Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic

by John Rowland

  I was getting more than a trifle worried now. After all, the man would be coming back very soon. And if he came back before I had managed to get hold of a weapon of some sort I should be completely sunk.

  Then I saw what I wanted. On the desk, alongside the pile of papers which I had been examining when the man had challenged me, was a small statuette. It was a representation of a nymph, poised on one toe, obviously about to dive into a river. It was a pretty little thing, and in better surroundings I might have appreciated it as a work of art. But all that I was now concerned with was its value as a weapon.

  I picked it up and balanced it in my hand, trying to estimate its weight. It was made of metal, and, unlike many of its kind, it was solid. It weighed a good seven or eight pounds, I reckoned. Wielded with all the strength that I could put behind it, I thought that it would certainly be heavy enough to knock out any man who had not a thick skull.

  If, of course, the man’s skull was too thin, it might be that I should, in my ignorance, hit him so hard as to fracture it. That might mean the man’s death. But my conscience did not assault me too violently on that score. If I killed my opponent I should regard it as being the clearest possible case of justifiable homicide. For, given the opportunity, he would quite certainly kill me, as he had already killed Tilsley and Margerison and attempted to kill Bender.

  It may, in fact, strike you as a little odd that I was, up to this time, not consumed with curiosity as to the identity of the man in whose power I had been. But I am not the fellow to worry about something which I am unable to solve. And the man I was up against had so cleverly arranged the lighting of the room that it was not possible for me to get any sort of suggestion as to who he was. His features, I have already explained, were so hidden in darkness that I couldn’t see them.

  The main thing, in fact, was that I should get him under my control as soon as he came in. The matter of his identity was something that could then be dealt with at leisure.

  I stood behind the door, the little statuette grasped firmly in one hand, and listened. I knew that he might be back at any moment, and that the only real danger was that I might allow myself to be lulled into a false sense of security, so that I did not do the necessary hitting at the precise moment that it was needful.

  The wait was, in fact, quite a boring business. Shelley had often said to me that the long periods of waiting were the worse parts of a detective’s life. And while I had been concerned with these calamities in Kent I was beginning to understand what he had meant.

  There was, in fact, nothing that I could do as I stood there. I had to keep my mind concentrated on the job in hand. I had to listen to every sound that might come from the other side of the door.

  The fact was that for the moment no noises came. And yet I still had to stand and listen. The statuette got very heavy in my hand, and for a time I rested it at my feet, where I could pick it up at a moment’s notice. I leaned against the door, with my ear almost touching it. I had no idea, of course, of how long this ordeal of waiting might go on.

  I had a plan of campaign, but that plan was dependent on a first move being made by my opponent. I guessed, however, that he was in many respects a shrewd psychologist, who would do his best to keep me in suspense for what he regarded as being the optimum time. The trouble was that I had no way of reading his mind, and so I did not know what he would regard as the optimum time in my case.

  Then I pricked up my ears. I heard a firm footstep in the corridor outside. I was sure that it was the footstep that had previously heralded the approach of my opponent. Yes; he was coming!

  I picked up the statuette and grasped it firmly in my hand. The footsteps stopped outside the door. There was now no doubt about it. My opponent was about to enter.

  I heard the scratch of the key being inserted in the lock. I took a firmer grasp of the statuette. I was holding the nymph by the head, intending to hit the man with the solid base on which the statuette stood.

  The handle turned and the door opened. I raised the statuette above my head, swung it and brought it down on the back of the newcomer’s skull.

  It went home with a kind of dull thud. He fell flat on his face before me in the doorway. I rapidly grasped him by his shoulders and dragged him hastily into the room. I had no desire to run unnecessary risks, and I knew that if any of his underlings had seen what had happened they would be after my blood without delay.

  Then I did what took more sheer cold-blooded courage than anything that I had done before. I knew that it would be no good to leave the key on the outside of the door. Anyone might come along and think that it was queer to find the key there. Therefore it was now necessary to regain that key.

  I knew well enough that there might be someone in that corridor. The man had not made much noise in his fall, but there had naturally been some sound. The sound might therefore have been enough to bring someone down in investigation. Well, there was only one thing to do—I should have to get that key. I did my best to squint around the door. I couldn’t see anyone, so I rushed around the door whipped the key out and rushed back into the room.

  It was done! I had at any rate won a round in the fight.

  Chapter XXIX

  In Which the Mystery is Solved

  I can’t think why I was such a fool as not to lock the door behind me. I was, I suppose, so elated at getting the key without, as I thought, being observed that it never occurred to me that my action might have been seen. Anyhow, I went back into the room, and was bending over the man whom I had knocked out, when I was suddenly conscious of a sound behind me. It was the merest rustle of clothes, as if someone was moving gently towards me. I sprang to my feet and had half-turned towards the source of the sound when something descended on my head. Instantly unconsciousness overcame me, though I think that in the moment that consciousness was going, I cursed myself for having been so absurdly careless as to let the whole course of events change to my disadvantage—and that was putting it mildly enough in all conscience.

  From the blackness of unconsciousness I slowly came to myself. My head ached abominably, and I was conscious of the fact that it was bandaged. I was lying on what seemed to the touch to be a leather couch of some sort. I opened my eyes and frowned in the effort to focus them. At last the room which had been swimming round, came into focus, and I realised that I was still in the same place as that in which I had earlier been imprisoned. I felt a sinking at my heart to think that I had been so near to victory, but had, it seemed, lost the last trick. Well, I supposed that I could put up with defeat as well as the next man.

  Then I gasped. A man was seated at the desk, steadily working through the pile of papers there. And that man—I gazed at him with astonishment—was Detective-Inspector Shelley! What was the meaning of it?

  “Inspector,” I said. My voice was stronger than I should have expected, in view of what I had gone through. Shelley looked towards me.

  “How d’you feel, Jimmy?” he asked.

  “Terrible,” I said. And it was true.

  “I’ll bet that the man you hit feels worse,” he commented.

  “Why? Did I hit him hard?” I asked.

  “The doctor said that he’s very lucky to escape without a fractured skull,” smiled Shelley. “You’ve merely had some bad bruises.”

  “But what has happened?” I asked.

  “Well,” answered Shelley, “it’s rather a long story. I’m not sure that as yet you are in a fit state to listen to it.”

  I sat up. My head swam about almost intolerably, but I thought that if I did not at once get a complete description of what had happened I should soon die with curiosity. I managed somehow to control myself, though I felt as if I might faint at any moment. Still, I called into service every scrap of will-power that I possessed, lay back against the cool leather back of the settee, and said: “I’m all right. I want to know what’s happened. You see, Inspector
, the last thing that I remember was being slugged in the back of the head. I thought that I’d lost the whole thing through carelessness, and then the next thing that I know is that I find you here, and, I suppose, our friends the enemy under arrest.”

  “They’re under arrest all right,” said Shelley with a grim smile. “And you will be an important witness at the trial, Jimmy, if we can patch you together in time.”

  I grinned. “I’ll be only too pleased to put in an appearance at the Old Bailey,” I said. “I suppose that I’ll be allowed to write about it afterwards?”

  “Still the journalist, eh, Jimmy?” Shelley smiled. “Well, I must say that I cannot but admire the way you sailed into this job, even though in some respects I feel that you made a bit of a mess of it. Still, all’s well that ends well, the old proverb says, and I think that this is going to end well.”

  “But can’t you give me a bit of an explanation?” I pleaded. “I know that I ought to get some sleep, but I shall never sleep without some sort of explanation of what has been going on.”

  Shelley fished in his hip-pocket and produced a flask. “Have a swig of this, Jimmy,” he advised. “But don’t drink too fast. It’s brandy.”

  And that brandy was very welcome. It put new life into me. I felt its warmth coursing through my veins. The headache improved in an almost miraculous manner, and I was at once much more fit to discuss the case.

  “Let me give you an outline of what lay behind the case,” Inspector Shelley said. “It concerns, as we thought, drug-smuggling. The gang, under the control of a chief who lived at Broadgate, were bringing into the country supplies of cocaine, made in a secret factory in the north of France. It was brought out into mid-channel in fast motor-boats, and transferred to what were supposed to be harmless fishing-boats from various ports along this coast. They caught some fish, and hid the small packets of cocaine underneath the fish.”

  “And distribution?” I asked. My head was fast clearing now, and I found no difficulty in following the story that Shelley was telling me.

  “Distribution was carried out under various disguises. There were a chain of agents all over the south and east coasts, and extending up to London,” the detective went on. “They all had some small business of their own, which gave them an ostensible reason for travelling about the country. They were supposed to be dealing with various things, as we suspected, from motor spares to precious metals. All that we said about it was correct.”

  I smiled, though it hurt my head to do so. Shelley still pretended to forget that the original idea had been mine—or rather Maya Johnson’s.

  “This inn was the headquarters of the gang. It was here that the smuggled cocaine was brought, and distributed to the various agents.”

  “But the murders?” I asked.

  “Tilsley was one of the principal agents. But he thought that he was not getting enough out of it. He was threatening to give away the head of the gang, if he did not get some better pay. Therefore he had to be got rid of. And so he was killed.”

  “Margerison?” I asked.

  “He had rumbled the way that the first murder was committed. In fact, he suspected it was coming. He wrote, in a disguised hand, a postcard warning Tilsley—the postcard you found at the Charrington Hotel. He had pretended to be a doctor when you met him, but merely in order to hide his identity. He thought that if he gave a totally fictitious identity we should find it difficult to trace him. And so, indeed, we might well have done if he had not applied the screw to the murderer, and himself been killed in turn.”

  “It all sounds very simple,” I said. “But you haven’t solved the problem of how the bodies were in the lift.”

  “What do you mean, Jimmy?” Shelley asked.

  “Well,” I frowned. My head was now aching again, and I found it difficult to formulate what I was trying to say. But I knew that unless I got an answer to the question I should be so consumed with curiosity that I should be unable to sleep.

  “Don’t worry, Jimmy,” Shelley said. “You mean that you can’t understand how it is that the bodies got into a locked lift without there being any signs of the locks having been in any way tampered with?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, Jimmy, there is no such thing as a crime committed in a hermetically-sealed compartment. That is the first thing to remember. And you will recall that when Bender was injured—not in the locked lift—both sets of keys, Bender’s own and the set in the council offices, were in the possession of the police.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That means that there was nothing supernatural about the way in which the murders were committed. They were definitely done with the assistance of one set or other of the keys. In other words, the murderer was either someone connected with the council offices or someone connected with Bender.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I had come to that conclusion when the people at Scotland Yard told us about this place, and I had the idea of setting you on to it. I thought that you had a better chance of finding out something than an obvious policeman would have. I owe you an apology for giving you such a rough time, Jimmy. But we had a police guard not far away. In fact, we had a plain-clothes man from Scotland Yard in the bar. He saw you slip through that curtain, and when you didn’t come out he phoned us, and we staged a full-scale raid. I came down the corridor just as Arthur Banbury’s second in command hit you on the head.”

  “Arthur Banbury?” This was an unfamiliar name, I thought. But then, I told myself, I might not be able to think straight after the smack on the head that I had received.

  “He’s the chief of the gang, the real brains behind the whole set up, which was very brilliantly planned,” explained the detective. “Of course, you don’t know him under that name, though you’ve come across him under one of his numerous aliases.”

  “Arthur Banbury.” I screwed up my eyes and did my best to think hard. But it was no good—the slugging that had come to me had, for the time being, destroyed my power of coherent thought.

  “Yes. But cast your mind back to those lift murders,” Shelley said. “You see the bodies were found in a locked lift, and found by Bender. We suspected all sorts of things, we tried to find out who could have got hold of the keys in the council offices. But for a long time there was one man we overlooked as a possible murderer.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Aloysius Bender,” he replied.

  “Bender?” This puzzled me. I recalled the man, his unintelligent manner and his limp. He bore no resemblance to the firm-stepping, masterful, intelligent man who had questioned me in this very room.

  “Aloysius Bender or Arthur Banbury. The initials are the same,” Shelley said. “That struck me as soon as I got the name of the chief of the gang. You see, he could put on a limp, he could brush his hair in such a way that it looked unkempt and untidy. He could pretend to a general lack of intelligence.”

  “And he continued to work as liftman?” I asked.

  “Yes. The lift was very useful. It was actually used in the night, when the coastguard was far away, to transport smuggled goods. They were landed on the beach at high tide and taken up the lift to the promenade, where a fast car would be waiting to bring them to this inn. Oh, the whole thing was very well organised,” Shelley said.

  “But…Bender!” This was a staggering discovery to me. “But what about the time that he was stabbed?” I asked.

  “He did that himself, after telling you a lying tale about a man who had a set of keys made,” Shelley said. “You will recall that he was only superficially wounded. The business about shock was ingeniously done. But I have found that a few years ago there was a promising actor called Alfred Bailey—same initials again, you see. I suspect that he was the man. That, of course, is why he was so convincing in the role of Bender. He was a practised actor.”

  “And so he merely a
rranged to meet these people in the lift,” I said.

  “Yes. He killed them there, and locked the lift and went home. Then the next morning he came back, ‘discovered’ the body, and everything was all right,” said Shelley. “Still, he is safely under lock and key now, and I forecast that his trial will be a sensation.”

  I leaned back, feeling very tired. Now that the mystery was solved I had only one real urge—to get some sleep. I felt as if I hadn’t slept for a month.

  “There is one other thing,” Shelley said.

  “Yes?”

  “There are two people who want to thank you for what you have done,” he said.

  “Who?”

  Shelley made his way to the door, opened it, and stood aside, to let Maya Johnson and Tim Foster come in.

  “You’re all right?” Maya said, as she came towards me.

  “I shall be when I’ve had a bit of sleep,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know how to thank you,” she murmured.

  “Don’t try,” I advised her.

  “But Tim and I are getting married next month,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for you that might never have happened.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “I’ll never forget it,” she replied.

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” said Tim, holding out his hand.

  And if I ever regret that slug on the head—well, the memory of the gratitude in the eyes of Maya Johnson and Tim Foster will be enough to overcome my regret.

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