Murder: One, Two, Three

by John Creasey

  “Yes,” said Roger gruffly. “Yes, I know. Thanks. Hold on a minute, will you?” He put the receiver down and stared across the darkness towards the East End, and the garish light towards Holborn. From here he could see the police moving about with slow and deliberate movements, a dozen torches flashing at the same time. He found himself lighting a cigarette. Then he raised the receiver again. “Hallo, Corty. Sorry. Either Ginn is more desperate than we ever thought, or he can really kill Daphne Mallow. If he can, she isn’t where I thought she was.”

  Cortland grunted.

  “What’s this about Mallow looking like death?” Roger asked.

  “Well, we gave him a meal—he ate as if he hadn’t touched food for days!” There was real astonishment in Cortland’s voice. “Just shovelled it in. He said he spent all the cash he had on a few things he had to buy. We thought the food would quieten him down, but not a bit of it. He’s been on the rampage. Why don’t we find his wife, what do we think he gave himself up for? He didn’t kill anyone, he can prove it, he wants a solicitor. And he wants to go and look for his wife,” Cortland went on; and sniffed. “Tell you one thing, Handsome—I dunno whether he’s right about his innocence, but I’d say he loves his wife the way I ought to love mine.”

  Roger didn’t even think about making a quip.

  “I’ll come and have another word with him,” he said, “he might give me an angle.”

  “What about the search, then? We’ve had two urgent calls for help tonight, and can’t send more men out to Divisions because of the concentration round St. Paul’s.”

  “Sorry.” Roger was suddenly brisk. “I’d like more on that job, not less. Be nice to everybody. Or tell them the simple truth,” he added savagely. “That the woman—”

  “Listen, Handsome,” Cortland broke in, “why don’t you take it easy? They’ll finish the job as well without you as with you. And why don’t you stop blaming yourself? Ginn pushed you in front of a train, otherwise you wouldn’t have lost Mallow’s wife. Stop being Atlas.”

  There was a pause. Then: “Thanks, Corty,” Roger said, and rang off.

  When he drew his hand across his forehead it was wet with sweat. He didn’t move, but took out the whisky flask and took another tot. When he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he didn’t think of Richard. He got out of the car, conscious of the curious gaze of the policeman. He nodded, but didn’t speak. Then he walked across to confer with a Divisional man and two sergeants.

  Nothing had been found.

  “We know the direction Ginn came from,” Roger said. “Let’s make sure we cover that.”

  No one else suggested that he should go home, but he knew what was on their minds. Yet nothing could have drawn him away from the ruins, except news of Ginn. There was no news – of Ginn, or of the girl. Every place Ginn was known to frequent, every friend or contact he had in the East End, was interviewed that night; it was as if a vow of silence had been imposed upon them all.

  Gladys Domwell’s sister swore she knew nothing more.

  By half past one, they had nearly finished the search near St. Paul’s. Policemen were human beings, with human limitations, and they began to flag in spirit and in body. Many of them had been working most of the day, and had volunteered for this extra duty. Others had lost the stimulus of excitement when they knew that Ginn had escaped. No one could be sure that the other woman was here. Yet they were all conscious of the way West drove them on, and something in his tension kept them moving.

  It was a quarter to two when a whistle shrilled out; a signal of discovery.

  “Not much doubt about it, this is where they were,” a man said to Roger. He was in the outer cellar, and a dozen torches were lodged on the walls, shining down on the half dozen police making the search. “That’s the murdered woman’s compact, all right—G.D., too much of a coincidence to think there was anyone else here with those initials, isn’t it?”

  Roger said: “I should think so.” He turned the cheap brass compact over in his hand. The initials were large, it was one of the “souvenir from Southend” pieces, available with almost every combination of two initials. The faint smell of perfumed powder came from it. In the pale red glow from the “danger” wall and the light of a torch, he could see only one set of fingerprints; someone with a small hand. He held the compact by the edges, and then put it carefully in a white envelope. “How’d she come to drop it, I wonder? Did she have a handbag?” He answered the question himself. “No.” Then his voice rose. “That’s a thing to look for—Gladys Domwell’s handbag. Find out what it was like, whether she had it with her tonight, if not, what happened to it? Flash that to the Yard, will you? See if Mallow knows.”

  “Right away.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The footprints aren’t very clear,” said another man. “Man and a woman, but they trampled all over the place. Could be two women, I suppose, we’d tell better in day light.”

  “Go round the walls, tap them all thoroughly,” Roger said. “Don’t miss even half a chance.”

  “We won’t.”

  Men began to go round the walls, using wooden hammers, tapping every square foot for a hollow sound. They found none, although they actually tapped the movable brick.

  Now and again, the tapping set up a tremor in the wall which loomed high above them. No one noticed it.

  Inside, almost sealed up in that cupboard, Daphne did not even know the police were there. She was bitterly cold. Fear and terror had merged into a kind of stupor. Every now and again she had a flare of horror, when she thought she heard a sound, and prayed that the door would open.

  It didn’t. Her legs, her feet, her whole body ached.

  She began to wonder whether Ginn was coming back.

  When a man looked as if he had the burden of the world on his shoulders even in sleep, it was bad. Janet West knew that Roger felt as badly as he could. She stood by the bedside, looking down. He hadn’t stirred when she’d got up, just after seven, to start getting breakfast. She knew he’d come home in the early hours, but wasn’t sure what time; he’d hardly disturbed her. Now, he slept with his lips tightly closed, and with a sharp groove between his eyebrows, which were drawn together slightly. She knew him as well as a wife could know her husband; and she knew that when he looked like this, it was because things were going gravely wrong.

  The fair stubble on his cheeks and chin was smeared with dust and dirt; he hadn’t washed before falling into bed, a measure of physical fatigue. One hand, over the bedspread, had two nasty scratches; the nails were dirty – unusual with him – and one was broken. She knew that there was nothing she could do, except be herself. She wasn’t worried, beyond the ordinary worry of a wife for the man she loves because things are going badly; but he’d get through this bad spell as he had others. Of all his qualities, the one which served him best was refusal to give up. Refusal? It was virtually an impossibility.

  “Mum,” one of the boys whispered, so softly that she couldn’t be sure which one it was. “Mum, can we come in?”

  It was a little after eight. The Yard hadn’t telephoned yet, and there was no need to wake Roger until there was a call. Janet went out, so preoccupied that she didn’t at first understand the suppressed excitement of the boys; or guess why the newspapers were in their hands, one in each.

  “Look!” Richard almost squealed.

  “What—” began Janet, and then saw Martin’s news paper, held out towards her so that she could see Roger’s photograph. “What is it?” she exclaimed.

  “He was pushed in front of a train,” breathed Martin.

  “If I could find that man, I’d kill him!” Richard lost the battle to keep his voice low.

  “Quiet,” breathed Janet. “Let’s get away from here.”

  She led the way to the head of the stairs, the boys following her as day old clucks would follow a hen. She groped for the top step, and started down, still looking at the newspaper. In the hall, she read the main parts of the story. It
was nearly all there; the two men battered to death in Hoole, the murder of an unnamed girl near St. Paul’s, Ginn’s escape, the description of the encounter between Ginn and Roger – in heavy black type and largely guesswork – and the fact that Daphne Mallow was missing.

  “Do you think Dad will be awake before we go to school?” Richard asked.

  Janet made herself put the paper down.

  “I don’t know. You mustn’t worry him, anyhow, he has enough on his mind as it is. Now finish dressing, if I don’t hurry you’ll be late for school.”

  They’d left the house when the telephone rang, other urgent matters on their minds.

  Would Roger go to the Yard as quickly as possible, several urgent matters were awaiting his attention, and the Assistant Commissioner wanted to see him in his office at half past nine.

  It was now twenty minutes to.

  Roger had a quick, cold bath, a bad shave, and nothing like enough breakfast, he was in too much of a hurry. He did everything with a speed and tension which told the same story as his expression when he had been asleep. Janet didn’t obtrude, didn’t ask questions. He kissed her with that little extra vigour which told of grateful understanding, and at nine fifteen was getting into the car which had been sent for him from the Yard. Not having his own car was a nuisance, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. As he lit his first cigarette of the morning, he looked back; Janet and the house were out of sight; only the neat brick houses and neat, hedged-in gardens of the neighbours were there. He wished he hadn’t been so short with Janet.

  “Nice morning, sir,” the driver said.

  “Yes. Fine.”

  In fact, it was already warm, and the temperature would probably be up in the eighties today; hot, for London. It wasn’t sticky yet, not in the way it could be. Roger eased his collar, and wished he’d put on a lighter suit. Then the car swung into the Yard, and the first thing he saw was his own green Wolseley.

  “Did you know my car was here?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t when I left, sir.”

  “Hm,” said Roger.

  Wortleberry must have had a driver bring it up; unless Bradding, who had stayed in Hoole, had come with a report. Roger put that out of his mind. It was exactly half past nine, and Sir Guy Chatworth didn’t like being kept waiting.

  He’d have to wait for five minutes.

  Only Eddie Day, one of nature’s ugly men, was in the office. His big, protruding teeth seemed to force his lips apart, as he greeted: “Didn’t you know the Old Man was waiting for you?”

  “Just ring him, and tell him I’ll be half an hour or so,” Roger said tartly; and felt the morning’s first moment of relaxation when Eddie took him seriously; and was horrified.

  “Listen, Handsome, you can’t do a thing like that. You must be—” He stopped, saw Roger’s grin, and became aggrieved.

  He turned stiffly back to his own desk, and Roger glanced through the reports on his.

  There was nothing in that mattered.

  Gladys Domwell had had a green handbag with her; her married sister, with whom she lived in a tiny house off the Whitechapel Road, was quite sure of that, and Mallow had confirmed it. She’d had a few pounds, because she worked with the manufacturing glove maker, who paid his staff on Thursday. There were other notes about what she had in her bag, but the important thing was to find the bag itself.

  There was nothing about Daphne Mallow.

  Mallow’s mood hadn’t changed.

  There was nothing new about Ginn.

  At twenty minutes to ten Roger tapped at the door of Chatworth’s office. He uttered a silent prayer: that Chatworth wouldn’t be in a hectoring or a critical mood. He could be the world’s best boss, and he could borrow characteristics of the Devil. He probably had no idea of what Roger was feeling, if he had he’d almost certainly soft pedal. With the morning newspapers and a virtually blank report sheet on his desk, he would much more likely bark.

  “Come in!”

  Roger squared his shoulders, and opened the door.

  Chatworth sat at his flat topped desk in the room furnished with black glass and chromium, looking like a farmer on holiday. He was positively angelic, actually smiled, waved a hand, and said: “Come in, come in, West, glad you made it. You know Superintendent Wortleberry, don’t you?”

  Wortleberry sat squeezed in a chair which was inches too small for him. He was ill at ease, obviously glad to see a familiar face, and had an open suitcase by his feet. On a sheet of crumpled newspaper on Chatworth’s desk lay a big rock. It was the size of a very large pear, ugly, jagged, and stained with a brownish colour.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wortleberry’s Finds

  “Don’t get up, Superintendent, don’t get up,” Chatworth urged benignly. “Come and sit down, West.”

  Wortleberry looked relieved, with reason, for getting out of the tubular steel arms of his chair was a major operation. He looked pasty besides Chatworth’s brick brown face, a colourless man against the A.C.’s colourfulness; but there was something dogged and likeable about him.

  “Thought I’d come up myself, there were one or two things we found down at Hoole,” he said. “Drove your car. Thought you could do with it. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Roger made a point of shaking hands.

  “I’m really grateful—lost without it. Thanks. What’s this?”

  He eyed the stone. He knew what it was, within the limits of probability, but it would be unkind to rob Wortleberry of the opportunity of explaining. He sat down. Already he felt much better; the day was really a new day.

  For the time being the fate of Daphne Mallow was at the back of his mind.

  “Glad I did the right thing,” snuffled Wortleberry. “Well, that’s blood, you can tell that. Had a group test—Group A. The dead man in the cottage, what’s his name, Silver, was Group A. So was Reedon’s.” He breathed heavily, and prepared to deliver himself again. “Some prints on the stone, too.”

  West said softly: “Fine. Mallow’s?”

  “No.”

  “Whose?”

  “Ginn’s.”

  It really was a new day. There was a lot to do, the pressure of the search for the missing girl hadn’t relaxed, but if there’d been any doubt before, there wasn’t now; they had Lefty Ginn. Ginn had fingered the rock which had killed his own accomplice in crime, or else had killed Reedon.

  It was like a flash of light in a dark room.

  The flash faded.

  Roger didn’t speak at first, and knew that the others were waiting for him to comment. They watched, intently. He had a new thought – not wholly new, but sharply at variance with the satisfaction that had come with the discovery of those finger prints. The flash of relief hadn’t lasted long.

  “What’s on your mind?” Chatworth asked. “Didn’t you expect to find that Ginn had been there? Eh? Disappointed that they weren’t Mallow’s prints?”

  “No, sir,” Roger said slowly, formally. “Hardly that. But Ginn’s—he’s giving himself away in every way he can. I don’t get it.”

  Wortleberry snuffled.

  “Don’t get you,” Chatworth said briefly.

  There was no need for further time to think; Roger understood his own doubts, his own reaction, his own bewilderment; several of the things that had puzzled him before came into sharp relief.

  “We were on to Ginn from the moment we knew that Chips Silver had been killed,” he said. “We didn’t worry whether Ginn or someone else had killed Chips, we just went for Ginn because it was obviously on the cards. We’ve picked up a hundred men that way. But after that, there was the girl, Gladys Domwell. All reports about her are the same: she’s no fool. Yet what happened? Ginn didn’t hide the fact that he was back in the East End, and that she was his girl. Ginn’s been out of circulation for years, and suddenly comes back. Why? And why did Gladys talk as freely as she did to Mallow? You know about that, sir, Superintendent Wortleberry doesn’t. She told Mallow that Lefty Ginn had his wife, remembe
r. That was taking a hell of a chance, wasn’t it—telling Mallow his name. The girl couldn’t be sure that Mallow would go where she wanted him, and it didn’t work out that way. He came to us, and named Lefty.”

  Chatworth competed with Wortleberry; and won.

  “Hm, yes, I see what you mean,” he rumbled. “Don’t see where it will get us, though. The girl slipped up. She may have believed that Mallow would be frightened of the name of Ginn. She—” Chatworth straightened up. “Yes, of course, that’s it. She used the name to frighten Mallow, thought that it was familiar to him.”

  “Might a’ been,” Wortleberry observed daringly.

  Roger found himself lighting a cigarette.

  “Yes. Yes,” he repeated more briskly. “Well, we haven’t heard everything Mallow can tell us, we’ve known that for some time. And whatever the reason—”

  “Puzzling thing, that Ginn killed his light o’ love,” said Chatworth, who sometimes revealed a Puritanical reluctance to call a spade a spade. “If Ginn knew she’d named him, and he thought Mallow had come to the police and also named him, he’d feel pretty vicious.”

  Roger said: “Yes, he would,” very slowly. He kept them waiting for a few seconds, then pulled himself together. “Sorry, sir. Well, with any luck we’ll have Ginn today.”

  “Hope we do,” said Wortleberry, and looked almost coy. He glanced at Chatworth, as if seeking permission to go on. With men from the provincial forces Chatworth could be cherubic, and obviously he liked Wortleberry. “There’s something else,” purred Wortleberry. “Your man Bradding found that, as a matter of fact. There’s a set of prints in the cottage which don’t square up with anyone known to have been there.”

  Roger said: “A man’s?”

  “Yes. Biggish chap, I’d say. Not Reedon’s, Mallow’s, Ginn’s, or what’s-his-name—Silver, isn’t it, Chips Silver. Ah. Carpenter or something. Not the gardener’s, either. Look,” added Wortleberry, and bent low, grunting and snuffling, to pick something else out of the suitcase. “See?”