeared in books written under the pen-name J.J. Marric, starting with Gideon’s Day (1955). That novel was filmed in 1958 by John Ford with Jack Hawkins cast as Gideon. Gideon’s Way, a television series starring John Gregson as Gideon, ran for 26 50-minute episodes from 1965–66.
***
1
The child lay listening to the raised, angry voices. He was a little frightened, because he had never heard his mother and father quarrel so. Quarrel, yes; but nothing like this. Nor had he known such silence or such awkward handling from his mother while he had been washed and put to bed.
He was six; a babyish rather than a boyish six.
He could hear them in the next room, now his father, shouting, next his mother, shouting back. Once she screamed out words he understood, but most of the time there was harsh shrillness, or the rough, hard tones of his father.
He had not known that they could make such noise, for they were always so gentle.
The child lay fighting sleep, and fearful, longing for a gleam of light to break the darkness, or for a sound at the door to herald their coming, but there was no relief for him that way.
There was relief of a kind.
The voices stilled, and the child almost held his breath, not wanting to hear the ugly sounds again. He did not. He heard the sharp slam of a door—then, his mother crying.
Crying.
Soon sleep came over the child in great, soothing waves which he could not resist. The darkness lost its terror, the longing for the door to open faded away into oblivion.
2
Usually, the child woke first in this household, and waking was gentle and welcome. This morning was no different. There was spring’s early morning light, bright yet not glaring, for the morning sun did not shine into this room. But there was the garden, the lawn he could play on, the red metal swing, the wide flower bed along one side, the vegetable garden at the far end, rows of green soldiers in dark, freshly turned soil.
From his bed, which was near the window, he stared pensively at the heads of several daffodils which he had plucked off yesterday. He frowned, then turned his attention to the small gilt clock on the mantelpiece. When the hands pointed to half-past six, he was allowed to get up and play quietly; at seven, if neither his mother nor his father had been in to see him, he could go and wake them.
The position of the clock’s hands puzzled him. He could not tell the time, except when it was between half-past six and seven—which it ought to be by now.
Disappointed, he reached for a much-thumbed book, and began to look at the familiar pictures of animals, and to puzzle and stumble over the unfamiliar words. In a cooing voice he read to himself in this way, until abruptly he looked at the clock again.
The hands were in exactly the same position. Obviously this was wrong. He studied them earnestly, then raised his head with a new, cheering thought. A smile brightened his eyes and softened his mouth and he said:
“It’s stopped.”
He got out of bed and went to the window, his jersey-type pyjamas rucked up about one leg and exposing part of his little round belly. He pressed his nose against the window and for a few minutes his attention was distracted by starlings, sparrows and thrushes. One starling pecked at a worm cast, quite absorbing to the boy, until his attention was distracted by a fly which buzze
d against the inside of the window. He slapped at it with his pink hand, and every time it flew off, he gave the happy chuckle of the carefree.
Suddenly, he pivoted round and looked at the clock. Birds, fly, and joy forgotten, he pattered swiftly to the door. He opened it cautiously and softly on to the small living-room.
All the familiar things were there.
He looked at the clock on the wall, and was astonished, for the hands told him at least that it was past seven. Eagerly, happily, he crossed to his parents’ room, and opened the door.
Silence greeted him.
His mother lay on her back in bed, with her eyes closed.
The bedclothes were drawn high beneath her chin, and her arms were underneath the clothes. There were other unusual features about the room, which he saw with a child’s eye, but did not think about.
His father was not by his mother’s side.
He went to the bed, and called: “Mummy.” His mother did not stir. He called her again and again and when she took no notice, he touched her face, her cold, cold face, not wondering why it was so cold.
“Mummy.”
“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.”
Soon, he gave up.
3
For Chief Inspector Roger West of New Scotland Yard, it was a normal morning. There was too much to do; like the rest of the Criminal Investigation Department’s staff, he was used to that, and dealt with each report, each query and each memo with complete detachment. He was between cases, having just prepared a serious one for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Whenever he took his mind off the documents on his desk, he wondered what he would have to tackle next.
“Mr Cortland would like a word with you, sir.”
This would be the job. With a nod to the messenger, Roger went at once, to Superintendent Cortland’s office.
“Looks pretty well cut and dried,” said the massive, dark-haired, aging Cortland, sixty to Roger’s forty. “Woman found strangled, out at Putney. When a milkman called, a child opened the door and said he couldn’t wake his mother. The milkman went to find out why. The child is with a neighbour now. The family’s name is Pirro, an Italian name, and here’s the address—29 Greyling Crescent. It’s the end house or bungalow, fairly new—but you’ll soon know all about it. Better go to Division first; they’ll fix anything you want. Let me know if you need help from me.”
The Long Arm of the Law Page 17