Squatting beside the body like a busy little brown elephant, he went through the pockets. He’d got to find out what the murderer had taken that he had to return. Of course, someone else might have found the body and left the handkerchief, but an innocent man, argued Crook, would have left his own. You’d have to be callous to take things off the body of a corpse. There wasn’t much in the dead man’s pockets, a notecase with some ten-shilling notes in it, a season ticket, some loose cash, an old-fashioned turnip watch—that was all. No matches, no cigarettes, of course, no handkerchief.
‘What’s missing?’ wondered Mr Crook, delving his hands into his own pockets and finding there watch, coin, purse notecase, identity card, tobacco pouch, latchkey.…‘That’s it,’ said Mr Crook. ‘He hasn’t got a key. But he talked of going back and letting himself in, so he had a key.…’ There was the chance that it might have fallen out of his pocket, but though Crook sifted through the damp sooty leaves he found nothing; he hadn’t expected to, anyhow. There were only two reasons why X. should have wanted to get into the flat. One was that he believed Smyth had some evidence against him and he meant to lay hands on it; the other was to fix an alibi showing that the dead man was alive at, say, 10.30, at which hour, decided Mr Crook, the murderer would have fixed an alibi for himself. He instantly cheered up. The cleverest criminal couldn’t invent an alibi that an even cleverer man couldn’t disprove.
He straightened himself, as he did so he realized that the corpse had one of its hands folded into a fist; it was a job to open the fingers, but when he had done so he found a morsel of tough white paper with a greenish blur on the torn edge. He recognized that all right, and in defiance of anything the police might say he put the paper into his pocketbook. The whole world by this time seemed absolutely deserted; every now and again a long melancholy hoot came up from the river from some benighted tug or the sirens at the mouth of the estuary echoed faintly through the murk; but these were other-worldly sounds that increased rather than dispelled the deathlike atmosphere. As to cause of death, his guess would be a spanner. A spanner is a nice anonymous weapon, not too difficult to procure, extraordinarily difficult to identify. Only fools went in for fancy weapons like swordsticks and Italian knives and loaded riding crops, all of which could be traced pretty easily to the owners. In a critical matter like murder it’s safer to leave these to the back-room boys and stick to something as common as dirt. Crook was pretty common himself, and, like dirt, he stuck.
‘The police are going to have a treat to-night,’ he told himself, making a beeline for the telephone. His first call was to the dead man’s flat, and at first he thought his luck was out. But just when he was giving up hope he could hear the receiver being snatched off and a breathless voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘Mr Smyth? Arthur Crook here. Just wanted to be sure you got back safely.’
‘Yes. Yes. But only just. I decided to walk after all.’
‘Attaboy!’ said Mr Crook. ‘Don’t forget about our date to-morrow.’
‘Nine o’clock,’ said the voice. ‘I will be there.’
Mr Crook hung up the receiver. What a liar you are, he said, and then at long last he dialled 999.
***
The murderer had resolved to leave nothing to chance. After his call to Mr Crook’s office he came back to the waiting car and drove as fast as he dared back to the block of flats where he lived. At this hour the man in charge of the car park would have gone off duty, and on such a night there was little likelihood of his encountering anyone else. Carefully he ran the car into an empty space and went over it carefully with a torch. He hunted inside in case there should be any trace there of the dead man, but there was none. He had been careful to do all the opening and closing of doors, so there was no fear of fingerprints, but when he went over the outside of the car his heart jumped into his mouth when he discovered blood-marks on the right-hand passenger door. He found an old rag and carefully polished them off, depositing the rag in a corner at the further end of the car park. This unfortunately showed up the stains of mud and rain on the rest of the body, but he hadn’t time to clean all the paintwork; there was still a lot to be done and, as he knew, there is a limit to what a man’s nervous system can endure. Locking the car, he made his way round to the entrance of the flats. The porter was just going off; there wasn’t a night porter, labour was still scarce, and after 10.30 the tenants looked after themselves.
‘Hell of a night, Meadows,’ he observed, drawing a long breath. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I’d be brought in feet first.’
The porter, a lugubrious creature, nodded with a sort of morbid zest.
‘There’ll be a lot of men meeting the Recording Angel in the morning that never thought of such a thing when they went out to-night,’ he said.
His companion preserved a poker face. ‘I suppose a fog always means deaths. Still, one man’s meat. It means work for doctors and undertakers and ambulance-men.…’ He didn’t say anything about Arthur Crook. He wasn’t thinking of Arthur Crook. Still under the man’s eye he went upstairs, unlocked the door of his flat, slammed it and, having heard the man depart, came stealing down again, still meeting no one, and gained the street. So far everything had gone according to plan.
It took longer to get to Westminster than he had anticipated, because in the fog he lost his way once, and began to panic, which wasted still more time. His idea was to establish Smyth alive and talking on his own telephone at, say, 10.30 p.m. Then, if questions should be asked, Meadows could testify to his own return at 10.30. On his way back, he would return the key to the dead man’s pocket, replace the handkerchief, slip home under cover of darkness.…He had it worked out like a B.B.C. exercise.
Luck seemed to be with him. As he entered the flats the hall was in comparative darkness. It was one of those houses where you pushed a button as you came in and the light lasted long enough for you to get up two floors; then you pushed another button and that took you up to the top. There wasn’t any lift. As he unlocked the door of the flat the telephone was ringing and when he unshipped the receiver there was Arthur Crook, of all the men on earth, calling up the dead man. He shivered to think how nearly he’d missed that call. He didn’t stay very long; there was still plenty to do and the sooner he got back to his own flat the more comfortable he’d feel. And how was he to guess that he would never walk inside that flat again?
He congratulated himself on his foresight in tying the handkerchief to the arm of the bench; in this weather he might have gone blundering about for an hour before he found the spot where Smyth lay in the gutter, his feet scuffing up the drenched fallen leaves. As it was he saw his landmark, by torchlight, without any trouble. It was then that things started to go wrong. He was level with the seat when he heard the voice of an invisible man exclaim, ‘Hey there!’ and he jumped back, automatically switching off his torch, and muttering, ‘Who the devil are you?’
‘Sorry if I startled you,’ said the same voice, ‘but there’s a chap here seems to have come to grief. I wish you’d take a look at him.’
This was the one contingency for which he had not prepared himself, but he knew he dared not refuse. He couldn’t afford at this stage to arouse suspicion. Besides, he could offer to call the police, make for the call box and just melt into the fog. Come what might, he had to return the dead man’s key. He approached the kerb and dropped down beside the body. Crook watched him like a lynx. This was the trickiest time of all; if they weren’t careful he might give them the slip yet.
‘Have you called the police?’ inquired the newcomer, getting to his feet. ‘If not, I…’ But at that moment both men heard the familiar sound of a door slamming and an inspector with two men hovering in the background came forward saying, ‘Now then, what’s going on here.’
‘Chap’s got himself killed,’ said Crook.
X. thought like lightning. He made a slight staggering movement, and as Crook put out his ha
nd to hold him he said, ‘Silly—slipped on something—don’t know what it was.’ He snapped on his torch again, and stooping, picked up a key. ‘Must have dropped out of his pocket,’ he suggested. ‘Unless,’ he turned politely to Crook, ‘unless it’s yours.’
Crook shook his head.
‘Which of you was it called us up?’ the Inspector went on.
‘I did,’ said Crook. ‘And then this gentleman came along and…’ He paused deliberately and looked at the newcomer. It was a bizarre scene, the men looking like silhouettes against the grey blanket of fog with no light but the torches of the civilians and the bull’s-eyes of the force. ‘Seeing this gentleman’s a doctor…’ As he had anticipated there was an interruption.
‘What’s that you said?’
‘Penalty of fame,’ said Crook. ‘Saw your picture in the papers at the time of the Baldry case. Dr Norman Dunn, isn’t it? And perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m Arthur Crook, one of the three men living who know Tom Merlin didn’t kill Miss Baldry, the others bein’ Tom himself and, of course, the murderer.’
‘Isn’t that a coincidence?’ said Dr Dunn.
‘There’s a bigger one coming,’ Crook warned him. ‘While I was waitin’ I had a looksee at that little chap’s identity card, and who do you think he is? Mr Alfred Smyth, also interested in the Baldry case.’
The doctor swung down his torch. ‘So that’s where I’d seen him before? I had a feeling the face was familiar in a way, only…’
‘He is a bit knocked about, isn’t he?’ said Crook. ‘What should you say did that?’
‘I shouldn’t care to hazard a guess without a closer examination. At first I took it for granted he’d been bowled over by a car.…’
‘In that case we ought to be able to trace the car. He can’t have gotten all that damage and not left any of his blood on the hood.’
There was more noise and a police ambulance drove up and spewed men all over the road. Crook lifted his head and felt a breath of wind on his face. That meant the fog would soon start to lift. Long before morning it would have gone. The inspector turned to the two men.
‘I’ll want you to come with me,’ he said. ‘There’s a few things I want to know.’
‘I can’t help you,’ said Dunn sharply, but the inspector told him, ‘We’ll need someone to identify the body.’
‘Mr Crook can do that. He knows him.’
‘Always glad to learn,’ said Crook.
‘But you…’ He stopped.
‘You don’t know the police the way I do,’ Crook assured him. ‘Just because a chap carries an identity card marked Alfred Smyth—that ain’t proof. I never set eyes on him before.’
‘Mr Crook’s right,’ said the inspector. ‘We want someone who saw him when he was alive.’
They all piled into the car, Crook and Dunn jammed together, and no one talked. Dunn was thinking hard. Sold for a sucker, he thought. If I hadn’t tried so hard for an alibi—perhaps, though, they won’t touch Meadows. Meadows will remember, all the same. He’ll think it’s fishy. And the car. Of course there was blood on the car. If they examine it they’ll notice it’s washed clean in one place. They’ll want to know why. No sense saying I was coming back from the pictures. Meadows can wreck that. Besides, Baron, the man who looks after the cars, may remember mine hadn’t come in when he went off duty. Round and round like a squirrel in its cage went his tormented mind. There must be some way out, he was thinking, as thousands have thought before him. They’ve no proof, no actual proof at all. Outwardly he was calm enough, maintaining the attitude that he couldn’t imagine why they wanted him. But inside he was panicking. He didn’t like the station surroundings, he didn’t like the look on the inspector’s face, most of all he feared Crook. The police had to keep the rules; Crook had never heard of Queensbury. To him a fair fight was gouging, shoving, and kicking in the pit of the stomach. A terrible man. But he stuck to it, they hadn’t got anything on him that added up to murder. He’d had the forethought to get rid of the spanner, dropped it in one of those disused pig buckets that still disfigured London streets; but he’d had to use the one near his own flats, because in the dark he couldn’t find any others. He thought now the river might have been safer.
He tried to seem perfectly at ease, pulled off his burberry and threw it over the back of a chair, produced his cigarette case.
‘Of course, our own doctor will go over the man,’ the inspector said, ‘but how long should you say he’d been dead, Dr Dunn?’
He hesitated. ‘Not so easy. He was a little chap and it’s a bitter cold night. But not long.’
‘But more than twenty minutes?’ the inspector suggested.
‘Yes, more than that, of course.’
‘That’s screwy,’ said the inspector. ‘I mean, Mr Crook was talking to him on the telephone in his flat twenty minutes before you happened along.’
He couldn’t think how he’d forgotten that telephone conversation. That, intended for his prime alibi, was going to ball up everything.
‘I don’t see how he could,’ he protested. ‘Not unless the chap’s got someone doubling for him.’
‘You know all the answers,’ agreed Crook. ‘Matter of fact, the same chap seems to be making quite a habit of it. He rang me a bit earlier from Fragonard 1511 to tell me Smyth couldn’t keep an appointment to-night. Well, nobody knew about that but Smyth and me, so how did X. know he wasn’t coming, if he hadn’t made sure of it himself?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Dunn.
‘We are asking you,’ said the inspector deliberately.
The doctor stared. ‘Look here, you’re on the wrong tack if you think I know anything. It was just chance. Why don’t you send a man round to Smyth’s flat and see who’s there?’
‘We did think of that,’ the inspector told him. ‘But there wasn’t anyone…’
‘Then—perhaps this is Mr Crook’s idea of a joke.’
‘Oh no,’ said Crook looking shocked. ‘I never think murder’s a joke. A living perhaps, but not a joke.’
Dunn made a movement as though to rise. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you…’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ drawled Crook.
‘What does that mean?’
‘There’s just one point the inspector hasn’t mentioned. When I found that poor little devil to-night he’d got a bit of paper in his hand. All right, inspector. I’ll explain in a minute. Just now, let it ride.’ He turned back to Dr Norman Dunn. ‘It was a bit of a Treasury note, and it seemed to me that if we could find the rest of that note, why then we might be able to lay hands on the murderer.’
‘You might. And you think you know where the note is?’
‘I could make a guess.’
‘If you think I’ve got it…’ Dunn pulled out his wallet and threw it contemptuously on the table. ‘You can look for yourself.’
‘Oh, I don’t expect it would be there,’ replied Crook, paying no attention to the wallet. ‘But—every murderer makes one mistake, Dunn. If he didn’t, God help the police. And help innocent men, too. And a man with murder on his hands is like a chap trying to look four ways at once. Now that note suggested something to me. You don’t go round carrying notes in a fog, as if they were torches. You’d only get a note out if you were going to pay somebody, and who’s the only person you’re likely to want to pay in such circumstances? I’m talking like a damned politician,’ he added disgustedly. ‘But you do see what I’m drivin’ at?’
‘I’m only a doctor,’ said Dunn. ‘Not a professional thought-reader.’
‘You’d pay a man who drove you to your destination—or tried to. There was some reason why Smyth had a note in his hand, and my guess is he was tryin’ to pay some chap off. That would explain his bein’ at Temple Station. On his own feet he wouldn’t have passed Charing Cross, not a chap as frightened of the dark as he
was. While he was offerin’ the note, X. knocked him out, and realizin’ that funny questions might be asked if the note was found with him, he’d remove it. You agree so far?’
‘I don’t know as much about murder as you do, Mr Crook,’ said Dunn.
‘That’s your trouble,’ Mr Crook agreed. ‘That’s always the trouble of amateurs setting up against pros. They’re bound to lose. Let’s go on. X. removes the note. So far, so good. But he’s got a lot to remember and not much time. He can’t be blamed if he don’t remember it’s trifles that hang a man. If I was asked, I’d say X. shoved that note into his pocket, meanin’ to get rid of it later, and I’d say it was there still.’
Capital Crimes: London Mysteries Page 38
