“Don’t,” said Bruce quickly.
Both men were silent an instant, remembering the sensation that Bruce had caused when it became known that he was going to marry the woman he’d successfully defended on a murder charge twelve months before. Some people had said it would ruin his career, but he hadn’t taken any notice. And you had to admit the marriage had been a success. Only sometimes Crook wondered where truth had lain.
Bruce picked up the letter. “This is from Ogilvie. It’s addressed to my wife and was put among my letters by mistake. He says that if she doesn’t send him a cheque for a certain sum by a certain date, he’ll prove he was a bought witness at the trial.”
“That can’t affect the situation now so far as the law’s concerned,” Crook pointed out. “If we’d both seen Lady Bruce drop the poison in the glass, she’d still be innocent because the law says she is.”
“He doesn’t propose to send the letter to the Courts. He’s going to sell it to the press. You know as well as I do what that could mean, Crook.”
Crook tilted his brown bowler on to the back of his head. “You have to hand it to the fellow he knows his onions. There’s more than one man who’d risk a thumping suit for damages to get a scoop like that. And like all famous men, Bruce,” he grinned maliciously, “you have your enemies”.
“Take care,” said Bruce quickly, as the front door closed and a new step sounded in the hall. “It’s Kay.”
Lady Bruce opened the door of her husband’s study and came quickly in. She was ten years younger than her husband, a straight, slender creature dressed in black, with a little curling red feather in her absurd hat. Even Crook, who liked to say he was granite where dames were concerned, was taken aback for an instant by her sheer magnificence, the sense of life she brought with her. Like fire in a cold grate, flame against snow—there weren’t words, but she wasn’t a woman it would be easy to forget. The pallor, the deep shadows under the dark eyes, seemed only to accentuate her unusual and poignant beauty.
“Oh Aubrey!” She stopped dead. “I didn’t know you were engaged.” “This is Mr. Crook. You must know his reputation. Now meet the man.” Kay Bruce held out her hand. “I hope you’re staying to dinner, Mr. Crook.”
But it was her husband who answered. “I’m afraid you can wash dinner out for to-night. I’ve a big job on. I’ve got to get out immediately.”
“I understand.” That was the marvellous thing about Kay. She always understood; she never sulked when her plans were destroyed at the last moment, never expected a man in love with his work to neglect it in order to be with her. “Shall I tell Masters to leave you some sandwiches?”
“Yes.” Bruce sounded vague. “I don’t know when I’ll be in. Hullo! Where did you lose your earring?”
Kay put up a hand with a little exclamation of dismay. Crook thought she looked paler. The fuss women make about jewels, he thought. Still, he was grateful they existed. They brought him any amount of profitable business.
“Oh Aubrey, and they’re the diamond ones you gave me. I never noticed one of them was loose.”
“You know where you’ve been?”
“Of course. At a dress show. Not to buy, of course. These were models for export trade. Oh, I wonder if I could have dropped it there.”
“Did you come back by taxi?”
“Yes. But I don’t know the number, of course.”
“Don’t be so distressed. We’ll get it back. I’ll make enquiries... .”
She said quickly, “Wait till the morning, Aubrey. Perhaps the driver will find it when he takes his cab home to-night and will bring it back. Anyhow, you can’t do anything to-night”.
She smiled at him, but there was more than just pleasure in her smile.
Crook was like a hound at scent. Metaphorically he pricked his ears.
As soon as the door had closed behind Kay, Bruce announced abruptly, “I’m going to go and see this fellow—now”.
“Better wait till the morning,” counselled Crook. “I agree with your wife. There’s nothing you can usefully do to-night.”
“No? I can get this damned letter out of him, and by Heaven, I will.”
Crook tipped the brown bowler forward over one eye. “Mind if I come with you?” he said.
Bruce looked surprised. “Any particular reason?”
“I’ve got a couple of cases coming along very nicely and I should hate you to be in jug and not be able to handle ’em for me.”
“That’s absurd.” Bruce sounded affronted. “After all my years at the Bar,
do you suppose I’m going to take to murder, knowing the consequences?”
“You tell me this, old boy,” said Crook. “Ever know a chap commit a murder except by accident? No, and nor did I. But our beastly soulless law don’t admit these fine distinctions, and it ain’t goin’ to help Lady Bruce much if it’s you in the dock this time. You can’t conduct your own defence, you know.”
Bruce shrugged. “Come along, if you like. Though what you suppose you can do. . .”
“Suppose Ogilvie should be found plugged with lead to-morrow morning. Well, a good prejudiced witness to swear to your innocence would be worth something, wouldn’t it?”
They let themselves out into the dark March evening and Crook insisted on their travelling by tube. He said he had a reputation to maintain and he didn’t want it said that Arthur Crook had been seen visiting in the underworld after dark.
“Underworld?” repeated Bruce, derisively. “Maida Vale.”
“You picture the underworld as a place of Chinese and opium dens and brothels and Mata-Haris and cocaine in packs of playing-cards, I’ve no doubt,”
Crook told him in the same tone. “But you’ll find plenty of underworld characters in little flats and offices like the one we’re visitin’ now.”
Burlington Mansions was a tall drab set of offices, with narrow stone staircases where the lights had been turned very low and painted blue.
“You could meet your own mother on these stairs and not be recognised,” murmured Crook. “ Come on. We’ll walk, even if the lift is still runnin’.Don’t want to take a chance of being seen. After all, we’re just the kind of people blackmailers love. We’ve got character, cash and kudos.”
They were an odd couple, England’s youngest K.C., a wiry little Scotsman, red-headed, green-eyed, looking as though he’d been cut out with a pair of scissors, and the bulky ungraceful Arthur Crook, the Criminals’ Hope and the Judges’ Despair. Number Seventeen was on the second floor, which was in complete darkness when they arrived.
“He may not be here,” said Bruce uneasily, pressing the bell. “I daresay
he doesn’t live on the premises.” He gave a shiver. “Place seems deserted enough.”
“They’re mostly offices. Push the bell again. It could be that he’s not seeing any strangers to-night. I daresay Ogilvie has his troubles like the rest of us.”
Bruce pushed the bell again, then lifted his clenched hand and thudded on the door.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed. “That’s odd. It’s open.”
“Look out,” said Crook. “Make sure you’re not signing your death-warant.
P’raps this fellow expected you.”
“That’s not possible. But probably some poor devil’s taking the count here to-night.”As he spoke he cautiously pushed open the door, calling Ogilvie’s name as he did so. There was no reply and for an instant the two men stood in the narrow, darkened hall.
“Room on the right, I think,” murmured Crook. “Got your torch? Good.”
“There must be an electric light switch somewhere.”
“Make sure it’s properly blacked-out before you go mucking about with that. Hullo! What’s that sound? No, don’t switch on a light. There’s something damned odd going on here.”
“It’s like water dripping—very slowly,” Bruce suggested.
“It could be.” Crook’s voice was grim. “Well, over the top.” He switched on his powerful torch and a brilli
ant white beam raked the room.
“Look out!” exclaimed Bruce, involuntarily. “We’ll be seen.”
“Not through friend Ogilvie’s black-out curtains. Take a look at ’em. Such prudence make me suspicious. Well.” He took a step forward, then halted so abruptly that his companion cannoned into him from the rear.
“What on earth ...?”
“It’s all right,” said Crook in a new voice. “I’ll say he couldn’t answer. And nor could the Angel Gabriel with half his face blown away with a gun.”
He turned the light of the torch as he spoke and Bruce moved back with a muttered oath.
“For God’s sake, leave it in a decent obscurity,” he muttered, wondering if it were squeamish to feel sick. He’d seen dead men before, but not quite so newly-dead, at such close quarters. Then he drew a long breath. “So—some other chap’s done our job for us. Well, I’ll defend him with all the pleasure in the world.”
Crook came over to the table and stood staring at the Thing that, less than an hour ago, had been George Ogilvie.
“That’s damned odd,” he observed. “I ain’t Sir Bernard Spilsbury but I’d have said this might be suicide but for one thing.”
“Suicide? I hadn’t thought of that. Well, either way suits me.”
“But tell me this.” Crook was staring steadily at the body all the time he spoke. “Did you ever know a man switch off the light before he shot himself?”
Bruce looked taken aback. “So it is murder?”
“It looks damned like it. Wonder whose gun that is on the floor under his hand? By the way, did you know he was a left-handed chap?”
“Kay may have told me. I wouldn’t remember. It wouldn’t seem important.”
“It may be damned important. Well, whoever it was didn’t stop long. The safe’s all locked and none of the papers have been disturbed.”
“He must have been just getting ready to go. There’s his hat on the table.”
Crook looked at it with distaste, a broad-brimmed, black felt affair. “He would wear an arty-crafty thing like that.” He picked it up. “No name, no makers’ name—there must be half a million of these in London alone. Well, the press gets its scoop all right.”
Bruce looked at him in a dazed fashion. “The press?”
“Sure. We’re news, you and me. When it comes out that we were visiting a notorious blackmailer after dark quite a lot of people will sit up and take notice.”
“Yes,” agreed Bruce slowly. “If they know.”
Crook looked at him with genuine admiration. “Meanin’ you’re goin’ to pull a fast one on the police?”
Bruce looked dazed, as well he might. “The police? I’d forgotten about them. Yes, I suppose we’ll have to let them know. My God, Crook, what a mess!”
“You’ve said it. Anyway, while we still have breathing space, let’s agree on the truth we’re going to tell. When we’re asked what we were doin’ in the rooms of an underworld rat, what do we say?”
“I came on behalf of a client,” said Bruce mechanically.
“Let’s hope they don’t ask which one. Look out, you don’t want to get blood spattered all over your fancy waistcoat. The police are so unreasonable about that kind of thing.”
“I wonder how long he’s been dead. We must have just missed the murderer.”
“Let’s hope he just missed us. What’s the time? Ten to seven. And we’ve been here—what? Five minutes. And the body’s still warm and the blood’s drippin’. We left your place soon after six-thirty. He must have been killed about then.”
“From a medical point of view the difference between half-past and a quarter to seven isn’t very great,” said Bruce grimly. “My word, Crook, we’re in a jam.”
“That,” returned Crook politely, “is what’s called one hell of an understatement.”
Bruce thrust his hands into his pockets. “A chap like this must have had heaps of enemies. When you think of some of the scenes that must have been enacted in these four walls. Think of the poor devils who must have begged Ogilvie for their lives, and got no mercy, until at last one of them was pressed too far and—whose gun is that?”
“I don’t know,” said Crook, “and, what’s more, it ain’t my job to find out. Leave the police a bit of the fun. Well, make up your mind if you’re going to walk out on the corpse or behave like an English gentleman?”
“There’s no choice for an honest man.”
“Thank God, I haven’t many in my clientele. They’re the kind that end by putting a rope round their necks.”
“I wonder if he kept a note of his appointments,” Bruce went on. “There might be something on the desk....”
“Don’t poach all over the police’s preserves,” Crook begged him. “It’ll only make them the keener to see us in jug.”
Bruce nodded and went towards the door, switching on his torch as he did so.
“There’s a chap on the corner,” said Crook gloomily, “and a telephone box the other side of the road. Hullo, what’s up?”
For Bruce had stopped and was standing, quite immobile, as though shocked into silence, staring at something he had just picked off the carpet.
He didn’t seem to hear Crook speaking. His face had. gone very white, the lawyer noticed, as he switched the beam of his torch and came across the room.
“A clue?” he demanded. “Let your Uncle Arthur in on this.” He peered over Bruce’s shoulder. “Nice work,” he approved. “Those diamonds are real. Well, now we know that Ogilvie’s killer may have been a lady.”
“Don’t,” said Bruce in smothered tones.
Crook looked at his face and whistled soundlessly. “So that’s where Lady Bruce lost her ear-ring.”
Bruce swung round on him. “This alters everything, Crook. You must see that. How can I go to the police now? It would mean dragging out all that old hideous story. It would drive any woman mad. It’s a risk I daren’t take.”
He thought of Kay as he had seen her walking into his room, head high, eyes blazing. “I can’t force her to go through that again,” he said. “It would kill her.”
“It might conceivably kill us, too. I daresay you hadn’t thought of that.”
“You were right,” said Bruce after a pause. “We can’t go on with this.
All the same, whatever Kay may have done here to-night she did for love of me.”
“The things dames will do for the guys they love would put the average chap in the booby-can in six months,” retorted Crook. “Praise the pigs, they all take one look at me and decide that my father was a gorilla.”
Bruce sent one final glance round the dreadful room. The slow dripping of blood from table to floor had ceased; there wasn’t a sound now but the breathing of the two men who’d walked into a trap and weren’t sure if they were going to walk safely out again. Bruce was thinking of Kay. Had she stood there just half-an-hour ago, looking round her as he looked now, wondering if she’d left any clue to betray her and send her for the second time to the dock to fight for her life. But no, he thought, she didn’t stop to look round; if she had she’d have seen the ear-ring gleaming on the dark carpet. She must have run out of the apartment, heart leaping, blood throbbing, her whole being shaken with horror. And he thought: If I can’t save her this time, I who love her more than my own life, what use am I at all?
Kay had changed and was waiting for dinner in the drawing-room when he came in. She greeted him with pleasure.
“So you’re back, Aubrey, after all? And I was anticipating such a dull evening. What happened to Mr. Crook?”
“He couldn’t stay,” He sank down on the sofa beside her. He thought she looked at him curiously, and he said, “Is anything wrong?”
“I thought perhaps you’d cut your finger. There’s a spot of blood on your cuff.”
He looked at it in horror. So Crook hadn’t been quick enough in warning him. Of course a spot of blood needn’t be important, but all his professional experience warned him that you can’t dismiss
the most trivial detail as irrelevant. It would be irony, indeed, if they pulled him in because of a blood-stain on his cuff.
Kay had her hand on his sleeve. “Aubrey, what is it?” He drew a deep breath. “I’ve been to see Qgilvie.”
Her face changed under his eyes. The youth, the vigour, died out of it. He knew now what she would be like when she was old.
“Why did you do that?”
He thought, “Oh God, it’s true. She did shoot him,” and answered, “One of his letters came accidentally into my hands. Kay, why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“Hadn’t you suffered enough?” she demanded passionately. “I wasn’t going to have him pull your life down into the slime and ooze of his underworld existence. Sooner than that I’d have—put an end to everything.” She put her head in her hands for a minute, “I suppose he told you I’d been there to-night.”
“No,” said Bruce very quietly. “You left this behind.” And he laid the earring on her knee. She sat staring at it for a minute, as though it was something more than a little jewelled clip, as though it had some tremendous significance that for the moment eluded her. Then slowly she lifted her head. He saw that her face was ashen.
“So you went there to-night and you knew I’d been there, not because he told you, but because of this. And there’s blood on your cuff. That means.... No, Aubrey, that can’t be true. You wouldn’t do that, for both our sakes.”
She felt his hands, firm and warm on her icy ones. “Kay, we’ve trusted one another always, haven’t we? From the first minute I saw you in your cell, like a lily in a black sheath.”
“Always,” she said. “I’d forgotten what hope was like till you came in, I don’t think I knew any fear after that.”
“Then we’ve got to trust one another now. You don’t have to tell me how desperate our position is. All I ask you to believe is that I didn’t kill Ogilvie,
and I know you didn’t. We’ve got to stick to that through thick and thin.”
Crook was the only one of the three who got much sleep that night. Crook used to say that if the Last Trump was scheduled for eight a.m. he’d sleep till seven. Bruce and his wife, not speaking much, refusing to acknowledge even to themselves the dread in the heart of each, lay awake, thinking: Who’ll find the body? What will they believe? Can it possibly be traced to us? Neither of them dreamed of what had already happened.
Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries Page 17