Final Witness

by J F Straker

  The D.D.I. did see. ‘Naughty, naughty, eh? Marriage lines getting crossed?’

  ‘Something like that. It’s worth considering, anyway. See what your chaps on the spot can pick up in the way of local gossip. Could you manage a house-to-house inquiry?’

  Nightingale looked doubtful. ‘The immediate neighbourhood, perhaps. We’re too short-handed to go far afield. That would take time.’

  Morgan nodded. ‘We’re short on time. I’ll see if I can help.’ He put a hand into his pocket and pulled out an acid-drop. ‘I wish I knew for sure how Nora Winstone came to be in that alley on Saturday night.’

  ‘I could make a guess.’

  ‘Don’t. I know how your unhealthy mind works.’ He sucked hard, the hollow in his cheek coming and going. ‘Obviously she was keeping an eye on the other two. But why? Who were they that she should be so interested in their love-making?’

  ‘Perhaps the man was her husband.’

  ‘Perhaps. It might help if we could trace him. See what you can dig up at Somerset House. And we may as well release her name to the Press. Just the bare news of her disappearance; no mention of kidnapping, and certainly no reference to Dyerson’s murder. We don’t want our missing witnesses putting two and two together, or they’ll grow even more reluctant.’ Morgan yawned. ‘A pity we haven’t a photograph.’

  ‘You’re sure there are other witnesses? That she didn’t invent them?’

  ‘Why should she? However, I’m not sure of anything right now except that I’m off home to bed.’ Morgan yawned again, and walked over to the main desk to collect his bowler and umbrella. ‘Good night, Warbler. Enjoy your stiff. Ring me if anything fresh crops up.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ the D.D.I. assured him.

  * * *

  It was while waiting at the traffic lights in the High Street that David saw the name-plate on the wall — Long Lane. It led to Rotherhithe — he had noticed that when studying the map with Morgan — and acting on impulse he turned right with the green. It was just after eleven o’clock. He would take a look at the scene of the crime, see it as Nora Winstone had seen it.

  There was the suspicion of a slow puncture in his off-side rear tyre, and he drove slowly, uncertain of the route but sure that he had to keep heading east. Long Lane led into Abbey Street, and presently he came to crossroads and turned right into Jamaica Road and knew that he was nearly there. The district had a less impoverished aspect than he had anticipated; wide streets, modern shops and houses, and blocks of flats that looked as though they had only recently been completed and occupied. True, some of the side-roads were less imposing, particularly those to the south. But it was the riverside that interested him, and he dropped into second gear and drove still more slowly, looking for Cathay Street. Marigold Street, Cherry Garden, West Lane, Cathay Street. He turned left and left again, and stopped the Alvis opposite the police-station to consult the map.

  Paradise Street. Who had suggested such exotic, lovely names for such an unlovely district? Had he hoped that their appeal might offset the squalor and wretchedness which, David suspected, had characterized Rotherhithe when the streets were originally christened? He put the Alvis into gear, took the first turning right, and found himself in Rotherhithe Street.

  It was much as the superintendent had described it; deserted now, but no doubt busy enough by day. A disorderly street, that narrowed and widened at will; a street of warehouses and small factories, of dumps and yards and offices; a street with less than its fair share of windows; a street for things, not for people. The tall buildings hemmed it in, towering broodily, the glow of the city behind them.

  He abandoned the Alvis and wandered slowly east, seeking the alley where Nora had stood. Between Cathay Street and Rose End, Morgan had said, and nearer the latter. He went as far as Rose End, a narrow cul-de-sac with blackened little villas on the west side and the blank wall of a warehouse opposite. Then he turned back. This was a cobbled stretch, with macadam at either end. Here, then, was where Constable Dyerson had died.

  He stood in the mouth of the alley and peered across the narrow street. In that archway, perhaps, the young couple had stood, presumably unaware that they were being watched, and certainly not anticipating the tragedy that was about to impinge on their lives. At the other end of the alley was the river; he could see the lights of Wapping beyond it. There had been a wind on Saturday night; now the air was still. The sound of traffic along Jamaica Road came to him clearly.

  The sliding doors of the warehouse beyond the alley were closed, the padlock was new. David went back to the car and bent to examine the suspect tyre, noting with relief that the pressure was holding. But there was something else. The number plate caught his eye, and he became aware that it was familiar to him in a way it had not been familiar before. He stood for a few moments staring at it, and wondering how that could be; but the solution eluded him, and presently he dismissed it as unimportant, and climbed into the Alvis and drove off. The cause of this new familiarity continued to tantalize him, however, and he kept turning it over in his mind. Enlightenment came with Westminster Bridge. He realized that the last three figures of his own number formed the registration number of the Zodiac he had seen near Nora Winstone’s flat.

  4

  Elsie Sheel was a thirty-five-year-old blonde; plump, highly coloured, and friendly. She was still in pyjamas and dressing-gown when David arrived the next morning; sleep was heavy in her eyes, her hair was unbrushed, her face devoid of make-up. But she offered no apology for her appearance. She stood in the doorway, fastening the cord about her waist and blinking her eyes at him, and demanded to know his business.

  ‘You got me out of bed,’ she accused, ‘and it’s only just gone nine.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘But this is urgent. It concerns your friend Nora.’

  She stopped blinking. ‘Have they found her? Is she all right?’

  David shook his head. Hastily he introduced himself and explained that it was he who had been with Nora on the Tuesday evening and had brought her home, magnifying that brief acquaintance into a ripe friendship. She would be more expansive, he thought, if she believed that.

  A gently sympathetic smile engulfed her plump face as she opened the door wide for him and slopped back into the room. With the corner of her dressing-gown she swept crumbs from the deal table, and, lifting a cushion from the floor and depositing it in a frayed wicker chair, invited him to sit down.

  ‘Nora and me, we’ve only been sharing the flat a few weeks, so I don’t know her real well,’ she explained, sinking her body into the only other chair. It too was of wicker, and creaked loudly in protest. ‘It was my sister Glore what was with her before. But she married an American boy and went to the States, and Nora couldn’t manage the flat on her own, like. So Glore asked me if I’d team up with her, and I said I would. But you being an old friend — well, I guess I know how you feel.’ She sighed breathlessly. ‘What do you think they’ll do to her, Mr Wight? They won’t —well, you know?’

  David was not sure that he did. With more certainty than he felt he said, ‘She’ll be all right. They just want to keep her away from the police, I imagine.’

  He could see what Morgan had meant about the flat being cell-like. The room in which they sat was tiny. The deal table filled most of it; a white-wood cupboard stood next to the gas-cooker, and beyond the cooker was the sink, a single tap suspended above it. The two wicker chairs were the only other pieces of furniture, and there would hardly have been room for more. There were no rugs on the worn and ugly linoleum. The design on the wallpaper had disappeared with age, there were damp brown patches filling one corner of the ceiling.

  ‘Poor Nora.’ Elsie sighed heavily. Remembering the duties of a hostess, she said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on. I never eat breakfast; just a cup of tea. I expect you could do with one too, eh?’

  While she busied herself at the stove he inquired casually if Nora had ever spoken to her of himself. He knew that that was
unlikely, since until two days ago Nora had not even known his name; but the question helped to stress the implied friendship between himself and the missing woman.

  ‘I can’t say as she did. But then Nora isn’t one for talking about her friends. Very quiet, she is. Keeps herself to herself, like.’

  ‘Doesn’t she even discuss her husband?’

  She swung round at that, china-blue eyes wide in her round, doll-like face.

  ‘She told you about him, did she? Well, I never! She must have took a fancy to you.’

  ‘She just mentioned him,’ David said modestly. ‘What’s he like?’

  Elsie had returned to the stove. ‘I never met him,’ she said, after carefully counting three spoonfuls of tea into the pot. ‘He never come here. I couldn’t even tell you his name. It just come up once that she had a husband. I think they was separated or something.’

  Elsie, it seemed, was no mine of information where Nora was concerned. ‘Are her parents alive?’ David asked. ‘They ought to be informed — although I dare say the police will do that.’

  The kettle started to sing. Elsie poured the boiling water on to the tea-leaves and placed the pot on the table, covering it with an ancient woollen cosy. ‘They don’t know where they are,’ she said, fetching cups and saucers from the cupboard, her mules slapping noisily. ‘I couldn’t tell them. I don’t know nothing about her family. Would you like a biscuit?’

  He declined the biscuit. ‘Any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘I tell you, I don’t know.’

  She seemed distressed by her ignorance. David said, ‘I suppose the police looked through her things, didn’t they? They would have got the addresses of any relatives from her letters.’

  Elsie shook her head. ‘She didn’t get any letters. Not while I been here. Sugar?’

  As he sipped his tea David wondered about Nora Winstone. At the start he had thought of her as just an unfortunate woman who had been sucked into tragedy through no fault or design of her own. But was there more to it than that? The more he learned — or failed to learn about her, the more mysterious she became. She had a husband who was not a husband, she received no correspondence, she was so reticent about her family that not even the woman who shared her home could tell him one solitary fact about them. And Morgan’s shrewd guess at the reason for her presence in Rotherhithe Street, even if correct, still left much unexplained. Did Elsie know the answers?

  Elsie did not. ‘She never said where she’d been,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t know it was Rotherhithe, not until I seen it in the papers.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  There Elsie was on more knowledgeable ground. She had been asleep when Nora had returned that night, but Nora had awakened her, had wanted to talk. Distressed and shaken by the tragedy she had witnessed and by the subsequent ordeal at the police-station, for once her habitual reserve had deserted her. She had poured it all out; the van emerging from the warehouse yard, the clang of the closing gates, the policeman’s torch dancing on the cobbles as he came pounding down the street, the dreadful certainty of what was about to happen as for a brief moment the two men had confronted each other; and then the shot and the crumpling body, and herself running to the dead man’s side as the noise of the van’s engine had faded into the night.

  It all happened so quickly, Nora had said; just a brief, violent tragedy and then silence. There was no sound of opening windows, no voices, no hurrying feet. Rotherhithe Street was as still and as silent as the body on the cobbles, and when she was certain that the policeman was dead and that there was nothing she could do for him she had collected her spectacles and had run to the police-station at the junction of Cathay Street and Paradise Street. And there she had stayed until, the questioning over, they had brought her back to the flat in a police car.

  Elsie Sheel sighed as she concluded her story, and refilled her cup and David’s. He did not stop her. The tea was hot and strong, with no resemblance to the sticky brew he had suffered at the police-station. He said, ‘Did she mention that there were others there at the time? A young couple?’

  ‘Not then she didn’t. She was too took up with that poor man being murdered.’ She sipped with great refinement, little finger exaggeratedly crooked. ‘But it was all in the papers the next day. Or was it Monday? I couldn’t get it out of me mind. As I told Paul, it’s the first time I’ve ever been that close to a murder, like me living with someone what had actually seen it happen.’

  ‘Paul? Who’s Paul?’

  ‘Paul Brenn-Taylor. He’s often in the Croc of a morning. Of course, I didn’t mention Nora’s name, like. Paul’s all right. But the others was listening, and you never know, do you?’ David agreed that you did not. ‘Nora said the police warned her to be careful, that if this Bandy got to know about her she might be in danger. She said I wasn’t ever to tell anyone. And I haven’t.’ There was a hint of tears in the blue eyes. ‘But they found her just the same, didn’t they? I wonder how.’

  David thought he could tell her. If Bandy or one of his gang had chanced to be in the Crocodile when Elsie Sheel was enlarging on her particular interest in the crime, they would not have needed Nora’s name to find her. The knowledge that she shared a flat with Elsie would have been sufficient. But he did not explain this to Elsie; there was nothing to be gained by adding to her grief. He did, however, ask about Paul. A Paul Brenn-Taylor had been head of his house while he was at school; a tall, authoritative youth whom David, from the wide gap of two years, had both admired and feared.

  Elsie received the news with surprised delight. Her emotions were transient.

  ‘Well, I never! It’s a small world, that’s what I always say. And he’s ever so nice. A bit sarcastic like, but that generous you wouldn’t believe. Such a shame he’s got only one arm.’

  ‘One arm? How did he lose the other?’ She did not know. A car accident, perhaps. ‘He doesn’t talk about it,’ she said. ‘Seems to embarrass him, like.’

  David realized they were straying from the purpose of his visit.

  ‘Damned bad luck,’ he said. ‘He was a fine wing three; captained the school fifteen. I’ll give you my phone number; you must ask him to get in touch with me. But tell me about Nora. How did you come to learn of the two other witnesses if not from her?’

  ‘Well, like I said, it was in the papers. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Of course, I asked her about them when I come home, and she said yes, she had seen a young couple. But she didn’t know who they was, she said.’

  ‘And did you ask her then what she was doing over in Rotherhithe?’

  Elsie shook her dull blonde head.

  ‘I would’ve if I’d thought. I suppose I just forgot.’

  David was sadly disappointed. He had not expected much from Elsie, but he had expected something. Had Morgan fared any better? He was wondering how to take his departure when Elsie said sharply. ‘How did you know she was the woman in the papers? Nora didn’t tell you. She didn’t tell anyone. She said so.’

  She was sitting bolt upright, staring at him suspiciously across the table. David gave her a disarming smile. ‘The police told me,’ he said. ‘I called to see Nora last night, while they were here. They wouldn’t let me come up, but they asked a lot of questions. I was at the police-station for hours.’

  Her body sagged a little, but she did not relax completely. She said, ‘You’re asking a lot of questions yourself. Why? What are you after?’

  ‘I told you, I’m a friend. I want to help Nora.’ He pushed the hair back from his eyes in a characteristic gesture. ‘You see, in a way I feel responsible for what has happened. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to leave when I brought her home Tuesday night — if I’d waited until she’d gone in, perhaps even come up with her...’

  He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished. But it was enough for Elsie. She put out a plump hand and gently touched his where it lay on the table.

  ‘You don’t want to blame yourself,’ she told him. ‘It
wasn’t your fault. If they hadn’t got her Tuesday they’d have got her some other time.’ The hand withdrew; reluctantly, it seemed to David. ‘Mind if I call you David?’

  ‘Please do.’

  She accepted the cigarette he offered, puffing at it vigorously once it was alight. The stale lacquer on her nails made her hands look dirty. ‘Anyways, I don’t see as how you can help her now. Do you?’

  ‘Not clearly. But I can try. I’m a journalist, you see. We get to hear things.’

  ‘Really?’ She was more intrigued by his profession than by its possibilities. When he told her the name of the magazine on which he worked she squeezed herself from the creaking chair to rummage under the white-wood cupboard. Triumphantly she produced several copies of Topical Truths. ‘I take it every week,’ she told him delightedly. ‘I must’ve read everything you’ve written.’

  He was young enough to feel flattered. He had spent some time pursuing Nora Winstone’s diary. It had not told him much, but on the day after Constable Dyerson had been shot Nora had written, ‘Must warn Bill against Bandy.’ That was all; there was no further reference to the tragedy, no exposition of her personal reaction. That one jolt to her memory was all she had confided to paper. Why? To David the answer was obvious. Bill, whoever he might be, was important to Nora. So important that she would not trust his safety to memory. But when he asked Elsie about Bill she shook her head. Nora had never mentioned the name, she said. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘From what Nora said I gathered he was someone close to her. Unfortunately she didn’t say enough for us to trace him. A pity — he might have been able to help.’

  ‘I don’t see how anyone can help,’ she said. ‘Only the police.’

  * * *

  The offices of Topical Truths were on the top storey of a tall building near the Holborn end of Fetter Lane; adequate without being spacious, and sufficiently dark to demand electric light for most of the working day. Staring out of the window at the traffic below, David reflected gloomily that it would be as good a place as any from which to commit suicide. Naturally optimistic, he was pessimistic now; he had banked on Elsie Sheel and Nora’s diary for information, and both had failed him. The diary had proved the greater disappointment. He had risked incurring his godfather’s wrath by concealing it, only to find that it contained little more than a long list of addresses and telephone numbers. So far as he could see there was nothing in it for him, nothing in it for Snowball. The hot scoop he had eagerly anticipated looked like being a frost. On the way to the office he had telephoned Morgan to tell him what he had remembered of the Zodiac’s registration number, and had been tempted to mention the diary. Fear, not cupidity, had stopped him. Morgan would flay him alive for concealing material evidence, no matter how sterile that evidence might prove to be.