by John Creasey
As he eased his way through the dwindling traffic of the West End, Mannering contrasted his own circumstances with those of Rebecca Blest, for instance. Money in moderate amounts hardly affected him or Lorna, and in recent years profits from Quinns had risen sharply, although his accountant frequently told him that he could safely charge more than he did. That girl had believed that she was in sight of a fortune, and had been so terribly disappointed.
Mannering could not tell himself why he was anxious to find out whether she had known that Uncle Rett Laker had been a jail bird or not. If he had to give a reason, he would probably say that it was to find out whether a pair of pretty eyes had fooled him; he had felt so sure that the girl was absolutely honest.
At two minutes to seven, he turned into Mapperley Street. This was near the main road, and the houses on either side were of four storeys. A few plane trees bordered the pavement. A few houses were newly painted. Many of them had several bell pushes in the front porch, showing that they had been turned into flats. He stopped near number 100, got out, and strolled towards 127. The first thing which caught his eye was a motorcycle propped up outside the front door. Was it the motorcyclist of whom Tom had talked? If so, had that been a chance meeting, or one by arrangement?
He found the street door ajar. A little name plate said: “H. Ashton – Ground Floor.”
“S. Blest – 1st Floor.”
He went into a gloomy hall and up a flight of narrow steps to the first floor, and as he did so, he heard a woman crying.
Rebecca Blest did not think she would ever understand why she had been willing to let Terry McKay take her on the pillion of his motorcycle, but when she reached the street door of her home, about half-past seven that evening, she knew that she was very glad Terry was there. She disliked the thought of going to talk to her father, hated the thought of disappointing him, felt that without the stranger, she would have been utterly alone. When he had come from the telephone, cheerfully reassuring her about Mannering, she had felt relieved and free from the deepest anxiety – that she and her father were being cheated.
“According to my brudder-in-law, this Mannering is quite a guy,” McKay had assured her. “Even the great men at Scotland Yard consult him about jewels sometimes. It looks as if you’re in the safest of safe hands, what with Mannering and me! Not looking forward to telling your old Dad, are you?”
“Not a bit.”
“Tell you what, let me give you some moral support,” Terry had said. “I needn’t come in, I can stall around, and if you need a shoulder to weep on, it will be there. How about that?”
“No, you’ve been too good already—”
“Woosh!” Terry McKay had said, and put a hand at her elbow, hoisted her to her feet, paid the bill, boomed a cheerful good night to Luigi, and led the way outside. He had ridden to Notting Hill very carefully, as if to make sure that Rebecca had no possible cause for alarm, and just before seven they had reached the street.
“And I shall stay here until you come down to give me marching orders,” McKay had declared. “I’m not hungry, take your time!” He had watched her go into the house, noticing that the street door was unlocked, and then he had walked up and down Mapperley Street, glancing up at the window of her flat occasionally, quite prepared to wait tor hours …
Rebecca went upstairs.
The familiar gloomy staircase seemed to be more than ever full of shadows and blackness tonight, although she knew that it was because of her mood. This was the worst moment – between closing the street door, and opening the front door of the three-roomed flat. Her footsteps dragged until, near the landing, she made herself put on a spurt, and reached the front door briskly. She took out her key, still moving quickly, fumbled for the keyhole in the poor light, and then dropped the key. “Little fool!” she snapped at herself, and bent down to grope for it. She picked it up, took a firmer hold, and tried again. This time she found the keyhole at the first attempt. She turned the key, drew a deep breath, and thrust the door open; then called out, in a cheerful-sounding voice: “I’m back, Dad!”
Her father did not answer.
“Hey, there!” she called again. “I’m back!” She closed the door behind her, and, forcing gaiety, went hurrying into the big front room, overlooking the street – the living-room and dining-room, the general purpose room, with the telephone, the old furniture, the old carpets, most of which she could remember from her childhood.
There was still no answer.
“Dad, where are you?” she called.
She was already puzzled, but not yet worried; usually her father would call “Half a jiff!” even if he were in the bathroom. She turned towards the rooms on the other side of the narrow passage, and saw that the bathroom door was ajar, but there was no sign of movement. He must have gone out, she told herself, but was even more puzzled because tonight of all nights she had expected him to be in, waiting – waiting so eagerly. She shouldn’t have stayed out so long with Terry; she had only herself to blame. With so much at stake, her father must have been beside himself with anxiety.
“Dad!” she called.
She heard nothing, but noticed that his bedroom door was closed. She hesitated, just outside it. He might have been taken ill, of course – it was quite possible that the delay and the anxiety had affected him so that his heart had played him up again. She still hesitated, now afraid of what she might find, then suddenly grasped the handle of the door firmly, and thrust the door open.
“Father, are you all right?”
He was there, but did not answer. She saw his feet at the foot of the bed. The head of the bed was behind the door, to keep him out of draughts; the window was on one side.
She hurried further in, anxiety sharpening her voice: “Father, are you—?”
She stopped half-way to the bed, staring round and down at him, so dreadfully shocked that she could not move. In fact, she could hardly breathe, for what had happened was so terrible.
He lay on his side. He was fully clad. Someone had smashed heavy blows on his balding head, so that there was only blood and horror.
Rebecca felt her senses swimming. She felt nausea, which suddenly affected her whole body, and she began to tremble. She backed away, clutching at the door for support, and then suddenly turned her head away, so that she could not see, and buried her face against her arm.
She began to struggle for breath; apart from the sounds she made, there was only an awful silence.
Chapter Four
Why Murder?
Mannering stood outside the door and heard the girl crying; frowned, and hesitated before ringing the bell or knocking. He listened for other sounds, and thought that he heard a man making soothing noises, but was not sure. He stood quite still. From the flat below the sound of music came suddenly, as someone switched on radio or television, and a car passed noisily in the street. After this, he heard a man’s voice from the other side of the door.
“We mustn’t wait any longer, Becky. We’ve got to send for the police.”
The girl seemed to be trying to stifle her sobs.
Mannering thought: Police? and rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles. Man and girl broke off, and it seemed a long time before the girl asked, in a scared voice: “Who’s that?”
“Soon see,” said the man, and Mannering heard footsteps before the door opened. A thickset young man of medium height stood there, freckled, curly-haired – almost certainly Tom’s motorcyclist; he wore a black windcheater of plastic or leather, and a pair of thick gloves dangled from a webbing belt round his waist. Out of sight, the girl called: “Who is it?”
“It’s John Mannering, Miss Blest,” Mannering announced.
“What the heck are you doing here?” the motorcyclist demanded, and added quickly: “Changed your mind about those jewels?”
“What’s the trouble here?” Mannering inquired, and the young man stood aside to allow him to pass. The girl was standing in the open doorway of a room on the right; beyond her,
Mannering could just see a television set, and a window overlooking the street. All prettiness had been wiped away with tears. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks smeared, even her hair bedraggled. She had a shocked look, too; Mannering had seen shock too often to be in any doubt of that.“What is the trouble?” he demanded.
The girl said: “My – my father—” and then swung round with her hand at her lips, as if she were biting her fingers to prevent herself from bursting into tears. The motorcyclist was pale, too; a look in his eyes suggested to Mannering that he was doing his best to put up a bold front, but didn’t feel too good.
“Her father’s dead,” he muttered. “He’s … dead.”
“Did the shock kill him?” Mannering asked, and for the first time allowed himself to wonder if there could be the slightest doubt about the value of the jewellery. In that moment, he took it for granted that Blest had died when he had been told the truth; it wasn’t until the motorcyclist said gruffly: “No – it wasn’t shock,” that he began to think beyond the obvious possibility. Without another word the youth led him towards another door, and into a bedroom.
Then Mannering saw exactly what the girl had seen.
He stood very still. The motorcyclist was looking away from the battered head, and towards the window, as if he could not bear the sight any longer. There was silence in the flat; only the noise of traffic in the street made any sound. Mannering glanced about the room, seeing that everything was tidy. There was no indication that the wardrobe, the chest of drawers or anything here had been searched.
“You were quite right, it’s time you went for the police,” he said. “I saw a telephone kiosk at the corner. Have you any change for it?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t ring 999,” advised Mannering. “Dial Whitehall 1212 and ask for Superintendent Bristow. If he’s in, tell him that I’m here, will you? And tell his personal assistant, if he’s not there.”
The youth said: “Yes, all right,” and turned out of the bedroom, but he didn’t go far away. “You’ll look after her?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you come here?”
“We can talk about that later,” said Mannering. “You can tell me what happened when you picked Rebecca up in Bond Street, too.” He waited for the glint of surprise in the grey-green eyes, and then pushed past the youth towards the front room.
The girl was standing near a window, staring across the road, one hand at her lips. The front door opened and closed. The girl turned slowly and looked hurtfully into Mannering’s eyes, then moved to a chair and lowered herself to the arm. Still staring at him, she said: “That was how I found him. I thought he—he had had a heart attack. He didn’t answer when I called out, so I went to his room and saw his legs, and then I looked round the door, and I saw—oh, God! Why did they have to do that to him? Why did they have to do it? Who would want to hurt a dear old man like that?”
The words came almost incoherently, and there were long pauses between some of them.
Mannering said: “There’s one good thing; he didn’t suffer.” “How do you know he didn’t suffer?” she blazed up at him. “How can you possibly know—?”
“Rebecca—”
“How can anybody know? It was awful, it—”
“He didn’t suffer,” Mannering said sharply, and Rebecca broke off, as if beginning to wonder whether he really did know what he was talking about. “He must have been lying on his side, asleep,” Mannering explained. “His arms and legs are in a perfectly natural position. That was the first thing I noticed. Whoever did it got into the flat without waking him, stood over him, and struck without waking him, too. I doubt whether he knew what was happening – it couldn’t have happened more quickly.”
Her eyes looked huge.
“You’re not – you’re not just saying this?”
“In a little while, a Home Office pathologist will be here, and I’m positive that he will tell you exactly the same thing,” said Mannering. “There isn’t any doubt about how it happened. And it means that your father didn’t live to learn the truth about the jewellery. Did he often take a nap in the afternoons?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said, and squeezed her eyes tightly, and moistened her lips. “Yes, always, the doctor said—” She broke off, raised her hands to her breast, and cried out in a shrill voice: “But who would do such a thing? Who would want to kill him?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” Mannering said. “Rebecca, the police are going to ask a lot of questions. They can’t help the fact that you feel shocked and grief-stricken. Their job is to get as much information out of you as they can before a doctor gives you a sedative and helps you to rest. Then—”
“Rest!”
“You’ll have to rest,” Mannering told her gently. “And I’m saying all this because I think you ought to tell the police everything you possibly can and as quickly as you can.”
She didn’t answer.
“Understand me, Rebecca?”
She was biting her lips. “Of course I’ll tell them,” she said, suddenly shrill. “I’ll do anything to help them catch this devil.”
“Then tell them what you forgot to tell me,” said Mannering, and he touched her arm. “Keeping it from me didn’t matter at all, but half-truths and evasions with the police always lead to difficulties.”
After a pause, Rebecca said: “I don’t understand you. Half truths about what?”
“Your Uncle Rett Laker.”
“Half-truths?”
“Evasions then,” corrected Mannering. He was glad that he had managed to make the girl think about something more than the hideous truth. It would do no harm if she were annoyed with him, even angry with him. It was essential that something should break through the awful numbness of her grief, and that she should be able to face the police fairly calmly. “You didn’t tell me that your Uncle Rett had spent the last fifteen years in prison. The police—”
She cried: “What?”
That was the first moment when Mannering had any doubt that she knew; until then he had taken it for granted that shame had kept her quiet, but now he thought, startled: She’s really surprised. He studied her as she took a step nearer, reading the bewilderment on her face.
“Your uncle spent the last fifteen years in prison,” Mannering said. “When I discovered that, I came to see you.”
“But I don’t believe it!”
“You didn’t seem to have much love for him,” said Mannering; and then another, very simple possibility occurred to him: that Chattering had told him of a different man, that the Rett Larker he had talked about wasn’t this girl’s uncle. Larker or Laker? “How do you spell Larker?”
“LAKER,” she answered.
“How often did you see him?”
She didn’t answer. A car came along the road very fast, then began to slow down: Mannering had no doubt that it was a police car. He didn’t look out of the window, but concentrated on Rebecca, especially on this new, startled expression in her eyes; it was almost as if the truth were slowly dawning on her.
“How often?” he urged.
“I—I saw him frequently when I was very young,” she said. “Before he went away to—to Australia.” She caught her breath. Outside, a car door slammed. “Then I didn’t see him for years—until a few months ago. I hated the sight of him then, he—he was sarcastic with my father. And they kept quarrelling. I don’t know what they quarrelled about, but it was something which went pretty deep. You mean—he was in prison.”
“He was in prison,” Mannering assured her.
There was a tap at the door as he spoke. Mannering opened it, to see a little grey-haired woman and a biggish, thickset middle-aged man, standing outside.
“Now what’s going on here?” the man demanded. “We live downstairs, and we heard Becky crying and a lot of people walking about—”
“Becky!” cried the woman, as Rebecca appeared at the room doorway.
They all went in.
“W
hat is it? What’s the matter?” demanded the woman. “What’s upset you so?”
“It’s terrible, Mrs. Ashton,” Rebecca Blest managed to say. “My—my father—”
“All right,” Mannering said. “I’ll tell them, Rebecca, a little later, I think the police are here.”
Footsteps were sounding in the house, heavy but unhurried, as the police were likely to come if there was need for them but no emergency. The girl looked astounded, the man and woman seemed shocked. Then men sounded at the head of the stairs, and one asked briskly: “Where are they?”
“In there, I think,” said the motorcyclist.
“And you say your name is Terence McKay, and that you hadn’t met Miss Blest until today.”
“I’m McKay, and I met Becky Blest this afternoon – about five o’clock, I suppose,” said the motorcyclist.
The door opened, and a uniformed sergeant came in with the youth. The sergeant was a middle-aged man with a thick grey close-trimmed moustache; he filled his uniform too tightly. He wore a peaked cap, and had obviously come from a patrol car. He had very pale blue eyes, and a clear, fresh complexion.
“Miss Rebecca Blest?”
“Yes,” Rebecca answered.
“I’m very sorry to hear what’s happened, Miss Blest,” the sergeant said. “In a few minutes the officer in charge of investigations will be here. Until then, I think you’d better take it easy.” He was setting out to win her confidence, Mannering noticed almost with amusement – but amusement couldn’t be very close with that body in the room across the passage. “Is there anything you want?”
“No—no thank you.”
“We’ve just come up from our flat. We’ll be there if we’re wanted,” the man Ashton said, and moved towards the door. His wife followed. The sergeant asked their names, then let them go.