Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic

by John Rowland

  I made up my mind to tell Beech the absolute minimum; any real confidence which I had would be reserved for Shelley.

  But I now had the opportunity of witnessing the police at work—something which, in spite of some experience in my days as a cub reporter, I still found peculiarly fascinating.

  Shelley and Beech, however, seemed to be working together well enough. That there may have been some psychological by-currents of which I was not aware was true enough; but outwardly they seemed moderately friendly. And I knew, from past conversations with him, that Shelley prided himself on handling the provincial policeman tactfully. It certainly seemed that he was doing that now.

  Anyhow, there was something businesslike about the way in which the two Inspectors set to work. First of all, they moved the body over very gently; then they turned out the man’s pockets, noting all the things which I had previously seen.

  “Know the fellow, Bender?” Beech asked abruptly.

  “No, sir. Never saw him before in my life,” answered my red-headed acquaintance.

  “Do you know him, Jimmy?” asked Shelley, looking at me with a quizzical eye.

  “No,” I said. “Of course, this is the first time I’ve ever been to Broadgate, so I might not know him, even though he may be a well-known local character.”

  “I don’t think that he was a local character,” Shelley replied, as he glanced at the letters he had taken from the man’s hip-pocket. I wondered how much Bender had told the police about my searching the man, and consequently how much they knew about me. Of course, it was difficult for me to put myself in their place, and to decide just what they would think of the way in which I had acted. I’m sure that had I been in Beech’s position I should have been very suspicious of a man who pushed himself into the case in the way in which I had done.

  “Now, Mr. London,” said Beech, when they had concluded their examination of the body, “I think that, before we go any further, we should like you to answer a few queries. What do you think, Mr. Shelley?”

  “I entirely agree,” Shelley said. “Of course, it so happens that I am an old friend of Mr. London’s, and so I can, in a way, vouch for his character, so to speak. But at the same time I realise that he has a bit of explaining to do.”

  I grinned. Shelley, I saw, while he was entirely ready to do the correct thing, had not forgotten our old friendship and was prepared to make the course of events as smooth as possible for me.

  “How did you come into this business, Mr. London?” Beech asked, producing a large notebook and hovering a pen over it, as if he thought that he could intimidate me into some admissions of criminality. At least, that was my idea; it may not have been his, of course.

  I told my story frankly, explained that I had seen Mr. Bender, obviously on the point of collapse, and, being both a journalist and a human being, had come forward to see if there was anything that I could do to help.

  Shelley, I could see, believed me; about Beech I was by no means convinced. He had a sceptical eye, that man, and he seemed to think that I was hiding something—as indeed I was, for I did not intend, if I could help it, to reveal the fact that I had searched the fellow’s pockets, or that I had managed to get hold of some information which was rightfully the possession of the police.

  “You’re a journalist?” Beech said.

  “Admitted,” I grinned.

  “On the staff of what paper?”

  I explained that I was on the staff of no paper at the moment, having spent some months on my back after an operation which had not gone as smoothly as the doctors had hoped. I added that I was in the running for various jobs, and that I thought, as soon as my brief period of rest and convalescence was over, I should land something worth while.

  Beech again did not look impressed. I thought that I had said my piece very nicely; but Beech had a truly suspicious mind, and did not seem to be prepared to accept me at my face value. This was a bit of a nuisance to me, though I could see that there was a certain amount of sense in his attitude—more sense, in fact, than he could know; unless he knew that I had been hunting through Tilsley’s pockets.

  “You won’t be writing anything about this affair, then?” Beech said. I thought that I could detect a twinkle in Shelley’s grey eyes.

  “I can’t guarantee that,” I replied.

  “Why not? You said that you were not at present on the staff of any paper?” objected Beech.

  “Not at present. But I am in the running for various jobs, and I might land one of them at any moment. Then, since I am already to some extent on the inside of this case, so to speak, an editor might well ask me to cover the case officially for his paper,” I explained.

  Shelley chuckled. “If I know that unscrupulous journalistic mind of yours, Jimmy,” he said, “you’ll be on the phone within five minutes of our leaving you, ringing some London editor, telling him that you are on the inside of this case, and offering to cover it for him and give him a good deal of exclusive news into the bargain.”

  I grinned. “I must admit that such an idea had crossed my mind,” I said.

  “But can’t we stop him, Shelley?” Beech asked indignantly. It seemed that there was something about a journalist which made him see red. I diagnosed that he had been badly reported at some time—perhaps when making a speech at a police dinner, or something of that kind—and that as a result he had ever after a dislike of pressmen.

  “No,” Shelley said cheerfully enough. “We can’t stop him, and I don’t see why we should try to. This case is certainly going to be pretty extensively reported in the papers, and Jimmy here is a fairly conscientious man, as journalists go. I mean to say, he takes a fair amount of trouble to get his facts straight; if he works for some London daily on the case, you can bet your life that he’ll deal with it reasonably and fairly. And that’s more than one can say of a lot of the news-hounds who are about nowadays.”

  I must say that I thought that was uncommonly nice of Shelley. His statement certainly appeared to impress Beech, who for a moment became almost human.

  “You won’t publish stuff without our permission, I take it, Mr. London?” he said.

  “I won’t publish anything you tell me without your permission,” I amended his statement. “Anything which I manage to discover for myself I shall of course publish as I think fit. There is, after all, no embargo on news in this country—not as far as my information goes, anyhow.”

  I thought that he deserved that dig. After all, I had received an unsolicited testimonial from Shelley, and I thought that I could, at least, have been taken more or less on trust by a lesser light like Beech.

  In all these exchanges we seemed almost to have forgotten the reason why we were all there. Even the body had passed into the backgrounds of our minds. But it was now recalled by the arrival of the police surgeon, a cadaverous Scot named Gordon.

  He was as businesslike as the two policemen. He knelt beside the body, tested it briefly for rigor mortis by bending the joints of the arms, glanced at the knife, and then stood up.

  “I’ll have to have the body around at the mortuary, ye know,” he said.

  “I realise that, of course, Doctor,” said Beech. “But can you give us any information now? I mean, can you indicate cause of death, time of death, and any other information which is likely to be of some value to us at this stage? It doesn’t matter if it is only approximate, but we find every little indication valuable early on in the case. Of course, you know all that anyhow.”

  “Well,” the Doctor said thoughtfully, and paused. He was clearly a naturally cautious man who did not at all like being pressed to commit himself to any sort of definite statement which he was not capable of proving. “Well, I wouldn’t like to say too much until after the post-mortem.”

  “But you can tell us something?” There was an almost pleading tone about Beech’s voice, and I saw that Shelley, who had had a l
ong experience of reluctant medical witnesses, was more than a trifle amused.

  “The cause of death I should have thought was obvious enough,” Doctor Gordon said. He pointed to the knife. “Judging by the blood that spattered all over the place, I should say that the knife had severed a main artery somewhere. And a man with a main artery bust hasn’t got much of a future, you know.” He chuckled at his own macabre jest.

  “And what about the time of death?” Inspector Beech was persistent enough. He was, indeed, like a bloodhound on the scent of something worth while in the way of food.

  “I’d not like to commit myself very closely,” the Doctor said cautiously, looking at his watch. “You know as well as I do, gentlemen, that rigor mortis is a very tricky and undependable thing. It varies so much from one case to another that it’s by no means easy to base any sort of precise decision on it.”

  This little lecture in medico-legal practice was not too well received.

  “Have a shot at it, Doctor,” Shelley said—his first direct intervention since the doctor’s arrival. “Give us some sort of idea of when you think the man died, if you possibly can.”

  Again the doctor peered at his watch. “Well,” he said, “if I must give you some sort of estimate, I should say that the man died between seven o’clock and midnight last night. But even that is not much more than a guess, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that he died at five o’clock last night, or at three o’clock in the morning. If I have to give evidence at any trial, gentlemen, I shall refuse to be at all precise about the matter. I strongly distrust all definite statements based on rigor mortis.”

  I could see that Beech didn’t like this; Shelley, on the other hand, was in no way put out. Personally, I thought that the doctor was being a bit pig-headed; but it had to be remembered that there had been cases when a medical witness, being too decided about the time of death, had been shown up in court by contradictory evidence, disproving what he advanced as a scientific estimate. Clearly Gordon was a cautious old boy who was not going to commit himself to anything which he did not regard as a cast-iron certainty.

  Now he left, and an ambulance drove up. The attendants removed the mortal remains of John Tilsley. I thought, actually, that the whole thing had been quite skilfully handled. Few of the visitors who were now thronging the promenade could have had any idea of what had happened. The police managed the whole thing discreetly. Then Inspector Beech turned to Bender.

  “What do you do on the odd occasions when the lift may get out of order?” he asked.

  Bender fished in a locker underneath the seat that ran along one side of the lift. He produced a large sheet of cardboard. On it were printed, in large bold letters: “LIFT OUT OF ORDER.”

  “I hang that on the outside of the gate,” he said. “There is a second one, too, for hanging outside the gate at the bottom, where it leads to the beach.”

  “Good.” The Inspector was now all brisk efficiency. “You’ll have to hang your notices out today, Bender,” he said. “The lift will be out of action, I’m afraid, for a day or two—until we have completed our preliminary investigations of this affair, at any rate.”

  “As you wish, Inspector.” Bender was ready to co-operate in whatever measures the police thought advisable. I could see that. But the red-headed man was now very much more the master of himself than he had been when I had seen him first, staggering across the promenade in a manner indicatory of the most severe sort of shock.

  “And do you want me any more, Inspector?” I asked as inoffensively as I could.

  “Want to get away to the nearest telephone without delay, Jimmy?” Shelley said with a light laugh. “Well, I don’t know that there is much more that we want you for just now. What do you think, Mr. Beech?”

  Beech, I could see, was not too pleased to agree; but there was little that he could do in the matter. In fact, there was really nothing that the police could do to hold me. They did not know, apparently, that I had done a bit of hunting around before their arrival. That, I thought, was just as well. But meanwhile the latest development meant that I was free to go my own way. It was good to think that I should soon be back in the old journalistic harness. I fingered the notebook in my pocket, and grinned.

  Chapter V

  In Which I Become a Special Correspondent

  I knew that it would be only a matter of hours before a bevy of newspaper-men arrived. As soon as this story broke it would be clear that this was one of the big murder-stories of the year, and every paper would be thinking out how best to cover it.

  So I made my way to a phone-box at the end of the promenade. I had subconsciously noticed it that morning. There was no one in it. I fished in my pocket, found that I had some coppers, a couple of sixpences, and a shilling—that should be enough for a call to London—and turned my attention to a consideration of what paper would be most likely to pay me a sensible fee as a special correspondent, studying the new murder.

  I really had to make up my mind which of my acquaintances among news-editors would be most likely to give me a job on my own recommendation. I decided, eventually, in favour of Mike Jones, news-editor of The Daily Wire. Mike was a tall, thin Welshman, with whom I had worked in prewar days. I knew that he remembered one or two scoops which, between us, we had in the past managed to pull off, and in consequence I thought that he would be more likely to appoint me to the post that I was after for the time being.

  In a matter of a minute or two I was talking to him. I could picture him at his desk as he spoke.

  “Jones here.”

  “Hullo, Mike Bach,” I said. “This is Jimmy London.”

  “Jimmy lad, and how are you after all these days? They told me that you’d been ill,” Mike said.

  “I have,” I agreed. “But now I’m ready to get back in harness again.”

  “Good lad,” Mike said. “Have you got anything particular in view, or are you just having a look round, so to speak, before deciding?”

  “That’s really why I rang you,” I explained hurriedly. “I’m actually convalescing at Broadgate, but I’ve run into what looks like being a big, worth-while story.”

  “Trust your nose for news, Jimmy,” chuckled Mike. “And what’s the big story?”

  “A murder,” I said simply.

  “We haven’t had a good murder story for some months,” replied Mike thoughtfully. “If this is a worth-while story, we could play it up pretty big. Is it a good one? I mean to say, has it got any romantic or mysterious aspects?”

  “Don’t know about romance, I haven’t investigated it enough yet,” I said. “But it’s a variation on the old theme of the hermetically sealed room. A liftman locks his lift when he goes off duty one night. The locks aren’t in any way tampered with; but when the doors are unlocked the next morning a dead body is inside.”

  Mike gave vent to a whistle of surprise. “You don’t say!” he exclaimed. “Sounds like a worth-while story, Jimmy.”

  “Certainly does,” I agreed. “So what do you say, Mike?”

  “You want a job on the strength of this?” he asked with another chuckle.

  “Not a permanent one,” I said hastily. “I’ve got a lot of information on it. I know the name and address of the murdered man, and I know a lot of the background. And Inspector Shelley of Scotland Yard, who is in charge of the case, is an old friend of mine.”

  “But what do you want?” Mike asked.

  “A special commissioner’s post,” I said. “Make me the Wire’s special commissioner or special correspondent in charge of the case. All my stuff to have my name on it. And you can pay me, at your best space-rates, for whatever you use. I’m quite content to justify my existence that way. I don’t want a salary—not for the moment, anyway. I mightn’t justify it.”

  “You justify it all right,” answered Mike. “But if we pay you space-rates on what we use, and if thi
s is the case that you say it is, you’ll find yourself getting a good deal more than the union rate for a week or two, anyhow.”

  “And putting myself back on the map in the bargain,” I reminded him.

  “True enough.”

  “Don’t forget the by-line,” I said. “By James London, Our Special Correspondent. You may as well get that set up in pretty big type straight away, because you’ll need it. This is going to be one of the greatest stories of the year. And you’ll scoop every one of your competitors.”

  “Anything you can give us now?” Mike asked.

  “Plenty.”

  “I’ll switch you over to the news-room. Dictate whatever you’ve got to the shorthand-writer. And tell them that there will be more to come. We’ll get your first story set up in time to go in the early editions; if you get more stuff through in time, well and good. But good luck, Jimmy bach.”

  So I found myself dictating a story to a shorthand-writer. Pretty hard-boiled most of the shorthand-writers in a daily paper’s news-room; but I heard this chap gasp once or twice, which was a fair tribute to the stuff I was turning in. I made it as strong meat as I could, too. I laid on the adjectives and the mystery, made it look as if this murder was a cold-blooded piece of butchery (which, indeed, it was) but with the added spice of a genuine mystery story behind it. I rubbed in the fact that The Daily Wire, as usual, was first off the mark with the story, solving a puzzle which would eventually rank with Jack the Ripper and the Wallace Case as the greatest problems in the history of criminology. And I told the chap a tale about myself, in the hope that even the dreariest of sub-editors wouldn’t be able to cut out all the build-up that I was giving myself, in order to re-establish myself in the world of London journalism.

  As I left the phone-box, having spent all my available change in getting extra time to dictate my tale, I cursed myself for not having remembered to reverse the charges. Nevertheless, I was fairly pleased. What Shelley and Beech would say when they saw the paper the next morning wouldn’t bear thinking of; but I had been perfectly frank with them, and I thought that there was little that they could say or do about the matter.