by Zenith Brown
“It sounds screwball to me.” He stopped abruptly, listening. “Here they are.”
Mr. Pinkerton went a shade paler grey, and blinked like a small dismayed owl caught out at high noon.
“Well, I think I’ll just go to my room,” he said hastily. “I— I think I’d best lie down for a moment.”
Dan watched him scurry back along the hall and into his door with much more haste than seemed reasonable in anyone with so obvious a talent for other people’s business. He watched the door as he waited for the lift to go down and up again. Mr. Pinkerton was in his room, but he was not lying down. Dan could see the shadow of his feet at the crack under the door. The big keyhole under the brass knob no longer showed any light. There was funny business, he thought, all over Number 4 Godolphin Square. Maybe the war and the post war had done something odd to the British. Or to the British in Godolphin Square anyway. The only perfectly rational and reasonably ordinary person he had run into was Elliot Winship, the missing Scott Winship’s brother. And he lived somewhere else. Maybe, he thought, it was the house. Nobody in it seemed to make normal everyday sense. Including McGrath. On second thought, McGrath certainly had to be included—and he had not yet been at Number 4 Godolphin Square a full twenty-four hours.
“You say this door was locked when you opened it, sir?”
The very large burly man from Scotland Yard standing by the wardrobe regarded Dan McGrath with troubled blue eyes. He had cinnamon-brown hair, a cinnamon-brown mustache and wore a suit of cinnamon-brown tweed. He might have looked like a pleasantly domesticated, greatly oversize, cinnamon bear except that he looked more like a St. Bernard worried about a traveller in a snowy pass—mild as milk, deliberate, naively trusting, and not very bright actually. The plodding type.
“Right,” Dan said. “I turned the key before I could open it.”
He was sitting on Pegott’s bed, the open despatch case beside him. Pegott’s body was gone, and the photographers and fingerprint men, with all their assistants and paraphernalia. Chief Inspector Bull and Detective-Sergeant Smithson were there, and a uniformed constable was at the foot of the stairs on the second floor.
“Miss Grimstead tells me he’s been looking very seedy lately,” Inspector Bull said.
“I wouldn’t know about that. I never saw him till this morning when he served my breakfast.”
“That’s right, sir. You arrived after tea yesterday and got your dinner out, I believe you said.”
“That’s right.”
It was easier than Dan had thought it was going to be. He tried to focus his eye on the narrow rib of solid fact, to tread safely through the morass without deliberately lying in the first place and without being a heel in the second. He was thinking about Mary Winship and her mother. Maybe they’d have to be brought into this somewhere, but somebody else could bring them in, not McGrath.
Chief Inspector Bull was looking soberly about the room. “I don’t want to keep you, sir. But perhaps you’d explain how you happened to open the wardrobe door in the first place? Were you looking for something in particular?”
“Yes. I was trying to find out if Pegott was going to be here to serve dinner. I saw his stuff was packed up.”
He motioned to the luggage still on the floor at the foot of the bed. They had not opened it up, and Dan, waiting with some curiosity, decided it was his presence that was stopping them. “I thought I’d see if his white coat, or whatever he wears at night, was still there.”
“I take it you’d rung for him and he’d not answered the bell, is that it, sir?”
“No. I’m in what you call the box room, temporarily converted. I don’t have a bell.”
“What was it you wanted of him, sir?”
“I have a suit that needs pressing.”
It was not exactly an outright falsehood. He had two, the one he had on and the one hanging in the box room.
Inspector Bull was looking at the despatch case on the bed. The space under Pegott’s folded pyjamas where the book had been yawned at Dan blankly, proportionately as big and empty as the space in his jaw would feel when his last wisdom tooth came out. But the Inspector did not notice it, and as it was in a sense Dan’s own property—in the sense that Pegott had taken it from him while he was asleep—he saw no reason for calling it to his attention.
“Just one thing more, sir, before you go. You say you left the flat at eleven o’clock this morning and returned shortly after four? And went out again till round six?”
“That’s right, Inspector.”
“If you’d just tell us where you were—”
The suggestion was made with no apparent real concern, but McGrath had heard of alibis before.
“Sure,” he said agreeably. “I went to Regent Street and had a snack in a pub there. Don’t know the name, but I could find it again, Inspector. After that I strolled around. I bought some stuff called Herbal Smoking Mixture. The sign in the shop window says it’s cheaper and better than tobacco and good for catarrh. Try some, Inspector?”
“Thank you, no,” Inspector Bull said.
“Then I walked through Covent Garden to look at the market, but I was too late, I guess. All I saw was some dead cabbage leaves and a few stray cats. Oh, except a sign, on the door into St. Paul’s Covent Garden. It says ‘In this Garden Sanctuary the Fouling of the Ground by Dogs is Deplored.’ ”
Bull nodded politely.
“Very good, sir. You’ll be here in case we should want to see you again? You’re not setting off anywhere immediately, I mean, sir?”
Dan shook his head and got up. He started for the door.
“Don’t forget your hat, sir.”
Dan looked around. He had forgotten he had automatically tossed his hat on the chair by the door before he had noticed the luggage at the foot of the bed.
“Oh, thanks. That is—”
The inspector was in sudden motion, across the room and in the doorway with the agility, ease and speed of an adagio dancer weighing nine stone instead of the eighteen he undoubtedly did weigh.
“Pinkerton!” It was a bellow only in the sense that it was the first time Inspector Bull had raised his voice above a sickroom monotone. Dan McGrath’s heart sank a little. The man really was known to the police. And Inspector Bull must have ears in the back of his head; he had heard no noise of any opening door. He looked past Bull. Mr. Pinkerton was at the turn of the staircase, his hat clutched in his hands, and if ever guilt was written on a human face it was written there. He was backed against the wall, terrified.
“Come here, Pinkerton. Where are you going ?”
Mr. Pinkerton came as one hypnotized, like a mouse summoned by a giant and inimical cinnamon-pied piper, blinking all the way.
“I—was just stepping out for a bite of supper, Chief Inspector.”
Dan McGrath looked at him silently, with genuine misgivings as to what this aspect of things did to the entire situation. He had thought before that the little man was honest. Touched, no doubt, but really okay. But now, as Mr. Pinkerton went into Pegott’s room at the Inspector’s gesture, sidling in unhappily indeed without a glance at Dan, he seemed virtually on the point of collapse.
Dan stopped outside in the hall. He would have stayed there if the Detective-Sergeant had not come out of Pegott’s room as Mr. Pinkerton went in—precisely, it occurred to Dan, so that he should not stay there.
“Do you know Mr. Pinkerton?” Dan ventured tentatively.
“Oh yes indeed, sir.” The sergeant permitted himself a slight, and dour, smile. “Always in hot water, he is, one way or the other, sir.”
Dan went along to his room. It was no wonder the little fellow was adamant about not calling in the police, the night before. That, however, was hardly the immediate point, which concerned one Dan McGrath and what he was going to do. He tried to take stock of the situation. It did not appear to be too good. One thing, however, was certain, he decided, thinking it over: no one got to be a Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard who was as gu
ileless, unsuspecting and unperceptive as the large cinnamon-brown man appeared to be. There was obviously more than met the eye: a kind of sign language, for one thing, he thought, remembering how Bull had occasionally nodded at one or the other of the men making their examination of the room and Pegott—his pockets, the necktie, the knot in it that had strangled him, and his shoes. They had all seemed to have some special interest in his shoes, carefully taking them off before his last grim descent in the service lift. A dumb show, he thought with a grin, but probably not so dumb as it had seemed to McGrath. There was obviously more than met the eye, and they were not through with him. McGrath ought to make up his mind where he stood and what he was doing there, and he ought to be quick about it.
He went over to the table and turned on the light. An envelope was lying on top of his briefcase. He picked it up and tore it open.
Sir. Our friend will meet us at 12:30 tonight at Number 22 opposite. £250 in American currency or by draught on an American bank will be acceptable if proper discretion in the transaction is guaranteed.
He read it twice, crumpled it up and put it in his pocket. Pegott would have written it, obviously, after he came in from lunch with Dalrymple-Hughes and some time before he was unable ever to write again. Had he been in contact of some kind with Scott Winship? Or was this a part of some put-up job . . . Pegott and Dalrymple-Hughes at one end, himself at the other? One thing seemed certain: Pegott was skipping out in any case and he wanted American currency. The packed luggage was no deception. On the other hand, the murder of Pegott was evidence of something else again. Thinking of that, Dan came back to the one fact that he appeared to have—and that he wished he did not have.
He did not know the exact moment at which the impermanent valet had been killed, but it was some time between his return from lunch at the Green Parrot in Regent Street and ten minutes to six o’clock when he had found him on the floor of the wardrobe; and at fifteen minutes past four or thereabouts he had seen Mr. Elliot Winship with his hand actually on Pegott’s doorknob—whether going in or coming out he could not tell. And the lift had been only one floor down when Elliot Winship had somehow given the impression, at least, of being on his way to the ground floor and out into the Square. And one other fact flashed into his mind that he wished also he did not have. It was actually in his own pocket. He took the red book out and looked at it without pleasure. He had been a fool to take it and a fool to keep it without telling the Inspector about it. He opened it up, looked at Caroline Winship’s name on the flyleaf, closed it again and looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes past six. He looked down at the other McGrath’s book steadily for an instant, slipped it back into his pocket and went out into the hall. All this had been serious enough before the murder of Pegott. It was more serious now. The only sensible thing to do under all the circumstances, and for more reasons than one, was what he should have done before: namely give the book back to its owner and make a serious effort to explain that he was genuinely and exclusively concerned with one thing, to marry Mary Winship.
11
ON THE first floor he concluded that the door at the end of the corridor on his right must be the one he was looking for, if Miss Caroline Winship’s sitting room overlooked the Square as Mr. Pinkerton had told him it did. The low murmur of voices inside broke off sharply as he knocked on the white painted panel. The silence seemed ominously intense as he waited. He was about to knock again when the door opened abruptly. It was Eric Dalrymple-Hughes.
He stared silently for an instant, said “Oh,” and relaxed into a bored nonchalance that was patently too studied.
“I’m Daniel McGrath. I’d like to speak to Miss Caroline Winship.”
“My aunt is—”
“Ask him to come in, Eric.”
Miss Winship’s heavy voice cut him off curtly. He shrugged and stepped aside. “Come in, will you?”
As Dan went into the small foyer he was aware of sharp misgivings now that he was about to confront the woman he had met out in the dark in the Square the night before. He had not thought of Dalrymple-Hughes being there. As he put his hat and raincoat on the chair and went on into the room the misgivings ceased to have any doubt about them, and if he could have turned back he would have done it. Mary Winship was standing in front of the fireplace, her hand gripping the wing of her mother’s chair. The surgeon Mr. Sidney Copeland sat rigidly in a chair turned sideways from the desk. Miss Caroline Winship was in a large faded yellow satin chair across the fireplace, and the empty chair that completed the half-circle was evidently the one Dalrymple-Hughes had left. Five pairs of eyes were fixed on him, each concealing, or making no attempt to conceal, the same livid resentment he had seen last in Miss Violet Grimstead’s. They were motionless, ringed round him in the shabby-luxurious room, watching him, waiting silently.
He came on in as coolly as he could. There was nothing here he hadn’t asked for. He was an alien, barging into their private lives, uninvited and unknown. He could see his own family in a situation of the sort. Except that the alien wouldn’t be in the living room; he would be out in the front street brushing off the seat of his pants.
“What is it, Mr. McGrath?”
Miss Winship moved her ponderous body in the yellow chair, her fingers tapping the frayed satin of the arms, twitching a little like a cat’s tail. Her brilliant brown eyes smoldered under their heavy lids as she looked steadily at him. “Will you sit down?”
“Thank you.”
He took the empty chair in the semicircle.
“Close the door, Eric, and sit down.”
Seeing Caroline Winship in the light for the first time, Dan had the impression of a gnarled oak on a storm-swept plain. He felt a sudden inexplicable twinge of sympathy for her that astonished him as he returned her steady unblinking gaze. Masterful women are the most easily deceived, he thought as her nephew drew up a chair and sat down, examining the tip of his cigarette with his brows raised. Miss Winship’s eyes rested obliquely on him for an instant before she looked back at Dan McGrath. A brief flicker that might almost have been amusement lighted the sombre brilliance of her eyes.
“You find it difficult to begin, Mr. McGrath?”
There was no doubt about that, though trying to think about it he could not say which of them made it most so: Mrs. Winship pale and intent and withdrawn, Sidney Copeland openly hostile, restraining himself with apparent effort, Mary Winship with her chin proudly up and her eyes burning.
“I thought maybe I could be of some help, Miss Winship,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I guess I’m wrong. The police are coming back. They’ll question me about Pegott’s murder. I—”
“Why should you think it has anything to do with us, Mr. McGrath? I take it you do think so?”
“It seems to have some connection.”
“Which you feel you have got to tell the police?”
“I’ll have to tell them Pegott was planning to take me tonight to see Mr. Scott Winship.”
He kept his eyes steadily on Caroline Winship’s, not wishing to see any other person in the room. After Mrs. Winship’s startled gasp, the silence in the room grew, intense and electric.
“You are brutally tactless, Mr. McGrath.” Miss Winship’s sombre voice was rigidly controlled.
“Sorry. So are the police. There’s not much time. I thought you ought to know about it. It may be a coincidence that he was killed before he got the chance. I don’t know. I wanted particularly—”
She motioned Sidney Copeland, who had half risen from his chair, back with an imperious gesture. “You have been deceived. My sister’s former husband is not alive, Mr. McGrath. If he were, he would not confide in a valet. The Winships are not in the habit of associating with servants.”
“I’m merely telling you what I’ve got to tell the police, Miss Winship. If you don’t mind I’ll go on.—That Pegott some way got the quite erroneous idea I was prepared to pay him to get in touch with Mr. Winship, presumably about a picture Pego
tt said was in his possession. That he offered—for a price—to take me to him tonight. Also, that your nephew lunched with Pegott today.”
Miss Winship stared silently at him.
“That is false, Aunt Caroline.” Dalrymple-Hughes leaned back in his chair and brushed an invisible speck from his trouser leg. “If Pegott said that he lied.”
“He didn’t lie, Eric.” Mary Winship spoke quietly. “You did lunch with him. I saw you. At the Green Parrot.”
Miss Winship, still silent, turned to him. “Tell me the truth, Eric.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I did.” He smiled easily at her. “On your behalf.”
“On my behalf?”
“As head of the family. I was going to tell you tonight. Pegott thought we might like to overbid his American client here.” He waved his cigarette toward Dan. “I said I’d got to take it up with you. Don’t ask me how Pegott comes into it, because I don’t know. But he—seems to have got it into his head that Aunt Louise here knows perfectly well where Uncle Scott is. I rather gathered he’d done a bit of detective work following her about when we’ve had the idea she was too ill to leave the flat.”
Louise Winship shrank deeper into her chair, her face ghastly pale.
Eric Dalrymple-Hughes got up coolly. “You haven’t got to believe me if you like. I had no intention of mentioning it at all. It’s no pleasure to me to know I’ve got a thief for an uncle. I’d much rather they’d not find him, frankly. But I’ve no intention of being accused of murdering Pegott just because he decided to tell me a lot I’d not known before. Fortunately, I’ve got an alibi, if it interests Mr. McGrath. I hope he’s got one— because I’ve got several things to tell the police myself.”
He moved away from the motionless semicircle in front of the fireplace.
“Eric—sit down.”
Miss Winship’s voice was like a lash catching him in the face, his angry flush the welts it left as it struck.
“I’ll not sit down, Aunt Caroline. Frankly, I’m through with the lot of you.”