Except For One Thing

by John Russell Fearn

  “Simple. The same unknown did it — maybe not so much at Val’s behest as for reasons of his own. Anyway, you can’t prove that I did it!”

  Richard wished that he had not added the last words. He had the uneasy feeling that they untied everything he had said — but if Garth thought the same thing he made no sign of it.

  “Well, Dick, I’m glad you’ve been so frank about your friendship with Valerie Hadfield. It helps me a lot…But whether you are the victim of circumstantial evidence or not, you must realise that I have to check on everything?”

  “Naturally,” Richard agreed, with a trace of his normal, easy-going smile. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where you were last Friday evening between six o’clock and midnight. It was during that time — approximately between eight and nine — when Timothy Potter drank his champagne with Valerie and Williams in Twickenham, and also when Valerie, dead drunk, was being hauled down the front path.”

  “Yes, I recall that,” Richard nodded, completely at his ease. “Well, I was working here — all evening.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Very easily. Ask my servants.”

  A vague doubt crossed Garth’s face as he led the way back through the laboratory and into the hall. Richard called the Baxters out of their quarters.

  “Okay, Garth, you do the talking,” Richard invited dryly. “That’s the normal procedure, isn’t it? So I can’t drop any hints?”

  “Can either of you tell me what Mr. Harvey was doing last Friday night?” Garth asked. “Whether he was at home or not?”

  “Oh, yes, sir — he was at home.” Mrs. Baxter made the reply and looked questioningly at Richard.

  “The gentleman is a Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard, Mrs. Baxter,” Richard explained blandly. “Tell him all he wants to know; he’s entitled to it.”

  “I can verify what my wife says, Inspector,” old Baxter put in. “He was away most of Friday and came in about five o’clock — ”

  “And had a few sandwiches in place of the usual dinner,” Mrs. Baxter added. “I remember that I asked him why and he said it was because he had plenty of laboratory work to do and didn’t want to try and think on a full stomach. He said he’d perhaps be working from quarter-to-six that night until quarter-to-six next morning. And — and he insisted that he wasn’t to be disturbed.”

  “Then?” Garth asked, his jaw set.

  “Er — he said something about us going to bed earlier if we wanted, but as I told him fixed habits don’t alter that much and I said we’d go at our usual time. Then he said something about us being able to see him working in the laboratory if we wanted, because of the lighted windows…”

  “Uh-huh,” Garth acknowledged, staring into space.

  “I — I saw Mr. Harvey at work about eight o’clock, sir,” old Baxter ventured, and Richard found himself quivering with excited relief.

  “You did?” Garth’s voice was steady. “Personally?”

  “No — I didn’t dare disturb him. I never do. I went out to get the coal and wood for the next morning’s fires and I saw that the laboratory lights were on.”

  Garth said nothing.

  “At about a quarter-past ten,” Mrs. Baxter resumed, thinking, “Mr. Richard came into the house from the laboratory and asked for a sandwich. He said he was hungry and that — er — oh, his back was stiff from so much stooping. I don’t know any more than that, sir. We went to bed, my husband and I.”

  “Well, thanks very much,” Garth said, smiling. “I shan’t need to trouble you again. You can return to your quarters.”

  “Well, master mind?” Richard asked.

  “Only one conclusion I can come to,” Garth answered, shrugging. “My infernal dyspepsia must be clouding my judgement! Obviously you can’t have had anything to do with Valerie’s disappearance or with Peter Cranston’s murder. Two unimpeachable witnesses making a voluntary statement, and I can tell when anybody is lying or not…” His eyes rested on Richard’s for a moment, steadily; then he added, “Those two believe what they saw.”

  Richard nodded. “I’m really glad to get that worry off my mind, Garth. Now you know everything I think I’ll see what I can do to patch things up with Joyce…I gather that you have seen her. What did she say about me?”

  Garth raised his hands in protest. “A referee usually gets his head punched and I’m not going to risk it. You’d better do your own dirty work…Now, how about a brandy-and-soda for an old friend — and one who’s made about the biggest faux pas of his investigative life?”

  “Surely!” Genial once more, Richard led the way from the hall and into the lounge, motioned to a chair while he mixed a drink and handed it across.

  “Well, what happens now?” Richard asked, looking at his drink.

  “Oh, have to switch things round a bit and find out who Rixton Williams really is — and, above all, we’ve got to make some sort of show at finding Valerie. That’s the big snag — her missing body.”

  Garth got to his feet, put down his glass, then held out his hand. “No hard feelings, Dick?”

  “Lord, no! I’ll be only too glad to help you if I can — but please tell me one thing, and admit it like a man. Isn’t this a perfect crime? Such as you said could never exist?”

  “Yes, it is. It’s clever — diabolically clever — with every clue so neatly eradicated that we stop almost before we start…But perfect crime or otherwise, Dick, the hunt isn’t over yet. I still maintain that the Yard can beat any criminal alive…or dead.”

  They went out together into the hall.

  “Drop around to my office when you’re in town and I’ll tell you how far I’ve got. Failing that I may drop in here now and again.”

  “Do that,” Richard agreed, shaking hands — and he watched Garth go off down the driveway. He closed the door and strolled back into the lounge, grinning. Until this moment he had never known what freedom really meant. All along the line he had won. Chief Inspector Garth was beaten…Utterly.

  *

  Garth, however, was not quite such a fool as Richard imagined.

  “There is no doubt anymore,” Garth said, when he got back to his office in Whitehall towards midday, “that Dick Harvey is our man; and there is also no doubt that he has devised a perfect crime which only an unguarded move can betray.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Whittaker agreed. “Everything checks up — even to Doc Winters’ precipitin test on that bloodstained cotton wool. The blood is in the same group as that found on the car — Group AB, the rare blood-group as he calls it. It doesn’t prove that it is Mr. Harvey’s blood, but it looks as if the thing is too obvious to admit of doubt.”

  “Of course it is Harvey’s blood!” Garth snapped. “He engineered the whole damned thing from start to finish and the only thing stopping us arresting him is proof. Look how the facts are now ranged against him: One — away from home at the approximate time Williams came into being in Twickenham; two — withdrew two thousand from his bank and two thousand appeared in Twickenham; three — his nickname is the same as Williams’; four — he admits he was intimate with Valerie and found her a nuisance to him; five — his fingerprints on the back of the Daimler and in the flat; six — the inscribed cigarette box; seven — his blood-stain-group tallying with that on the abandoned car; eight — his desire to be rid of Valerie and marry Joyce Prescott; and nine — the year-old ink on the letter from Valerie found in Twickenham. I didn’t refer to it when talking to him, and I imagine that he has too many other things on his mind at the moment to recall its significance…All that is on the debit side, Whitty. On the credit side we have…”

  Garth mused and ticked the items off on his fingers.

  “One — his alibi that he was working in his laboratory when Valerie and Rixton were in Twickenham and when Peter Cranston was murdered; two — the two thousand pounds which he showed me to explain away his actions and which he must have wangled somehow; three — his clever removal of all clues which might hav
e proved he murdered Peter Cranston…”

  “What do you make of his alibi, sir? Has he bribed those two servants of his to get him out of a jam?”

  “No, they’re not the bribing sort. They saw the lighted laboratory windows but not Dick Harvey. They assumed he was in there, which was exactly the reaction he had expected. He wasn’t there, but I’ve got to prove it.”

  “Then things being as they are, sir, what’s your proposition?”

  “I shall have to remain friendly with him. He’s quite convinced now that I don’t suspect him anymore. I’ve even let him think that we may need his help.

  Anyway, I’ll stay beside him until I get the clue we need…” Garth was silent for a moment, inspecting his empty cheroot case woefully. “Y’know,” he said, “there’s one thing I can’t understand.”

  “Sir?”

  “Why the hell he’s working so hard on that garage! At first he said he was doing it for Joyce Prescott. But he has lost the girl completely because of her well-formed suspicions and yet he still goes on building the damned thing! I’ve looked at it, searched it, but there’s nothing unusual about it as far as I can see. What’s his game?”

  Whittaker shrugged. “I should imagine it’s an outlet for nervous tension, sir. Harvey feels with so much bottled up in his consciousness that he must do something. Just as some men fly to drink, as others seek out a — er — woman. Escape mechanism, sort of.”

  “Suffering snakes, man, you should have been a professor of psychology! You’re just wasted here!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I just wonder though what did become of Valerie Hadfield?” Garth scowled. “I still don’t know whether she is dead or not, but something inside me keeps insisting that she is — but even if dead her body should remain. That was one of the main points Dick and I argued over at the club. I pointed out the terrific difficulties presented to murderers in trying to be rid of the victim.”

  “Perhaps it’s hidden somewhere near where we found the car, sir?”

  “No, no — don’t forget the absence of footprints, and besides Chalfont’s men have toothcombed that area. No reports of any suspicious parcels anywhere or anything like that. I can conceive of Dick in his disguise as Rixton Williams doing a perfect vanishing act by simply becoming himself and destroying the clothes of his alias, but the disappearance of the girl is a real stinger. Doesn’t seem to be any clue in Dick’s laboratory either. I could of course take out a warrant and have the grounds of his home dug up, but that would make my friendship with him extinct. Besides, I can’t imagine him being such a fool as to use such a clumsy method of disposal. No, I think there’s an answer in that laboratory somewhere…”

  Garth closed his eyes, visualising its layout.

  “Door to the house — there! Door to the drive — there! Benches down the middle and along the sides. Three Dewar flasks near the outer door on the floor. An X-ray machine facing a liquid-air compressor apparatus across the laboratory. Shelves full of chemical bottles; racks full of test tubes, and a separate rack containing joinery and metalwork tools…”

  Garth stopped, and his eyes opened suddenly, pale, blank — even horrified.

  “Great God!” he whispered. “Surely it couldn’t be…”

  CHAPTER XVI

  Richard worked on with the garage throughout the day, believing he had circumvented the last problem. The alibi had apparently done the trick by reason of its very ordinariness. No case could ever be brought satisfactorily against him. He even felt proud of his brilliance in having perpetrated a perfect crime.

  Perhaps now, able to make a clean breast of the thing as he had to Garth, he could get Joyce back for himself? Worth a try…

  He chose the evening for the attempt, after he had slated the garage roof and nailed the ceiling laths in position to take the plaster on the morrow. Towards seven he arrived at the Prescott home. He was quite unaware as the housekeeper opened the door to him that out in the quiet suburban road Chief Inspector Garth stood watching, well hidden by the shadow of the trees lining the road.

  “Miss Prescott in?” Richard asked briefly.

  The woman gazed at him in the fan of light cutting the dark. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harvey, but my instructions are to say that she is not at home — ever. So — ”

  The woman’s adamancy faded as there was a sound behind her and Dr. Howard Prescott came out of the drawing room, his glasses gleaming in the hall light.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll attend to it.”

  Richard stepped into the hall without being invited and closed the front door.

  “Just because Joyce and I have broken things off because of a misunderstanding it doesn’t make me a social outcast, does it?”

  “She’s in the drawing room,” Howard Prescott said, nodding towards it. “Go in and see her if you want. I’m going to my study.”

  There was studied indifference to the words. It set Richard’s darkly suspicious mind wondering just how much Garth had told…

  Joyce looked up quickly as he entered the drawing room. She was seated on a swollen leather buffet beside the fire, her legs tucked under her and a book in her lap. She did not get up, but her eyes followed him.

  “Hello — Joyce,” he said awkwardly and came to a stop with his hand on the back of the hide armchair.

  “What do you want?” the girl asked, not a trace of affection in her dark eyes. Nor was there fear either. They stared out of a pale face, silently accusing.

  “I’ve something I must say to you, Joyce.” He came to the front of the chair and sat in it.

  “You have me weighed up all wrong, you know. About the woman in my life, I mean. It was Valerie Hadfield. I told Inspector Garth as much this morning.”

  “It’s no surprise,” Joyce said finally, looking into the fire. “You must have known that I’d guessed it but you hadn’t the decency to admit it outright. You had to wait until a Scotland Yard official hammered it out of you.”

  “He didn’t hammer it!” Richard retorted. “I admitted it in the course of conversation because I saw no point in concealing it any more. Garth was actually beginning to think that I had done away with Valerie so it was time to clear myself…and I did, to his entire satisfaction.”

  “Well, since you’ve done that what more is there to be said?”

  Cold viciousness crept into Richard’s grey eyes. One thing he could not stand was being treated with contempt by a woman. Perhaps it was even one of the prime reasons why he had killed Valerie.

  “I don’t understand you Joyce,” he said, controlling his voice. “I came here to make a confession, expecting you to behave with ordinary decency and forget the troubles we have had…you haven’t even the manners to look at me when you speak!”

  The girl still stared into the fire, hiding the fact that she was nervous. Her hands were shaking — so much so she clasped them together about her knees.

  “I don’t want to look at you,” she said. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “Why? Just because I kept quiet about Valerie to save myself getting into a mess?”

  For the first time Joyce turned and looked into his angry eyes.

  “No! Because I believe you know what happened to Valerie Hadfield! I believe…that you murdered her! And her chauffeur!”

  Richard overcame an overwhelming desire to strike her with all his force across the face.

  “What a damned vivid imagination you’ve got!” he breathed. “And how little faith in me!”

  “Little faith is right,” she agreed, getting to her feet abruptly. “Now I’d be glad if you’d get out! It’s time you understood that we have not got a single thing in common anymore!”

  Richard jumped up, caught the girl’s shoulders fiercely.

  “That swine Garth’s been feeding you some sort of story!” he shouted, shaking her. “Go on, you little fool, admit it! He’s been telling you that I killed Val and her chauffeur, hasn’t he?”

  Joyce t
ore free of his prisoning grip and stood beside the table, her breath coming quickly. Her eyes were blazing.

  “He didn’t say anything of the sort — how could he in his position? I’ve simply arrived at my own conclusions. You know perfectly well what you’ve done, so how can you expect me to have anything in common with you? You…a murderer!”

  “Take care what you’re saying!” Richard whispered, clenching his fists.

  “Why?” the girl asked defiantly. “If you’re not guilty why should you care what I say?”

  “If Garth didn’t tell you anything then you must have told him something!” Richard snapped. “You sold me to him, invented all sorts of wild stories, and that was why he came chasing after me. I see it all now. Idiot that I was ever to trust you.”

  There was hostile silence as they measured each other. Richard failed to see a spark of pity in the girl’s face.

  “You — bitch!” he shouted harshly; then turned and strode from the room. The slam he gave in closing the front door reverberated through the house and brought Dr. Prescott out of his study — to suddenly find himself with a weeping girl clasping her arms about his neck.

  “Dad — why did it have to be — Dick?” Her voice was choked, hardly audible. “Why? I really love him! Why did I have to fall in love with a man who’s a killer? What have I done to get a deal like this…?”

  “You told him your real feelings?”

  “Yes. I — ”

  “Good!” Prescott patted her quivering shoulders gently. “It’s hard now, dear, but it’s the best way. Neither you nor anybody else is safe in the company of Richard. He’s going downhill fast. I can see it in his eyes…”

  When he left the Prescott house Richard did not return home. Home was the last thing he wanted. It would never have Joyce for its mistress: he would never have her for his wife — only her cold contempt until the end of his days…

  Hair ruffled by the wind, he marched through the mild autumn night, struggling to comprehend how his scheme had come so completely unstuck — during which time Inspector Garth was in the laboratory-annex, a silent, shadowy figure, having let himself in at the laboratory’s driveway door with a master-key. Now he prowled about the long place, a tiny rod of light projecting from the masked lens of the torch he carried.