The Worm of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  “Nothing.” Walt Barn said it much too quickly.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. You started thinking about Dr. Piers’s death. You realised that Rebecca might easily have caused it—either before she joined you in her room that evening, or after you left the house. You remembered the row she’d had with her father that day—how she sent for you, and you came along and found her in a murderous state of mind.”

  “No! Steady on! She was hysterical, I grant you. But not——”

  “And then it occurred to you that she’d sent for you so as to provide her with an alibi of sorts for that evening. Had she ever asked you up to her room at night before?”

  “No, as it happens. But——”

  “You are aware that she has a passionate temperament, and a slightly unbalanced mind, and that she had two reasons for hating her father.”

  “Two reasons?”

  “You didn’t know that, when her father and mother had a cataclysmic quarrel eight years ago, Rebecca got hysterics and was ill for some days after? That she has always believed he was responsible for her mother’s death?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” Walt’s eyes were glittering and inexpressive now, like mineralogical specimens. Reaching out for his palette-knife he made stabbing motions at the wooden table. Nigel got up and walked over to the french windows: the garden outside, in the dour February light, was a mess of rank grass, bricks, balks of wood, rusting household utensils.

  “I think Becky may have taken up with me,” Walter was saying slowly, “because I was different from anything she’d come across—from her dad and the way they live there. It was a sort of gesture of revolt. Like Lousy’s from her chartered-accountant father. If Becky really hated her dad, as you say, it’d be a way of rolling him in the mud, wouldn’t it?”

  Nigel made no comment on this singular interpretation of Rebecca’s conduct. He asked point-blank, “Are you breaking it off with her because you’ve got cold feet?”

  “I’ve not broken it off.”

  “Because,” Nigel persisted, “you’re afraid that your coming in for her share of the old man’s money would make the police suspect you?”

  “Well, you have got a nasty mind,” said Walter with a flickering, evasive grin.

  “Maybe. But it’s the only explanation I can think of. You don’t like getting mixed up with trouble, do you?”

  “Who does?”

  “Lots of people. Do you get the impression that Rebecca is a bit doubtful about you too?”

  “Doubtful?”

  “You had motive and opportunity for killing her father. And you persuaded her to tell the police she’d been alone in her room all that night. Wouldn’t that make her suspicious about you?”

  “Not on your life. She’s in love with me,” Walter replied with a disagreeable complacence.

  “So you’re just going to sit tight on your little raft of non-commitment and let Rebecca drown.”

  Walter shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve got to concentrate on my work. It’s been going well since this happened. All I want is a bit of peace just now.”

  “Which is what you won’t get—not till the case is cleared up. If you want to let Rebecca carry the can for you, that’s your business. But you can’t paint out the fact that you and she are two of the chief suspects; the police will chivvy you from here to judgment day till they find out the truth.”

  “——the police.”

  “Particularly,” added Nigel at a venture, “when Sharon comes out with the full story.”

  “That bitch. She’d say anything.” His eyes glittered at Nigel like blue glass. “So it was her in Graham’s room?”

  “Yes. And I’m convinced she saw or heard something that will lead the police to the murderer.”

  “Well, why doesn’t she tell them?”

  “She’s like you. All for Number One and a policy of non-involvement.”

  “Except with young Graham. I should watch that bird, if I were you. He’s the killer type. A psychopath, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “You think he killed Dr. Piers?”

  Walter Barn gave Nigel a look both calculating and impish. “Well, I saw him come upstairs about ten past nine that night.”

  “Which proves that he had just murdered his father?”

  “I’d nipped out of Becky’s room to go to the john. Its door faces the head of the stairs. When I came out, I saw him walking up from his father’s room and going into his own.”

  “Very sinister, I’m sure.”

  “Yes. He had a ghastly grin on his face, and blood dripping from his hands.”

  Nigel gazed contemptuously at the young painter. “Why don’t you grow up? You’re not even amusing as a clown.”

  “Just taking the micky out of you, mate. I don’t like bloodhounds and I don’t like intellectuals. A combination of the two makes me sick to the stomach. Now run along and be inquisitive somewhere else, sod you.”

  Nigel realised that Walt was about to explode with demoniac violence: the round face had gone white, the broad shoulders were hunched in menace. As he finished speaking, the young man made a sudden pass with the palette-knife, his wrist turning upwards, at Nigel’s face. Sidestepping, Nigel brought the edge of his hand down on the inside of Walt’s wrist, with such force that the knife flew to the floor and its owner doubled up in agony, thrusting his wrist between his thighs to alleviate the pain.

  “Christ! You’ve broken it, you bastard!”

  “Nonsense. You’ll have a bruise, that’s all.”

  Walt soon straightened up. One arm dangling, he came at Nigel, who straight-armed him, the heel of his hand cracking against the bridge of Walt’s nose, and stopped him as if he’d been nailed to the floor.

  “All right,” said Nigel. “Calm down. You’re tough. But I’m not a yellow-bellied newspaperman.”

  Walt shook his head to clear it. He looked dazed, but not a bit tamed yet. His hands went up to his bowed head, as if to cradle the injured nose, which was bleeding profusely: but Nigel sensed that Walt was looking through his fingers, measuring the distance. So, when the hands came down and Walt kicked viciously at his groin, Nigel was already moving back and to his left. Seizing Walt’s boot, he gave the foot a sharp upward twist, up-ending his opponent, the side of whose head struck the linoleum with a stunning thud. Nigel picked up the palette knife, and sat down on a kitchen chair against the wall—the chair recently occupied by the undraped Louisa.

  “This could go on for ever,” he observed amiably, as Walt Barn sat upright on the floor, his eyes not perfectly focused yet, and wiped the blood off his face with the back of his hand. “The irrepressible in pursuit of the impossible.”

  Walt looked comically puzzled. “Well, who’d have thought it?” he said. “But if you expect me to shake hands and say the better man won and all that Public School crap, you can——”

  “Oh, come off it. There’s only one thing I’d expect from you.”

  “Yes?” Walt dragged himself to his feet.

  “A kick in the liver as soon as I turn my back. Or would you rather use this?” Nigel handed him the palette-knife.

  Walt stared at it for a moment, then threw it down on the table.

  “I guess I’ll keep that for my painting.” He grinned at Nigel suddenly. “Proper dirty fighter, aren’t you?”

  “When encouraged.”

  “I’ll have another go at you one day. Have to brush up my timing a bit first.”

  “Pugnacious bastard. In the meantime, why not go and have a talk with Rebecca?”

  “Wedding-ring and all?”

  “That’s your affair. Of course, if you don’t love her——”

  “Who the hell says I don’t love her?” Walt belligerently inquired.

  Inspector Wright gave the appearance of a man utterly exhausted. His eyes seemed to be looking out from the far end of deep caverns. He sat slumped in Clare’s studio, the hands—usually so restless, miming his words—dangling flaccidly now from
the chair arms. Even Nigel’s account of the set-to with Walter Barn that afternoon produced hardly a flicker of animation.

  “Well, it doesn’t sound as if young Walt was the murderer,” offered Clare.

  “No,” said Nigel. “He’s a demon when he loses his temper—he boils over suddenly and silently, like milk in a pan—Welsh blood, perhaps. He’d never think up a deliberate thing like that: neat incisions with a razor.”

  “He was going to incise you with a palette-knife, though,” said Wright.

  “He’d lost his temper. I provoked him.”

  “But he could have been provoked into losing his temper with Dr. Piers. He finds Miss Loudron in a hysterical state after the scene with her father: it makes him see red——”

  “No. That won’t do. He hasn’t got that kind of chivalry. He’d just slap her on the bottom and say ‘Cheer up, ducks, it’ll all come out in the wash.’”

  “You say that, when you saw him beating up the newspapermen?”

  “Yes.”

  Wright sighed, reached out for his whisky, took a deep draught, and closed his eyes. “We’re getting nowhere. Nowhere at all. A lovely set of motives. Lots of lovely opportunity. Some cock-eyed alibis. But hardly one solid fact to build on. Even their lies—and they’ve told enough, between them—seem to cancel one another out.”

  Clare refilled his tumbler. “I must say it does seem odd no one heard a splash. It was a dead quiet night: no traffic on the river, only one car——”

  “One car?”

  “The car in which the body was brought to the river. There are only three roads, at all near, which run right down to within a few yards of the water. And there are houses at the end of each of them,” said Clare. “It’s a hundred to one that the murderer would use a car and would choose one of those three roads. In that fog, you can’t imagine him going farther afield.”

  “But the Loudron cars have been checked and double-checked. We took samples of dust. We went over the mats and upholstery with——”

  “Dr. Piers’s car included?”

  “Of course. A hair or two of his on the floor by the front passenger’s seat——”

  “The passenger’s seat?”

  “Yes. It seems Graham Loudron often acted as his chauffeur.”

  Nigel, pacing up and down the studio, paused. He gave the inspector a veiled look. “I think Clare’s right. Somebody must have heard a splash. Somebody in the Trafalgar Tavern.”

  “But we inquired of every resident there. Those likeliest to hear anything—in the apartment nearest the river wall—had the radio on.”

  “Too bad,” remarked Nigel dreamily. “Nevertheless I think I shall work on the assumption—the far from tacit assumption—that they did hear a splash. About eleven. We’ve got to get this log-jam shifted.”

  Wright, looking a little revived, winked at Clare. “What’s the old man cooking up?”

  “Something nasty, I’ll be bound. ‘Eels boiled in broo, Mither.’”

  “‘Mak’ my bed soon,’” Nigel capped the quotation. “But that’s not it. . . . An association. . . . What did he call that dirty girl? ‘Lousy.’ No. Ah! ‘Cleopatra.’ A barge.” He swung round on Wright. “The barge! Harold’s old wreck. What fools we are! That’d be the place to hide the diary. Why didn’t we——?”

  “Speak for yourself, chum. I had two men taking that barge to pieces all yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” Nigel looked only momentarily disconcerted. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

  “It’s full of mud and rats and rotting timber. Nothing else. And I wish you’d get your mind off that diary. If it was the least danger to him, the murderer would have set a match to it long ago.”

  “We mustn’t assume that it was the murderer who tore out those pages.”

  The three sat in silence for some moments—a silence broken at last by Clare’s high, light voice, whose child-like timbre often deceived the ignorant into imagining it went with a childish mind. “A phrase keeps running in my head: ‘he’s got it taped, he’s got it taped.’ Now what do you suppose that can mean?”

  Nigel seldom made the error of not taking seriously Clare’s random contributions to a subject. “‘Taped’? Let’s see. Measurements. Boxer’s knuckles. Ticker-tape. Tape recording. Name-tapes in schoolboys’ underwear.” His mouth fell open. “No! Tape recording! That’s how Harold could have got his alibi. Don’t you see? He sets a tape-recorder going near his telephone in the hall, just in case someone should ring up or ring the door-bell while he was out. Dashes off to Crooms Hill. Kills his father. On his return, plays the tape over to himself. Hears the telephone bell ringing on it. It’d be easy to fix exactly the time at which the bell had rung—so many minutes after he’d switched the machine on and left the house. Wait a minute, though. How long does a spool of that stuff play for?”

  “Half an hour,” answered Wright, poker-faced.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I ought to be. I had a chap spending the best part of a day playing Harold Loudron’s spools over.”

  Nigel bowed his head. Clare smiled at Wright.

  “Dearest Inspector, you know I love you fondly. But sometimes you are the most provoking creature in the world.”

  “Of course he could have destroyed that particular spool,” said Nigel. “Or just scrubbed it.”

  “Oh yes, indeed he could. But we’re back where we started. By the way, I’ve been on to the chap who put that trunk-call through to Harold’s house—just in case Harold might have asked him to put it through at that time, so as to provide an alibi. He says Harold did not ask him. Respectable chap. No reason to suspect him of lying about it.”

  Nigel took up one of Clare’s chisels and sighted along it. “If our bird sits tight, you’re going to have an unsolved case. I think it’s time I put a cat among the pigeons.”

  But a very different sort of cat was already on the prowl. While Clare, Nigel and Inspector Wright were talking, the telephone bell rang in Harold Loudron’s house. Harold was out, dining with a business associate. Sharon took up the receiver.

  “Who? Oh,” she said. “I didn’t expect——”

  “Listen. I’ve got to see you——”

  “But——”

  “The police have been at me again. And I’ve got to have another session after dinner. Don’t know how long it’ll go on. It should be safe about 11.30. Slip out then. I’ll be waiting at the end of Lassell Street.”

  “But why not here? Why out?”

  “I’ll explain when I see you.”

  “Well, can’t you give me some——?”

  “It’s not advisable, on the telephone. I can only tell you we’ve got to have a talk. Terribly urgent.”

  “Oh, very well.”

  “And keep this to yourself, my dear. Tell nobody. Repeat, nobody. ’Bye——”

  At 11.30, Sharon came out of her house. She was fully dressed, and wore a thick frieze coat and a head-scarf. The east wind had died down, but the air was biting: Sharon shivered, feeling the cold at once, and a certain chill of apprehension too; but it was partly excitement which made her shiver—Nigel had been right when he told her she would do anything for a kick.

  Quietly she opened the door in the wall. She looked left, and then right. The street lamp outside the Cutty Sark tavern threw an amber glow over Ballast Quay. She could hear water slapping the river wall: no other sound.

  The windows of the Cutty Sark and the houses on either side of it showed no glimmer of light. It was a dark night, but Sharon could just pick out against the sky the pyramid of scrap-iron overtopping the corrugated-iron wall of the yard beyond the curving quay.

  “Why did we ever come to live in this god-forsaken hole?” she muttered peevishly as she hurried in her heel-less shoes over the cobbles past the public house, startling a cat which streaked away from her like a ripple of shadow.

  At the corner, she descried a figure standing in the shadow of the scrap-yard wall. Was it the per
son she expected? The figure raised a finger to its lips. The finger looked unnaturally thick, which Sharon put down as a trick of light and shadow, being unable to see till she got close that the hand was wearing a heavy, gauntlet glove.

  “Why all this mystery?” she murmured, looking up into a familiar face that seemed the face of a stranger.

  “Shh! I may have been followed. Come this way a little. Daren’t go into the house.”

  Sharon could barely hear the whisper. She shivered again, but allowed herself to be drawn by the arm which was firmly tucked into her own, towards the entrance of the narrow alley between the scrap-yard and the quay where the scrap was loaded on to ships. To her right, a crane stood up against the darkness like a premonition. From downriver came one melancholy hoot of a steam whistle.

  Excitement welled up in Sharon. There was something about this assignation and the tense figure of her companion which stirred her jaded senses. She clutched the arm closer to her body, groping for the gauntleted hand.

  Half-way down the narrow passage, with its corrugated-iron walls rising high above their heads on either side, her companion stopped, moved behind her. She heard quickened breathing: arms came round her, and hands over her breasts. Leaning back, she shivered deliciously. There was a silence of listening. Then the hands rapidly shifted, flurried; Sharon was flung down on her face and felt a dreadful constriction at her throat.

  The woman’s body jerked and thrashed, but she could not throw off the weight upon her back, the knees which ground into it. The silk stocking, tightening and tightening round her throat, took her voice away, so that her screams were only whimpers and gasping croaks. Nevertheless, it took her some time to be killed, and she was not quite dead when the killer heard footsteps, their noise drowned till now by the struggle, approaching the far end of the alley.

  It was a Dutch seaman, returning blind drunk from a round of the pubs, and subsequent potations in a private house, to his ship moored at Lovell’s Wharf.

  The murderer dragged the body of his victim to its feet, set its back against the corrugated wall, and held it there, its knees sagging, screened by his own back from the approaching seaman. If the latter was capable of perception and inference, he would take them for a pair of lovers in a close clinch.