From Murder To A Cathedral

by John Creasey

  “Monday! God! It’s Thursday now.”

  “I’ve been lying low.”

  Bottelli said very softly, “So you’ve been lying low, have you? Where?”

  “Katey Lyle’s place.”

  “You’ve been laying while you’ve been lying low, have you? She’s quite a doll.”

  “She’s a doll all right.”

  “But you let her go.”

  “I ran out of the lolly, Toni.”

  “So you ran out on the cops and you ran out of the dough and after that you ran out on Katey Lyle.”

  “You make it sound like I was always running out,” Rhodes protested peevishly. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “And so you were, Henry,” Bottelli said. “You’ve got to keep away from the cops and there’s only one way of doing that - get out of the country until they cool off you.”

  Rhodes’s eyes lit up. “Then that’s what I’ll do!”

  “You’ll certainly need some lolly,” Bottelli said. “And a plane ride - how about luggage and things?”

  “I’ve got some over at Katey’s.” Rhodes could hardly conceal his pleasure.

  “That’s fine,” said Bottelli. “Now I know a man who can fix you a cheap flight to France - you got a passport?”

  “Why, sure!”

  “At Katey’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You thought of everything, didn’t you,” Bottelli said smoothly. “Okay, Henry. You go back to Katey’s and stay there until after dark. I’ll arrange for a Honda motorcycle to be parked outside her place, and I’ll drop an ignition key through the letter box, with directions as to the place to go. It will be in a field near Ashford, Kent, or near Southend - I’m not sure yet. You’ll find the two-seater plane and a pilot waiting for you, and you’ll be dropped in France with the motorbike and some dough. Right?”

  “It sounds wonderful!” Rhodes’s voice was high-pitched. “I knew you’d see me through, Toni. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Toni Bottelli said.

  As far as Henry Rhodes could judge, everything went according to plan, and fair-haired, plump-bodied Katey Lyle could not have been sweeter nor more compliant. He rode to Southend with directions in his pocket, helmet on his head, wind whistling past his goggles, happy as a young man could be. Even when he turned into the field, indicated by a white circle on the bark of a tree close to the gate, and found no sign of an aircraft, he was unperturbed; it had been delayed, that was all.

  He waited by the gate, on a bright starlit evening.

  He heard a rustling, but did not suspect danger. He had not the slightest sense of impending death, and in fact was whistling softly, looking up into the sky for the aircraft which was never to come.

  He felt a sudden, sharp, bruising blow between his shoulder blades, heard the muffled roar of a shot - and died.

  He was Toni Bottelli’s fourth victim, and the first one whom Bottelli had murdered by shooting.

  Soon the murderer was heading back on the Honda for London and for Sally Dalby, who was probably still asleep on the dais in the cellar of photographs.

  About the time that Henry Rhodes died, Gideon was sitting at the table in the kitchen at his home, watching amateur boxing on a small television set. The volume was turned low and he listened with half an ear to the cascade of the piano as Penelope played in the living room. The rest of the family was out. Penelope went on playing with a fury of abandon which gradually pierced Gideon’s consciousness and he got up slowly and went to her. She was playing the Grieg Concerto, and he had never known her to play with such fire and such virtuosity; even he, the unmusical member of the family, was impressed and admiring. He stepped just inside the room. The piano, a Bechstein grand bought years ago when the Gideons had realized that they had two gifted daughters, was in the far corner, and Penelope’s back was toward him. Her fair hair rippled down past her shoulders. Her slender body moved with the concentrated tension of the playing. Her fingers seemed to dance over the keys as if she had four hands, not two. As she reached the final crescendo her very life seemed to be part of the wonderful sound.

  When she stopped she sat motionless, fingers still poised.

  Gideon, remembering how dreadfully she had been disappointed only yesterday morning, wondered what was going through her mind now - would despair surge over her again? When she sprang to her feet he was taken by surprise, and had no time to back out of sight.

  Her eyes were glowing, and her radiant young face lit up even more when she saw him.

  “Daddy!” she cried. “I am good, I know I am!”

  “My God, you’re good!” Gideon said fervently.

  “You could tell?”

  “If that examiner were here now—”

  “I know, but it was my fault, I gave it the wrong interpretation, I tried to be too clever. There will be another chance, and next time I’m going to play this, and I’ll pass. I know I will.”

  “You’ll pass,” said Gideon. “Penny—”

  “Daddy, you’re wonderful!” she cried, and threw her arms about him. As he felt the strength of her young body and saw the glow in her eyes, he felt a moment of sheer exultation - that she was his daughter; his, and Kate’s. She was still hugging him in her newfound delight when the telephone bell rang.

  She gave him a final hug and broke away.

  “I expect it will be for you.”

  “Probably.” Gideon stepped back into the hall, lifted off the receiver and said, “George Gideon.”

  “George.” He recognized Rollo’s voice on the instant, and a pang went through him, because this was probably to do with the three dead girls. “Sony to worry you so late, but I’ve got a nasty one.”

  “Another body?” Gideon pictured the photographs he had seen the previous afternoon and heard Penelope playing, very subdued this time, so that he could hear what was being said.

  “Different sex,” said Rollo. “That photographer I was looking for, Henry Rhodes. He’s turned up dead. Freak chance we found him so soon. A courting couple going into a field nearly fell over the body.”

  “How was he killed?” Gideon demanded.

  “Shot in the back.”

  “Where?”

  “Five miles from Southend. They had his photograph - I’d sent it out - and called me. I’d like to go down there with a couple of our own chaps and get cracking under floodlights. If those three girls were killed by the same man and he’s killed Rhodes to keep him quiet - sorry, George, I know I’m doing a Lemaitre on you. All right for me to go?”

  Gideon said, “Yes. You don’t need an official request for help from the Essex people, as we want him for the London jobs.”

  “Put a call in to square things for me, will you?” asked Rollo.

  Gideon said, “All right.” He was about to ring off when a thought flashed through his mind. “Hugh!”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Have you been checking closely on other missing girls?”

  “You bet I have.”

  “How many have been reported?”

  “This week, six,” answered Rollo. “Last week, three. Multiply by at least five and you’ve got the number of those who are really missing. If parents would only make sure we knew in good time. . .”

  This was Rollo’s hobbyhorse, which, once started, must never be allowed free rein.

  “Quite, quite,” interrupted Gideon soothingly, “I’m absolutely with you. But, let me see, how many girls did you say have the statistics we’re looking for?”

  “Two,” answered Rollo.

  “Names?”

  “A Doris Manning, of Salisbury, and a Sally Dalby, who comes from Guildford. She’s the latest - her father reported her missing only yesterday. Apparently she told a friend that she was going to pose in the nude for a photographer.”

  “Did she, by George!” Gideon’s voice rose. “Get her photograph out and a general call for her.”

  “Fi
rst thing in the morning,” Rollo promised.

  “Tonight,” ordered Gideon, and then remembered. “You want to get down to Essex, of course. I’ll see to the other thing, then.”

  “Why not Golightly?” suggested Rollo, with a chuckle in his voice. “He’s had an easy one over the Entwhistle case and he’s at the Yard now.”

  After a moment’s pause, Gideon said, “Put me through to him, will you?”

  Geoffrey Entwhistle lay back in an armchair, a whisky bottle by his side, a nearly empty glass in his hand. He wasn’t drunk, but at least he was not remembering the past so vividly, not regretting so much his decision to leave home for three years. He had left because he had seen his marriage breaking up and had thought desperately that a long parting would help. He had come back believing that he could settle down to a new life.

  If things went on as they were, it would be a new life all right - a life sentence in prison for a murder he hadn’t committed.

  The whisky created a hazy kind of resignation and the ability to face facts without alarm. Fact: he was under suspicion for the murder of Margaret, his wife. Fact: he hadn’t felt any grief at her death. Fact: he had been away from his children for so long that they were strangers to him and he to them. Fact: his mother-in-law hated him, believed he had killed Margaret, and was busily making sure the children believed it, too. Fact: he had not killed Margaret.

  Probability: by tomorrow he would be charged with the murder.

  He gave a snort that was half laugh, half groan, gulped down the whisky in the glass, and picked up the bottle.

  Eric Greenwood stood looking at the photograph of Margaret, whom he had murdered, for a long time. Slowly and deliberately he picked it up and carried it to the empty fireplace in his living room. He put the photograph in this and set light to a corner; the flame caught tardily, gradually crinkling the face and then devouring the print bit by bit. Before the last flicker, he turned to a desk, full of his private papers, and began to search through it for letters and notes which Margaret had sent him. He made a pile of these in the grate and burned them also.

  Watching these higher, consuming flames and not knowing the strange light they cast upon his eyes, he said aloud, “It’s a good thing I never wrote to her.”

  He had always been very careful about this, so anxious had he been to avoid any involvement in divorce.

  He did not believe in divorce.

  “Percy,” Gideon said, “I’ve an urgent job for you.”

  “I’ll buy it,” Percy Golightly said.

  “A girl named Sally Dalby is reported missing. I want her photograph and description sent out on a general call. Tonight.”

  “Don’t remind me of photographs,” Golightly protested. “There hasn’t been a single bite about Margaret Entwhistle’s.”

  “How is that shaping?”

  “Looks more and more like the husband,” answered Golightly. “The mother-in-law let her hair down tonight. According to her the Entwhistles used to quarrel like hell before he left for Thailand. She was too flighty for his liking. Looks more and more as if he came back, goaded by that anonymous letter, and let his wife have it.”

  “We’ll talk about that in the morning,” Gideon said. “Fix the call for Sally Dalby.”

  There was something about the name that attracted him: Sally Dalby. He was sensitive about young women tonight, of course, but that kind of oversensitiveness did no harm. He tried to put all the Yard’s cases out of mind and picked up the newspaper, but inside ten minutes he was reading the Police Gazette. It was late before he heard a key in the front door and got up to greet Kate, who was bright-eyed and tired after a visit to the cinema with a neighbour.

  “Oh, put that thing away, George!” She flicked a hand toward the Police Gazette. “You should have come with me tonight, you would have enjoyed it almost as much as if it had been a Western. Some of that South African country is beautiful and the photography was absolutely breathtaking. . .”

  Drinking tea and eating biscuits, listening to Kate’s enthusiastic chatter, seeing the children as they came home one after the other, four of them living at home these days, Gideon forgot all the problems of the Yard. It was when he was in bed, Kate by his side, that he thought: I hope there’s no more trouble in the churches tonight.

  12: FOUR-IN-ONE

  Police Constable Edmund Davies was a man in his middle thirties, keen on his job but unambitious, a contented family man who took it for granted that one day he would be promoted to sergeant, that he would retire at fifty-five and take on a part-time job. He had one hobby, gardening; one sport, boxing. It was two years since he had last been to church - at the christening of his third born.

  Like every other policeman in the London area, he was on the qui vive that night whenever he neared one of the three churches on his beat. There had been special instructions during the day that every church should be watched, door handles tried, vergers and clergymen, where possible, asked what precautions were normally taken. This was a routine commonly applied to cinemas, theatres, banks and post offices, but it was new and comparatively exciting where churches were concerned.

  Davies’ favourite church was St. Ethelreda’s.

  He liked the weathered grey stone and the smooth, beautifully kept grass, and the hill it was on. Once it had overlooked farm and meadow land; now masses of red roofs and chimney pots, ribbon roads, and factories, clustering the reservoir, lay beneath it. In this part of the outskirts of London, the countryside which Davies loved was still within easy distance, and he liked to stand by day near the church gate and look northwest. One, in the myriad mass of houses, was his own; one of the little green patches was the one where he laboured so lovingly.

  Tonight there was a slight drizzle, misting the lights in windows and creating halos about the bright street lamps. Over the doorway of the church was a single electric lamp in a wire shade, for the vicar of St. Ethelreda’s liked the church to be available for prayer by night as well as day.

  Davies plodded up the hill. A car passed, wheels slithering on the damp macadam. A cyclist wobbled by; two couples passed on the other side of the road, oblivious of the rain. The misted light glowing outside the church porch burned steadily.

  “No one would ever do anything there,” Davies thought, but the reflection did not make him careless. He opened the gate, noted its creak, and walked slowly up the tarred path. Only the sounds of night were about him, and he was so used to this lonely job that he did not give a moment’s thought to danger.

  He put a hand on the wrought-iron latch and pushed the door open.

  As he did so a dark figure leaped out of the faint yellow light that filled the church. Taken completely by surprise, Davies had no time to protect himself. The man launched his body forward and an out-flung foot caught Davies in the groin. Agony shot through him as he staggered to one side.

  His assailant dashed through the door and was lost to sight.

  Davies was so pain-racked that for seconds he almost forgot where he was. Flung up against the wall, he saved himself from falling, then bent down, jack-knifing his body to stave off the worst of the pain.

  He was aware of the flickering, spitting light, but not yet of its significance. He forced his head between his knees until gradually the waves of pain eased. Slowly he became increasingly conscious of the unusual quality of the light. Straightening up, he saw a tiny spot of bright flame on the floor at the far end of the nave, and a word ripped into his head.

  “Dynamite!”

  Fighting waves of pain and of fear, he staggered toward the altar, understanding at last exactly what was causing the spitting and spluttering: a lighted fuse. He must put it out. Once he fell against the end of a pew, the jarring blow bringing on a wave of excruciating pain. It held him back for precious seconds, but he was driven by the desperate urgency of the situation: he must put that fuse out.

  Not once did the thought of personal danger occur to him.

  He actually managed to quicken h
is pace, until he saw the flame close to the side of the altar and sensed that there was little time. The fire was now spitting more wildly, and he scrambled down on his hands and knees, able to see the two sticks of dynamite to which the fuse was attached. There was only an inch unburned. He had nothing with which to dowse the flame and unhesitatingly thrust his hand forward, to press his palm onto it.

  There was a sudden, blinding flash, a roar, and awful pain in his eyes and in his right hand; then he lost consciousness.

  In the churchyard were two lovers, sheltered beneath a yew tree, dry and secure and satisfied, lying close but still as they looked into each other’s eyes. Suddenly a flash lit up the entire scene. There was a roar and the sound of crashing glass. The man started up, and a sliver of glass stabbed into his cheek.

  “God!” he gasped.

  “Jock!” cried the girl. “What is it?”

  “It’s in the church.” He leaped up. “Go and telephone the police. Go on, hurry!” When she bent down, scrambling for her shoes, he screamed again, “Hurry! Hurry!”

  Sobbing, bewildered, she moved uncertainly away as he ran toward the front of the church, oblivious of a dribble of blood splashing down his cheek.

  In northeast London; near Charlton in South London; in Camberwell; and in southwest London, close to Putney Bridge, other churches suffered the same kind of damage, but no one was hurt.

  Gideon woke to a morning of bright sunshine and was cheerful because of it. Kate was still sleeping, and he left her undisturbed. Creeping downstairs, he made some tea and toast, and was out of the house by seven-forty-five. He kept his car garaged round the corner and was nearly out of earshot of the house when his telephone began to ring; he went back, muttering.

  It was Lemaitre.

  “Okay, I’ll see him at the office,” Gideon said.

  The Embankment road was clear and Gideon was at the Yard in twenty minutes. He saw Lemaitre’s car; Lem was really making sure he kept on top of this job. A constable fresh on duty saluted Gideon but no one else was about. He opened the door of his office and, as it closed, Lemaitre’s door opened. Lemaitre’s eyes had the glassy look which follows a sleepless night; he hadn’t shaved, his collar and bow tie had a crumpled look.