Gideon's risk

by J. J Marric

  The maid announced her.

  "Hallo, Charlotte," Clare greeted smoothly. She smiled charmingly, and came forward, and they touched cheeks. "How lovely you look tonight." Does she think I'm an utter fool? "It's unbearable to think that John is in that cell—utterly unbearable, isn't it?"

  John.

  "Yes," Charlotte said tensely. "I still can't believe it's really happened. There can't—there can't be any danger for him, can there?"

  "Oh, not when the truth is known," Clare said. "Darling, could I have a drink? I'm absolutely parched tonight, and it's so harassing at the office—everyone seems to think they can do what they like now that John's away." John. She watched as the older woman poured out a sherry for herself, whisky and soda for the guest. "Thank you, that looks lovely." She drank, and then sat on the arm of a chair and crossed her slim, lovely legs. "Charlotte, I've had Mr. Cuthbertson with me most of the afternoon, and obviously he's really worried about one thing."

  "What—what thing?" Charlotte made herself ask.

  "That secret compartment in his desk," Clare told her, and sipped her drink. "John had no idea that it was there. The desk wasn't new when he bought it, of course—it came from Lord Alston's study. Lord Alston is dead, and there's no way of proving that he must have put those things in the secret compartment."

  "But John knew about them," Charlotte said miserably. "Just after he bought it he told me about the compartments. Why, he actually showed me one of them!"

  Clare was looking at her very levelly.

  "Darling," she said with great deliberation, "you're dreaming. You must be. You see, if we can prove that John didn't know about the secret compartments in the desk, then it will go a long way to establishing his innocence. If it should be proved that he knew—"

  "But he did know!"

  "Did he?" asked Clare, very softly. "Did he really, Charlotte? Do you want him to be sent for trial at the Old Bailey? Isn't it bad enough as things are? After all, you are his wife, and he is desperately in love with you. If he did want his first wife dead, it was only because he was so passionately in love with you. And you can help him more than you've ever been able to before. Mr. Cuthbertson has been with him a lot, and John is positive that he told no one else about those secret compartments; you're the only one who could say that he did. So—" The beautifully curved lips parted a little, as Clare paused before she went on softly, "You couldn't have known, could you?"

  Charlotte could not answer.

  "And there is another thing," Clare went on, swinging one beautiful leg. "There was in fact that family of John's wife. They all had a share in the inheritance, and several of them needed money pretty badly, didn't they?"

  Charlotte's eyes lit up.

  "I didn't know that, Clare. I hardly knew the family and John didn't talk much about them. Is that true? Were they in need of money?"

  "Of course it's true," Clare assured her. "And that's one of the facts that Mr. Cuthbertson is going to bring out. When it is known that there were other people who had the opportunity to commit the murder, and when it is known that anyone could have put that poison and the syringes in John's desk—well, Mr. Cuthbertson says that the police case is bound to collapse. He says that the weight of public opinion in the City and in the government is in John's favor. I mean, he's done so much good, and he's so well liked and respected. It would be a dreadful thing if anything were to happen to him; and you can make sure that it doesn't."

  "If only I could," Charlotte cried.

  "Charlotte," Clare said, and slid off the arm of the couch and came toward her, "there isn't any doubt about it at all. You and I can save him. Mr. Cuthbertson is going to ask you certain questions tonight, and rehearse everything that will happen in the police court next week. It is absolutely essential that you should know exactly what to say. He's told me the kind of questions that the police will ask you, too, and I am going to practice them with you. You have to be absolutely word perfect, and I'm sure you will be."

  After a long pause, Charlotte said huskily: "I will be."

  "That's wonderful," Clare said, and she slid an arm round the older woman. "John has always told me how lucky he was when he married you, and I can understand it now."

  It was an awful situation, and, in spite of what she had said to Clare, Borgman's wife did not know what to do. Cuthbertson wanted her to tell a barefaced lie, of course, but was that really surprising? If she could save John, if she could even help him, wasn't such a lie forgivable? It would only be a white lie.

  Her duty was to her husband, remember: "till death us do part." But his first wife had said the same thing, and John had to her. Death had parted them.

  Could there be any truth in the accusation? If she told those lies, would they be helping John and putting others, even herself, in danger?

  It was about that time that a cable came into the Yard from Perth. It was decoded urgently and telephoned to Gideon. It read, bleakly:

  Witness denies seeing B. this trip very tough customer, regard it improbable she will make any statement. Delaney.

  In the next three days, Clare and Cuthbertson visited Borgman's flat for hours on end. Gideon, who was told of this, and who was now quite sure that the police case would not be helped by Borgman's ex-mistress, had a shrewd idea that Borgman's wife was being drilled to give certain evidence. He was still not sure what line the defense would take, but was inclined to think that Cuthbertson would go all out to try to prove that there was no case to answer. The need for overcoming that plea preoccupied Gideon more than anything else, even more than the need for finding Red and Syd Carter.

  He was looking through some newspapers in which Borgman was being discreetly whitewashed when his telephone bell rang.

  "Gideon," he said gruffly.

  "There's another cable in from Adelaide, sir, being decoded now."

  "Bring it in the moment you've done it," Gideon ordered, and was on edge for only five minutes. Then a messenger brought in the cable, typed with two carbon copies:

  Still no success, witness intends flying to Sydney tomorrow STOP Can only hold if new justification available. Please cable.

  Then he picked up a pen, and wrote on a slip of paper:

  Cable to Delaney, C.I.D., Perth, W.A. No additional justification for holding witness.

  Gideon looked sourly at the newspapers again. One had an article listing Borgman's many interests, his gifts to charities, and the general excellence of his character.

  When Gideon got home, the same newspaper was folded at the same article.

  "Did you read that, Kate?" he asked.

  "Yes," Kate said.

  "What do you make of it?"

  "No one seems to want to believe he's guilty," Kate said quietly. "George, dear—" She broke off.

  "Hm-hm?"

  "What is there about Borgman? I even hear people in the shops and on buses saying that they don't believe he did it."

  "I think it's the result of a clever whispering campaign," Gideon answered thoughtfully. "It started in the newspapers and it's being spread everywhere—on ships, trains, buses—the lot." He poked his fingers through his hair. "It's pretty rife at the Yard, too. If you ask me whether I think he did it, I'll walk out on you."

  "What does Fred Lee think?"

  Gideon said, "I'm not too happy about Fred. I think he's afraid that he'll be on the losing side next week. I wish—hallo, wasn't that the front door?"

  "I'll go," Kate said.

  "You stay there." Kate was ironing, while sitting at a large ironing board, and Gideon heaved himself out of his chair and went to open the door. It might be someone for one of the children: the girls were in their room upstairs, reading a play for some local dramatic society; he could hear the murmur of their voices. He opened the door, and the light shone on Fred Lee's pale face.

  "Talk of the devil," Gideon said, and stood aside. "Come in, Fred. Working overtime?"

  "That's about it," said Lee, "and I'd like pounds for the hours I've put in on
this job for the past week. Your youngsters home, George?"

  "Come in the back, they won't hear us there." Gideon led the way, Lee came in and shook hands with Kate, who moved the ironing board so that she could push up a chair for the caller. Gideon went into the kitchen and came back with two bottles of beer and two glasses. He saw that Kate was assessing Fred Lee, and anyone could see the anxiety and the misgivings in the other's eyes. Gideon poured out, giving his own a bigger head than Lee's, and said:

  "Here's health, Fred. What's worrying you?"

  "The whole blasted case is worrying me," blurted out Lee, "and I can't get it out of my head that things run in threes, George. I've had two flops, and now I'm ready for the third. You seen tonight's Globe?"

  "No."

  "Take a look, then," Lee said, and took a folded newspaper out of his pocket and handed it to Gideon. There was a paragraph heavily marked in ball-point ink. Kate stood up, to read it over Gideon's shoulder, while Lee sipped his beer gloomily.

  The Gideons read:

  The late Lord Alston was known to have a passionate liking for secret drawers and hidden passages, and he took many of his secrets with him to the grave.

  "Well, what does it mean?" asked Kate.

  After a long pause, Gideon said softly, "It may mean that we can probably get him all right after all, Fred." He saw surprise spring into Lee's eyes, and puzzlement in his wife's. "It might not do what it's meant to do," he went on. "It's meant to imply that Borgman could have bought the desk without knowing about the secret compartment. If they could establish that, they'd have us on the wrong foot."

  "I'm on the wrong foot already," Lee said.

  "Shake out of it," Gideon said. "You got all the depositions in your case?"

  "Yes—I've read em all until I'm sick."

  "Get out those you got from Sammy after he'd had the desk gone over for prints," said Gideon.

  "George, there were no fingerprints on the bottle, on the hypodermic syringes, or—" Lee stopped abruptly, and his eyes rounded comically. "Gawd!" he breathed. Kate looked sharply from him to Gideon, while Lee opened the middle section of his brief case, thumbed through some documents which were pinned together, and then pulled one out. "Here we are." He flipped over the pages. "Morphine bottle, two hypodermic syringes, and the packets of morphia—negative. Compartment in which these items found—two sets of prints, neither identified. No way of saying how long they had been there; in a sealed compartment they could last for years. George," Lee said in a choky voice, "I must be going senile."

  "You're worrying too much," Gideon said very tensely. "The desk still sealed up?"

  "Yes, they're not going to take it to the court unless the magistrate asks for it."

  "Nip over there, and get one of the Fingerprint chaps to go through all those compartments. Just one of Borgman's prints in one compartment will do. That'll be another hole sealed up." His eyes were bright and his voice as eager as a boy's, and Lee looked years younger. "Have another beer for luck."

  "Haven't got time," said Lee.

  When Gideon came back from seeing him off, he was humming; and Kate, looking toward the door and smiling, reminded herself that he hadn't hummed lightheartedly like that for a long time. She could still picture the delight with which he had spotted the flaw. She marveled, as she always had and always would, at George's grasp of details and speed of thought, as well as his astonishing memory for trivial facts; or facts which did not seem to matter. He came in, said, "Why don't you put that ironing away and do it when I'm not home?" and immediately switched on the television. "All I want now is the news that Red Carter's been caught," he went on, as the set began to warm up. "Funny how often cases go in parallels. There's a kind of whispering campaign for Red and his brother, too—started to do them a bit of good, too."

  Kate said, "I'll just finish this shirt, and then I'll put it up. How do you mean?"

  "The way they got away with the Black Maria caught the public fancy," Gideon said. The set began to whine, and he started to fiddle with it. "We hate their guts but you've got to admire their courage, hope they get a sporting chance—that kind of attitude developed. And I was talking to Hugh Christy today. He's having a bad patch like Fred's having, although I don't think it will affect him so much. He says that there's a lot of talk in the Division—that Tiny Bray was a crook himself, and the worst kind, a traitor. So he deserved a beating up. And Syd Carter wasn't going to kill the Gully girl—they were going for a night out, and she changed her mind at the last moment. It won't do the Carters any good, but it shows the way the wind's blowing." He stood up the volume right on the set now; and the picture began to form. "Oh, lor', it's that serial. Shall I switch off?"

  "We might as well give it a trial," Kate said. "I rather like it, and—oh, why can't they let you alone for five minutes."

  The telephone was ringing.

  "Might be to say that Borgman's confessed or Red and Syd Carter are back in the cell," remarked Gideon lightly. "I'll take it in the hall, you look at your young lovers." He closed the door and switched on the hall light, leaned against the wall and heard his two daughters upstairs, lifted the receiver, and announced himself:

  "Gideon."

  "Hallo, George," greeted O'Leary, and went on without preamble. "I've got a report here that I thought you'd like at once."

  "Try me."

  "The movements of Lucy Sansetti," O'Leary told him, "checked over four nights running. She's called for petrol and gone to the toilet while being served, at Mortimer's Garage, the Arches, Fulham, Bennett's Garage, New King's Road, Chelsea, and Butterby's Garage, Fulham Road. Tonight she's back at Mortimer's. Then there's the report you had in today from Wills. Three of these four garages are known to have been on the rocks last year, and now they're doing all right. It looks as if we've got something."

  Gideon said, "Yes, Mike, it looks good. Have you put a ring round Mortimer's Garage?"

  "Yes, it's in position now. All corners and approaches covered."

  "That's the big place not far from the river near the football ground, isn't it?" Gideon said. "Right on my doorstep. Have some chaps up on the roof of the warehouse overlooking it. Have a couple of launches up to cover the river. Alert the Putney boys to make sure we can close the bridge and the towpath if we need to. Don't move in until I get there. If Lucy Sansetti comes out, let her get well away from the garage before picking her up. Right?"

  "On the nose," O'Leary said.

  15. Mortimer's

  Mortimer's Garage was a new one built on the site of an old, almost derelict place which had been there since the beginning of motorcars. It had eight petrol pumps, each of them glowing with illumination at the top, each bright and shiny in red and yellow. Well-made drive-ins were on either side. There was a large showroom which stretched right across the pump line, with a driveway to the repair shop and the paint shop behind. In a fenced-off area next to the garage there were forty or fifty new and secondhand cars, several of them marked: "One Owner Only" or "3,000 Miles—a Snip." These were exactly the kind of cars which might have been stolen and repainted, and if they were, then the owners of Mortimer's Garage were bloated with their own self-confidence.

  Gideon pulled up at a pump marked Mixture and a smart-looking girl in a white smock came from the showroom, where the cash desk was in a corner. A little Ford, Lucy Sansetti's car, was pulled up by the air installation, and a man was bending over the engine, as if looking for some trouble. Gideon knew that a dozen Yard and Divisional men were close by. Three of them were in a lorry which had parked outside a truck café a few yards along. One was parked opposite. The men on the nearby warehouse roof were out of sight, but ready to act at the first sign of action.

  The girl was pretty and her smile was bright.

  "Evening, sir. How much?"

  "Five, please," said Gideon, and opened his door and got out. "Check my oil and the battery, will you?" As the girl said "yes" brightly, he strolled toward the doorway at one side of the saleroom, marke
d Toilet. He saw Wills appear from the lines of cars for sale, with a sleek-looking motor salesman by his side, talking freely. Wills nodded. Gideon walked past the toilet door, toward the repair shop. He heard a man tapping, as if with a light hammer, and heard the hum of a battery charger and of a dynamo. A man appeared from the office just in front of Gideon, and asked pleasantly enough:

  "You got a car in here, sir?"

  "No, I—"

  "The shop's reserved for customers with cars here only, sir."

  "I daresay," said Gideon, and then Wills and another man jumped the fence which divided the drive-in from the parked cars. The little salesman gaped, and looked ready to shout. The man in front of Gideon was obviously scared. "What—" he began, and then Gideon shouldered him to one side, and another Yard man slipped into the office to make sure that no one could use the telephone.

  In the repair shop there were half a dozen cars; a man was bending over an engine of one, like the mechanic outside. He gaped at Gideon and the other massive detective who strode in, and Gideon saw a youngster with a streak of oil across his forehead, wearing a pair of blue jeans; quite a pleasant-looking lad.

  "Go and warn them!" screamed the man whom Gideon had pushed aside.

  A Yard man clapped his hand over this man's mouth. Gideon, Wills, and two others rushed at the youngster, but suddenly he swung round, and dived toward the repair shop. As he reached it, Wills said reassuringly, "They'll walk right into our chaps at the back." The youth disappeared, shouting, and the door of the paint shop slammed as Wills reached it. He flung his weight against it, and forced it open a few inches. The others reached him in a stride, the weight of three big men was hurled against the door, and it began to sag open—until there was the sharp sound of a shot.

  Wills drew in a hissing breath, and his body slumped. The other men, startled, took off their pressure, and the door was slammed. Gideon heard bolts being pushed home. And on the oily ground, eyes rounded and with a startled expression, Wills lay with blood oozing from a wound in his neck.