by John Creasey
“I’ll do some hard thinking,” Tom said. “Mr. Larraby would know, but—”
Lorna told him what had happened to Larraby.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Tom said. He was a naïve young man in some ways, likeable, loyal and knowledgeable, but not highly intelligent. No one could have been more willing. “Look here, Mrs. Mannering, wait five minutes and I’ll put some clothes on, and then come with you. We need all hands at the pump for this, don’t we?” When Lorna didn’t speak, he went on: “Who are you going to see next?”
“Rebecca Blest,” Lorna said. “John told me where to find her. Thank you, Tom. Please hurry.”
Chapter Thirteen
Photograph
“No, I wasn’t asleep,” said Rebecca Blest. Her eyes were bright and huge, as if she badly needed sleep, and her young body seemed tense. She looked very young, and really pretty in a dressing-gown a pale shade of pink. She had run a comb through her hair and put on powder, but no lipstick or rouge, and received them in the living-room of the flat. “I haven’t been able to sleep, and I’m quite all right, really – the girl from the flat downstairs is staying with me, but I’m all right.” She spoke tiredly, mechanically. “I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Mannering is in this trouble, but—”
She broke off.
“Miss Blest, I hate trying to make you answer questions now, but it is very urgent,” Lorna said. “Will you try to help?”
“If I can.”
“Had you ever heard your uncle, Rett Laker, talk about my husband?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Or did your father talk about him?”
“Not until yesterday, when I telephoned Sothebys and asked advice about the jewels. A man there sent us to Quinns and Mr. Mannering.”
There would be no useful lead from a man at Sothebys, Lorna knew; if the Blests had been recommended to Quinns by someone else, it might have been significant, but Sothebys were as solid and reputable as the Bank of England.
“Do you know if your father ever went to Quinns?”
“Of course he didn’t,” the girl answered. “He had never heard of the shop before.” She didn’t say so, but obviously she was beginning to wonder where these questions were leading. Now that she was talking, she seemed to become tired, and droop.
There was a movement at the door, and a thin girl in her late teens appeared, brown hair bedraggled, wearing a shabby dressing-gown. She looked at Lorna resentfully.
“You shouldn’t make her talk like this. She ought to be asleep.”
“Yes, I know,” Lorna said. “And I’m really sorry.” She felt desperate. “Miss Blest, have you a photograph of your uncle?”
“Oh, yes. It’s all right, Ruth,” Rebecca added. “I don’t mind.”
“You have?” exclaimed Lorna.
“It’s not a very good one,” Rebecca went on hurriedly. “I bought a new camera a few weeks ago, and took a picture of my uncle and my father – my father’s last birthday. He was sixty-three. Sixty-three,” she repeated, huskily, and turned away. She went across to a bureau, pulling the drawer open so vigorously that it nearly came right out.
“You shouldn’t worry her,” insisted Ruth Ashton. “It’s not fair.”
“I won’t be a minute,” Lorna promised, and she approached Rebecca as the girl turned round with the photograph in her hand. Tom came forward as eagerly as Lorna. Rebecca held out the photograph. It was an enlargement of a snapshot, showing two men standing quite close together, one looking frail and old, the other taller, stockier, heartier. Tom twisted his head round so that he could see properly, and exclaimed: “I know him.” Excitement made his voice shrill. “He was often in the shop!” He pointed to the stockier-looking man on the right of the photograph. “But his name wasn’t Laker, he said that it was Klein. Jacob Klein. He saw Mr. Mannering several times.”
After a long pause, the skinny girl from downstairs said sourly: “Well, if you’ve got what you wanted, perhaps you’ll leave Rebecca in peace. If you don’t, I’m going to fetch my father.”
“It’s all right, Ruth,” Rebecca Blest said. “I can see that Mrs. Mannering’s worried, but … that was my uncle.”
Tom asked with unexpected shrewdness: “Did you know him before he went to prison?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you’re sure it was the same man?”
“Of course I’m sure,” replied Rebecca. “You couldn’t mistake him. There’s another photograph of him taken about fifteen years ago; you can see for yourself.” She turned round to the bureau again, took out a photograph album, flipped over the pages, arid then pointed to a man who was obviously the same one, although much younger. “But why should he use a false name?”
“We’ll find out,” Lorna said, quietly. “Thank you very much, Miss Blest. If there is anything at all I can do to help, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“But there isn’t anything,” Rebecca said. “I don’t see that anybody can do anything.”
As she spoke, she looked up, for there was a thump of footsteps. A thickset man appeared, with trousers over his pyjamas, and with a rather truculent manner.
“Now what is all this? Eh? What’s up, Ruth?”
“Dad, they won’t leave Becky alone!” the girl from downstairs exclaimed. “It’s not fair, they keep on at her.”
“Who are you, and what’s this all about?” the man demanded, brusquely.
“It’s all right, Mr. Ashton,” Rebecca insisted. “I really don’t mind, honestly I don’t.”
But it was obviously time for Lorna to go.
The taxi howled along the empty road from Notting Hill Gate and towards Kensington, turned to the right, and headed for Chelsea. Tom was sitting in a corner, smoking a cigarette, taking furtive glances at Lorna as the car passed beneath street lamps. There was no traffic about, and London had a curious eeriness.
It was after three o’clock; three clocks hanging outside lighted shop windows all showed that, though differing from one another by as much as ten minutes. Tom had insisted on coming to the Chelsea flat, and Lorna hadn’t had the heart to tell him not to; in any case, it would be good to have him at hand. Her head was aching more than ever, and fear was deep in her. She could not tell whether the new identity of the man Laker was important at all.
Klein.
So far as Tom knew, the man calling himself Klein had been a dealer from Nairobi, opening an account with Mannering at Quinns, but had not discussed business with anyone else at the shop. Klein had started coming four months ago, saying that he was in England for a few months; when he had stopped coming, a month ago, Tom had assumed he had gone back to Nairobi.
The simple, inescapable fact was that John had seen and talked to the man. All the assistants at the shop would now be able to testify to that, as well as Bristow’s detectives.
Could John have been deceived?
Could he really have been unaware of ‘Klein’s’ true identity?
Even if he had been, would it ever be possible to convince the police of that?
Now that they were nearing Chelsea, Lorna began to think about Larraby again, and was eager to find out if there was any news. The taxi turned into Green Street, where two men sat in a car half-way along the road; she had no doubt that they were watching the flat. There was a uniformed constable inside the ground floor hall, and he let them in. He was civil enough.
They went up in the lift. Lorna was aware of Tom staring at her, as if anxiously; she probably looked washed out. She took out her key and handed it to him, and he opened the door and stood aside for her to go in. The first surprise was to find the hall light on; the next was the figure of Chittering of the Daily Globe, rising from a chair in the study, the door of which was wide open. He came forward, hands outstretched: a thin man in the late thirties who looked no more than twenty-five, a little reminiscent of Larraby to look at, with curly fair hair and a round, impudent kind of face. There was nothing cheeky about his expression now, and his blue ey
es were troubled.
“Hallo, Lorna.” He took her hands. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this.”
“I know you must be,” Lorna said. She let him squeeze her hands, freed herself, took her hat off, and put it on a table in the hall. “Is there any news?” She was afraid of what the answer would be, and added huskily: “About Josh, I mean.”
“He’s at St. George’s Hospital,” Chittering told her. “I couldn’t get much out of the police, but one of our chaps knows a nurse there, on night duty, and she says it looks like a case of an overdose of some sleeping pills – barbiturates of a kind.” He rubbed his chin. “Crazy, of course, but the hospital authorities seem to take it for granted that it was attempted suicide. So do the police.”
“Suicide – Josh Larraby? They’re crazy!” Tom almost spluttered.
“Suicide is what it seems like,” Chittering said. He lit a cigarette. “Lorna, you look as if you could do with a pick-me-up. Going to have a drink, or some coffee? I got Ethel to put some on, and it’s been percolating for half an hour. What a girl she is for sleep!” he added, breezily. “She could hardly keep awake long enough to let me in, and when she opened the door she thought I was a policeman. She does not love policemen!” Chittering was trying to introduce a more cheerful note into the atmosphere, and half-succeeding.
He led the way into the kitchen, where the coffee percolator bubbled and muttered. Cups were on a tray, with cream, sugar, biscuits, butter, and some cheese. Lorna sat on Ethel’s chair, Chittering leaned against the sink, Tom against the larder door, as they all sipped coffee. “Er … the really bad news sent me here,” Chittering added. “I’d heard that John was on a charge, and went to the Yard to find out what it was all about. Some beggar got a picture, by the way, and nothing would stop my Editor from using it. Don’t blame me. He—”
“The really bad news?” Lorna made herself ask.
“Yes,” said Chittering, gently. “Very nasty, indeed, I’m afraid. The man Farmer died without recovering consciousness. So it is murder. And from what I could piece together from bits and pieces I was told at the Yard, there seems a reasonable chance that they think John hit him while he was here.”
Lorna said: “Oh, dear God.”
“They’re going crazy!” gasped Tom.
“That’s the word,” declared Chittering. He put his cup down in the sink, turned and stared straight at Lorna, looking very much older than his years. “But we mustn’t go crazy. We’ve a lot of work to do. Toby Pleydell is out of England, and John hasn’t a lawyer to act for him with any knowledge of the background. John’s under arrest on a charge of being in possession of stolen goods, but now that Farmer’s dead, the charge might be changed to one of murder.”
Lorna caught her breath.
“No use blinking at the facts,” Chittering went on grimly. “If the charge is being in possession of stolen goods, and John asked for bail, he would probably get it – he could put up any amount as surety, and could get plenty of others to stand for him, too. But there’s no chance of bail on a murder charge, and from what I could gather at the Yard, that’s what they’re likely to go for.”
“Murder!” Tom said; he almost choked. “My God, it looks as if they’re doing anything to break Mr. Mannering! And after all he’s done to help—”
“More likely because of all he’s done to help,” Chittering suggested. “It’s no use blinking at facts, and the fact is that John has often solved cases which the Yard couldn’t – or at least, which they didn’t. Even though he’s been a consultant on special inquiries concerning precious stones, a lot of the Yard men have resented it – amateurs always run into trouble at the Yard, sooner or later. There’s a lot of bitterness, a feeling that a man they’ve trusted, one of the few they’ve worked with, has been hiding behind them as a cover in order to pull off crime after crime. It’s no use calling them bloody fools, either – that’s what they believe, or what a lot of them believe. The pressure on the Assistant Commissioner to make it a murder charge will be so great I doubt if he’ll be able to resist it.”
The Assistant Commissioner for Crime looked at the man from the solicitor’s office and at the man from the Public Prosecutor’s office, then down at the recommendations in front of him, and asked: “What do you think, Bristow?”
“If we want to keep Mannering in custody, it’s got to be the murder charge,” Bristow said. “If we put him up on the other, he’ll get bail. This is a case where it’s easier to believe that the prisoner would commit murder than to believe that he would traffic in stolen goods. Remember, Mannering’s had years of glamour treatment from the Press, and he’s a kind of public hero in the eyes of a lot of people. He’ll get a lot of sympathy on the receiving charge, but none if he’s accused of murder.”
“Never mind what public sympathy he’ll get,” said the Assistant Commissioner. “If he were released on bail, could we keep tabs on him?”
“If he’s really frightened, I think he could find a way to get out of the country,” Bristow said. He was speaking very precisely. “He buys and sells all over the world, and has bank accounts in a dozen different countries. I don’t think we could keep him in England, and I don’t think we could find him easily.”
“So you think the murder charge is the right one.”
Bristow said gruffly: “I hate the idea of it. On the one hand there’s the evidence, and I think we could make it pretty convincing in court. On the other hand, there’s my knowledge of Mannering. I could easily believe that he was holding these jewels for some third party, and taking a chance of getting into trouble himself. I can’t believe that he would commit murder.” Bristow gave a strained laugh. “I called Cannon Row before coming in here, and checked. Mannering was awake until about half-past one, and then he seemed to have gone to sleep; he was still sleeping at eight o’clock. Some people would say that was a sign of an easy conscience.”
“Or of a hardened criminal, said the Public Prosecutor’s man. “I don’t think there’s any question: Mannering should be charged with murder, and you should ask for the usual eight-day remand. That will give you time to get inquiries under way. This man Larraby should have recovered by then, and be ready to talk, I know Mannering is an old friend of yours, Bristow – that fact ought to make you feel even more angry about this.”
Bristow said: “Should it?”
“We’ll make the charge murder,” insisted the Assistant Commissioner.
Chapter Fourteen
Remand
“… and in accordance with the indications which I saw at the apartment on the top floor of 28, Green Street, Chelsea, I came to the conclusion that the accused had been the only person in a position to carry out the assault upon the then injured man who has since died,” deposed Ingleby. “Subsequently I took the accused into custody on a less serious charge and later was advised of the death of the man assaulted. I thereupon charged the accused with the wilful murder of Stanley James Farmer, and he replied that he was not guilty. It is the request of the police that the accused be remanded in custody while full inquiries can be made.”
Ingleby stopped.
Mannering stood in the dock above the crowded court, trying not to meet Lorna’s eyes too often. Even across the court he could see that they were red-rimmed, and had dark patches under them; she hadn’t had much sleep. Tom was with her. Chittering was in the reporters’ benches, which were so crowded that it was almost impossible for them to make notes. The rest of the court was jammed tight with people. The only space was on the bench itself, where the magistrate sat in solitary state, and immediately below him, where his clerk was busy writing the evidence of arrest.
The magistrate, Mr. McKenzie-James, was a middle-aged benevolent-looking, balding individual who wore pince-nez.
“Is the accused represented?” he inquired.
No one answered, and the clerk looked up, testily.
“Is the accused represented?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lloyd, a stocky man f
rom Pleydell’s office. Mannering had talked to him for an hour this morning, and at least felt certain that he knew what he was about. “I represent Mr. Mannering, and I would like to assure the court that he has a complete answer to this and in fact to any other charges which have been most unfairly hinted at by the police, and pleads not guilty.”
“I see,” said McKenzie-James.
“And with your permission, your Honour, I would like to apply for bail in this case. The accused is a highly respected and wholly reputable citizen. He has afforded the police a great deal of assistance in the past and in fact has been responsible for bringing many criminals to justice. Given the opportunity of personally conducting the investigation into this murder it is likely that he will once again be able to find the truth ahead of the authorities. My client is of course fully prepared to offer the highest recognisances and seven persons of the highest reputation are prepared to act as surety for him. He—”
“Your Honour,” Ingleby said, when Lloyd had finished, “this is the gravest charge which can be made and the police are not satisfied that the accused would stay in the country if allowed to carry out any kind of investigation which might obstruct the police. We consider a remand in custody is the only safe course.”
The magistrate said: “Mr. Lloyd?”
It was a foregone conclusion, Mannering thought grimly. No one could alter the course of events. Lloyd could try, but on a charge like this bail was unthinkable; the application would make a good Press story, that was all.
Lloyd was sweating in the stuffy court. Lorna was watching Lloyd as if she really believed that she could will the magistrate into making the concession. Bristow, who had kept out of the witness box, was sitting with the Public Prosecutor’s solicitor, fingering his moustache as if wishing that he could light a cigarette. To Mannering, there was an air of unreality about the whole situation. It was difficult to believe that he was the central figure; as difficult to believe the picture he had been shown in the Globe. Between Ingleby and the sergeant, he had looked as if he were being hustled to his cell.