Homicide House

by Zenith Brown

  Dan stared at him. “What—sorry, I don’t get it, sir. I don’t know what you’re—what mysteries am I supposed to have made around here? Except this if you call it a mystery?”

  The sudden angry light that kindled in the surgeon’s brown eyes was a startling change from his precise and passionless detachment.

  “You’re the American who was making inquiries of this man,” he jerked his hand toward Mr. Pinkerton, on the couch, stirring a little, his breath coming more easily, “over the road this afternoon. Are you not?”

  Dan stared with blank incredulity.

  “I have no idea what your game is, Mr. McGrath, but if you’ll take my advice you’ll clear out of here. And if Scott Winship is in London, and has even a shred of decency left in him, Miss Caroline Winship’s solicitors will be very glad to hear from him. You may tell him that Miss Winship expressly forbids him to attempt to communicate with his daughter—either in person or through you. She’s left London and isn’t expected back for some time. If it’s money he wants, tell him—”

  Dan took a step forward. “Wait a minute.”

  “We’ve waited long enough, Mr. McGrath. Tell him that so far as the family are concerned he is dead and buried. His daughter thinks so, and she is to continue to think so. So far as all of us are concerned, Scott Winship is dead.”

  He moved abruptly over to his patient. Dan, watching in stupefied silence, saw his long fingers tremble as they rested on the little man’s pulse, his eyes, focussed on the watch-face on his own wrist, still burning with suppressed fire. He put Mr. Pinkerton’s hand back under the coverlet.

  “I know a hospital nurse, Mrs. Beckwith, I can get to come and spend the night with him till his own medical man can make arrangements. If he wakes and complains of a headache, give him some aspirin. Nothing else. Keep him quiet till she gets here.”

  At the door Sidney Copeland turned back. “Miss Grimstead tells me you plan to call the police. If that’s part of your game, by all means do so. You’ll find Scott Winship would much prefer the police to be left out of it. Good night, Mr. McGrath.”

  5

  DAM MCGRATH stood motionless in the shabby room, listening to the surgeon’s footsteps rapidly going down the stairs. He said slowly, “Well, I’ll be quadruply damned.”

  He turned and looked at Mr. Pinkerton. He was lying there, his eyes open, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Dan went over to him. “Hi, there,” he said gently. “How’re you coming, old-timer?”

  “I’m coming all right,” Mr. Pinkerton managed to say. He moved his hand up to his scrawny throat.

  “They choke you too?”

  Mr. Pinkerton tried to nod his head, but the movement made him wince with pain. He closed his eyes to keep the American from seeing the tears in them as he felt feebly at his forehead.

  “Did—did they break my spectacles?” he whispered. “I’m afraid I can’t see without them. I’ve only got the one pair.”

  “Half a minute.”

  Dan’s jaw was tight with hard white ridges along it as he lifted the afghan and released the steel bows from the woolen strands. He polished the lenses with his handkerchief and put them into Mr. Pinkerton’s hands.

  “There you are. They got caught in this cover thing.”

  Mr. Pinkerton put them on and blinked up at him. “You— you’re very kind,” he said. It hurt him to try to move his vocal cords, but something in his heart hurt worse. “I’m—ever so sorry,” he whispered. “It’s all my fault. I heard what the man said. She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “I’m beginning to gather so.”

  “And you—you don’t care?”

  Mr. Pinkerton tried to raise himself, but the effort was too much.

  You don’t care? No answer sprang immediately to Dan’s mind. If by “caring” they meant Why didn’t he dash off to stop her from going? it was not the way he felt at the moment. You didn’t stay patiently on the track of a star for six years and then go berserk standing on the threshold, especially when you still had to find out if the star was a star or a star-dusted dream that had never truly existed. If you could wait six years, you could wait a little longer. And Dan McGrath was angry. A cold solid rage was burning quietly behind what seemed to the still dazed little Welshman an impassive and deliberate stolidity.

  “Mr. Pinkerton,” he said quietly, “this happened to you because of me, some way. And they can’t push us around like this. I care more about what happened to you, just now. You feel well enough to tell me?”

  The idea of anybody’s caring what happened to him was a little startling to Mr. Pinkerton. He blinked rapidly. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, really,” he whispered hastily. “I—I’d just come upstairs. I hadn’t meant to make any trouble. I thought Mrs. Winship was a widow. I just thought it would be nice if Mary didn’t get sent off to Paris until after you’d seen her.”

  He tried feebly to think how to put all of it into some understandable form.

  “I told the Winships you’d asked if Mary’s father had come back, when Miss Caroline wanted to know who you were. They were upset, and I was upset, too, so I came up here and went out on the balcony. Then I heard somebody behind me in the room, and something black was over my head and they were choking me. I thought they were going to throw me over the coping. Then I thought I heard a taxi-horn, and a crash, and that’s all I remember till I heard that man telling you about Mary’s father. That was Mr. Sidney Copeland, wasn’t it? Miss Caroline Winship rang him up as soon as I’d got out of the flat, and told him to come over. She thought you’d seen Mary’s father. All I said was you asked if he’d come home.”

  Dan McGrath listened in silence. He said then, “This is all as clear as—as English coffee, Mr. Pinkerton. But I know enough about one thing. I’m going to call the cops now.”

  Mr. Pinkerton forgot his aching throat and his nauseatingly throbbing head. “Oh, no!” he cried. He stared wildly up at Dan McGrath, trying to find words. The young American would think he was afraid of the police, that he’d done something—perhaps even that he was an old lag. How could he explain something so very important and so intensely personal? Dan McGrath did not know about J. Humphrey Bull. Or, worse still, Sir Charles Debenham the Assistant Commissioner.

  Mr. Pinkerton, shuddering, almost forgot his throbbing head and aching throat. The last time he had got himself mixed up with crime, the Assistant Commissioner had been very severe. Mr. Pinkerton could still hear him. “Now look here, Bull. Mr. Pinkerton’s got to stay out of these things. Someday somebody’s going to bash him over the head, and I’m going to see they’re knighted for it. Ha, ha!” Of course he was shaking Mr. Pinkerton’s hand as he said it, because if it had not been for Mr. Pinkerton they would not have got Vincent Delaney by the heels nearly as quickly as they did. But where there was smoke there was potential fire. Mr. Pinkerton glanced sideways up at the mantel at the photograph of Chief Inspector Bull, looking very deceptively mild in his capacity of family man on the front lawn of his semi-detached villa in Hampstead, with Margaret Bull and J. Humphrey Pinkerton Bull, and a liver-and-white spaniel named Dr. Crippen that had been a present to Mr. Pinkerton from the Chief Constable of Bath.

  He looked back at Dan. “Please don’t call the police,” he said earnestly. “Miss Grimstead would be very much put out. It must have been a—a mistake, of some kind. And it—it might make trouble for you.”

  He did not believe that, but it was a straw to clutch at, after the mistake of saying what he had said about Miss Grimstead, which only made the American’s jaw go harder and his eyes fleck an icier blue. “You see, the—the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard is—is sort of a friend of mine, and he told me to—to keep out of trouble.”

  He trailed lamely off as Dan McGrath looked silently down at him with an expression of concern he could not keep off his face. If ever a little guy had been born that was not likely either to get in trouble or to know an Assistant Commissioner of New Scotland Yard, Mr. Pinkerton was it. Dan wondered, with a
nxiety, if the blow on the head could have done something to him. Head injuries were tricky.

  He nodded reassuringly. “Sure. Anything you say, Mr. Pinkerton.”

  “Did—did her cousin come?” Mr. Pinkerton forced himself out of a dazed silence. It was relief, not dizziness. He had not expected Dan McGrath to give in so easily.

  “Didn’t see him.”

  “I thought he’d come.” Mr. Pinkerton shook his head painfully. “He said he wanted cash. I told him I’d let him have two hundred pounds, to—to see if he could stop her from going to Paris. I expect it wasn’t enough.”

  Dan stirred uneasily. The little guy was really bats. He listened through the closed door into the hall, wishing the nurse would come, and drew a breath of relief as he heard the rap on the door. But it was not the nurse. It was Mason, the night porter, with a silver tray in his hand. On the tray was an envelope.

  “For you, sir.”

  He peered around at Mr. Pinkerton, obviously distressed. “ ’E’s coming round, sir, is ’e? Would ’e like a nice ’ot cup of tea, do you think?”

  “I’m sure he would. Bring it, will you?”

  Dan tore the envelope open, read the contents without surprise, and turned back to Mr. Pinkerton with a grin on his lean face. “The Manageress presents her compliments to Mr. McGrath and would like him to get the hell out of the storeroom, the sooner the quicker.”

  The grin disappeared from his face as Mr. Pinkerton drew himself up on the couch, blinking with sudden indignation. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said heatedly. “I—I won’t allow it. I own these flats. I—I won’t permit it.”

  Humor them. Don’t let them get excited. Never argue. Head injuries are really tricky.

  “Sure,” Dan said gravely. “They can’t do this to us.”

  He went over to the day bed, took the cover off, folded it and turned down the blanket.

  “We’re here, Mr. Pinkerton, and we’re going to stay. Now what about you getting your clothes off and climbing in. It’s late and you’ve had a tough night.”

  Mr. Pinkerton blinked, speechless. “He—he really thinks I’m crazy,” he thought hopelessly.

  “Where are your pyjamas?”

  Dan went to the cupboard. An old-fashioned nightshirt, mended and patched, was hanging on the inside of the door, under a faded but spectacularly extraordinary dressing gown that looked as if it had come from Hollywood and not from Piccadilly as the label alleged. He took it down with a suppressed grin.

  “It—it was a gift,” Mr. Pinkerton said weakly. “The Duchess of Cleves gave it to me when I admired one the Duke had. After I’d helped Scotland Yard get back the old duchess’s emeralds. That was before the War.”

  “Nice going anyway,” Dan said. He knelt down, wishing the nurse would come, unlaced Mr. Pinkerton’s solid black boots and took them off. “Come on now. Let’s get in bed. Then I’m going to give you some aspirin and you’re going to sleep. I’m going to lock the window, and lock the door, and you’re going to stay right here till I get back.”

  Mr. Pinkerton managed to nod. “What—are you going to do? Are you going to—to the boat train?”

  “Mr. Pinkerton, I’m going to call the Prime Minister and have him stop the boat train.”

  He meant it to be mildly funny, and had no way of knowing Mr. Pinkerton would not take it so. He had seen enough motion pictures to know there was nothing too fantastically improbable for an American to do when he set out to get his girl. “Good,” he said. “Good.” He put his head gingerly down on the pillow and closed his eyes. He did so want the American to see Mary for the first time while she was still radiant with excitement. It might make all the difference.

  Dan shut the door. The hospital nurse was coming out of the lift. She looked capable and honest.

  “He’s quiet now,” Dan said. “I’ve locked the door so he can’t get out. Here’s the key. Will you sit in the door of my room here till I get back? And don’t let anybody in.”

  Mason was still there with the lift. There was a tray on the leather seat with a pot of tea and a cup and saucer.

  “Give it to Mrs. Beckwith here,” Dan said. “Mr. Pinkerton’s gone to bed.” In the lift he said, “Mason, I’m going to catch a train—if I’m not too late.” He took two one-pound notes out of his billfold. “Stop right here and tell me which train. You got the taxi for Miss Mary Winship, didn’t you?”

  The porter stopped the cage midway between the first and ground floors. He shook his head at the notes.

  “Put them away, sir. ’E said if you was to enquire, I was to ’ave no idea—but if you was going to France tonight you might fancy the nine o’clock boat train from Waterloo to Southampton. You’d ’ave to ’urry. I’ve no idea what Miss Mary and ’er cousin did.”

  “Thanks,” Dan said.

  He hurried through the hall. Outside, the golden haze of the afternoon, degenerated into a murky mist, was now in actual and permeating precipitation. He yanked his hat on and pulled on his raincoat, and made a dash for a taxi at the corner. “Waterloo. I’ve got to make the nine o’clock boat train. Step on it, will you?”

  They dodged in and out of narrow side streets, crossed Piccadilly, headed down St. James’s Street between the Palace and Marlborough House into Pall Mall, and cut through the Park. He sat there looking out on familiar ground without seeing it—on the right the two pelicans asleep on their rock, to the left the Horse Guards Parade and the lighted windows of Whitehall Palace. It was a fool’s errand, he was thinking. He felt an almost fatalistic sense that what was to be was to be. If he missed her, he missed her. He could even get to the train on time, he thought suddenly, see her there and not know her. Six years was a long time.

  In fact, his best chance, actually, was her cousin. Thanks to Miss Myrtle Grimstead, he could spot him easily enough. It had happened while he was making the deal for the box room with her; she had leaned smiling out of the small office window toward the man in a chalk-stripe blue suit and black homburg hat, adjusting his fancy cravat in the mirror beside the lift as he waited for it, as self-satisfied as Narcissus contemplating himself in the woodland brook.

  “Oh, Mr. Dalrymple-Hughes! Miss Winship asked me to tell you to be sure and look in on her before you go out. Thank you.”

  She had given Dan an arch smile before coming back to the business of the room. “He’s rather hard to catch before he’s off and away. A trial to his aunt rather, I’m afraid . . .”

  So, unless there was another cousin . . . Dan settled back in the cab. They were in Parliament Square, with the Thames and Westminster Bridge ahead of them. As they came out on the Bridge he looked back to the left at the flattened turrets of New Scotland Yard rising above the misty plane trees of the Embankment, shadowy in the river fog, and grinned suddenly, thinking of Mr. Pinkerton’s friend the Assistant Commissioner. The taxi lurched sharply into the blackened purlieus behind the overhead activity of the Southern Railway terminus. Another swerve to the left and he was there. On a fool’s errand, with five minutes to spare.

  “Thanks, pal.” He thrust a note into the driver’s hand. As he made his way quickly into the lighted hall he felt a throb of excitement and a sense of sharpened anxiety that had been absent before. He spotted the gate and went rapidly over to it, thought of an excuse as the guard stopped him, and gave it up. “I haven’t got a ticket. I want to say good-bye to a girl.”

  The guard looked at him with a dour smile. “You’ve got more time than you think. We’re running a bit late. Step along. Tickets, please!”

  It was a dingy train, the first-class compartments older and dingier looking than the third-class. He went along the platform, looking for Dalrymple-Hughes, and spotted him, standing at the door of a third-class corridor car, one hand raised as he looked at his wrist watch. He turned and spoke into the vestibule.

  She’s there inside. All you have to do now is move along opposite the open door and you’ll see her. He hesitated, and went instead over to the side of the t
rain and along to the door of the coach in front. Dalrymple-Hughes’s petulant voice was clearly audible.

  “. . . go, if you insist. But don’t tell Aunt Caroline I ditched you, will you. Of course it’s a perfectly beastly bore seeing people off when you’ve got to stick at home yourself. But you’ll be all right. And I have got an important engagement.”

  When he heard her voice his heart stopped beating for an instant before it began again, thumping hard against his ribs.

  “Do go along, Eric. I’ll be all right. The train may be hours late starting.”

  “Well, if you insist . . .”

  You’ve twisted my arm, let me out of here quick. Dan turned his head just in case Dalrymple-Hughes had bothered to notice him at Miss Grimstead’s office window.

  “Cheer-oh, then. Do try to get Agnes to give you some of Bernard’s castoffs for me, even if you won’t try for yourself. Thank God I’m not proud. Cheer-oh. I’ll push along.”

  Dalrymple-Hughes moved off. Dan went quickly to where he had been standing. He was too late. All he saw was her back as she disappeared into the corridor. He went quickly along to see her through the windows when she took her seat, and caught his breath sharply.

  Mary Winship was running along the corridor. At the door of the third compartment she stopped for an instant, looking back, her body a taut tense line. She flashed into the compartment, pulled her suitcase down from the rack and bent quickly to drag a bulkier one from under the seat. She pushed them into the corridor, caught up the gloves and book on the seat and flashed out. It was then Dan saw her face—small, pointed and intensely pale as she stood there, her breast moving with her quickly drawn breath, her eyes wide.

  She raised her hand and pushed her dark hair back from her forehead with a quick nervous gesture before she stooped to gather up her bags. For Dan McGrath standing outside on the damp murky platform it was as vivid an instant as he had ever lived. He was back in the Underground shelter on the dark chilling stairs, the reek of fear and antiseptics in his nostrils, all hell loose in the invisible world above them, his arms tight around her, feeling her pounding heart against him, her breath in staccato tempo cool against his burning cheek. It was the instant he had lived six years to feel again. It was a sharp renascence, an affirmation of a dream that was no star-dusted illusion but brilliant reality, swelling his heart, melting it with sudden warmth and glowing tenderness. He had had a vision, and he had doubted it. There on the platform in the instant his doubts had been swept away.