by John Creasey
Warrender jumped up. “Why, Mr West!” His bright smile failed to hide his alarm. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I bob up all over the place,” Roger said, and his eyes lit up as he turned to the girl. “Hallo, Miss Franklin, I had a feeling we’d meet again.” He saw her flinch, and recognised the anxiety in Warrender’s eyes. “Would you care to dance?”
“I—oh, I’d love to!” She was overeager to get up, and fear and uncertainty did not affect her dancing; she was like quicksilver, her movements had a natural rhythm, and as she grew bolder, she drew closer. If she gave Raeburn this treatment, it was easy to understand why he liked her around.
“I’m ever so glad we had a chance to meet socially,” she said, as the music stopped.
“We never know when we’ll meet next, do we?” Roger asked.
She wasn’t quite sure how to take that, so she giggled.
Roger took her to her table, where Warrender was all false smiles, then went to find Janet with Raeburn and Mark.
“Your wife is a delightful dancer,” Raeburn said, as if he meant it.
“I have luck in some things!”
Raeburn chuckled, and wished them goodnight, all with easy courtesy.
“I trust you didn’t bounce off that creature too often,” Janet said coldly, when he was out of earshot.
“Only when we turned the corners,” Roger said. “Was Raeburn a brilliant conversationalist?”
“I don’t know,” sakd Janet. “I talked all about the boys and their examination, and how big Scoopy is, and how Richard thinks you’re the best detective on the force. At least he knows I think you’re wonderful.”
“Did he try to pump you?”
“As a matter of fact, all he really said was that he hoped you wouldn’t waste your talents,” Janet said, and she was a little uneasy. “I had a feeling that he was really asking me to warn you that if you didn’t stop working against him, you’d get hurt. He didn’t put it into words, but—”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Roger squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, sweet. Mark’s on our side now, Warrender is scared, while the little lady was positively jumpy.”
“If she’s a lady—”Janet began.
“How about dancing with your husband for a change?” Roger suggested.
“You are taking Raeburn seriously, aren’t you?” Janet asked, when they were in bed that night. “I had a feeling that he would try to squash anyone who got in his way.”
Roger didn’t say: “As he squashed Halliwell,” but he knew exactly what she meant.
At nine o’clock on the dot next morning, Roger entered his office. He looked at his laden desk, grinned, rubbed his hands and sat down, glad that no one else had arrived. He opened the files and started running through the cases —all concerned with routine matters.
The visit to the Silver Kettle had given him a bigger fillip than he had realised. Warrender’s jumpiness and the girl’s unease might be encouraging straws in the wind.
The door opened.
“Morning, Eddie!” greeted Roger.
“What, you ‘ere?”
“All fresh for the fray,” said Roger. “Why the look of astonishment?”
“Thought you’d be out at Battersea,” Eddie said. “Turnbull’s over there, ‘e asked me to tell you if you came here first. A man named Tony Brown, Eve Franklin’s ex, was found dead in his room this morning. Gassed.”
“My God!” ejaculated Roger, and grabbed a telephone. “Give me Superintendent Pinkerton of Clapham, quickly, please. . . . I wonder if Eve knows? . . . Hallo, Pinky! I’ve just heard about the Flodden Road job, and I’ll be on my way in a few minutes, but there are one or two oddments you could get cracking on before the official report’s ready.”
“Always a jump ahead,” jeered the Divisional Superintendent. “Tell me what they are, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Ta. If you could get me Brown’s history, going back to his first tooth, it would help. Then see if he’s ever had anything to do with The Daytime, the night club Raeburn owns in Clapham. This could be suicide because of unrequited love, but if it’s murder, we might find a double motive.”
“Jumping a bit fast, aren’t you?”
“I can’t jump fast or far enough to get Raeburn,” Roger said. “See you at the morgue.”
CHAPTER VI
HOW DID BROWN DIE?
TURNBULL, MASSIVE and frowning, watched the pathologist who was examining Tony Brown’s body, which was cherry pink except where it had been in contact with the bed. His face was as red as a cherry trodden by a clumsy foot. The smell of gas had now almost gone, although in die corners of the room there were still traces. The tap of the gas fire, the door and the brass rails of the bedstead were covered with a film of grey fingerprint powder, and a detective officer was on his knees in front of the fire, brushing the tap gently with a small camel’s- hair brush.
The pathologist straightened up.
“Isn’t much more I can do,” he said. “He’s been dead since late last night. No signs at all of violence. There’s the usual pink coloration of the body, and the flesh is flattened where he was lying. He’d been drinking heavily,
I’d say—tell you more about that after the post-mortem. You needn’t keep him here any longer.”
“Right,” said Turnbull.
“Nothing more you want me for?”
“No, thanks.”
“All right.” The doctor nodded and went out, leaving Turnbull alone with the body and the man who was on his knees. Photographs of the room and the body had already been taken, and an ambulance was waiting outside.
The officer in front of the fire stood up and dusted his knees. “Nothing at all suspicious,” he said.
“Sure?” Turnbull was hard-voiced.
“The only prints on the tap are Brown’s. I took an impression off his fingers, sir, and they’re identical with all the others in the room. He looked after himself; no one else in the house ever came in here. Looks as if he did himself in all right.”
“He may have,” conceded Turnbull. “Raeburn might be an honest man, too.”
The detective pretended not to have heard. “Shall I send the ambulance men up?”
“Not yet, Symes,” Turnbull said. “Have another go at the people across the landing and the woman downstairs. We want to know exactly what time Brown came in last night.”
“They all say—”began Symes.
“Try them again,” ordered Turnbull, brusquely.
“Right, sir,” Symes, who so obviously thought that Brown had committed suicide, turned to the door, which was ajar. It opened wider, and Roger came in.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Morning,” Roger said, waited until Symes had gone, and said to Turnbull, without rancour:” If you talk to men like that, you’ll make them hate your guts, and you’ll never get the best out of them.”
“Morning, preacher,” Turnbull said.
It was a touchy moment. Turnbull, a rank below Roger, was always aggressive, often nearly insolent, as now, for they had clashed before. Roger bit back a sharp retort, and bent over Tony Brown, but soon turned away and looked about him. The telltale evidence of police work was everywhere. He did not ask questions, although, when he looked at the fire and glanced up, Turnbull shook his head. Roger went to the window, overlooking a terrace of grey houses, three stories high, mostly shabby, but some of them resplendent with new paint. At intervals along the street were plane trees, their branches spreading upward, dotted here and there with dry leaves hanging on tenaciously. Three stone steps led up to the front door of each house.
Leaning forward, Roger could see a cluster of trees in Battersea Park; not very far from this spot, Raeburn’s victim had been run down.
“Found anything useful?” Roger asked at last.
“Not a thing.”
“Know much about this fellow yet?”
“Not much,” Turnbull answered. “He didn’t do any particular job,
but managed to make a fair living. Fond of whisky and women, and”—Turnbull paused deliberately —”in love with Eve Franklin.”
“Or just a boy friend?”
“I’ve talked to one of his friends who lives next door, and I’ve seen his brother, who lives in Tooting. At one time Brown had a different fancy every few nights, but he’s been steady on Eve for some time. His friends thought he was making a mistake. She isn’t popular . . . too expensive.” After a pause, Turnbull asked: “Are you going to see her?”
“I am,” said Roger.
“Room for me?”
“Why not? But I want another look round here first. What did he have in his pockets?”
Turnbull pointed to a bamboo table on which were a variety of oddments, some taken from the dead man’s pockets, and some from drawers in the old-fashioned dressing table. There were two photographs of Eve
Franklin, one a snapshot of her dressed in cheap, tawdry clothes; the other a recent studio portrait which showed her as she had looked at the Silver Kettle. There were no letters from her; in fact there was not a letter of any kind, but there were betting slips, several copies of The Winner, and other pointers to Brown’s habits. Standing in a corner was a saxophone case.
“Wonder if he played that?” Roger picked up the case, and asked casually: “Has the sax been tested for prints?”
“It’s so dusty I didn’t think it worth while,” answered Turnbull.
It would have been easy to say: “Everything’s worth trying.” Instead, Roger opened the case. The saxophone was bright and shining, as if it had been well tended.
“We’d better find out if he ever played in a band; Eve used to sing with a third-rate dance band, remember.” Roger tossed a cigarette stub out of the window. “We certainly shan’t get much more from here.” He looked up as Symes came back, obviously empty-handed. “Any luck?”
“They all say they didn’t hear a thing, sir.”
“Keep at it, especially among people who live near by,” urged Roger. “Tell the ambulance men to get the body away, then you stay on duty outside. We want the name and address of anyone who comes to visit Brown, especially of anyone who’s already heard that he’s dead. All understood?”
“I won’t miss anything,” Symes promised.
“Handsome,” said Turnbull, as they drove back to the Yard, “I’ve got this Raeburn bug even worse than you. Sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“Thanks. Where now?”
“I want a word with Gubby Dering,” Roger said.
The pathologist was at the large laboratory with several other white-coated men, busy at Bunsen burners, tripods, burettes and evil-smelling liquids, testing bloodstains, oil stains, some pieces of fabric, and—where Dering was concerned—the organs of a dead child.
“Hallo, trouble?” greeted Gubby. “I’m told you’ve a carbon-monoxide corpus on the way.”
“I’d like to find evidence of culpable homicide, too,” Roger said.
“Bloodthirsty devil,” growled Gubby. “You’ve got murder on the brain. But you didn’t come in to tell me to look for signs of violence. What exactly do you want?”
“Some blood,” said Roger.
“Eh?”
“Blood—human blood, preferably, in a small container which I can slip into my waistcoat pocket and open easily.”
Gubby looked at Turnbull. “Never follow his example,” he advised. “He’s daft.”
“My state of mind apart, can you find me what I want?” asked Roger.
“There’s some blood we were testing from that arsenic job; we’ve finished with it,” said Gubby. “I can make you a thin glass phial you can break easily enough. Or a small bottle.”
“I’ll have the phial,” said Roger.
Outside, with the phial in his pocket, he looked at Turnbull. “Got the idea?”
Turnbull looked fierce. “No, but let me keep trying. We’re going to see Eve, are we?”
“Yes, and we’re going to act dumb with her—for a start, anyway. I’m taking that line with all of them.”
“Why?”
“I think they’ll be eager to underestimate us,” answered Roger, quietly. “We’ve got to make them slip up, somehow.”
Billinger Street, where Eve Franklin lived, was only a few minutes away from Brown’s apartment. The street was very much the same as Flodden Road, but the houses were larger and most of them had been recently painted. The wind blew straight up the street, and a few dead leaves floated from nearly bare trees.
As the ear slowed down, a little man came out of one of the houses and walked away quickly, glancing once or twice behind him.
“He came from her house,” Turnbull said quickly.
“Never mind about him,” Roger said. “We’d rather see Eve alone, anyhow.”
The hall of the house was painted a bright green. A penetrating smell of frying onions came from one of the ground-floor flats, as they studied a notice board, on the wall, on which the names of the tenants appeared in gilt lettering. The sign: MISS EVE FRANKLYN, FLAT 3 had a fresher look than the others. Roger knew that the girl had lived here for only a few weeks; it was a better apartment than her previous one, and was probably part of her reward from Raeburn. It was already established that she had been ‘ill’ since her arrival, for everyone in the house had told the police so.
The two Yard men walked quietly up the stairs. The door of Flat 4 was ajar, and the whine of a vacuum cleaner came from inside. A shadow darkened the doorway, and a woman with a dust cap on her head looked at them curiously, then closed the door.
The two men seemed to fill the small landing as Roger rang the bell of Eve’s flat.
After a long pause, footsteps sounded inside. Roger rang again. Almost immediately the door was opened, and Eve faced them. She wore a pale, gold-coloured dressing- gown, and her hair fell to her shoulders. She stifled a yawn, but her eyes were bright and clear, not those of a woman who had just waked up or was sleepy.
Then she seemed to jump. “What, you again?”
“Sorry to have to worry you,” Roger began.
“You’re not sorry a bit,” retorted Eve, “but you’d better come in.”
She drew back to let them pass, and Turnbull closed the door. The girl walked into the room immediately in front of her; she seemed to float along, the dressing-gown billowing behind her, slim ankles very white, heels baby pink in gilt mules. The room was a large one, but not expensively furnished. It looked out on back gardens, and another row of houses.
“Well, what is it you want?” demanded Eve. She was keeping her fears in check very well.
“Miss Franklin,” Roger said deliberately, “a man named Brown, a Tony Brown, was killed last night. He was a friend of yours.”
Eve caught her breath.
“I’m sorry to bring bad news,” Roger went on. “When did you last see Mr Brown?”
“Why, last ni—” she began, and broke off. Then, as if realising that she had said too much, she went on: “Only last night, he just looked in to see how I was.”
“What time was that?”
“Time? I—I don’t know.” The shock was beginning to take full effect, and she sat down on an easy chair. “Tony dead—it—it doesn’t seem possible!”
“What time did he call? It’s important, Miss Franklin.”
“It must have been about—about seven, I suppose. I went out at half past, and he—he was here before then. But there must be a mistake. He was all right last night, I’ve never seen him looking better!” She was talking to cover her increasing agitation, and suddenly burst out: “What do you mean—killed?”
“He died in somewhat mysterious circumstances,” Roger said ponderously. “We are anxious to find out where he was just before his death, and what was his state of mind—”
“No!” she exclaimed, now almost beside herself. “No, he didn’t kill himself because of me. Say, it wasn’t suicide, it wasn’t! He—”
“Why, had you quarrelled?”
Roger flashed.
She stopped, and turned her head away. Tears welled up into her eyes, of shock or grief, it didn’t much matter which. When she didn’t speak or look up, Roger touched her shoulder.
“Leave me alone!” She brushed his hand away. Her eyes were filled with tears, but they blazed at him. “All you do is to pester me, you and your bloody detectives! It’s a lie, that’s all, you’re lying.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Roger, brusquely. “Brown’s dead, and we want to find out why he died.”
“I don’t know anything about it, I tell you. You’ve no right to come here and torment me.” Eve sprang up, pushed him aside, and rushed towards the door.
She caught them both on the wrong foot, and slammed the door. As Turnbull opened it, Roger saw her rushing into a bedroom across the tiny hall. That door closed, and they heard the key turn in the lock. There was a creaking sound, followed by a brief silence, and another outburst of crying.
“One to her,” Turnbull said, “and about ten to you. She’ll soon crack. Think she thinks Brown was murdered?”
“I think we might break that door down,” Roger mused.
“I’m the rash one of this party,” Turnbull said, dryly. “Ought we to take a chance of being rapped for forcing entry?”
“In that hysterical state she might do anything,” Roger said, “such as commit suicide! Come on.” He put his shoulder to the door, but it did not yield. He took a knife from his pocket, opened a thin blade, inserted it into the lock of the door, and twisted, then pushed.
The door swung open. Eve was lying face downward on a divan bed, quite beside herself with shock.
Roger said: “You’d better get her a drink,” and stepped to the dressing table as Turnbull went out. He found a bottle of smelling salts in a top drawer, turned round to the girl and, sitting on the edge of the divan, put one arm about her shoulders, and raised her head. She rested on his arm like a dead weight. He held the smelling salts under her nose, and she must have taken a deep breath involuntarily, for she gasped and sat upright.