Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  Curled up in the arm-chair Blount vacated, his eyes half closed, Nigel watched the Superintendent at work, moving solidly, purposefully, from one part of the room to another, shifting the newspapers to peer at the carpet, measuring, making marks with white chalk, taking notes, standing back as if to see the puzzle in perspective, muttering and clucking to himself the while. After a quarter of an hour of this, the very room began to look browbeaten, exhausted and guilty.

  “You ought to go on the films, Blount.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “And everyone in the country be compelled to attend the picture. Prophylactic measures. An awful lot of people would be inoculated against crime for ever if they could see one police investigation—the real thing—from beginning to end.”

  “Crime Doesn’t Pay series, eh?”

  “No. They’re too dramatic, too box-office. It’s the slow, tireless, meticulous, cumulative, boring side of an investigation; the spectacle of a stout, fatherly-looking gentleman in a bowler hat leaving not a single pebble on a whole beach unturned; that’s what would unnerve any misguided person who was contemplating a felony.”

  “The professional criminal hasn’t that much imagination. He’s a stupid fellow, on the whole—a one-track mind.”

  “But we’re not dealing with professionals now. You’ll never hear the last of it from Establishments Division if you cut a piece out of that carpet. Has it occurred to you, Blount, that the method of this attack on Jimmy, compared with the last——”

  The telephone rang. Blount took up the receiver.

  “Yes, Blount here . . . He’s not at his house? Went out at 10.25? . . . Very well, Simpson, wait there till you hear from me.”

  He turned to Nigel.

  “What do we make of this?”

  “Search me. Brrh, it is cold in this arm-chair—it must be the dawn wind. One might be sitting on a mountain ledge awaiting the rescuers. Oh, my God!”

  Blount positively started. Nigel was on his feet and had whipped round to face the window behind the arm-chair. Silently he moved towards it, opened a crack in the curtain and peered through.

  “Blount, this window is unlatched. That’s where the draught was coming from.”

  “Well, shut it then,” said Blount irritably.

  “No. I fancy perhaps there is someone sitting on a mountain ledge to-night.”

  Nigel drew the curtain right back, opened the window wide, put out his head and called into the darkness.

  “Merrion! Merrion, you idiot! Hadn’t you better come in?”

  “Is he there? Can you see him?”

  “No. But he used to sit on the ledge, outside his room, when the flying bombs were coming. Blount, go and pull back the curtains and turn on the lights in all the rooms on this side, will you? If he’s out there, I’ll go after him.”

  “No, that’s my job, Strangeways.”

  “Please. I know him. He may take some handling.”

  “Very well. Watch yourself, though.”

  Nigel was already clambering out of the window. The ledge was at least two feet broad, but the well of darkness beyond made it seem more like two inches. Just as his eyes were growing used to the darkness, and he could see the traffic lights at the corner far below to his left, the light from Harker Fortescue’s room sprang out, carving a little bay in the night, making the darkness around it blacker still. Then, the light from his own room, Merrion’s, Brian Ingle’s. The ledge, flood-lit now, seemed deserted. Already one or two angry cries were coming up from the street below: people had been conditioned for so long to the black-out that although it was no longer necessary, they still made their automatic protests. Nigel found himself filled with a quite insensate rage against these busybodies in the street. “Bloody fools,” he muttered, and then, keyed up by his rage, began to walk smartly forward along the ledge.

  If Merrion was there at all, he must be at the corner of the building, where the ledge stopped. The lights, streaming out from the rooms in between, cut him off from view as effectually as would total darkness. Nigel walked through the successive bays of light, hoping that Merrion—if he was there—had not gone mad; hoping he was not there; yet hoping in a way that he was there, so that his own conjecture might be proved right.

  A gust of wind tousled the tree-tops in the park opposite, and seemed to bounce off the canyon wall of the Ministry, twitching maliciously at Nigel. He was passing Brian Ingle’s window. There was the end of the ledge, no figure crouching on it, nothing beyond but a dark drop.

  And then Nigel saw, with an odd mixture of fear, relief and irritation, the knuckles white on the coping. He went deliberately to the edge, knelt down and looked over.

  He was looking into the upturned face of Merrion Squires, more clown-like than ever, dead pale as if it had been coated all over with liquid white. He was hanging by his hands over an abyss. Far below, the traffic lights flicked from green to red.

  “So you are here,” said Nigel inadequately.

  “Don’t try and touch me, or I’ll let go.”

  Nigel’s accumulated irritability burst inside him.

  “All right, let go, then. Dash your god-damned brains out—it doesn’t matter to me,” he said furiously.

  He could not, if he had pondered conversational gambits for an hour, have hit on a more successful one. The wild look went out of Merrion’s frantic, upturned eyes. A sort of resentment took its place.

  “That’s a nice way to talk to an old friend,” he gasped.

  “If you don’t pull yourself up soon,” Nigel remarked coldly, “you’ll not be able to.”

  “Well, who cares? You don’t.”

  “Jimmy has been stabbed, and——”

  “Yes, I know that. With my knife. So I’d better take the high jump now, hadn’t I?”

  “You’d better come up and tell me what you know about it.”

  The eyes rolled in the chalky, clown’s face; they were beginning to look mad again. “I don’t know anything. I——”

  “This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had. I’m getting cold and I want to go to bed. Jimmy is not dead; he won’t die. You will, if you try and stay there much longer. It’ll take you about fifteen seconds, after you’ve let go, to hit the street. You’ll be conscious all the time, and it will seem much, much longer than fifteen seconds. And when you do hit the street, you will not necessarily be killed outright. People have fallen greater heights, and survived for some days afterwards, in extreme agony. Why go through all that when neither I nor the police are at all convinced that it was you who attacked Jimmy?”

  Merrion Squires, beads of sweat on his face, peered up at Nigel. At last he said:

  “D’you swear that, now?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Help me up.”

  Nigel lay down full length on the ledge and took hold of Merrion’s wrists. Merrion’s feet began to scrabble on the smooth wall. His breath came in sobs: “I can’t! I’ve got no strength left! I——”

  “Pull, damn you! Don’t be such a snivelling baby!”

  The insult seemed to brace Merrion. He swore back at Nigel furiously, made a new effort, and scrambled out of the abyss of darkness on to the lighted ledge. There he collapsed for a few seconds, sobbing again.

  “Are you ready now?” asked Nigel briskly. “We’ll have to crawl back to Jimmy’s window; the rest are locked inside——”

  Merrion Squires interrupted him strangely.

  “Nigel, you asked me a question just now.”

  “Well, are you ready? There’s no hurry. Take your time——”

  “Not that. You asked, ‘Why go through all that?’” His body shuddered convulsively. “I’ll tell you. Because I don’t know. I don’t know whether I stabbed Jimmy or not.”

  CHAPTER VI

  MR. SQUIRES: YOUR COMMENTS, PLEASE

  “I KNOW IT must look bad, after that shindy I had with the Director over my lay-outs for the Pacific job,” said Merrion Squires.

  “Yo
u don’t inevitably attempt to kill the boss just because he ticks you off.”

  Merrion gave Nigel one of his glancing looks, half-challenging, half-defensive.

  “Ah, but think of the Irish temperament, my boy. Vindictive. Never forgets an injury.”

  “Well, if you’ve got a confession to make, you’d better keep it for the Superintendent. He’ll be here any moment.”

  Nigel Strangeways rose from the breakfast table and began prowling round Merrion’s room. It was 8.45 on the morning after the attack on Jimmy Lake. When they had got him off the ledge, Merrion had been in no shape for questioning. With Blount’s consent, Nigel had accompanied him back to his lodgings in a police car and stayed the night. The plain-clothes man, whom the Superintendent had insisted on keeping at his post there, had just been relieved by another as they began breakfast. The search of the Ministry building had disclosed nothing more than an unlatched window on the ground floor—which might mean something or might not. No doubt the police were working on it now.

  “I must say, it’s very odd to think of you as a detective,” Merrion Squires was saying. “I’m not sure I don’t prefer your normal rôle—the stern but just Jehovah of the Editorial Unit. Don’t you find it embarrassing having to snoop around your old colleagues?”

  “I prefer it myself. On the other hand, I do quite enjoy snooping. Born inquisitive, I suppose. I collect human frailties like Hark’ee collects. . . . Now this is very nice, a quite enchanting piece of work.”

  Nigel held up a pencil drawing of Merrion’s, with an air of delighted discovery which effectually concealed the fact that he had already found it earlier this morning, while Merrion was asleep, and Nigel poking about in the magpie litter of his sitting-room.

  “Did Mrs. Lake sit for this?” he asked.

  “Is this the sort of ‘human frailty’ you collect?” replied Merrion, a sharp edge on his voice.

  “Why be so evasive about it? Nothing morally culpable about drawing a head-and-shoulders sketch of a pretty woman, is there?”

  After a pause, Merrion said, rather sulkily:

  “Yes, she did sit for it. I can’t draw from memory.”

  “You know her well?”

  “I have made a pass or two at her, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I didn’t mean it at all. However, as you approach it from that angle—”

  “What other angle would you prefer to approach a pretty woman from?”

  “—With what results?”

  Merrion Squires’ evasive glance flickered from Nigel to the portrait he held. He seemed to be making up his mind whether he should take offence or not. Then he gave an exasperated kind of grin.

  “Nothing very striking. I did not ‘make’ her, as you’d put it. A few kisses. She’s a very deep, cold little pond, that one.”

  “A case of deep meeting deep, that must have been. Is she still in love with Jimmy, would you say?”

  “I doubt if she could love any one distractedly, except herself.” Merrion was talking seriously now. “No, Jimmy was the peaked and pining lover of the two.”

  “Yes, poor Nita seems to have——”

  “Poor Nita, nothing! It’s Alice his emotional capital has always been sunk in, my boy; don’t you get that wrong.”

  “He took a queer way of showing it, then,” said Nigel, genuinely surprised.

  “Ah, don’t be so naïve! Nita was a substitute for him—a substitute for the womanly affection and admiration, all the cosiness he couldn’t get at home. Clever of her to see that’s what he wanted. But of course he didn’t really want it—not in the depths of him. And he was beginning to realise this.”

  “He did, and he didn’t, want it?”

  “Yes, my innocent friend. Jimmy’s not capable of sustaining a deep, whole-hearted emotional relationship. He’s the type that, in the last resort, hates being fully involved. I know. I’m that sort myself. Now, Alice never made such demands on him; she gave him room to breathe. That’s why I say his emotional capital is sunk in her. He took up with Nita because there’s always a hell of a dualism in his sort of nature. Part of it wants to lose itself utterly in someone else—wants to defy the other half, which is all for keeping its own integrity and remaining irresponsible. Jimmy’s setting up with Nita was the first part of him, making a dash for full emotional responsibility. But the other half would always have been stronger and hauled it back. In fact, it’s a wonder Nita lasted so long—great tribute to the girl, when you come to think of it.”

  “Did Nita convey all this to you?” asked Nigel, after a meditative pause.

  “Oh glory, no! I was on far from intimate terms with the deceased, I’m glad to say.”

  “‘Glad?’ You’ve always been very hard on her, haven’t you?”

  “I see Jimmy’s fate, and I says to myself, ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes M. Squires.’”

  “Well, how do you know all this? Pure reason?”

  “Oh, no,” said Merrion. “Alice told me. Gave me the clue, anyway.” His voice became a startling mimicry of Mrs. Lake’s high, cool tones: “‘I know he’ll regret it. He doesn’t like exacting women. He’ll find her absolute hell before long, Merrion.’”

  The thought shot across Nigel’s mind that, if Merrion and Mrs. Lake were in a conspiracy together, this could be a very subtle manœuvre by Merrion to direct suspicion away from them—if they had been in a conspiracy against Nita, that is to say. On the other hand, if Jimmy Lake had been the intended recipient of the poison, why should Merrion admit even a mild degree of intimacy with her? And the fact that a murderous attempt should have been made on Jimmy, so soon after the poisoning, suggested that he had been the real target for the poison too.

  Nigel had no time to follow up this thought, for Superintendent Blount was announced. Blount was very business-like and impersonal this morning. He administered the official warning to Merrion Squires, then asked him to give his account of the previous evening. With a wry glance at the sergeant, who was all set to take down his evidence, Squires began.

  His story was that, after lunch on the previous day, he had found on his desk a note from Nigel, asking him to come back to the Ministry at eleven in the evening, as he had some important matters to discuss, and to wait in his room till Nigel turned up. He did so. He must have arrived only a few minutes after Nigel and the Deputy Director went down to the canteen. No, he had not seen any other member of the Division when he came in. About ten or fifteen minutes later—Merrion could not be at all sure—he had heard feet running past his door towards the staircase, and a moment afterwards he could see through the transom over the door that the passage lights had gone out. He left his room to investigate, and was attracted by a queer sound from the Director’s room. He went in and found Jimmy Lake very much as Nigel had found him, kneeling before. Nita’s desk, his body sprawled over it. Protruding from Jimmy’s back was the hilt of a knife which Merrion recognised as his own, or one of the same pattern. He assumed Jimmy to be dead. But he was approaching the body to make sure, when he heard the whine of the lift ascending, heard the lift door opening and feet coming down the passage. He was trapped in the room, with a body which had apparently been stabbed by his own knife. There was nothing for it but to scramble out of the window, push the window to from outside, and hide on the ledge, awaiting events.

  “I lost my head, of course,” he concluded. “If I’d had any sense, I’d have pulled out the knife and taken it with me.”

  “It’s extremely lucky for you that you didn’t,” said Nigel—a remark which earned him a nasty look from Blount.

  “I take it you wrote no such note to Mr. Squires?” the Superintendent asked Nigel, who shook his head. “What did you do with the note?”

  “Scrumpled it up and put it in my pocket. Here it is,” said Merrion Squires.

  “Ah. Typed. I see it’s got your initials, Mr. Strange-ways.”

  “That’s easy,” said Nigel, looking at the typewritten sheet over Blount’s shoulder. “
We all initial everything in the Civil Service—including the Attendance Book. Nothing simpler than to forge someone’s initials when you’re seeing them every day on odd bits of paper.”

  Blount took Merrion Squires over his story again, asking a number of innocent-seeming questions, which would have been dynamite if the story had been fabricated. But he could not shake Squires at all. In spite of that sliding eye, which often prepossessed one to doubt Merrion’s veracity, he did seem to be telling the truth now.

  “Was it generally known in the Division that Mr. Lake would be working late last night?”

  “I couldn’t say. I didn’t know myself. He often did, of course,” replied Squires.

  “And the Deputy Director? You see what I’m trying to get at, Mr. Squires? If your statement is correct, or, for that matter, if it is not, I have to ask myself how the criminal could rely on finding Mr. Lake in his room, yet be sure there’d be no one else about the place.”

  “There I can’t help you. Not being the criminal, as it so happens,” replied Merrion Squires.

  “Hark’ee—the D.D.—is very regular in his habits. He always goes down to the canteen about eleven o’clock when he’s working late,” put in Nigel. “And presumably the criminal had made sure, somehow or other, that Jimmy would be on the spot. Made an appointment with him, perhaps.”

  “If that is so, we shall know soon enough who it was. I’m going to see Mr. Lake this afternoon. The doctor says he is fit to be interviewed.” Blount held Squires with a steely look.

  “No, you won’t bounce me that way,” said Merrion, flushing. “If I stabbed Jimmy, it was quite unpremeditated, I assure you. Nothing was further from my mind when I came to the Ministry last night.” He held up a hand to check the question Blount was about to ask. “And, if I may make my modest contribution to human knowledge, the obvious thing for X to have done was to wait in the Photographs Library—its door is directly opposite the Director’s ante-room—wait there in the dark, with the door slightly open, till he’d seen Hark’ee depart for his nightly orgy in the canteen, and then slide into Jimmy’s room.”