Tell It to the Birds

by James Hadley Chase

  “Just for the record… where were you on the night of September 30th?”

  Anson felt a sudden cold stab of fear go through him.

  “What do you mean?”

  Harmas smiled.

  “You know Maddox. He loves alibis. He wants to know where everyone was, remotely connected with Barlowe on the night of his death,” Harmas’s smile broadened. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t ask me for an alibi as well. It doesn’t mean a thing and if I’m treading on thin ice say so and we’ll skip it.”

  “Of course not.”

  Anson opened a drawer in his desk and took out an engagement diary.

  “I was working late, right here,” he said in a cold, fiat voice. “I didn’t leave here until eleven. The janitor downstairs will tell you if you want to check.”

  “Relax,” Harmas said, waving his hands. “I don’t want to check.” He leaned back in his chair. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this case. I’m inclined to agree with you. Even if this woman isn’t on the level, it might be wiser to pay her. As you say, in this district, we might easily lose a lot of business by fighting her claim. Maddox is coming here this evening I’m going to try to talk him into paying up.”

  Anson stiffened and leaned forward. “Maddox is coming here?”

  “Yeah. He wants to talk to Jenson. I’ll let you know if I persuade him to meet the claim. Will you be home tonight?”

  Anson nodded.

  “Up to around nine o’clock but I know Maddox; he won’t pay up.”

  “He could do. Old man Burrows doesn’t like bad publicity. The newspapers could have a go at us. I’ll see what I can do.” Harmas pushed back his chair. “Getting away from business, do you know anything about that antique shop at the corner of the block? I picked up a paperweight there. They swore it was a genuine antique.” He took from his pocket a plastic bag and slid out an ornate glass paperweight. He pushed it across the desk towards Anson. “Helen is nuts about antiques, but I am now wondering, if it is a fake… could be Japanese, 1960!”

  Without thinking, Anson picked up the paperweight and examined it, then he shrugged.

  “I don’t know; looks nice. If you tell her it’s a hundred years old, she’ll be happy.”

  He handed the paperweight back and Harmas carefully returned it to its plastic bag.

  “Yeah: you have something there.” He stood up. “If I can talk Maddox into paying up, I’ll call you. So long for now.”

  When Harmas had gone, Anson lit a cigarette and stared thoughtfully at the opposite wall. He had an uneasy feeling that this murder plan of his was slowly coming unstuck at the seams.

  He tried to assure himself that although the situation was tricky, it wasn’t dangerous. Not for one moment did he believe that Maddox would pay up now. He was sure that the insurance money was as good as lost. What he had to be careful about was not to be involved. It was Meg’s fault, of course. If she hadn’t told him all those lies about her past life, he wouldn’t be in this spot now.

  He was still sitting at his desk, probing the situation, still wondering if he had made some fatal mistake, when some thirty minutes later, there came a gentle tap on his door.

  “Come on in,” he called.

  The door opened and Jud Jones, the night guard wandered in.

  Surprised, Anson stared at him.

  “Hello, Jud,” he said. “I was just going home. Is there something I can do for you?”

  Jones moved his fat body further into the office. He closed the door. There was an uneasy, smirking expression on his face Anson hadn’t seen before and which he didn’t like.

  “I wanted a word with you, Mr. Anson,” he said.

  “Can’t it wait?” Anson said a little impatiently. “I want to get home.”

  Jones shook his head.

  “I guess not, Mr. Anson. This is important… to you as well as to me.”

  Anson moved over to the window so his back was to the fading light.

  “Go ahead… what is it?”

  “This guy Harmas… you know him?”

  Anson’s hands turned into fists.

  “Yes… what about him?”

  “He has been asking questions about you, Mr. Anson.”

  With an effort, Anson kept his face expressionless. So Harmas had checked his alibi. Well, that would get him nowhere.

  Forcing his voice to sound natural Anson said, “I know all about that. It’s to do with this murder case. The police want to check everyone’s alibi; everyone remotely connected with Barlowe. I happened to have sold Barlowe an insurance policy so I’m involved. It’s just routine. Don’t let it worry you.”

  Jones took a half smoked cigarette from behind his ear, stuck it on his lower lip and set fire to it.

  “It’s not worrying me, Mr. Anson. I thought it might be worrying you. You see, I told him you were right here in this office between nine and eleven. I told him you were using the typewriter.”

  There was a sneering tone in his voice that made Anson’s eyes move intently over the fat, sly face.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I told him the same thing. Just as well I didn’t have company that night, isn’t it?” He forced a smile.

  “Yeah,” Jones said without returning Anson’s smile. “Well, I told him you were here, but he’s only a private dick. What if the cops should ask me?”

  “You tell them the same thing, Jud,” Anson said, his voice sharpening.

  “You can’t expect me to tell lies to the cops, Mr. Anson,” Jones said, shaking his head. “I can’t afford to get into trouble… they could make me an accessory…”

  Anson felt a chill growing around his heart.

  “What do you mean? Accessory? What are you talking about?”

  “You weren’t in your office that night, Mr. Anson.”

  Anson sat abruptly on the edge of his desk. His legs felt as if they wouldn’t support him.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked, his voice husky.

  Jones dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and trod on it.

  “I had run out of cigarettes,” he said. “I thought I might borrow a couple from you. I knocked on the door. No one answered, but the typewriter kept going. I knocked again, then I thought something must be wrong. I opened the door with my pass key. You weren’t there, Mr. Anson. There was a tape recorder playing back the sound of a typewriter working and very realistic it sounded… it had me completely fooled “

  Anson felt cold sweat run from his armpits down his ribs.

  Sunk! he thought, now what am I going to do?

  His immediate impulse was to take Barlowe’s gun from the locked drawer in his desk and murder Jones. The thought was scarcely in his mind before he dismissed it. He would never have the strength to move this great hulk of a body from his office once Jones was dead. He had to gain time to think.

  “That’s right, Jud,” he said. “I wasn’t in my office but I had nothing to do with the murder… nothing at all.”

  Jones, who had been watching Anson closely, smirked. Anson could smell the sweat of excitement and fear coming from the fat man.

  “I’m sure, Mr. Anson… never crossed my mind you did have anything to do with it. I just thought I’d better let you know if the cops asked me. I’ll have to tell them the truth.” He cocked his head on one side, and went on, “it wouldn’t do any harm, would it, Mr. Anson?” Anson said slowly, “Well, Jud, it might.” Jones managed to look sad.

  “I wouldn’t like that. You’ve always been good to me. What sort of harm would it do?”

  “I could lose my job,” Anson said. “I set up this alibi because I was fooling around with a married woman and her husband is on to me. I wanted to prove I was right here instead of being with her.” Even to him, this sounded pretty feeble, but he had no time to think up something better.

  “Is that right?” Jud said and leered. “You were always sharp with girls.” He paused to scratch the back of his fat neck.

  “Well, maybe I could
forget it if that’s all it is. Maybe I could… I’ll have to think about it.”

  Anson smelling blackmail, said quickly… too quickly, “If a hundred dollars would be of any use to you, Jud… after all, although I have nothing to do with it, this is a murder inquiry. How about a hundred bucks and you keep me in the clear?”

  Jones lolled his massive frame against the wall. “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Anson. It worries me. To tell the truth, my wife is far from well. The doc says she should go away. The climate here doesn’t seem to agree with her. Moving is an expensive business. You couldnt run to a thousand, could you? For that I’ll forget everything and you will be doing us a good turn.”

  Anson suddenly became calm. He realized the situation. He told himself he would have to kill this fat, hulking blackmailer, but he would have to stall him until he got him where he could kill him in safety.

  “A thousand!” he exclaimed. “For Pete’s sake, Jud! Where do you imagine I’d find that kind of money? Two hundred is the best I could do.”

  Jones shook his head. His expression became more sorrowful. “I’d like to help you, Mr. Anson, but suppose the cops found out I had lied to them? What would happen to my wife? They could put me away for. a couple of years. Two hundred bucks is no good to me.”

  Anson stared at the fat, sweating blackmailer for a long moment, then he said, “Give me a little time; two or three days.

  I might manage to find five hundred, but that would be the top. How about that?”

  “I hate to press a guy as nice as you, Mr. Anson,” Jones said and Anson was quick to detect a hardening in the expression of his eyes. “It’ll have to be a thousand or nothing. I will give you a couple of days to decide.”

  Anson watched him heave his bulk away from the wall and over to the door. As Jones opened the door, he paused and leered at Anson.

  “My wife knows,” he said. “I never keep anything from her, but she can keep her mouth shut as well as I can. Good night, Mr. Anson.”

  He went out into the corridor and closed the door after him.

  On his way back to his apartment, Anson stopped off at the Shell Service Station. Hornby shook hands with him and asked him how he liked his new tyres.

  “They’re fine,” Anson said. “I looked in to settle the account.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Anson. Come into the office and I’ll give you a receipt.”

  As Hornby began to write out the receipt, he said casually, “The police have been asking about your old set of tyres, Mr. Anson.”

  Anson was looking at a tyre pressure chart, hanging on the wall. His back was to .Hornly. He felt the shock of Hornby’s words like a physical blow.

  Without turning, he asked, “The police? Why?”

  “Something to do with the Barlowe murder,” Hornby said. “It seems the killer left an imprint of his tyres on the murder spot. The police are checking on everyone who has changed his tyres recently. I told them that you had changed your tyres and that you took your old set away.”

  Now the first shock was over, Anson turned.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll see Lieutenant Jenson. He’s a good friend of mine… I wouldn’t like him to think I had anything to do with the murder,” and he forced a laugh.

  “I just thought I’d mention it,” Hornby said, giving Anson the receipt.

  “Sure… I’ll see the Lieutenant.”

  As Anson drove away from the garage, he had a feeling he was in a trap. How many more mistakes was he going to make? He had been so eager to get the insurance money, he had rushed into this thing. He had been crazy to have used Barlowe’s gun. He had been even more crazy to have been so damned careless as to get a garage that knew him to change his tyres. Then there was Harmas asking about the coupon inquiry form and worse still, he now had no falibi for the night when Barlowe died!

  Could this bright idea of his be slowly but surely collapsing? He mustn’t lose his nerve, he told himself. So long as his alibi stood up, he was in the clear. What was he to do about Jones? His hands turned damp as he gripped the steering-wheel. Would he have to murder both Jones and his wife? Somehow he would have to silence them. He was sure, even if he did manage to find one thousand dollars, Jones would come back for more. This tyre business… he had dumped his old set in a breakdown yard among hundreds of other used tyres. No one had seen him do it. Suppose Jones did betray him? Could the police prove he murdered Barlowe? He didn’t think they could… unless Meg’s nerve broke. If they worked on her, she might involve him.

  She would be back the following night and alone in the sordid dirty, little house. He would go out there late and talk to her.

  Maddox flicked cigarette ash off his tie.

  “I never liked Anson,” he said. “There has always been something queer about him. He looks sexually starved and when a man looks like that, I don’t like him.”

  Lieutenant Jenson sat behind his desk. Astride a chair, Harmas kept his eyes on Maddox. They had spent the past hour going over the details that Jenson and Harmas had collected covering Anson’s connection with Barlowe’s murder.

  “Let’s take another look at it,” Maddox said, dropping his cigarette butt on the floor and lighting another cigarette. “We know Anson has been in this woman’s bedroom. We know also he has handled Barlowe’s gun-box. You have his fingerprints in the bedroom and on the gun-box. We know this because you got his prints on the glass paperweight.” He looked approvingly at Harmas. “That was smart.” He drew in a lungful of smoke and let it drift down his thick nostrils.

  “We know from this woman, Fay Lawley, that Anson has been losing money on horses and has been chasing women.

  We know he has been living far beyond his income. We also know on the morning following the Caltex holdup, Anson suddenly pays into his bank a thousand dollars. We know the gun that killed the officer in the hold-up belonged to Barlowe. We also know that the gun killed Barlowe. We can assume the woman gave Anson the gun. He hadn’t the money to pay for the premium so it looks as if he were forced to fake the Caltex hold-up to get the money and to pay off his debts to this bookmaker. We know he changed his car tyres after he was alerted by you…” here Maddox scowled at Harmas, “that a tyre track was found on the murder spot. We also know that he has a cast iron alibi.” Maddox leaned back in his chair “What is a cast iron alibi? Who is this night guard who tells us Anson was working until eleven on the night Barlowe died?”

  “He wouldn’t stand Up for three minutes under cross examination,” Jenson said. “He copped a five year stretch for blackmail ten years ago. He’d lie his mother’s life away if he could earn a dollar.”

  Maddox ran his fingers through his hair, his red, rubbery face set in a scowl.

  “Then it looks like Anson.” He turned on Harmas. “What do you think? Can we nail him?”

  “I don’t think so,” Harmas said. “We have nothing against him that a smart attorney couldn’t shoot to bits. I think as you do… I think he is our boy, but proving it is something else besides.”

  “Well, this is your job,” Maddox said, glaring at Harmas. “So what do we do?”

  Harmas smiled his slow, lazy smile.

  “I think we should settle the claim. Give Mrs. Barlowe fifty thousand dollars.”

  Maddox’s face turned purple.

  “Pay her! You’re trying to be funny! She’ll never get a dime out of me!”

  Harmas glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes to nine and he was hungry.

  “I told Anson I’d persuade you to settle the claim. Just to get the right atmosphere, I think we should call her lawyer and tell him the same thing. As soon as they know the money is going to be paid out, things will start happening.”

  Maddox suddenly relaxed.

  “Go on… keep talking…”

  “This woman is an ex-prostitute; there is no greedier animal,” Harmas said. “She won’t part with any of the loot. She and Anson could have a quarrel. She’ll be leaving hospital tomorrow. I thought it would be an idea to
tap the telephone and plant microphones, hooked to a tape recorder around the house. It’s my bet Anson will go out there as soon as he knows the money is going to be paid. We could get quite a conversation on tape.”

  Maddox rubbed the back of his neck as he looked at Jenson. “The boy’s smart,” he said. “I won’t say I can’t do without him, but he makes my life a little easier than if I didn’t have him.” To Harmas, he said, “Go ahead… call her lawyer and call Anson.”

  Anson paced up and down in his sitting-room. Every now and then, he looked impatiently at the clock on the sideboard.

  It was five minutes to nine o’clock. Then suddenly the telephone bell rang.

  For a moment he hesitated, then picked up the receiver. It was Harmas.

  “I’ve fixed it!” Harmas exclaimed. “Phew! I’m pretty near a wreck! Maddox has agreed to settle the claim. You have yourself to thank for it! If you hadn’t been selling so much insurance in the district, Maddox would never have agreed, but even he can see that he would only be spoiling your territory if we fought the claim.”

  “You really mean… there’s no trick in this?”

  Anson was stiff with suspicion. The idea of Maddox parting with fifty thousand dollars with the evidence he had against Meg seemed impossible.

  “Don’t imagine Maddox likes it,” Harmas said and laughed. “He talked first on the telephone with old man Burrows.

  He’s sure the woman fixed her husband, but he isn’t sure he can prove it… so, well, he’s letting her get away with it. I’ve called her lawyer. He’ll get the cheque tomorrow.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” Anson said. “Thanks for calling me.”

  “That’s okay. I thought you’d like to know. See you sometime,” and Harmas hung up.

  Anson slowly replaced the receiver.

  Meg Barlowe stirred the fire into a blaze.

  The big, dusty room gave her a feeling of security. Having Hogan, his heavy body stretched out on the settee, gave her a feeling of relaxation even though Hogan seemed in a vile mood.

  The time was a few minutes after eleven p.m. Meg had left the hospital during the afternoon. As soon as she had got back to the house, she had attempted to call Hogan, but it was some hours before he answered her repeated ringing.