Except For One Thing

by John Russell Fearn

  For his own edification he put 1, 2 and 3 on each one in pencil, and after that the intended day of posting. Next, he went to the safe and took out the letter of Valerie’s he had placed in a separate envelope. He read it again to make sure, put it with the three letters he had written — after stamping the envelopes — and then transferred all of them to his wallet.

  Snapping off his gloves he put them back in the desk drawer.

  “Chauffeur,” he muttered. “Don’t quite like him knowing so much — but since the tie-up between Williams and me will never be traced I can’t see that it matters. I paid him well and I think he’ll keep quiet. Anyway, nothing to prove murder; just a disappearing act, and it will even look voluntary…What else? Engagement ring and cigarette box — and letters! Must find all those and remove them.”

  Switching off the light he left the study and went to bed.

  *

  After breakfast Richard called the Baxters to him as he put on his coat in the hall, his travelling case standing beside him.

  “I’ll be marrying soon,” he told them, “and my arrangements are likely to keep me out of town, on and off, for about a week. I shan’t be home tonight, but I may return for a few hours tomorrow. Anyway, don’t either of you prepare anything for me and just expect me when I arrive. Right?”

  “Of course, Mr. Richard, sir,” old Baxter agreed.

  Richard picked up his bag and departed. In fifteen minutes he was putting the bag in the Jaguar, and from here on began his routine performance of change of identity. Towards early afternoon he reached his newly-acquired house near Twickenham and brought the old car to a halt. The furniture men were there with the pantechnicon.

  Richard surveyed the men going in and out; then he got out of the car, strolled further down the road to a pillar-box and sorted the letters from his wallet. With the soft rubber head of his pencil he removed the guiding marks and posted letter number one — Saturday — and then he strolled back to watch the men at work.

  “Everything all right?” he asked the foreman.

  “Be finished in an hour, sir,” the man answered.

  Richard glanced up as he saw Timothy Potter strolling up and down his front garden in his alpaca jacket. He limped towards him.

  “So you decided to take it, eh, Mr. Williams?”

  “Yes,” Richard acknowledged. “But now I have taken it I don’t know whether my fiancée will like it. She’ll be coming to see it next Friday.”

  “She should like it,” Potter reflected. “Quiet about here. Most people mind their own business.”

  In every house, as far as Richard could see, there were faces dodging behind curtains. Everything he was doing was being noted — which was exactly the way he wanted it…

  For perhaps twenty minutes he went on talking to Potter, then he turned away again to see how the removal was progressing. In another half-hour the job was finished and Richard retired inside the place to find it furnished, the hangings at the windows, everything ready — even to the electric current having been switched on. It appeared that the meter-man had called during the morning and had been admitted by the removers.

  “So it begins,” Richard murmured, pulling off his cap and sitting down. “The creation of somebody who is already familiar in the immediate neighbourhood, and who has yet to become known in various other directions as well…All the time I am here I must wear gloves, waking or sleeping. Come to think of it, I’ll sleep down here and not upset the upstairs at all, except for washing. I can rub away any prints I might leave behind.”

  And from this moment onwards he began the strangest adventure of his life. After a meal from some of the tinned provisions he had brought wrapped up in the pyjamas in his suitcase, he went out, cap pulled down and leg limping, and made his way to the little block of stores a half-mile further down the road.

  A grocers-cum-post office, a newsagents, the usual little huddle of essential tradesfolk were all there. Richard talked with the shopkeepers at length and gave time for every detail about himself to be absorbed; then he returned to his hideout, drew the curtains, and satisfied himself that the light showed through them in a glow. Everybody knew the place was occupied.

  He slept at the house — putting the light on upstairs for a brief while towards half-past ten — in an armchair in the front room. During the following morning he put himself on view in the unkempt front garden, inspecting the weed-strewn chaos. He had lunch in the house, then towards mid-afternoon slipped his packed suitcase in the car and drove off down the road on the start of the return trip which brought him to his Belsize Park home in the Jaguar.

  The Baxters merely greeted him and left it at that. He spent half an hour in his study, another half in the laboratory — for no other reason than to seem occupied in business — then at four-thirty he went outside with the blueprints of the garage and considered the layout of the site for it. For two hours, until dusk, he pottered round with the concrete mixer, getting the floor of the garage laid so it could set in the night. That it was Sunday and that the concrete mixer made plenty of noise did not even seem to occur to him…

  So, alternating his behaviour between Twickenham and his own home he passed the days between building the garage and living a reserved life as Mr. Rixton Williams of Twickenham. He found it nerve-racking work, but not once did anything unexpected cross his path. By the following Wednesday, after he had posted the last of the letters to Valerie from Twickenham, he felt he could return safely to Belsize Park with the illusion of Mr. Williams complete in the minds of his inquisitive Twickenham neighbours.

  During this time the garage had grown from a concrete floor to having its walls half up. All day Thursday he added but little to it, preparing instead considerable amounts of concrete and then, for reasons best known to himself, he stopped working on the garage and retired to the laboratory.

  On the Friday morning at breakfast Mrs. Baxter found Richard entirely genial and smiling at her.

  “Going away today Mr. Richard?” She asked him, setting the meal down before him.

  “Only until five o’clock,” he answered. “Then I shall be working on a very important laboratory job at home here until after midnight. High explosive test. But you needn’t worry; I shan’t blow you up!”

  Mrs. Baxter smiled. “I think you’re working too hard lately, Mr. Richard. What with your business trips, your laboratory work and trying to build that garage too…”

  “Yes, I’ve done as much as I can do so that the garage will be ready for the car when I bring the wife here; but now I’ve found out I’ve got to make the floor two inches higher! That’s the worst of these amateur builders,” he added, grinning. “Anyway, I’ll finish it in readiness for when my intended wife comes here even if I have to work on it all night.”

  “When will your wife be coming?” Mrs. Baxter asked. “I’d like to know so that I can prepared.”

  “It won’t be yet awhile. Things haven’t been settled yet, though I’m hoping they may be before long.”

  Mrs. Baxter completed her usual duties, and then went out. Richard left the house towards nine-thirty, picking up his Jaguar shortly afterwards. He drove straight through the city and onwards through Richmond, taking careful notice of the countryside as he began the run from Richmond to Twickenham.

  He knew the spot he wanted: he had seen it on the occasion of his first visit — a rutted side-road leading to a dense wood and apparently miles from any habitation, certainly five from Twickenham centre and a good three miles from his hideout.

  He swung the wheel of the car as he found the road, glided onwards gently between bare hawthorn hedges lining neglected pastureland. So in a few minutes he came to the outcroppings of a wood, nosed the sleek black bonnet among the outermost trees.

  Alighting, he took the key bunch from the ignition, locked the car, and then retraced his way slowly. He was satisfied the car wouldn’t be seen before night when he would need it — and even if it were the assumption would probably be that it
had run out of petrol and had been temporarily abandoned.

  As he walked back to the main road he studied the Jaguar’s tyre tracks in the soft surface of the lane. That night they would have to be eliminated, when he had made the return tracks. Once he gained the hard macadam of the main road the tracks disappeared of course.

  Here he turned towards Twickenham, and kept on going towards it until a bus caught up with him and he got a lift. He had lunch in Twickenham, then went on a bus to Richmond and from here took the Underground back to London. He felt pleased by the smoothness with which everything had gone.

  The afternoon he spent in the city, strolling through the side streets that bordered on the Paragon Theatre, getting a complete idea of the district. At six-forty-five Valerie would alight from her Daimler at the side alley leading to the stage door. On many occasions she had mentioned that she got to the theatre promptly at quarter to seven. The chances were in favour of her being alone — her love of isolation was going to prove her undoing.

  This particular alley would be deserted too, kept clear especially for property cans and stage folk. The old car would be round the corner in the next alley and for a few brief seconds Valerie would not be within the sight of anybody. There were no overlooking windows anywhere; Richard satisfied himself on that. And it would be night. With careful timing and keeping Valerie quiet the thing would be easy…

  Richard returned home about five o’clock, as he had said he would, and requested a few sandwiches in place of the customary meal. As usual it was Mrs. Baxter who brought them in to him as he sat waiting at the table.

  “As I told you at breakfast, Mrs, Baxter, I’m starting on a new experiment this evening…And whoever comes, or whatever happens, I am not to be disturbed. It may be fatal if I’m interrupted in the middle of a high explosive test. If I seem to be very quiet, don’t be alarmed. I may be working from quarter-to-six tomorrow morning. As long as the laboratory lights are on you’ll know I’m there.”

  “We shan’t disturb you, Mr. Richard, if you don’t wish it,” Mrs. Baxter said. “And as for looking if the laboratory lights are on…Well, why should we?”

  Richard’s expression changed slightly. Had he over-emphasised the point?

  “Oh, only to satisfy yourselves,” he said, shrugging. “Anyway, I shan’t want anything more until tomorrow morning, I expect. If you and Mr. Baxter want to go to bed early for a change it’s all right to me. Go as soon as you like.”

  “It’ll be at the usual time, Mr. Richard. Fixed habits take a lot of breaking.”

  Damn the woman! Why couldn’t she and her husband go earlier and make things even safer? Still, eleven o’clock would do. He had calculated on that.

  After she left him he ate the sandwiches and drank the tea. Was there any point he had missed? No — apparently not. He looked in his wallet to be sure he had that letter of Valerie’s to him. Very essential. No, there was nothing wrong at all so far, unless it was that infernal chauffeur of Valerie’s. It was a nuisance him knowing so much…Perhaps later, if he showed signs of talking…At first, though, Valerie’s disappearance wouldn’t look like murder. There would be time to turn round.

  At half-past-five he finished the sandwiches and then went across the hall to the annex. Darkness was just commencing to pale the daylight.

  He switched on the laboratory lights and went to the big storage cupboard, emptied it completely of its contents and then locked it up again.

  Twenty minutes later he went out into the gloom of the drive and looked at the lighted ground glass windows. That old Baxter himself would see them at about eight o’clock was tolerably certain for at that time every evening he went past the laboratory to the woodhouse and coal shed to get in his fuel supply for the following morning. And at eight o’clock, all being well, Richard planned to be in Twickenham.

  He turned aside and inspected the cloying, soggy mass in the concrete mixer amidst the jumble beside the partially erected garage. Then he looked in the sacks containing the lime, sand, and other ingredients intended for the plaster of the ceiling when he had progressed that far. Satisfied, he went back into the laboratory, took an overcoat from a peg on the wall, made sure once again that the door to the house and all windows were securely fastened, then he left the laboratory by the drive door, closed it carefully.

  The plan was reaching its climax.

  CHAPTER VII

  He went silently down the drive, passing the side of the house where lay the domestic regions, blinds drawn down over the big kitchen window. The Baxters were unaware that he was leaving the house.

  Beyond the gateway the street was deserted and faintly misty. He crossed to the opposite side, dodged down side streets, and so came at length to a bus stop. From here he went into the city. By the time he had claimed his old car from the garage, parked it in a quiet alley while he changed into his Williams outfit in Charing Cross Station, and had returned to the car again it was six-thirty. Perfect timing so far.

  He drove to the second alley near the Paragon Theatre, which he had singled out in the afternoon. Here he spent ten minutes with a duster, rubbing the smooth parts of the old saloon inside and out. This done he returned the duster to the cubby-hole, donned his blue wool gloves, and then walked to the corner of the next alley which contained the theatre’s stage-door. Pressing himself in the shadows he stood watching.

  There was a light shining over the stage door. Now and again as he waited Richard saw figures appear and go in at the stage doorway. He glanced at his watch: six-forty.

  The sleek bonnet of her Daimler had just appeared at the opposite end of the entry. In desperate anxiety he glanced about him. The entry was quite empty. He stole forward, keeping close to the wall. He heard the car door slam and Valerie’s elegant figure in a fur coat, her blonde hair streaming, a big handbag under her arm, passed beneath the single lamp at the end of the alleyway. The car, as he had hoped, moved on.

  He fled past the stage doorway and from the lightning glance he gave saw there was nothing to fear. The stonewalled vista was deserted except for the doorman browsing over a newspaper in his little office with its glass sides.

  “Just a minute, Miss Hadfield!” Richard caught her arm and swung her round as she was about to pass him.

  “What the — ?” she demanded blankly; then before she could say a thing further Richard’s hand clamped tightly across her mouth. He impelled her forward through the gloom, his strong hands keeping an iron hold over her. They went past the stage-doorway, round the corner, and then the girl found herself being shoved violently into the saloon’s front seat.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked. “Who are you? What are — ?”

  “I’m your admirer, Miss Hadfield — Rixton Williams. You got my notes, didn’t you — ?”

  “You impudent swine!” the girl spat at him, clutching her handbag. “Let me out of — ”

  “Shut up!” he snapped, as she tried to push her way out of the car again. “Be quiet or I’ll use chloroform. Just shut up a minute!”

  She stared at him bewilderedly, and rather than take the risk of her slipping out while he went round to the driving seat he climbed in over her and slid into position under the steering wheel. Then he started the car up and swung out of the alleyway into a long, dark street.

  “What are you doing?” Valerie shouted. “Where are we going? Don’t you realise that I’ve got to be on the stage in — ”

  “You’re coming with me, on a little trip!”

  “This is abduction!” She pounded his shoulder with her fists.

  “Not exactly,” Richard said, relapsing into his normal voice. “Since you want me as a husband I thought I’d do a bit of old-fashioned stuff!”

  She stared at him fixedly. “Ricky!”

  “We’re going to elope,” he said calmly. “Think of the publicity we’ll get — or you will, anyway. Picture the headlines — “Musical comedy actress deserts show to marry man of her dreams!” You want it known from o
ne end of the country to the other that you’re marrying me, and by God you shall!”

  “But my contract…”

  “To hell with your contract! It expires tomorrow night in any case. If you are sued for it, we can pay it easily enough. You’ve another contract in the bag, anyway. As for tonight, the understudy can go on for you. She looks enough like you to be your twin.”

  Valerie stared at him as he began to thread carefully through the London traffic. “What on earth are you doing in this awful get up? And in this ancient car?”

  “I’ll explain it to you later. Believe me, I’ve thought of a wonderful publicity stunt for us both. You will hug me for it…Didn’t think I could turn into a gallant, did you?”

  “I’ve always known you to be crazy in some things, but this caps them all.” Valerie was calming a little. “So you are Mr. Rixton Williams! What’s the idea of it? How does it fit in?”

  “All part of the surprise,” he said, grinning. “You got my love letters? Didn’t throw ‘em away?”

  “Well, no,” she answered, hesitating. “Like the visiting card, I kept them in case I needed to convince you that somebody else was interested in me. And you’ve had the laugh of me all the time…”

  “All in the game,” he said again.

  “What game?” she implored. “Where are we going now?”

  “Twickenham.”

  “Twickenham! Now I know you’re crazy!”

  He drove on for a while in silence, then once he drew out of the area of speed limit he stepped up his speed. Valerie sat beside him, lost in thought, staring at the road with the glare of headlights upon it.

  “There’s an awful lot about this which I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Just trust me until we get to the house I’ve bought in Twickenham.”

  “You bought a house?”

  “Yes. Wait until we get there, and if we should meet anybody and I start talking in a hard northern voice don’t be surprised. It has been essential to keep my identity a secret for your sake, but the elopement is all planned out. That’s what you want, isn’t it? A gigantic publicity build-up?”