by Bruce, Leo
“Yes,” he said. “I should like to have more accurate details of Larkin’s arrival here. Where did he come from?”
“Paris, I believe, but I forget now why I think so. He never said.”
“Can you remember the actual date?”
“By chance I can. It happened thai that Spring a film was being made here and they wanted every available Englishman for a crowd scene. I’d never done anything of the sort before, but I did about six days’ work with them. I even had to speak two words, which were ‘We protest!’ I remember Larkin’s arrival because it was during those six days, and they were in March.”
“Good. Lucky you can pinpoint it.”
14
“DO YOU suspect Lance?” asked Rupert Priggley next morning.
“He could have done it,” Carolus said. “As far as I know yet he’s got no absolute alibi and more motive than anyone. He left here on the Thursday morning before the murder, he says, for Cadiz. He could, so far as we know, have flown, reached London Thursday night, gone down to Barton Abbess on Friday or Saturday and been back here on the Monday. On the other hand we shall probably find his Cadiz alibi is impeccable.”
“What about my theory that he bribed Larkin to do it?”
“No,” said Carolus. “It doesn’t hold water. In the first place he would never have trusted Larkin. Then if Larkin had done it on those terms he wouldn’t have obligingly gone back to England but when he found he could be extradited he would have made a bolt for it. Moreover Larkin’s whole behaviour at Barton Abbess was wholly against it.”
“I suppose it was. What are you going to do today?”
“Willick’s coming here presently to take me to see Larkin’s house. It is exactly as he left it, apparently, and may be most interesting. You’d better go to the beach.”
“All right. I’ll see what talent there is.”
Willick drove up in a large American motor-car like a mediæval dragon and said he would drive Carolus up to the Kasbah but they would have to walk from there. The streets in the Moorish quarter, it appeared, were too steep and too narrow for vehicles and Larkin’s house was in the depths of it.
Carolus asked if there were many Europeans living in this ancient picturesque and crowded medina.
“Not so many now,” said Willick. “A few years ago there was quite a craze for it. American artists and so on. I must say I find it rather an affectation. But not with Larkin. He spoke the language of these people.”
“You don’t?”
“Not a word. I speak Spanish and French, and as all the Moors talk one or the other it’s as much as I need. But Larkin liked to hob-nob with them. He was even reputed to have some financial dealings with them of rather a shady sort. But that may be nonsense. Tangier is full of the most fantastic stories about its residents. Another one they told about Larkin was that he was in Germany throughout the war.”
They were descending a steep hill by a narrow cobbled road, passing little Moorish shops and tall windowless houses. The street was noisy with the playing and shouting of the beautiful Moorish children. Presently Lance Willick led Carolus by an even narrower street, a mere passage-way. It was like walking through a narrow canon between cliffs of plastered house-wall, unbroken by anything except iron-bound doors on the street.
“Would you describe this as a dangerous quarter?” asked Carolus.
“Only in the minds of visiting journalists whose editors apparently never get tired of the same boring nonsense about smuggling, dope, crime and vice in a city where everyone carries a knife. I’ve no doubt you would read in London of the perils of the medina, but it’s far quieter and better behaved than the King’s Cross area, for example, or the Elephant and Castle, not to mention Soho.”
“That I can well believe.”
“I’m going to leave you at Larkin’s house,” said Willick, “because I want to get to the bank before it closes. But I daresay you’d prefer, anyway, to poke about on your own.”
“It’s kind of you to have brought me.”
“I hope you’ll come to my house afterwards for lunch. You can walk from here—it’s in a district called the Marshan, which adjoins this. Here’s the address. I’ll expect you about one?”
With a large key Lance Willick unlocked a narrow door which was in a doorway with a broken arch. It was studded with iron-headed nails and heavily bound with iron. It creaked as it opened into a dark interior.
Carolus entered and stood quite still for a moment trying to grow accustomed to the semi-darkness. It appeared that the only light came from a glass skylight which stretched right across the central well of the house.
Lance pointed out some objects of glass and pottery on a shelf beside him.
“These are Larkin’s collection. Museum pieces, some of them.”
He picked up a beautiful glazed earthenware bottle.
“That’s Turkish,” he said. “Sixteenth century. That bowl is Amol, about four hundred years earlier.”
“Larkin was evidently a connoisseur,” said Carolus.
“He was. Well I’ll leave you here.”
Lance handed Carolus the key.
“Lock up when you leave,” he said; “there’s some quite valuable stuff here. In fact I’ve been trying to trace Larkin’s sister to know what she wants done with it. Happy hunting.”
Carolus heard the creak of the door and its slam, but no more. So heavy was it that no sound of retreating footsteps came from outside.
There was something eerie about this hushed and shadowy house. He soon began to see about him, but even then he felt as though he was in a cavern after coming from the brilliant morning sunshine outside. He had heard that Moorish houses were constructed almost without windows, yet when he saw the reality and stood in deathly silence and gloom in a dead man’s home he was conscious of an unnaturalness, something macabre and perhaps evil in the atmosphere.
There were two rooms on the ground floor, the fairly large one in which he stood now and a room which was divided from it by tall double doors. But in front of him was an alcove, and this was evidently used as both kitchen and dining-room. Upstairs was a small bathroom and a bedroom which looked as though it was never used.
Having made a preliminary survey, Carolus began to examine the objects around him. The large room was furnished in a pseudo-Moorish style with low divans, low round tables and endless ornamental shelves crowded with bric-à-brac. Here was the Aleppo glass which Lance had mentioned and some interesting pottery.
Carolus went through the double doors and stood for some time looking about him in what had been Larkin’s bedroom. He opened the cupboard and took down one of Larkin’s plain dark suits, which he examined minutely. After a moment he took off his own jacket and put the dead man’s jacket on, examining the effect most carefully in the mirror. He looked for the maker’s name and found the suit had come from an American department store. The others in the cupboard had been made by a Tangier tailor. He went on to the shirts and the old-fashioned starched collars, of which several were here.
He then did a thing which would have brought him a gibe or two from Rupert Priggley if the boy had been there. From his pocket he brought out a tape-measure and very carefully made a number of measurements: the neckband of the shirt, the collar, the approximate waist measurement of a man wearing Larkin’s trousers, and several other calculations. All these he noted down.
He then began to look for a pair of Larkin’s shoes. There were none to be found in the bedroom and Carolus went through the rest of the house without success. He did not seem puzzled by this, and as soon as he had satisfied himself that here, as in the cabin of the Saragossa, none were to be found he went to the bathroom and looked at the contents of the small cupboard.
He came back to the central room and sat down. Again he was conscious of the curious brooding atmosphere, as though he were under observation. What was wrong with this house? he asked himself. There was something seriously wrong, something which he could not define. The least s
uperstitious of people, Carolus refused to believe that it was in any sense haunted, even by the memory of a man who had murdered and killed himself. No, it was something real, something visible, probably right under his nose if he could have the wit to perceive it. He looked about him again as though he expected to see a cross hung upside down or a wax figure stuck with pins.
Certainly the house was not haunted by Larkin. Perhaps that was exactly what was wrong—it ought to have been, if things were what they seemed. There should have been some relic, some mark of the man as he had heard him described, and there was nothing. In all the house there was nothing written by hand. In a drawer of the table was some typewriting paper, of which he took a sheet, but not a word was written anywhere.
There was not a photograph in the house, either. That was not extraordinary so far as any display of photographs was concerned. Many people detest them to be framed and shown. But in this case there were none put away anywhere. Surely not many people, except of the most primitive races, have homes in which there are no personal papers, no handwritten words and not a single snapshot?
But what puzzled Carolus most was the contents of the kitchen cupboard. Remembering Lance’s description of Larkin as a very good cook who invited Lance to excellent dinners which he cooked himself, Carolus expected to find here at least some indication of the man’s tastes. There was a packet of tea, some sugar, salt, a bottle of tomato sauce, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of vinegar. The rest of the space was occupied with tinned food—baked beans, tinned vegetables, sardines, corned beef, even tinned meat loaf. There were no spices, no wine. In the kitchen itself there was no sign of onions, garlic or herbs. Scarcely, one would have thought, the stock-in-trade of a gourmet.
Turning to the batterie de cuisine, Carolus found that it consisted of one frying-pan, one saucepan and a kettle. This mystified him and he remained for some time looking unhappily at the poor little collection, then went upstairs again.
As he stood on the landing he became aware of a sound from the floor below. Someone was slowly opening the front door.
Carolus stood still. He would wait till the intruder was inside and had shut the door before interrupting him. Whoever it was, he must be aware that someone was in the house, since the front door was unlocked. But he might not expect that it was Carolus.
Presently Carolus moved to the door and started going downstairs. He neither hurried nor dawdled. A man was looking up at him, a large dark man with a heavy face and sullen eyes.
“What do you want here?” asked Carolus coolly.
“You Mr Deene?” The fellow spoke in a deep raw voice and even from those few syllables it was evident that English was not his language.
“Yes. How did you know I was here?”
“Never mind that. I’ve watched you since you landed. I want to talk to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You do no good here. You go back to England.”
“What’s this nonsense? A threat of some kind?”
“More than a threat. I tell you plain. You do no good here. Leave things alone you don’t know about.”
Carolus smiled.
“That’s exactly what I can never do,” he said chattily. “I’m the most inquisitive person.”
“This time you must. It isn’t for a joke, I tell you.”
“Cigarette?”
What made Carolus uncomfortable was that the other was as composed outwardly as he was. This was not, in other words, a piece of acted melodrama. The man, whoever he was, was sincere.
“Look here,” the man went on, “you don’t know about this. You forget what you know already. This is not the thing you think—it’s a bigger thing.”
“Very likely. That makes it more attractive. But what chiefly interests me is not anything to do with Larkin’s past life, except in so far as it enables me to discover who killed Gregory Willick. Anything that he may have done here is not my business.”
The man seemed to consider this.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all one. You leave the whole thing alone, as the English police have done. It is a serious thing. You look for other things to investigate. This is not a thing for a man’s hobby.”
“I’m sorry, you know, but it is. I’m tired of cases in which all I’ve got to do is to solve a problem. I’ve been waiting for you to turn up, in a sense, ever since I started to be interested in crime.”
“You mean you refuse? You will not give up and go home?”
“Oh dear me, no. I can’t tell you how interested I’ve become in this case in the last half-hour.”
“Then I shall have to kill you.”
The man spoke quietly, almost regretfully and, Carolus believed, with deadly sincerity.
“I don’t think so,” said Carolus. “I don’t think you are very likely to try, and I’m quite sure you wouldn’t succeed. But let’s talk of more sensible things. What is your interest in the matter?”
“That is not important. It is sufficiently strong for me to do exactly what I have said.”
“You’ve plenty of experience, I daresay?”
“Yes. I have experience.”
“What is your name?”
“Michaelis. They call me Mike.”
“You live here?”
“For the moment. Now you listen, Mr Deene. You fly back to England tomorrow. I mean it. I must do what I say if you stay. No other remedy. You believe me?”
“I believe you mean what you say. I think you would be more likely to influence me if you would tell me a little more. Why is it essential that I go? Am I getting warm, as we used to say in the children’s guessing game? Are you, or is someone else, afraid that I shall find out the truth?”
“No one is afraid of anything. But you cannot stay here.”
“What would you say if I told you that I had discovered the truth already? Not the details, certainly, but the basic fact from which all details come?”
“I should say you were a liar. There is no basic fact. This is something you do not understand.”
“You are wrong there, you know. I do not understand it all, certainly, but I know what happened to Larkin and I know who killed Gregory Willick.”
“These are not altogether the questions.”
“But they are. The only questions for me. I’m not interested in anything else about Larkin. I don’t want to know, for instance, where he got his money. I set out to find out who killed Willick, and I know.”
“Can you prove that to me? Can you prove that you know?”
“By asking you a question, yes.”
“A question?”
The big man stood over Carolus. His attitude was not exactly threatening—it was clear that he had come to give a warning and no more. Probably, Carolus considered, his orders were to leave it at that. But he was evidently baffled, perhaps perturbed, by the turn the conversation had taken.
“What question?” he asked.
“This. Where are the dead man’s shoes?”
If Michaelis was startled or even surprised by this he did not show it. He looked calmly at Carolus, then turned to go.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” asked Carolus. “Or don’t you know?”
“I tell you once more, Mr Deene. You may be a clever man but you are acting like a fool. Surely you understand a man like me? I do not lie and threaten empty words. You go back to England on the plane tomorrow. You don’t play around here.”
He said no more and Carolus watched him slowly go out and close the door after him.
15
THE FIRST thing to do was to get rid of Rupert Priggley. Carolus was convinced that the man called Michaelis was not bluffing and that there was real danger in the situation. He could not possibly expose a schoolboy to that, however often he had flippantly besought a violent death for Priggley.
He thought it over as he locked the house and made his way by the passage and narrow street Lance had shown him. He realized that it was going to be no easy matter. Priggley was enjoy
ing Tangier and if he suspected that he was being sent away from possible danger he would flatly refuse to move. That would involve Carolus in dragging in the Consul and cause a lot of trouble all round. The best thing would be to give Priggley some job in England connected with the case—send him down to Barton Abbess perhaps on the plea that events and people there should be under day-to-day observation.
He found a taxi in the Kasbah square and gave the driver Lance Willick’s address. Watching the speedometer, he saw that the total distance from the Kasbah, which was two hundred yards from Larkin’s house to Lance’s, was less than half a kilometre, so that the whole distance could be covered on foot in ten minutes.
Lance’s home was the opposite to Larkin’s. It was not without taste but entirely modern, its bric-a-brac from Scandinavia and Germany instead of the Mohammedan countries.
Lance seemed both amicable and hospitable.
“Find anything?” he asked when he had poured long cool drinks for them both.
“Yes. Quite a lot. Or rather there was quite a lot I didn’t find. The kitchen cupboard had practically nothing but a packet of tea in it. You told me that Larkin was a very good cook.”
Lance laughed.
“He was a little crazy, you know. He thought more about his bits and pieces of cookery than his collections of old pottery and glass. When he was going away he borrowed an old trunk of mine to pack the lot in so that they could be stored in safety.”
“Here?” asked Carolus.
“No. I don’t know where he put that trunk. He probably would not trust my servants. What else was missing?”
“There wasn’t a line of handwriting, a personal document, a letter or a photograph in the whole house. And like the cabin in the Saragossa the place was without a single spare pair of shoes.”
“Those shoes seem to worry you. Perhaps Larkin only kept one pair. It wouldn’t have been his only eccentricity.”
“It certainly wouldn’t.”
Carolus decided to say nothing to Lance Willick about Michaelis. The less people who knew about that, the better. He took his leave soon after lunch, conveniently forgetting to return the key of Larkin’s house.