Dead to the World

by Francis Durbridge

  When she had gone he allowed himself the promised cigarette and settled down to catching up with some of his paperwork, but his mind strayed continually to the Scranton case.

  The following afternoon, with heavy rain splashing against the bay window, and the intermittent hiss of passing traffic slitting a curtain of rain outside, Ruth brought in the tea tray and called Holt from the Studio where he was setting up lamps for a tobacco advertisement. Dusk was falling, the blurred lights from the Embankment keeping the night temporarily at bay, and as she poured the steaming tea and they relaxed for a while in the pleasant warmth of the office all thoughts of the murder were momentarily forgotten.

  Then the ringing of the telephone shattered the peaceful atmosphere and started a train of events which left no room for detachment.

  It was Robert Scranton, almost breathless with excitement. ‘Mr Holt?… I’ve got some news … but I must be quick because I don’t want Mother to overhear me …’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I’ve heard from Vance! He’s just called me!’

  ‘Have you seen him? Where is he?’

  ‘No, no, he telephoned. Just under an hour ago.’

  ‘But, Mr Scranton, you promised to contact me immediately he—’

  ‘I know I did, but … Listen, Mr Holt, can I have your word that you won’t get in touch with the police yet? Give the boy a chance to explain. I think he’s in trouble, real bad trouble.’

  ‘But where is he, Scranton – where is he?’

  ‘I don’t dare tell you over the phone, Mr Holt. You never know when these things have been bugged. He wants to meet me – he needs money badly. I can fix that all right, the hotel will cash me a traveller’s cheque. But I’d like you to come with me.’

  ‘Yes, all right. When?’

  ‘Right now, if you can make it.’

  Holt glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be at the hotel inside ten minutes. Is that soon enough?’

  ‘Great, just great! Meet me at the back entrance, facing the Embankment. Okay? – Bring your car, and perhaps that cute little secretary of yours as well. I’d sure be grateful if you could bring her. If Vance is hurt or ill it may need a woman’s touch and I just don’t dare take the risk of telling Mother …’

  ‘Quite. I understand.’

  Holt hung up and turned to Ruth. ‘Now the ball is really rolling! Get your brolly and coat, it’s raining like hell. We’re on our way to meet the elusive Mr Scranton Junior!’

  Ruth’s eyes gleamed and in a few moments she was ready.

  Robert Scranton was waiting at the hotel doorway as Holt swung the Mustang into the crescent of Victoria Embankment Gardens. The American did not appear to notice their approach, so Holt tapped his horn lightly. Scranton still took no notice.

  Ruth lowered her window and leaned out. Rain was pouring down with torrential force. ‘Hey – Mr Scranton!’

  ‘Ruth! You’ll get drenched!’ Holt remonstrated. He pressed more firmly on the horn.

  The figure in the doorway made a feeble gesture with one hand and began to walk very slowly over to the car.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with him, is he ill?’

  ‘Something must have happened. Just look at him!’ said Ruth, opening the car door as Scranton reached them.

  ‘It’s my heart,’ he muttered, sliding into the rear seat. ‘Often … often plays me up … Get too excited … Guess it was Vance’s call that did it.’

  Holt eyed him with alarm. Scranton felt in his pocket for his tube of pills. By the inner light of the car he certainly looked ghastly; he was obviously having great difficulty with his breathing.

  ‘Are you sure you’re well enough for this?’ asked Ruth. ‘Perhaps we’d better take you up to your room?’

  ‘No … I’ll be all right … in a minute. I must get to Vance … he needs me … Sounded real strange on the phone …’

  ‘Tell us where he is,’ insisted Ruth. ‘We’ll take care of things. You don’t look fit to go out on a terrible night like this.’

  ‘No. You’d only go straight to the police,’ Scranton said in a weak, accusing whisper.

  ‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Ruth assured him gently. ‘Whatever has to be done in the end, we’ll make you a promise: you can see him first.’ She turned anxiously to Holt. ‘We can promise that, can’t we, Philip? It’s only human decency. We’ll take Vance the money, Mr Scranton, or tell him you’ll send it. Where is he?’

  Scranton looked at her, uncertain whether to trust them, then he reached for his American-type billfold and extracted a wad of ten-pound notes. ‘I feel bad about this,’ he said, ‘but I guess I won’t be able to make it. And if I should pass out on you at a critical moment, that won’t help Vance much.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Ruth agreed, taking the money. ‘Now then, where do we find him?’

  With shaking fingers Scranton dug once more into his billfold and produced a scrap of paper on which an address had been scribbled. ‘Sure hope you can read it. It’s a place called Lewisham. Ask for John Griffiths, that’s the name he’s using – he didn’t say why.’

  Scranton made to open the car door but had to clutch suddenly at his breast and struggle for breath. Ruth jumped out, ignoring the pelting rain, and helped him out of the car. She shepherded him to the hotel entrance and they disappeared from sight. Two minutes later she reappeared and dashed back to Holt.

  ‘That was quick. Did you take him to his room?’

  ‘No, he insisted on being left in the hall – didn’t want to upset “Mother”. I got a waiter to bring him a brandy.’

  ‘And you think he’ll be all right?’

  ‘Goodness knows. He looks dreadful, but I think it’ll set his mind at rest if we go and find this son of his. He’d be in a far worse shape if we hadn’t said we’d go.’

  Holt debated the issue in silence, whilst the rain drummed with tremendous force on the Mustang’s bonnet.

  Ruth asked, ‘Do you think we shouldn’t go?’

  ‘Well … it’s not very ethical, what we propose doing. Young Scranton’s a wanted man, you realise – a suspect for murder. I ought to contact Hyde.’

  ‘We can do that from Lewisham. Supposing it’s a false alarm? We’d look pretty stupid, wouldn’t we? Let’s get a bird in the hand, and then make our decision.’

  After a moment Holt nodded. ‘You’re right! How do we get to Lewisham?’

  ‘That’s your department. The place rings a bell somewhere, though … Wait a minute – didn’t Jimmy Wade say he lived near there?’

  ‘Yes. Honor Oak, just next door.’ Holt started the engine. ‘A very different class of locality, if I may say so.’

  Ruth grinned at Holt’s mimicry. ‘Will Honor Oak be on our route?’

  ‘No. We’ll take the Old Kent Road and then the A.20. Good grief, what a night!’

  He drove carefully, his nerves taut but under control. If they found Vance Scranton a very difficult decision would have to be made. The boy was wanted by the police and Hyde would have to be told. Nevertheless, Holt was working for the Scrantons and had promised not to go straight to the police. He quietened his conscience with the thought that Robert Scranton would never have parted with the Lewisham address without this promise so there had been no alternative.

  They crawled behind slow traffic into the main Lewisham High Street, where a policeman on point duty gave them directions for reaching the address on the paper.

  It proved to be a narrow, evil-smelling lane in a bleak slum quarter. Holt felt conspicuous in his scarlet Mustang. Eventually they located the grime-covered two-storey house which bore the number they wanted and Holt drove past and parked his car some distance away: They dashed back through the downpour and stood gasping for breath under an inadequate porch cluttered with empty milk bottles.

  Holt pressed the chipped door bell but no sound came. There was a knocker blackened with dust and soot, which he thumped resoundingly, and after a while they heard heavy, shuffling footsteps and the door crea
ked open.

  ‘You come about the telly, man?’ The voice was a deep contralto and appeared to come from black space, completely disembodied. ‘You come about the telly?’ the voice repeated in a monotone.

  ‘No, actually we’ve come to see Mr Griffiths, please.’

  Their eyes were becoming accustomed to the sepulchral darkness and it was just possible to make out the silhouette of a very large body standing in the doorway.

  ‘He doan have no telly, man,’ the voice droned. ‘I’m the one with the broken telly. You come right on in and fix it, man. I’m lost without the telly.’

  As the body moved a faint gleam of light from a street lamp caught the outline of a coal-black shining face and eyes with enormous whites, and they realised they were talking to a Negress.

  ‘We haven’t come about the television, Mrs … er …’ Ruth said in a brave attempt to apply a little charm to the chilly scene.

  The huge woman swayed forward to look at them more closely, bathing them in fumes of strong alcohol.

  Ruth blenched but stood her ground. ‘Is Mr Griffiths in? We’d like to see him, please. It’s raining rather hard; do you think we might come in?’

  ‘Man, doan I know it’s raining! I got soaked coming from the boozer.’

  The Negress moved on squelching feet to the wall and fumbled for the switch. The weak light of a naked twenty-five-watt bulb revealed a cramped hall almost entirely blocked by bicycles and prams.

  ‘He’s one of my coloured gentlemen, this Griffiths, is he?’ asked the woman, staring at them and knocking some of the rain off her clothes.

  ‘No, he’s … he’s not coloured.’

  ‘Ain’t no white folks here, ’cepting that feller that come day ’fore yesterday. You go up and see, if you like – third floor, second door on the left … My ole legs is tired. I just wanna curl right up like a cat in front of that telly – you sure you ain’t gonna fix it, man?’

  Holt muttered an apology and started climbing the poorly lit staircase. Ruth followed. When the fumes of gin and rum had receded other aromas crowded in. Stale odours of food, inadequate sanitation, and damp laundry hanging out to dry assailed their nostrils, but the stairs were too steep for them to hold their breath in self-protection.

  After the second floor the illumination ceased and they groped their way up the last flight in the diminishing glimmer coming from the landing below. When they reached the third floor, in almost total darkness, Holt had to enlist the aid of his pocket torch.

  ‘You stay there, Ruth,’ he said. ‘I’ll find the room.’

  She waited at the head of the stairs while he crept along the passage and located the second door on the left, in a recess where the roof sloped at a steep angle. With his head and shoulders bowed he rapped firmly. But there was no answer.

  He called ‘Griffiths!’ several times, then changed to calling ‘Vance!’ Still there was no reply.

  He tried the door handle. It turned and he faced an unlighted room. When he found the light-switch he saw that it appeared empty except for an unmade bed and a battered chest of drawers.

  ‘No one here,’ Holt said, stepping across the threshold.

  As he did so, the door swung slowly to, behind him, cutting off all light to the landing and leaving Ruth enveloped by the blackness.

  ‘Philip! I can’t see a thing! Open the door so I can find my way.’

  ‘Just a minute, Ruth,’ he said gently, ominously. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  He had spotted the hand on the far side of the bed. It was the size of a North Sea haddock.

  He leapt round the brass bedstead. Curly’s great bulk lay on the floor, partly hidden by the bedclothes, one arm flung backwards in a mutely defensive gesture. The knife-wound in his throat was half covered by the strands of a black wig. The wig sat lopsided on his skull, like an awkward joke: it had been the pitiful best he could think of to try to disguise the great putty-coloured beacon of his bald head.

  The murderer had added a small macabre touch. Where the wig had slipped as Curly had slid to the floor an expanse of skin had been revealed. On this patch a cruel wit had drawn a question-mark in scarlet lipstick.

  ‘I don’t think I quite follow,’ said Ruth shakily as they drove back to Town, leaving Inspector Hyde and a team of experts to seal off the Lewisham boarding-house and start their investigations. ‘Why Curly?’

  ‘Because he knew too much, I suppose,’ Holt answered. ‘Don’t ask me what he knew. Probably he was seen talking to us at the Brighton car park and that’s why that delivery van went for us. I dare say he decided to go into hiding until the heat was off. Taking the Chichester train was evidently just a blind. He must have doubled back on his tracks and then gone to earth in that foul-smelling hole.’

  ‘What about the landlady? You don’t think—’

  ‘Not for one moment. In the first place she was as drunk as a lord. In the second place, it was true that she’d been out – her clothes were steaming wet. No, it’s my guess that someone sneaked in while she was out at the pub and slit poor Curly’s throat, and then phoned Scranton, pretending to be his son. Scranton did say Vance sounded strange on the phone, if you remember.’

  ‘Yes, so he did. But why should the murderer do that?’

  ‘To lure Scranton out there with a lot of cash in his pocket, I suppose. There’s about two hundred pounds in that pile he gave us.’

  ‘What do you think would have happened if Mr Scranton had come?’

  ‘Someone would probably have slugged him in that dark passage, stolen the cash, and cleared off. It could also have been intended as a profitable way of warning Scranton to keep his nose out of the affair.’

  ‘Then why didn’t they slug us when we turned up?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, I don’t suppose they were expecting us – they’d have been on the look-out for Scranton himself and they wouldn’t have known we were carrying the money. And in any case, there were two of us. If he’d gone for me, you’d have set up such a caterwauling that all Lewisham—’

  ‘All right, I get the picture!’ She was silent for a moment, then she said quietly, ‘He must have been in that house, Philip – in that passage while I was waiting for you, in the dark.’

  He felt slightly guilty. His hand left the wheel for a second to give hers a reassuring squeeze. ‘Try not to think about it, Ruth.’

  Then, eternally buoyant, her spirits brightened. ‘Well, what’s our next move?’ she asked.

  He navigated a sharp turn, put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and shot some lights that were turning from amber to red.

  ‘What’s your hurry? Where are we going now?’

  ‘You are going home, young lady! Get a good night’s sleep, and be at the Studio early tomorrow morning. Bring a suitcase packed with enough things for three or four days.’

  She turned to stare at him for a moment, then gave an impish grin. ‘Philip, are you inviting me to stay at your flat for three or four days?’

  ‘The suitcase is for Deanfriston,’ Holt announced firmly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, Deanfriston is the place where the hard nuts in this case are to be cracked!’

  Chapter Six

  Deanfriston College stood on a windswept ridge of the South Downs, commanding a fine view of the English Channel and of the charming Sussex village nestling at its foot.

  The College, relatively new, specialised in the Arts and Political Science. Professor Harold Dalesford held the Chair of Political Science, and it was in this field that Vance Scranton had been awarded an exchange scholarship at his university in America.

  A little over a week had gone by since the night of the murder. The shock waves had not yet ceased to reverberate along the corridors, lecture halls, and quadrangle of the College, and Professor Dalesford found difficulty in concentrating on his work.

  Laying aside the latest issue of the New Feature he took out a pair of field-glasses from his desk and walke
d to the window. His hobby was bird-watching and he knew of no finer way to relax a worried and overworked mind.

  He focused the glasses and viewed the copse of elms to the right of the road which curved through chalk-white banks down to the village. There was a light tap on his door and someone came into the room. He knew the step and did not bother to look round.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ he said.

  The girl who had entered was tall, slim, and strikingly beautiful. Thick tawny hair with elusive rich glints hung down to her shoulders in a perfect blend of care and disarray. A pencil-slim skirt of chocolate brown hugged her slender hips, and a cream turtle-necked pullover swelled decisively over firm breasts. She wore no jewellery and very little make-up, and her skin glowed with a natural honey-gold tan.

  Antoinette Sheen picked up the Professor’s copy of the New Feature and started to say something, but she was halted by a startled exclamation from the window.

  ‘Damnation! I think we’ve got a visitor. And I’m afraid it’s the one we were expecting.’

  Antoinette went to the window and took the binoculars. She focused them on a scarlet car which was sweeping up the hill.

  ‘A red Mustang. That will be him,’ she murmured.

  ‘Is he alone?’

  ‘Does that matter?… No, as a matter of fact I think there’s someone in the passenger seat.’

  Dalesford made a grimace of annoyance. ‘If it’s that dull-witted policeman Hyde again …’

  ‘It isn’t. It’s a woman.’

  The Mustang turned the corner into the quadrangle and came to a halt.

  Antoinette’s voice took on a lilt of subdued amusement. ‘I do believe he’s brought his little doxy with him … Pretty little thing, too,’ she added as Ruth got out of the car. A moment later, when Holt stood beside his secretary, Antoinette’s eyes widened and she gave an appreciative murmur. ‘So that’s the celebrated Philip Holt, top-flight photographer and amateur sleuth! My, what an attractive hunk of a man! This could prove to be very interesting.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so!’ Dalesford snapped with considerable venom.

  ‘Aren’t you going down to meet them?’