Death in the Middle Watch

by Bruce, Leo

  Fourteen

  EARLY NEXT MORNING THE telephone, a “period” instrument, rang in Carolus’s room. He recognized the voice of the paunchy old man at 341 Dover Street.

  “He’s come,” he said, “with a young lady. Turned up last night. Very little luggage—only a small handbag each with British Airways on them. I didn’t phone you then because it was too late and I was going off duty. But you’ll be in plenty of time to catch them if you come round now.”

  Carolus thanked him and would have started at once if the old gentleman had not detained him.

  “We don’t like doing this sort of thing,” he said repeating the words of yesterday. “It seems like spying, somehow.”

  “It is spying,” said Carolus, losing his patience. “But you’re being paid for it.”

  The old gentleman was equal to him.

  “Am I, sir? Thank you. I’m pleased to hear that,” he retorted. “I’ll expect you round as soon as you can manage it, I’ve just sent their breakfast up to them. The waiter says they’ve been packing. He says you’d be surprised at what they’ve got into those little handbags.”

  It was not far from Freeman’s Hotel to Dover Street and Carolus was able to get a taxi, but when the old doorkeeper greeted him with that particular look with which doorkeepers make their wishes known to clients, he said that Mr Darwin had gone out.

  “He told me he wouldn’t be long. He just had to buy something. But the young lady is there.”

  Carolus did what clearly was expected of him.

  “Thank you, sir. I ought to phone to the young lady to tell her you’re here. But I suppose it doesn’t matter as you’re a friend of Mr Darwin’s.”

  This was enough for Carolus and he pressed the bell of Suite Number 18.

  “Oh it’s you!” said Rita, seeming delighted to see him. “However did you find us here? Guy said no one knows about this place.”

  Carolus did not answer directly but looked at the confusion on the bed where the two small handbags had evidently been packed and some discarded clothes, too heavy perhaps for the flight bags, still lay.

  “Going abroad?” he asked Rita.

  “Yes,” she beamed. “To Morocco. We’re leaving before lunch from Heathrow. Exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” said Carolus. “I hope you have a good time.” He looked at her as though he felt shy. “Hadn’t you better get some more clothes on?” he suggested.

  “If you want me to,” said Rita coyly.

  “Well, I think it would be wise,” said Carolus. “Guy will be back in a minute and I don’t know what he will think. He’s not expecting me here, you see. Besides, if your flight leaves before lunch you haven’t much time.”

  Rita pouted and disappeared into the bathroom leaving Carolus with the two small bags to which, deep under the clothes with which they were filled, he made certain small additions. He had barely time to light a cigarette and lounge carelessly in an armchair when Darwin entered. He seemed to be thunderstruck by the presence of Carolus.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Waiting for you. I wanted to ask you those few questions.”

  “I haven’t time for that sort of nonsense now,” said Darwin.

  “No. I see you’re going away. Another little holiday? How lucky you businessmen are. Lisbon one day, Tunis the next …”

  “Who said anything about Tunis?”

  “I did,” said Carolus. “I was just giving an example. Nice little flat you’ve got here. Not leaving it for good, are you? I shouldn’t mind this.”

  “Certainly not. Short holiday,” said Darwin. “Wouldn’t give this place up for anything.”

  “No. I suppose not,” said Carolus, as if disappointed.

  “And now, if you wouldn’t mind, I still have some packing to do.”

  Rita entered.

  “Ah, there you are, Guy,” she said. “I’m quite ready now. Shall we go, darling?”

  “Yes. When Mr Deene leaves us.”

  “Oh, don’t be so rude, darling. Mr Deene only came to see you for a minute.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Carolus, and then mouthed a lie not perhaps in its literal sense, but by implication one of the largest of his career, “I know when I’m not wanted!” he said.

  “There!” said Rita. “Now you’ve offended him!”

  “To hell with that!” said Darwin, picking up his small bag. “Come along!”

  And indicating to Carolus that he should go first, he followed Rita out and locked the door behind him. The three went down together in the lift after Darwin had said goodbye to the doorkeeper.

  “We’ll meet again,” said Carolus as he left them in Dover Street.

  Five minutes later, Carolus was in a public call box. He had asked for the Chief Security Officer at Heathrow.

  “I’ve got some information for you,” he said, “and I’m speaking from a call box. So don’t attempt to have the call traced or you won’t get all the information.”

  There was a short hesitation, then—

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “There is going to be an attempt at hijacking the 414 flight to Tangier, leaving Heathrow at 12.42,” said Carolus.

  “414 at 12.42,” repeated the C.S.O., seemingly writing down the details. Carolus wondered whether he was accustomed to this sort of thing.

  “It will be made by a man and a woman, with passports probably in the names of Guy Darwin and Rita Latour. But they may have false passports. In any case they are both armed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Do you think this is a practical joke? Each has a small automatic at the bottom of their flight bags.”

  “That will be found in any case.”

  “I daresay. But I wanted to make certain of it.”

  “Where are you speaking from?”

  “As if you didn’t know. You’ve had that checked. I’m expecting your men at the door of the call-box at any minute.”

  “Do you wish to give your name?”

  “I don’t mind, provided you phone through to Deputy Chief Inspector John Moore at CID headquarters,” said Carolus. “And tell your men to take me to him. I don’t want to waste a lot of time. My name’s Carolus Deene.”

  “Carolus Deene,” repeated the other slowly as he wrote it down. “Does the DCI know you, sir?”

  “Intimately. Ah, I see your men coming along now. They haven’t hurried, have they? But you’d better get a move on to prevent those two getting on the Tangier plane.”

  It took Carolus a good deal of protestation before he was finally taken to John Moore’s office, and it must have been nearly twelve before he was sitting there, supplied with the invariable—and at that time not particularly welcome—cup of tea.

  “Television’s to blame for this,” said Carolus indicating his cupper. “And not only ‘Z Cars’ either. I’ve never seen so much tea consumed in my life as BBC policemen in plays have to swallow.”

  “Get on with your story,” said Moore good-humouredly. “I suppose it is a story?”

  “It is. Yes. But first find out if an arrest has been made at Heathrow. An attempt to hijack a plane for Tangier.”

  John Moore put the required demands in motion.

  “What’s this?”

  “A man called Darwin,” said Carolus. “And a girl called Rita Latour.”

  “Intending to hijack a Morocco-bound plane?”

  “No, no, no. Are they arrested?”

  John Moore listened.

  “Yes,” he said at last, “ten minutes ago. They both had automatics in their bags. How did you know that?”

  “Because I put them there.”

  “You mean they had no intention of hijacking the plane?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “They were perfectly innocent people, in other words?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’d better get on with your story, Carolus.”

  “I will. But t
ake extra precautions with Darwin, will you, John? I don’t want him to get away, even to Tangier.”

  “I’ve already done that. Now will you go ahead? I can guess what’s coming. A mass of circumstantial assumptions, leading us to find out whether there’s anything in them or not.”

  “Yes. Up to a point,” agreed Carolus. “It was all guesswork at first. But what you’ve just heard from the airport will be pretty conclusive when it’s sorted out.”

  “Please, Carolus! The story! How does it start?”

  “With a man and woman—like most stories. Not in the Garden of Eden, but on what was meant to be next best thing to it—a holiday cruise. Do you know anything about a man named Porteous? You will. He runs an organization called Summertime Cruises. The name of the firm is quoted from its own slogan—‘Where we go it’s always summer.’ On one of these a year ago an attractive middle-aged woman met an attractive middle-aged man. I accept the definition of ‘attractive’ from those who profess to know. I can’t say how accurate it is. At any rate, their attractions worked. They became attracted to each other. The only trouble was that the woman had a husband and a very rich one. So the two of them decided to do away with him.”

  John Moore repeated the last words in chorus with Carolus. “I could match this beginning with an old tale,” he quoted from As You Like It.

  “I know,” said Carolus. “There’s nothing new in the world, certainly not in crime. And for this first episode I admit I haven’t got the remotest vestige of proof. I can only tell you that a man named Darwin met a woman named Cynthia Travers on a cruise and that the woman’s husband, Tom Travers, a wealthy bookmaker, died of a heart attack shortly afterwards. The ship’s doctor, a Pakistani who suffered from chronic seasickness, wrote a certificate and the man was buried at sea by his wife’s request.”

  “That’s circumstantial all right,” said John Moore. “And I suppose they came back to England, got married and were unhappy ever after?”

  “Right, but before that we come on the first novelty in this case. A Mephistopheles called Leacock. What is more, a maritime Mephistopheles, a deckhand. How far Leacock was concerned in the first murder, or believed murder, or whether he came by chance on some proof of it, we shall never know now. What we do know is that it was enough to enable him to blackmail the man Darwin, if not the woman.”

  “I see. A serpent in the Garden.”

  “And a very dangerous one. I think the plot that follows is more than half his. Darwin may have been a willing partner and his claim to have been in love with Cynthia Travers, the widow of Tom Travers whom he made his wife, was obviously exaggerated, perhaps phony altogether. At any rate, he worked out a way with Leacock to murder her without, as they thought, any great risk to themselves.

  “The plan was that Darwin, having made sure that Cynthia inherited all Tom’s money, thus becoming a very rich woman even after death duties were paid, should suggest a sentimental return to the Summer Queen for a cruise which would be more or less a repetition of the one on which they had met. Darwin would then have a business appointment which would keep him from starting the cruise with his wife, but would promise to fly out to Lisbon, the first port of call, to join her. All this worked smoothly, or would have done if a lunatic named Medlow had not started sending anonymous letters to the cruise organizer, the man Porteous, which caused him to call me in, so that I became what is known in the jargon of this form of travel a ‘cruiser,’ along with Mrs Darwin and the rest and met the man Leacock on the first night out.

  “The plan, a simple one, was for Darwin to come aboard on the night before the ship sailed and take up his quarters in one of the lifeboats. Only after it was too late did I remember how a ship on which I travelled had unwittingly and unknowingly carried a stowaway from Barcelona to Cadiz in a lifeboat. He had lived on the ship’s biscuits which are stored for emergencies in every lifeboat and he came out of his hiding place quite perkily. If I had thought of that, it might have saved Cynthia Darwin’s life, but I console myself by remembering that she had certainly collaborated in the murder of her first husband.

  “But the scheme went wrong, as such schemes often do, fortunately perhaps. On the first night out Darwin told Leacock that he could not stand being shut up in a lifeboat a moment longer and Leacock let him out on deck for a breather. No one was about except a Mrs Grahame-Willows who had been on the cruise a year before. Darwin was convinced he’d been seen, if not recognized, so that he and Leacock had to improvise. In actual fact, Mrs Grahame-Willows had only glimpsed him turning a corner and had not recognized him at all. Improvisation is always a tricky business, since it means a departure from, the original plan, and what they cooked up was not a wise proceeding at all. They argued that the ‘extra passenger’ must go overboard so that a search would not be made for a stowaway. Something was thrown down: a raincoat, jacket and shoes were left on deck and Leacock shouted ‘Man Overboard!’ loud enough to attract the attention not only of Captain Scorer who was on the Bridge, but also of the Owner, as we may as well call Porteous. I got in on their conference, much to the annoyance of at least two of them, and realized how much Porteous’s determination to keep anything from the passengers ‘for fear of spoiling their enjoyment’ would aid any mischief that might be going on.

  “Beyond being pretty certain that the ‘Man Overboard’ story was a fake, I formed no conclusions at this time.

  “But the next night something happened which was more melodramatic and silly. Darwin decided that he must let his wife know he was on board. What story he meant to tell her to explain his hiding in a lifeboat, I don’t know, but Leacock found out which cabin had been allotted to her. Then Darwin (with a beard, if you please), slipped on a jacket taken from a peg of one of the stewards, and went down.

  “‘Imagine his surprise,’ as the storytellers say, when he entered the cabin and found not his wife but Mrs Grahame-Willows sitting up in bed. They stared at each other and it seemed that the lady was hypnotized into silence and Darwin was able to escape. I imagine, however, that Leacock gave Mrs Darwin the necessary warning that Darwin was on board, since during the next night while the ship was in the Tagus, the woman was not only not surprised when Darwin came to her cabin, but opened the door for him to come in and strangle her.”

  “That’s what you think, Carolus?”

  “There’s more to come. But I’m pretty certain of all that. Cynthia Darwin’s strangled body was found by an old lover of hers called Runwell. He gave the alarm too late since Darwin had already gone ashore, but you can probably prove that by checking with Interpol in Lisbon. On the last call of the Summer Queen, Leacock had bribed a man called Costa Neves to come out to the ship at night while she lay in the Tagus and take Darwin off. Costa Neves was a clerk in the agent’s office so he could do this without raising too many questions either on board or ashore, but he had two boatmen who will probably break down under questioning.”

  “That would be conclusive. you think?”

  “With all the rest of it, yes. Anyhow that’s not my job. I simply tell you that Darwin was out at the airport bright and early to mix with the passengers of the plane coming from London, and so be ‘met arriving’ by Costa Neves sent by the ship’s Purser. After that it was all what we seamen call plain sailing.”

  “You seamen don’t explain how Darwin took the news of his own murder of his wife,” John Moore said.

  “Very convincingly. He’s a clever actor. But he could not appear on the passenger list of the plane for the very simple reason that neither he, nor anyone like him, travelled on it. Another point for you to check.”

  “Quite. What next?”

  “Next Leacock got drunk as he frequently did and was indiscreet enough to have one hell of an argument with Darwin on the night before we reached Gibraltar. Perhaps he wanted paying off in advance. I heard a little of that argument. Leacock was too drunk to give any reliable indication of its nature but I’m pretty sure he was blackmailing Darwin. And what happened later in
Tunis helps to confirm it.”

  “What happened later in Tunis?”

  “Leacock was murdered,” said Carolus simply. “He went ashore in Tunis regularly every trip and patronized the same brothel. Darwin, like everyone else, was aware of this, since Leacock made no secret of it. All Darwin had to do was to fly out to Tunis and, posing as another sailor, pick a quarrel with him. By keeping sober and preparing his strokes he was sure of ridding himself of Leacock and his blackmail forever. I actually saw the body of Leacock when Darwin had finished with it. And the Tunis police are doubtless trying to identify the ‘fellow seafaring man’ who is supposed to have done it and perhaps blaming one of the British matelots who were in the town that night.”

  “So that, you think, winds it all up nicely?”

  “Yes, John. Of course you’ll have to do a bit of confirmation here and there before you charge Darwin …”

  “That’s an understatement. I suppose it’s why you managed to put him in our hands now?”

  “Yes. He thought he was in the clear in London. I must say I was rather afraid that he would get word from someone on board that it was I who had found Leacock’s body and might suspect him, but I think I managed to avoid this. He had a girl on the cruise cabling to him all the way home, but you’ve no idea how rumours fly on a cruise like that and they helped me to confuse the issue. I’m sure he had no idea he was suspected till I called on him yesterday and practically told him so. I wanted him to make a bolt for it. You people take so much convincing.”

  “If your remote and remarkable theory has any relation with the truth, Carolus, it will be the only case I remember in. which the guilty came by their own punishment. Cynthia Travers was murdered when she had collaborated, you say, in the murder of her husband, and Leacock was murdered for planning it.”

  “Yes. And now Darwin. Fifteen years at least, I should say, for the two murders.”

  “Sentences are unpredictable,” said John Moore, “but I should think at least he must be cursing himself for waiting for the blonde instead of getting away!”