The Scene of the Crime

by John Creasey

  “I feel fine, now I am awake,” Maurice said, and looked hard at his father, then turned and walked quietly away. At the foot of the stairs, he began to whistle, softly for him.

  Gwen sat at the side of the bed.

  “Let’s take this temperature before you drink hot tea,” she said, and Payne opened his mouth like a small boy.

  In a way, Gwen had always seemed older than he, although they were the same age almost to the month. She looked years younger because of her smooth skin, and there was only a hint of lines at her eyes. She had a natural merriness which made her extremely popular with nearly everyone who knew her. Payne believed that she was truly a happy woman, not even disappointed because he had failed to make good his boasts of what he would do for her and the family. In a way her lighthearted comments on their modest income had made him keep longing for success. He had never been able to bear being laughed at, even good-naturedly, even by Gwen.

  She watched him with her head on one side, obviously his outburst had amused more than annoyed her, as he should have known. The thermometer seemed to become larger, and he kept wanting to gulp. It was a relief when she took the thing out, turned towards the window, and read it; she was frowning as she twisted it this way and that, then her face cleared and she said: “It’s as near normal as can be.”

  “Of course it is,” Payne said, gruffly. “I’ve got a shocking headache, that’s all. I—” Suddenly, the ‘explanation’ came to him, surely enough to make her think she knew what had put that harshness into his voice, yet something that could easily be laughed off. “Gwen, I’m sorry, but—you won’t laugh?”

  She chuckled.

  “I can’t promise that!”

  That made him smile, and also made his heart lighter.

  “I had the most god-awful dream,” he declared. “I can’t tell you exactly what it was about, but—but Hilda and Maurice were somehow mixed up in it, and there were gravestones and headstones.” He took her hand. “Kick me if I behave like that again.”

  “It must have been beastly,” Gwen said. She took him more seriously than he had expected, and he wasn’t really surprised when she went on: “It’s a funny thing, but Hilda has had several nightmares lately. I’ve put it down to her age, but once she woke up screaming—that night you were in Bournemouth.”

  “We must watch her,” Payne said. “Must be a reason for it.”

  Gwen poured out tea, then began to dress. Payne lay back, watching. Her figure could stir him to desire and to passion now as quickly as it had in their early days, and she had a boldness, almost a brazenness, as if she deliberately set out to hold his gaze and to stir his desire. He watched as she put her hands behind her back, to fasten her bra; the ends slipped and the bra dropped. She pursed her lips as if in vexation, but the gleam of humour, of enticement, was unmistakable in her eyes. Suddenly he seemed to picture Alice Murray by her side. Oh, God, it was funny. Funny! He actually wanted to laugh. He drank his tea, put the cup down, and said: “Strip tease over?”

  “This performance,” Gwen said, then wriggled into a dress which clung to her figure, came over to the bed, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and said: “Lie in for the morning, anyhow. Business can wait.”

  “Business can never wait,” Payne rejoined, and in the lighter mood, he went on buoyantly: “As a matter of fact, sweetie pie, it’s picking up extremely well. I’ve one or two big deals which might make us a fortune.”

  “You and your fortune, it’s always round the corner,” Gwen scoffed. “Just make enough to get us out of this house and buy me a mink stole, and I’ll admit you’re a better business man than I thought you were.”

  “Before we’ve finished, you shall have a mink coat which drags on the ground, and a Rolls Royce to go with the new house,” Payne declared earnestly.

  “I’ll settle for a Jaguar.” Gwen was still joking, without malice but hurtfully. If only she knew what he had done for her! She stood with the tray in her hands, looking down at him. “You look twice the man you did already. The next time you have a nightmare, tell me about it right away.”

  “Take it from me I will,” Payne said.

  There wasn’t going to be a next time. There was going to be the theft from Anderson’s, followed by a series of business deals, all carefully arranged to show substantial profits in his books. He would ‘win’ one or two good bets, too; nothing excessive, nothing to attract attention, but a hundred pounds or so at a time, to build up his bank balance gradually. There was no end to what he could do once he had that stock from Andersons. If he chose a Friday night, there would be the better part of two thousand pounds in cash, to go with it.

  He lazed until lunchtime, felt quite himself again when he went downstairs, and could think of Alice without panic or alarm. It was a pity it had happened the way it had, but she had only suffered for a minute or two, and it was even possible that she hadn’t known who was attacking her.

  She was dead; buried in the past. Now he had to make his future.

  In this new mood of confidence, it did not occur to him seriously that the police would ever catch up, but when he went out, about six o’clock that evening, to get some cigarettes and the classified football edition of the evening newspapers, tension suddenly gripped him again. On most Saturday evenings the family sat round the television, with a sandwich supper, a comfortable armchair for everyone, and Gwen was getting it ready. Payne was alone, and desperately full of disquiet. He kept a lookout for Hilda, who usually got home by half past six but occasionally arrived half an hour earlier. He hoped that he would not meet her tonight – certainly not until he had seen the newspaper.

  He bought the Evening Globe. Instead of looking for the Fulham result, he stared at the headlines. There had been a serious plane crash near Paris; there had been an avalanche in Scotland, and two climbers were missing; and there had been a murder in southwest London.

  He stood quite still, reading about it. How Alice’s murder had been discovered, how the police had arrived at once, how Superintendent Roger West of New Scotland Yard was in charge of the investigations, and how:

  Mr. Julian Anderson, son of the owner of the jewel merchant for whom the dead girl worked, may have information of value to the police.

  Payne’s head jerked up.

  “My God!” he breathed. “When they say that, they usually mean they want the devil! Julian, the swine!” He began to laugh, actually laughed aloud, and made several people rum round to stare; a man said half jokingly: “Got your treble chance right, mate?”

  “Pulled—pulled off four draws,” Payne made himself answer. He mustn’t let himself get out of hand. What he wanted was a couple of stiff whiskies, that would put him right, and there was no need to keep off drink now, these could be the doubles he had promised himself. One in the pub and a couple at home. If the spectacular show on television was good tonight, he could laugh as much as he wanted to; he could be positively hilarious! He folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm, thinking again of Julian Anderson, and how Alice had disliked him, how he had actually tried to follow her last night! Although Alice had been too nice-natured to say so, there wasn’t much doubt that Julian was a man who encouraged his hands to stray. He looked the type.

  This would teach him!

  Payne strode towards the local public house, the King’s Arms in the High Street, saw a bus pull up at the stop opposite, and caught sight of Hilda. Waving, she jumped off the bus and came to him eagerly, trustingly; again she reminded him of Alice, although physically she was so different.

  “Hallo, Dad! Been getting your paper?”

  “Yes. Nothing turned up on the pools,” he answered.

  “Our ship will come home one of these days.”

  She turned to walk beside him, and reminded him of Gwen when she had been younger. Gwen had had the same flamboyant figure and had flaunted it perhaps
a little more; or perhaps it had seemed more, in those days. Payne decided to wait for the whisky until he got home, it was a bad thing to encourage a girl of eighteen to go into pubs. Hilda would start that soon enough with boy friends. It was good to have her walking alongside him, chattering about the day at the shop – she worked in a mantle and gown shop in Hammersmith – about television, about the way they had overslept, and how Mrs. Cowley – the manager – had been quite rude about it. As they walked on, Payne noticed how many men, young and old, looked at her, some of them covertly, some with open admiration. Well, that wasn’t surprising. Gwen would be able to give her all the tuition she needed! The thought made him frown. How much did he, how much did Gwen, really know about their own daughter?

  “… Oh, I remember what I was going to say to you. I don’t suppose you’ve seen the evening paper yet,” said Hilda. “You remember Anderson’s, the place where you used to work years ago?”

  Payne said, stiffly, heart turning over: “Yes.”

  Hilda did not notice the strangeness of his voice, and went on without a pause: “A terrible thing happened, absolutely awful. Mr. Anderson’s secretary was murdered last night. I wonder if she was there when you were, Dad. Her name was Marshall, I think, Alice Marshall, or Marbel, or something like that. I read it in the Star. And it looks as if Anderson’s son did it. You used to say what a nasty piece of work Julian Anderson was, didn’t you? His name was Julian, wasn’t it?”

  Payne said, more normally: “Yes. What a dreadful thing.” As they walked along, he realised that he should have been prepared for this, and that it was a good thing that Hilda, not Gwen, had come out with the story. Gwen would have noticed the way it affected him.

  He wondered where Julian Anderson was now.

  Chapter Six

  Statements

  Charley Fox was a little man by the standards of the Metropolitan Police, and just young enough to have squeezed in when the regulation height had been lowered to five feet eight inches. He was not only small, but thin, bony and ugly, and his shoulders were slightly rounded. On the only occasion when Roger had seen him stripped, just after an investigation when they had been caught out in a heavy rain storm, he had been astonished by Fox’s powerful chest, biceps and forearms; all these were overdeveloped, and his arms were very long, giving him almost a simian appearance. His ugliness was monkey-like, too. But he had the sharpest pair of eyes in the Force, and his power of observation of physical things had marked out a course for him.

  He called himself chief of the Dry Cleaning Department at the Yard.

  His main job was to examine the scene of a crime for anything which might be used as evidence, but he also cleaned clothes, examined boots and shoes, studied the art of finding things which nine men out of ten would have missed. Generally, this was all he was expected to do. Roger West, studying him that morning, and watching the way he considered all aspects of the case, wondered whether Fox had ambitions to get out of the rut in which he could never hope to get beyond detective inspector’s level.

  He briefed Fox to look for anything in the room or between the room and the front door of Number 24, and then went out to face the sarcasm, the annoyance, the anxiety and the impatience of eleven residents who wanted to leave at once, and who were already late for work. There was a girl, almost in tears, saying that if she were late she would almost certainly lose her job. There was an elderly man, bowler-hatted and carrying a furled black umbrella, who said in tones of abject misery: “I have not been late once in thirty four years.”

  “Time he was,” a detective sergeant named Noble muttered to Roger.

  Roger said: “If it will help, I will arrange to have all your employers telephoned officially and told that the delay has been caused by us, and that we will see that you get away just as soon as possible.”

  The little girl gasped: “If only you would!”

  “That would be very considerate of you,” said the bowler-hatted man, perking up. “I am sure that it would not then be registered against me, and if it were an official message—”

  “Collect all the telephone numbers, and get that laid on,” Roger instructed Noble, ignoring the man’s look of disgust.

  Then Roger began to question the neighbours, and soon had cause to wonder whether he would get far. No one appeared to have heard anything unusual during the night except a middle-aged physiotherapist who looked vaguely like a circus lion tamer, and who had heard ‘something fall’ in the flat below her at about a quarter to one. It might have been half past twelve or even a little earlier, she admitted, but she had been in bed for a while, after turning in about midnight. A nice-looking, fresh-faced girl with long, fair hair, who wore a tight fitting black jumper with a high neck and long sleeves, and the latest kind of elasticised, figure-fit slacks, volunteered a little hesitantly: “I came in about half past eleven, sir.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual?” asked Roger mechanically. He saw that the girl was a little ill-at-ease, then noticed that an older woman was looking down her nose in apparent disapproval.

  “Well, no, I didn’t really,” the girl said.

  “I wonder if you’ll spare me five minutes a little later,”

  Roger said. “May I come to your room?” The girl went off with obvious relief. He finished with all the others, and promised that they would be able to leave immediately the police had finished the search of the staircase and the hall. Then he checked what Fox was doing.

  Fox was bending over the dead girl’s body, which was now completely covered, and plucking at something on the pillow with a pair of tweezers.

  “What?” asked Roger.

  “Hairs, Mr. West.”

  “Not here?”

  “Grey as a badger’s.”

  “Keep it up,” Roger said. “Had any other luck?”

  “Not a sausage. Not in my department, anyhow.”

  Roger stood by the door.

  “Any department?”

  “Well,” Fox said, a little hesitantly, “I watched them taking the pictures and I heard what Old Dammit said, but no one noticed what I think I did. The thumb marks on the neck. The strangler must have been standing about where you are, and lunged forward at her. The way she’s lying against the head panel you’d think his right hand would be higher than the other, and the pressure would be from her left side to her right, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it wasn’t—her neck was bent the other way,” Fox said.

  “Translate it, will you?” Roger asked.

  “Sure you need me to?”

  “Sure, I want to know if you can!”

  Fox grinned; he was more attractive when he smiled than when in a serious mood.

  “Well, that left hand went higher and used a lot more force. I’d lay odds the chap was left-handed.”

  “Chap?”

  “Don’t imagine it could have been a woman, do you?” said Fox, astonished. “I shouldn’t have—” He broke off, turned his eyes towards the ceiling, and said: “Strewth! There’s a physiotherapist upstairs with bulging muscles. She could, I suppose. Any reason to think she did?”

  “None at all,” Roger said. “Just reason to wonder if it’s safe to take it for granted that it was a man. Keep at it, Charley.”

  “About finished, except that I’ve got to vacuum clean the carpet,” declared Fox. “I did manage to get onto the stairs and the passage pretty quick. There’s one thing you could do for me, Mr. West.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let me get the vacuum busy before half a dozen other yobs stamp about the place,” pleaded Fox. “I’ll bet I’ll find dust or bits of dirt from a dozen different places, most of them from our chaps’ shoes. Hell of job when it’s as complicated as that. I know everyone wants to get here first, but it’s worth thinking about.”

 
“I’ll see if I can lay it on,” said Roger. “Did you find anything on the staircase?”

  “Nope.”

  “Pity,” Roger sympathised. “I’ll be seeing you.” He hurried down the stairs and into the street, where a Divisional detective inspector was organising door-to-door calls by the police to find out which people living nearby had been awake at midnight or after. That was another chore which would not be popular but could not be avoided. Several neighbours had been up and were now being questioned, and the Divisional man said: “There’s one description of a chap who brought the girl home in a Jaguar sometimes, Mr. West.”

  “Reliable?” asked Roger.

  “Well, I’ve got it from three neighbours,” the other told him. “It was a black Jaguar, probably a 1957, Mark VII, and the man was shortish, bald headed—he didn’t wear a hat—and rather broad.”

  “Did he ever go in?”

  “He wasn’t seen to.”

  “Keep at it,” Roger urged.

  It was then nearly half past nine, he was feeling hungry, and was acutely conscious of the number of things that he wanted to do; among them, go to Anderson’s shop in Kensington, where the girl worked and where the Andersons – her employers – lived in a flat above the shop. He had talked to the Yard, and a Detective Inspector Gill and a couple of sergeants had gone to the shop to start questioning the staff, and to find out if anything was missing, but he wanted to be there himself as soon as he could. He went into the murder house again, and found the girl in the close fitting slacks and jumper waiting for him in a room at the top of the building. This was Jennifer Ling, according to the list of residents Noble had prepared. She had a slim figure rather like that of the dead girl, and a fresh, wholesome look. There was an appetising odour of bacon which made Roger feel more hungry than ever, and the girl was buttering a slice of toast.

  “I’m very grateful that you didn’t question me in front of the others,” she said, and Roger liked her smile and her frankness. “There’s a friend of my mother in one of the other flats, and she tittle-tattles so much you wouldn’t believe. Actually, I was in about one o’clock.”