“Who?”
“Miss Marjhiti. Her stage name. You’re arguing that he’d rationalize it, I suppose.”
“Something like that.” His eyes were keen.
“But he wouldn’t. I can understand that he could see it in another man and excuse it. But he’d never excuse himself of such a thing. He’d got higher values for himself.”
“They say you’re a second Forbes,” Vantage observed.
“I think I understand him better than anybody.”
“So that, in understanding him, in being so positive that he could never himself—associate with such a slut, you’d be excused for something approaching fury when you discovered he had?”
I thought about it. You have to be fair and consider the other man’s point of view, though there’s the danger in such an attitude that you’ll go too far and find your own viewpoint swamped.
“If I’d have discovered it, yes, I’d have been angry. “
“Discovering your idol had feet of clay?”
“Angry at myself for questioning his behaviour.”
“You’re very smooth, Mallin. I’ll give you that. But we have to remember you’d be looking at it from a rather distorted viewpoint.”
“Do we?” I’d finished the cake and was still hungry.
“We have to remember you’ve been fascinated by his wife for some years, so much so that you’ve deliberately avoided meeting her.”
He had been asking around. “I’ve been in love with her, if that’s what you mean.”
“I do mean that.”
“I’m not denying it.”
“And I suggest that in such a position, in love with his wife but deliberately avoiding contact with her because of some outdated attitude of loyalty—”
“Not outdated. I told you, Geoff left behind his own personal morals.”
“In that position, to suddenly discover that the marriage you would not touch, because it was Forbes’s marriage, had already been broken wide apart by the one person you admire above all others...in that position your admiration would turn to hatred, and a hatred so strong that you would plan murder and carry it out carefully and precisely.”
I tried to speak with scorn. “This is all airy-fairy theorizing. You’ve got nothing to base it on.”
“I’m suggesting that you found out he’d leased a flat at Queens and was taking a young woman up there. You planned his murder. You somehow let him know you’d found out about the Queens flat, then you sent him a note asking to meet him at ten. He was not sure you meant Queens, but he knew you’d probably be playing snooker in the basement, so he walked round by way of the ramp and looked into the billiard hall.”
I was trying to ease into my jacket. The thought of a cigarette was distasteful, so I began to wonder what I’d done with my pipe. It was in my right hand jacket pocket.
“He saw you there,” said Vantage, “but he didn’t want you going up to his flat at ten. Perhaps he wanted time to think things out. So he asked the night porter to phone down and put it off until eleven.”
“But Jenkins made a mistake and phoned down an hour too late?”
“Exactly. You’d got Kyle there because he was an obvious suspect...”
“I do seem to have been clever.”
“But you couldn’t have visualized what actually happened. No doubt it would seem enough to get Kyle in the same building. There’s your coincidence, Mallin, no coincidence at all. You got Kyle there just so that he would be there, but you’d hardly expect that apart from one short break of a minute and a half you managed to allow him, he’d have a cast-iron alibi. That’s why you’ve been doing all you can to break it.”
“I still think there’s a coincidence,” I growled. I had a big advantage over him—I knew I hadn’t done it.
He ignored me. “But by the same argument, you yourself had ample opportunity to get up there. From what I gather Kyle very nearly monopolized the table. Maybe you did it in two trips, one to the lift in the basement to bring down the cage and wedge it in position for you, the other a few minutes later, when you’d only have to get up there as fast as you could—thirty seconds each way you got it down to—and kill Forbes. And of course, the same hatred of Forbes would later be directed towards Miss Marjhiti.”
I stood up again and paced a few yards round the room, easing my side, which was likely to become totally incapacitating if I let it stiffen up.
“And Jenkins?” I asked. “Why should I kill Jenkins?”
“We don’t know Jenkins was killed.”
“Of course he was bloody-well killed. Because he could’ve told us when the lift was out of order, and because—”
“We seem to have a lot of illogical thinking here,” said Vantage sourly, as though he was merely reproving me for a minor fault as a detective. “You talk about the lift being out-of-order between nine and nine-thirty. Well, maybe it was...”
“It was.”
“But Forbes used it at nine-thirty. We know that. So it was working again at that time, and Forbes couldn’t have been killed until he got up there to the flat. So...” He shrugged, smiled thinly. “...what has the lift got to do with it? In fact, he couldn’t have been killed until after your snooker break, at nine-thirty, which doesn’t even give Kyle the minute and a half you’ve been trying to allow him.”
And I called myself a detective! All that work with cues and wedges...and all the time the fault in the lift was a coincidence. I was fed-up with coincidences.
“I see you’ve got it now,” said Vantage sourly.
That was because I was marching round in stifled anger.
He went on: “And as to the possibility of Jenkins having made a mistake with the time of the message...”
I stopped pacing. Looked around. Now he really was smiling.
“Assume Jenkins made a mistake,” said Vantage. “Assume he was asked to phone down at ten to ten, but left it until ten to eleven. Now...who would benefit by that mistake? You say you didn’t send a message to Forbes arranging to see him at ten, so that if he had told Jenkins to phone down at ten to eleven, that would seem to confirm he hadn’t had such a message. So it would be you who’d benefit by Jenkins’s mistake. And you who’d wish to shut his mouth and memory, in case he had second thoughts about it, and admitted he’d made a mistake.”
I turned on him savagely. “But if it wasn’t a mistake...”
“All right.” He raised his eyebrows. “I know what you’re going to say. If it wasn’t a mistake, and Kyle’s been trying to frame you, he might wish Jenkins dead so that he couldn’t keep repeating it. Because, if Jenkins dug his heels in and persisted that Forbes had told him to phone down at ten to eleven, you’d have been in the clear. Better, perhaps, to have Jenkins dead, and the doubt left hanging in the air.”
“Yes.” I grabbed at it eagerly, in spite of Vantage’s confidence.
“But...you must see...Kyle would have to know that Jenkins had said he was asked to phone down at ten to eleven. How would he know that Jenkins made the statement to me and to you. I didn’t tell Kyle. Did you?”
I glared at him.
He raised his shoulders expressively. “And in any event it follows that any plausible killing of Jenkins because of that statement must have been done by you or me. And again, it wasn’t me.”
A fine bloody detective I was turning out to be. Everything I did just shuttled me further into trouble. Vantage needn’t have come into the case at all. They could have left me to dig my own grave. I grappled round for just one detail that would lean in my favour.
“What about the weapon? What did I do with that?” I demanded angrily.
“Show him, Crewse,” he said evenly. “Show him.”
Crewse nodded and slipped himself off the table. He went into the bedroom and came back with my cue in its case. He didn’t ask for the key; they’d already broken the lock. The cue that he slid out looked like mine. I watched him, fascinated, as he screwed-off the weighted end, slid it away from the rest, and
produced eighteen inches of cold, hard steel, set in the haft. There were brown, dry stains on it, and nobody had to tell me what they were. Geoff’s blood.
I stood up to take a closer look, spun round, and dived for the door. I had it open as Crewse shouted, and ran for the stairs, my side screaming for mercy.
I fell down most of the distance to the hall.
12
I got the front door open as Vantage began to shout from my bedroom window. On the other side of the street I heard a patrol car burst into life. Behind me, Crewse was thundering down the stairs. I sprang down the five steps to the pavement and turned away from the car, to my right.
The coincidence, my mind was clamouring—that Kyle should have been there. My side was aflame and I stumbled as the car accelerated in pursuit. I heard Crewse shout something, the engine eased off, and then there was the slam of the door as he got inside.
I ran. At the end the crescent turned left, and left only, heading for the main street. I stood no chance in that direction. The car’s engine was whining in a low gear and coming close. I dived down an alley on the right. At least I’d drop the car. Two pairs of feet pounded behind me in the enclosed space as I ran through. The car would make a rapid circuit of the block to intercept me. I felt I could run no more. My side was sticky again. But feet pounded after me, and I tried to decide which circuit the car would make.
I plunged along beside a bank of dustbins, slinging them on to their sides behind me, then I was out in the next street, no sign of the car, and a decision to make. It was a backwater. I turned left, and inside a dozen swaying steps saw the car swing out in front of me. He headed towards me, his blue light winking, and on the opposite side of the road. I ran straight and hard as he saw me and swung over on to his right lock to intercept. There was a lamp post twenty yards away. I dived for it and the car’s tyres screamed as he leaned out of the sharp turn he was making. I reached the lamp post and got it between us. With a crash he buried his nose in it and there was a tinkling of breaking glass.
Crewse shouted and the driver ran towards me, but the shock of the impact was still with him and he staggered. I gained three yards. Feet thudded close behind and the streetlights ahead swung from side to side. I ran. I didn’t think I could keep going much longer, and wondered what would happen if I stopped. So I did, falling on one knee and a hand. Crewse went flying over my back, cursing. The other man was on me as I straightened. I threw a hard right at his face. He had a thin face, a young man. He saw it coming but couldn’t do anything about it, and I stepped aside to watch him fall.
For a moment I stood panting. I was about done. I started back the way I’d come, staggering and weaving and working up my speed as I went. The driver of the car was standing waiting for me, a big chap in a peaked cap and leather gloves, flexing them firmer over his knuckles. There were bedroom lights coming on and a woman shouted from a window. I dug out my pipe.
He spread his legs and waited for me to dodge to one side or the other. But I’d got no dodging left, so I went straight on. He grinned, but a vicious left went over my shoulder. I caught him low in the stomach with the pipe in my right fist, and heard him give a wheezing cry. I ran round him, and turned down the alleyway the way I’d come.
Now the overturned dustbins were a liability. I crashed through them, scrambling on my face. Crewse was still with me. There was somebody screaming. I don’t think it was me. I got to my feet, a lid in my hand. It was one of those black rubber things and it buckled against his chest. His fist reached out, but I hit him with the pipe stem. It had broken off on the other fellow and what was left didn’t make much impression. He tried to kick me. I was too tender down there to take it, so I sidestepped, caught his foot and heaved, and he went flying back amongst the dustbins. Then he lay still.
I stood and panted, knowing that I had very little time. The shapes of the two men were at the end of the alley. I backed up and felt the sneck of a gate between my shoulders. I turned, opened it, stepped through. Six feet of fence stood between me and the alley. There was a crashing sound from outside as the two men blundered through. I thought my wrenching breath must have been heard out there, but they went on past.
They wouldn’t be long before they were back. I stood and thought about it, and pain blurred the result. Across the yard a light went on. The door opened and an old dear in a housecoat put her head out.
“What is it?” she asked plaintively. I stepped forward into the light. I must have looked pretty rough because she fell back with a little eek of alarm.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, “but where’s your front door?”
She pointed to my right. The same street as mine. I turned and lurched off through the house. There was a dragging feeling in my left leg where the blood had soaked my trousers, and I think I must have left dark red footprints on her gold Wilton.
I opened her front door. The street was quiet. No sign of the two patrol men, who must have headed back to their car. Far away, an eternity away, my Oxford stood parked under a streetlamp. Vantage was standing beside it, calmly lighting a cigarette.
While he’d got his eyes on it I slipped across the street and clung to the railings round the little war memorial. They were six feet high, extending nearly the whole length of the street, so that we favoured tenants on the other side always had an outlook on wilting trees and the couple of benches they’d put in there. They probably locked the gate, I thought, but no, it was unfastened. I eased it open in case it squeaked. It did not.
In the distance Crewse was shouting something. Across the street Vantage paced a few yards up and a few yards down. Just there I was shaded by an old elm, which was still clinging to its leaves. I moved tenderly across six feet of gravel path and on to grass. It sloped. I reached out one hand to help along, then both, and crawled up to the bench. I fell on to it sideways, and rolled over, gasping with pain. Then I lay still.
There was the throb of another car’s siren in the distance, rapidly coming closer. It swooped into the top of the street with its lights full on, impaling Vantage for a second, and screamed to a halt beside him. The headlamp beam had glanced at me, but now it thrust me into even harder shadow. I had the chance that if I lay still enough I would not be spotted. There was rapid consultation by the car, then the two fresh men set off at a run for the alley. I could see Vantage using the radio in the car.
Two more cars came crashing into the street. They left their headlights on, and I lay in a hard bar of shadow. I seemed to be groping through cotton wool for an idea. The coincidence, my mind pounded at me, but I couldn’t decide what coincidence that was.
I closed my eyes because the shade was blinding me. When I opened them it was quiet, and the headlights had gone. It was nearly three o’clock.
In front of my flat there was a shadowy patrol car parked. There would be one officer waiting inside it and another in my flat. I was very stiff and sore. It occurred to me that I was bathed in light, so I tried to get up. Pain twisted me. The iron gate was a mile away. It took a long while to get there, then I hung on, wondering what to do.
After a while I groped out of the gate, my back to the railings, and moved delicately away from the Patrol car. No headlights snapped on at me so I continued to do it until I ran out of railings. Then I was at the corner, round it, and in the clear.
Throughout the city Patrol cars would be drifting, alert for any movement in the streets. It was a little over two miles to Edgbaston. I counted the steps. Every hundred I stopped and rested. It took me an hour to reach Geoff’s flat.
I slipped through the gateway into the clammy grasp of the overhanging trees. My head was hammering with a relief I tried to keep in check, because it could well have occurred to Vantage too. I edged my way round the drive, heading for the garages. If anybody was waiting for me I was about finished. The door was still up. I groped my way to the car, and the driver’s door opened at a touch. Nobody spoke from the shadows. I slid into the seat. It was all silence, beautiful, cool
, enveloping silence.
For a minute or two I sat and listened to it, then I got out again and gently drew down the garage door until the latch clicked. Then I put on the car’s interior light.
My cigarettes had been in the wrong pocket and were soaked with blood. I groped around inside the car and found that Geoff had left me a pack of long panatellas. I lit one, drew the smoke in, and almost groaned as it hit the nerve spots. Then I looked at the raw mess of my side. On the back seat there was a silk scarf. I pulled up my shirt and tied it tightly round my waist, holding my breath. The silk forced itself into the wound and I felt as though I was going out again. I hunted round some more and discovered he’d left a brandy flask in there too. I added brandy to the nicotine and luxuriated in the glow of it.
When I’d finished the cigar and made sure he’d got nothing else interesting tucked away I put out the light and lifted the door again. I went out to look at the house.
It was some months since I’d been in this flat, but I recalled that it looked out over the garages. I stared up and considered the possibilities. There was only the orange background glare from the streetlamps, but I could see enough to confirm my doubts. There was no way up that side of the house, other than a dead ivy that didn’t look safe, no half-open window left carelessly for the stray burglar. I had not really hoped that Geoff would leave it like that, but I’d had to give it a try.
I went back to the car and backed it out as quietly as I could. The tyre crunch on the gravel seemed loud enough to waken the whole neighbourhood. I headed north towards the Hagley Road, then west towards Warley. I was going the only place I’d got left.
It was four-thirty.
I was reasonably confident that nobody would be looking for me in a gold-coloured 4.2 Jaguar, because Vantage had not thought about it before. But I drove sedately, not drawing attention to myself. Twice I crashed the red traffic lights, simply because my reactions were too slow, but at that time there was nobody to see me do it.
I reached Elsa’s at a little after half past five.
Time to Kill Page 12