by John Creasey
“Could be an answer,” Mannering said, softly. “If Samuel Blest was all his daughter thinks he was, then he would be the last man to be suspected of having these jewels. If Laker alias Klein had an accomplice, and there’s no doubt he had, then they might have been anxious to have the estate in the hands of someone who could easily be handled. So—” he broke off. “Leave that one, for now. This broken glass at Josh Larraby’s.”
“Yes?”
“There was a picture behind that door all right. It was a water-colour by Wimperis, a nice little meadow scene which a client gave to Josh for buying for him at a sale. It was in a black frame with a white border, and glazed. Hasn’t it turned up?”
“No. But the glass fragments have been examined – it’s ordinary window glass which is often used for glazing pictures.”
“I could understand it being broken, but not why it should have been taken away,” mused Mannering. “It would be worth thirty or forty pounds, at the most, and even then the buyer would have to want it keenly. So we’ve got a missing coloured man and a missing water-colour, and the puzzle of the inheritance. This man Farmer, whom they think I killed – you say Bristow admits that he had a note of my telephone number, and that he may have used a phone box at Hyde Park Corner?”
“Yes.”
“Any friends, associates, that kind of angle?”
“The police say he isn’t known to them, and no one’s turned up to identify him, except a landlady who owns the house in Whitechapel where he had a couple of rooms. She says he kept himself to himself, and thinks he made his money by betting. Our people can’t find anything much about him.”
“No apparent association with Laker?”
“No.”
“Any with a coloured man?”
“I don’t know,” said Lloyd. “It’s a possibility – I’ll check.” “Thanks. And no news of anyone who saw a car in Green Street?”
“No,” answered Lloyd, unhappily. “Nothing at all. The police have combed Green Street itself, so has Guttering, and this evening I’m told that Lorna has been visiting all the neighbours. But it isn’t very likely that she would find out anything which the others have missed.”
“I suppose not,” said Mannering. “Except for one thing.” “What’s that?”
“She’d give her right hand to find that witness,” said Mannering. “Will you be seeing her tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Geoffrey,” Mannering said.
“Yes.”
“Put an idea into her head, will you?”
“Yes.”
“We need that witness more than we need anything else,” Mannering went on, very softly, “and we need something to make anyone who did see anything, recall it. Also, the murderer must have accomplices, and crooks are notoriously greedy. Tell Lorna that it might be a good idea to offer a reward for anyone able to give information about what happened in Green Street on Tuesday night. A large reward. Let’s say, ten thousand pounds.”
Lloyd caught his breath.
“Not enough?” inquired Mannering.
“John,” Lloyd said, with great deliberation, “if you offer a reward like that, and someone comes forward with the information, the police and the Public Prosecutor will say that you bribed the witness into making the statement. Prosecuting counsel will want to know why the witness didn’t come forward until this large reward was offered.” When Mannering didn’t respond at once, he went on: “You can see that, surely?”
Mannering said: “Yes, I can see it. You know what you’re doing, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re playing the police game.”
“Now, John—”
“But you are,” insisted Mannering. “Whether you know it or not, you’re playing right into their hands. Don’t escape, you say – don’t try to do anything yourself, don’t offer a sensational reward, don’t do anything which might possibly give the prosecution a weaker hand if it comes to trial. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“Geoff,” said Mannering, “you’re making a big mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I didn’t kill Farmer.”
“I’ve never suggested—”
“You’re working on the assumption that a trial is inevitable, because no evidence can be turned up to make it unnecessary. Nine times out of ten, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you could be right – but this time you’re wrong. I don’t want to spend the next six or eight weeks in a remand cell waiting for trial. In six or eight weeks, before the Assizes could hear the case, Quinns would be virtually destroyed. Dealers all over the world would stop ordering from me. I’d lose nearly everything I possess, and most of what I’ve got is sunk in Quinns. Even if I were acquitted, the time lag between this moment and the acquittal would do the business serious damage. This isn’t a job that we can sit on, and we don’t have to worry about what prosecuting counsel might say to a jury. Everything we do must help to make sure that when I come up next Wednesday there is no case to answer.”
“But it’s a gambler’s throw!”
“That’s right,” Mannering agreed. “I was always a gambler. Tell Lorna to put that reward out. Take a column in all the national newspapers, to advertise it. Say precisely what we need: evidence of anyone who saw a car stop outside any place in Green Street on Tuesday night between eight-thirty and nine-thirty in the evening. And make that reward very big, because it might bring a squeak from someone who’s working for the murderer but won’t get much of a cut in the profits.”
Lloyd didn’t respond, but backed slowly away from Mannering. He thrust one hand in his trousers pocket, frowned, and stared into Mannering’s eyes. He looked as if he might be ready at any moment to plunge into a Rugby scrum.
“If Lorna does this, it will be against my advice,” he said flatly.
“I don’t care what it’s against, but tell Lorna.”
“John, I can’t speak for Toby Pleydell, but I can tell you in advance that in the opinion of my other partners such a move would be a very grave mistake. If you do it, I doubt whether they would agree to continuing with the defence.”
After a long pause, Mannering said levelly: “Just tell Lorna what I want her to do, will you?”
“The more I think about it,” said Rebecca Blest to Terry McKay, “the more I wonder if those jewels the police showed me this afternoon were the same. I thought they were, but – well, I was nervous while I was with that Superintendent Bristow, and wanted to get away.”
“The jewels you saw today looked better, perhaps,” said Terry McKay.
“The police had probably given them a clean up,” said Ruth Ashton.
“That’s a thought,” McKay said. “Forget it, Becky. Ruth, my pet, I’ll look after Becky while I’m here. I promise not to be a naughty boy.”
“What Becky does about you is up to her,” the other girl said tartly. “All I want to be sure is that she’s safe. We don’t want any more murders.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lloyd Disposes
“I simply have to tell you that if you do what John asks I believe it will be a grave mistake,” said Lloyd to Lorna.
They were on their own in the flat. Chittering had left before Lloyd had arrived, and Ethel had gone for her evening hour off. “The truth is that John is in a highly emotional state, and he can’t hope to assess the situation dispassionately. I know all about his compulsive drive. I can guess what he would do if he were out of prison. But he isn’t. I tell you that if this advertisement should ever appear, if claimants came forward for the reward and were proved to have lied, then it would take away one of the most important factors of the defence. John overlooks the fact that the police can’t prove there wasn’t a car here on Tuesday night. In his defence, we can say that it isn’t established that no one brought Farmer, that the lack of witnesses in itself is by no means conclusive. We need that element of doubt very badly indeed, and a single false claimant to the reward could kill
it.”
“I don’t see why,” Lorna objected.
“It must be obvious! This reward, any reward of such magnitude, is an open invitation for false statements, and the prosecution would make a lot of play on it – arguing that you were virtually bribing people to come forward and perjure themselves. And if we got witnesses to come forward in this way, we might not be able to prove if they were lying, but counsel might when he got them in the witness box. I tell you that it’s a very grave risk indeed, and you ought to persuade John to drop it.”
Lorna said: “I see what you mean. Yes. Would it—?” she broke off. “All right, Geoff. I’ll think about it.”
“I wish you’d see a doctor and get a sedative,” grumbled Lloyd. “You look tired out.”
“I’m all right,” Lorna said flatly. The telephone rang, and she was glad of the interruption, for she knew exactly how John had felt. Somehow this reward suggestion would be the kind to appeal to his sense of the dramatic – and he would feel frustrated to a point of exasperation by Lloyd’s clinical attitude of disapproval. “Excuse me.” She went across to the telephone. “Hallo … Oh, good evening, Mr. Entwhistle!”
For a moment, hope surged.
“I’m afraid I haven’t had any luck,” Entwhistle reported, brisk as always. “But I shall keep on trying, and so will everyone I saw tonight. They’re solidly behind Mr. Mannering, you can be sure of that.”
“You’re very good,” Lorna said. “Very many thanks for calling. Good night.”
“Don’t worry too much,” urged Entwhistle.
Don’t worry too much …
“It was a neighbour,” Lorna told Lloyd. “They’re all being very kind.” She spoke mechanically, and did not feel that she could talk in any other way to Lloyd just now; she almost disliked the solicitor. “Everyone is. Geoffrey, I really must try to get some rest.”
Lloyd was obviously aware that her mood towards him had changed, that she wanted him to go. He hesitated before turning towards the door, then swung round again in his forceful way, and said: “Lorna, you may hate my guts at this moment, but I’m advising you for the best. You don’t seem to understand – John could hang for these murders.”
Lorna stood very still; shocked.
“These murders?”
“Yes, murders. You don’t need to be told there are the two,” said Lloyd, almost desperately. “Whoever hit the man Farmer also hit and killed Samuel Blest. John could have—”
“He wasn’t anywhere near the flat!”
“Perhaps he wasn’t, but can he prove it? He had been out that afternoon. Samuel Blest was last seen alive just after two, and was found dead at five. John could have gone out to Notting Hill and killed him, and got back in plenty of time to see the girl Rebecca at Quinns.”
“Geoffrey,” said Lorna, quietly. “I don’t think you’re the right man to be defending John.”
“For God’s sake cut out this emotional nonsense and see this as a cold legal problem!” Lloyd almost shouted, and he drew nearer her, one quivering hand raised. “John was out. I haven’t asked him directly, but I’ve asked him in roundabout ways, and he can’t establish where he was that afternoon. He went to three or four auction rooms and second-hand shops in the Portobello Road area, but only looked in the windows of some of them. And he travelled by bus and taxi; he didn’t take the car because of parking difficulties. I tell you that the prosecution could turn this into a capital murder charge, and if they did that and John was found guilty, he would hang.” When Lorna didn’t answer, but stood there, shocked beyond words, Lloyd went on: “Why won’t you admit that I’m doing my absolute best, that I’ve got a feeling about this case, and I think it’s going wrong. We’ve got to have the strongest defence we possibly can. If the police catch us out in a single act which looks as if we’re trying to buy John off – my God, it will finish him.”
“I see, Geoffrey. When are you planning to see John again?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Well, don’t go,” Lorna said. “I’ll send someone else. I’ll tell him that you’re ill, if that will make you feel better, but I don’t want you to see John again, and I don’t want you to handle this case any longer.”
“Now, Lorna—”
“There isn’t anything to argue about,” Lorna said. “I don’t believe that anyone who is so sure that John killed these men can possibly help him.”
“That’s damnably unfair.”
“It’s damnable all right,” Lorna said. “Will you go, please?”
Lloyd started to speak again, then turned round and clumped out; the door closed with a snap. Lorna heard his footsteps on the landing, then on the passage and the stairs; they faded. She felt clammy cold, and frightened. When at last she turned away, she asked herself in a low-pitched voice: “What on earth’s the matter with everyone?” And then: “What’s the matter with me?”
She shivered. She hated every word that Lloyd had said, but he had put doubt back into her mind, had rekindled the fear which she had felt earlier and had managed to push away. How much of the truth had John told? Could he be caught out in a positive lie? Could the police ever prove, for instance, that he had really put the genuine jewels into his own strong-room? If it could be proved that he had lied to Rebecca Blest about them, the rest of the case would almost certainly go against him.
Had he lied?
“Of course he didn’t lie,” Lorna told herself savagely. “You’re as bad as Lloyd! I hate all lawyers.” She went into the empty study, stood looking at John’s chair, and choked back a flood of emotion. She went to the chair, sat down, and lifted the telephone; she dialled the Globe, and it was a long time before there was any answer. The ringing sound going on and on, as if in a vacuum, was like this case; they could never get anywhere. She knew what John would feel; she knew that he would sense what Lloyd really thought.
“Daily Globe?”
“Mr. Chittering, please, in the reporters’ room.”
“Hold on.”
Lorna heard the click of the plugs being connected, and then a noise of a telephone being lifted, but there was no immediate answer, just a hum of voices in the background; someone had lifted the receiver and put it on the desk and continued what he was doing. Frustration, frustration, frustration.
“Hallo?” It was Chittering.
“Chitty, are you—”
“Lorna?” Chittering interrupted. “Where are you?”
“At home. Chitty, could you come and—”
“Yes,” said Chittering, interrupting again, and Lorna could not understand why he spoke so tersely. “I was coming soon, anyway. Stay in, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll see you,” Chittering said, and rang off; he sounded as brusque as if he had lost the mood of friendliness. Chittering? It was nonsense even to think so. If he turned, as Lloyd had, then it would seem as if some hoodoo was upon them, blighting all hope of getting John free. There couldn’t be anything wrong with Chittering, unless …
Unless he had discovered some reason for thinking that John was guilty.
Lorna poured herself a whisky-and-soda, sipped it, lit a cigarette, and moved about the room; she had never felt so lonely or so frightened. Now there was this new menace hanging over her head – hanging over John’s head. A noose.
She went to the kitchen and got out the coffee things; Chittering always liked coffee. As she stood in the larder, there was a ring at the front door bell. She turned her body and looked towards the door. She was so much on her own, but there were a lot of people whom she did not want to see. Lloyd might have come back, for instance; or the police might be here with more questions.
She wished she was not on her own. When John had last been here by himself and that door bell had rung, he had opened it on to the man reeling against the wall outside.
Hadn’t he?
Then why hadn’t there been bloodstains on the wall? The bell rang again before she reached the door. She heard a man say: “T
here’s a light, so someone’s in.” It was an innocent kind of remark, and the voice hadn’t the depth of a policeman’s, more of a youth’s.
She opened the door, and saw Rebecca Blest with a young, curlyhaired lad; two young people, side by side and holding hands.
“Why, good evening,” Lorna said. She was surprised but not disappointed, glad that there was no fear of another clash with Lloyd. “Come in.” She stood aside, and they entered, looking round quickly, and obviously impressed; when she thought of their background, that wasn’t surprising. Lorna hadn’t seen McKay before, but she liked the look of him, and now that Rebecca Blest had rested, and was made up a little, she was young and attractive and … honest-looking. It was easy to understand John deciding to help her.
She began: “Mrs. Mannering—”
“Mrs. Mannering—” the youth started at the same moment.
They broke off together.
“I was just making coffee,” Lorna said. “Would you like a cup?”
“Well—”
“Look, Mrs. Mannering,” the youth said, speaking hastily, “I’m Terence McKay, and I happened to meet Becky on the day that she came to Quinns. I dare say you’ve heard of me.”
They were moving towards John’s study.
“I have indeed,” Lorna said.
“Well, no one wants to find the murderer of Becky’s father more than I do, or Becky does,” declared the youth, with the sweeping confidence of the young. “But we’d hate the wrong man to be landed with it.”
Lorna said: “Well, so would I.” It was impossible to say why, but the arrival and the manner of the couple had soothed her; so did the words. They entered the study, and she sat in John’s chair, while the girl stood looking at her from the fireplace, and the youth paced about.
“Well, I don’t even know if we ought to be here,” said McKay, “but we decided to have a go. You know those jewels that Becky took to your husband?”
“I know the ones you mean.”
“Well, the police showed her some jewels today, and asked her to identify them. At the time she said they were the ones which she’d taken to Quinns, but she’s been thinking since then, and remembered one or two things. She says that the settings – you know, the gold in which the jewels are set – aren’t the same. She couldn’t tell a genuine diamond from a piece of glass in a ring, any more than I could, and there was the right number of articles there, if you see what I mean …”