The Case of the Innocent Victims

by John Creasey

  “Ledbetter says because he was guilty.”

  “Ledbetter could be right,” agreed Spendlove. “He’d know that by running he was making it look as if he were guilty. If everything else had been all right, I don’t think he would have run. I’d like to know what made him.”

  “Don’t you think he committed suicide?”

  Spendlove asked sharply: “Found his body?”

  “No.”

  “I was afraid for a moment that you had,” the newspaperman said. “No, I don’t think he’s the suicidal type. I don’t believe that he drove the car to the river, either.”

  “Good job you’re not a policeman,” Roger said dryly, and handed Spendlove his glass. “We still have to go on the facts.”

  “Can you prove that he did drive it there?”

  “On circumstantial evidence.”

  Spendlove said: “Handsome, I know I’m probably talking out of the back of my neck, but I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t felt strongly about it. It’s the baby angle. I take it you know that Edward Maddison—”

  “Has a young wife and a young baby.”

  Spendlove said: “I wanted to get out to Esher today, but couldn’t fit it in.”

  “General neglect of Mrs Maddison,” Roger said dryly. He lifted up the telephone, dialled a Kingston number, and asked for Superintendent Boon. Spendlove watched intently, as Roger asked questions. Yes, Maddison had reached home before six o’clock. He and his wife were still indoors. Their resident staff, a man and woman, were middle-aged – the man an ex-policeman. The resident nurse was a local girl. Yes, the house would be watched during the night.

  Roger was warm in his thanks as he rang off. “So it’s got you like that, too,” Spendlove remarked. “I don’t like the feel of this job – do you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve been dabbling in crime for nearly as long as you, and I’ve a nose for it,” Spendlove said. “I don’t think this case is what it seems. There’s a nasty stench about. I picked up a rumour that Gibson’s officially missing. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Roger answered simply.

  “Edgy about him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see what I mean,” Spendlove said, almost too intensely. “It isn’t running a normal course at all. I know that I’m probably trying to find something which will fit the facts, as I’d like to find them. I’d like to find that Cartwright isn’t guilty, and that he is being framed.”

  “I asked you once, what makes you think that he might be being framed?”

  Spendlove hesitated.

  “In about five minutes my supper will be ready,” Roger said. “Like to share it?”

  “No, thanks,” Spendlove said, and then gave a rather fierce grin. “What did you make of Edward Maddison?”

  “Autocratic throwback spoiled by his staff.”

  “Ah!”

  “Don’t be so cryptic.”

  “The kind who would demand and obtain implicit loyalty and obedience,” Spendlove said. “The whole of the Maddison-Cartwright family has been built up like that. I know. I read the history of the firm during that carpet smuggling business a few years back. I did a piece on the romance of carpet making and buying – you probably don’t remember. Maddison Brothers is the oldest firm in the country, it exports the finest carpets from the most out-of-the-ordinary places, and it’s been built up on the personalities of various heads of the family. There’s a kind of tradition: the Boss is really the Boss. Now the Boss is Edward Maddison. I think Cartwright would do whatever his uncle told him to do.”

  “Even to taking a murder rap?”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Or threatening his baby cousin?”

  “That’s right – Maddison’s child,” Spendlove said. “We both see how bad it could be.”

  “Yes, but don’t quote me,” Roger said.

  “I won’t. I can say I got it from somewhere else,” Spendlove promised, still looking uneasy. “I don’t know what it amounts to, but it’s a fact that the future of Maddison Brothers lies with Edward Maddison, his new son, and Roy Cartwright.”

  “That much even I know,” Roger said wryly, “but I can’t find an explanation which fits the facts.”

  “Keep at it,” urged Spendlove, in a firmer voice. “I ought to have known that I wouldn’t be ahead of you, but there was a chance. Found any reason why Cartwright might have wanted the Shaw child dead?”

  “That first murder, you mean?” Roger said. “No, I don’t know of a motive. Now tell me why you really came to see me.”

  “To find out if you were on to the Maddison family and inheritance angle,” Spendlove answered. “I’ll be off before the smell of those sausages drives me away! Oh, thanks for the tip this afternoon. Anything I can do for you at the moment?”

  “Yes,” Roger said.

  “Name it.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. Tell your readers that this is almost certainly a psychopathic job, and play up the fact that Gibson’s disappeared.”

  “Really think it’s a psycho job?” asked Spendlove.

  “Obviously it could be,” Roger answered, “but I’m not talking about schizophrenia, or possible insanity. Psychopaths often have motives, a deep-seated cause to hate, and some shock jolts them into taking action. But I needn’t tell you that! Tie everything up, will you, including the fact that Gibson was last seen at Maddison’s place, that Cartwright is the junior director of Maddison’s, and that the Maddison baby has been threatened.”

  Spendlove looked eager.

  “In other words, make Edward Maddison hopping mad.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Scare him, too?”

  “If he’s scarable,” Roger said. “A column on his marriage and the new baby wouldn’t do any harm at all.”

  “You really want Aunt Martha on that angle.”

  “I’ll get her, too, if you’re not quick about it,” Roger said.

  “Talk to her anyhow,” Spendlove advised. “We want this story spread far and wide. You needn’t tell her about the threat!”

  Richard came hurrying along the passage to announce that Roger’s supper was ready. The smell of sausages was appetising, but there was an odour of burnt toast. Spendlove went off. Roger said: “Keep everything under the grill, Fish, I won’t be a minute,” and hurried back to the telephone and dialled the Gazette. “Give me Aunt Martha,” he said when the operator answered, and the name was so general that there was not a moment’s hesitation; and Martha Wise was in.

  “Roger West here,” Roger said. “Could you do some sob-stuff on Mrs Edward Maddison’s great interest in young babies and things?”

  “I’m doing it now,” Aunt Martha told him, sweetly.

  Roger was smiling as he went into the kitchen. The boys had excelled themselves; there were four sausages, two eggs, three rashers of bacon and some crisply fried bread. Neither asked, but each was ready with a plate for a second supper. Roger ate ravenously, but said little. The boys, used to such spells of preoccupation, did not worry him with questions. He tried to convince himself that Spendlove had told all he knew, but was by no means certain. He also tried to make some kind of logical sequence of the different factors which the newspaperman had introduced, but could not.

  Was Cartwright being framed?

  Was there any family feud or jealousy?

  Did the new Maddison baby offer any threat to Cartwright’s future in the firm?

  Cartwright was still missing and so was Gibson; and a psychopathic killer might still be on the prowl. It was a hell of a case.

  Hilda Maddison was very young and very lovely, and she had a really beautiful body. She had modelled for one of the great fashion houses for two years before marrying Maddison, and she had learned to carry herself superbly, and to wear and select only those clothes which really suited her. She was usually bright-eyed, alert and, as far as one could tell, thoroughly contented with her lot.

  And she loved her child with a passion
ate love.

  She was a paragon of a wife, and did absolutely everything that her husband required of her – provided he told her what to do.

  For she had never been able to think for herself. Before Maddison had come along, she had been engaged six or seven times, only for the engagement to be broken off ‘by mutual consent’. In fact, she was almost simple. All her reactions were by the book, and her ideas were culled from weekly magazines of the more popular kind. She was sweet, charming, lovely, she had been chaste and virginal, perhaps the most beautiful shell of a woman in London. She had even allowed herself to be trained so that she could talk intelligently for a few minutes, and few of her casual acquaintances suspected the truth of her simplicity.

  Anyone who tried to spend half an hour in her company began to suspect the truth: that she had nothing to say in spite of her beautifully modulated voice.

  That night, about the time that Roger was eating his supper and Spendlove was driving back to Fleet Street, Hilda was watching television. She was alone in the living-room of the lovely house at Esher. Edward was in his study upstairs, and the married couple who ran the house were at their own television set. Hilda watched the antics of a comedian with the intensity of a child, smiled or laughed with the unseen audience and seemed to have no interest at all except the screen. But quite suddenly, and for no apparent reason, she stood up from a soft couch, and went out, walked straight to the stairs rather as if she believed that she was being watched by a crowd of buyers and prospective customers, went up the wide staircase, which was brightly lit, passed the door of her husband’s study without a glance, and went into the small room, next to her bedroom, where the baby slept. This was the nurse’s night off.

  There was a glow of light near the door, enough to show the outline of the cot and, when she drew nearer, enough to see the outline of a child’s head and face. Hilda reached the side of the cot, and then stared down. The television was blaring, and with the door open it sounded very loud, but she took no notice of this, just stared at the child. When the study door opened, she glanced round, but did not move. She heard Edward’s footsteps, and he appeared in the doorway, saying: “Hilda, my pet, must you leave the door open so that the television sounds all over the house?”

  Hilda didn’t answer, but turned to look at him, and he had never seen greater intensity on her face; never seen such emotion as there was now.

  “If anything should happen to my baby, I would kill myself,” she said. “I mean every word of that.”

  She had taken the phrase out of a book, Maddison knew, and had uttered it a dozen times today: he also knew that, at the moment she said it, she meant it.

  “But nothing will happen to him,” Maddison said soothingly. “If you’d be happier, I will arrange for a second nurse, a night nurse—”

  “I don’t want anyone here I don’t know,” Hilda answered sharply. “I don’t trust anyone, Edward; you know that. Have they caught Roy yet?”

  “My dear, I wish you wouldn’t talk as if Roy were a hunted criminal. He—”

  “I shan’t feel safe until he’s caught,” Hilda declared. “His name wouldn’t be in the papers like it is unless the police were pretty sure. If anything happened to my baby, I would kill myself.”

  Maddison went to her, slipped his arm round her shoulders and together they looked down on the child, until he said: “I think I would too, Hilda. But nothing will happen, you know. The police will take care of that.”

  “But that man who telephoned meant what he said!”

  “There are a lot of cruel, vicious men who enjoy causing pain and anxiety, and I believe the man who spoke to you was one of those. Now come along, precious. Don’t worry yourself about things which will never happen.”

  That was the moment when the telephone bell rang. Hilda jumped wildly, and rushed towards the study, as if determined to make sure that her husband could not get to the telephone first.

  As she put the instrument to her ear, a man said: “Make the most of the time you’ve got left with your baby.”

  “It was a soft voice, with nothing particular to identify it by,” reported the Yard man who was tapping the Maddison’s telephone. “The woman gasped, and then Maddison shouted into the telephone, but the caller had rung off. It was a London call, so there’s no hope of tracing it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Third Victim?

  Little Alice Graham was a very different type in every way from Hilda Maddison, although she came from the same background. She was so small and looked so young that many people found it difficult to believe that she was the mother of three children, one of them seven years old, the last a two-month old girl. Alice Graham was a bright, vivacious, hard-working and good-natured woman, her mind as sharp as a needle. Apart from running her home, bringing up the children and looking after her husband – a man crippled two years before by poliomyelitis – she helped to run the small carpentry business which George Graham had operated for years before his disaster. She had kept the business together while he had been away for nearly a year; had kept on the workmen; and, now that he was back and working from his wheelchair, she did all the clerical work, answered the telephone, booked the orders, and generally behaved as a woman-of-all-work. She was one of the happiest women alive.

  That night she was humming to herself while darning the older boy’s socks. The radio was on. Television was a dream to come when they were prosperous, because neither parent was prepared to buy anything on the hire-purchase system. All the children were upstairs in the three-bedroomed house on the borders of Acton and Ealing. George was still at the workshop, and would probably not be home until after eleven o’clock; it was now half-past nine.

  She had the radio tuned in very low, and every now and again she would get up, go to the door and listen to the silence. After the last trip, she went to the dresser drawer in the small living-room cum kitchen, opened it to get out her sewing box, and saw the silver paper which had been torn when the children had shared half of a large slab of chocolate that afternoon. She hesitated, looking elfin-young, and her eyes were glowing. She put her head on one side, said: “I shouldn’t,” and then picked up what was left of the slab, broke a small piece off and popped it into her mouth. She gave a comical little grimace, took out the box and slammed the drawer, and went back to her chair. It was a rocking chair with a restricted movement, and she swayed to and fro in it. The radio music stopped, and a man began to talk about education. She listened to this with one ear, hummed to herself and, after ten minutes, got up again and went to the passage door. It was still silent outside.

  Coming back, she glanced at the chocolate drawer, shook her head firmly, went to a chair – and then thought that she heard a sound. She stood quite still, looking round at the door. Had it been one of the children she would have known at once, but this was a kind of click, and she felt sure that it had not been from the radio.

  It was not often that she felt nervous, but folded on a corner of the table was the Evening Globe, carrying the story of the murdered child, and the missing Cartwright; there was also an article connecting the baby murder with one which had taken place last week. She moved very quickly towards the door, a little tense and pale, gripped the handle, and pulled.

  It did not open.

  Alice Graham turned it again, and the handle moved freely enough. She pulled again. The door had stuck; but she had never known it happen before, George always made sure that everything worked smoothly and well. She tried again, shaking the door, but it held fast.

  Suddenly, she cried: “Oh, God, no!”

  She darted across the room towards the telephone, and snatched up the receiver, then dialled 999. In spite of a surge of frenzy, she did it all very deliberately. Her heart was pounding, and she could hardly hear the voice of the operator, who asked almost disinterestedly: “What service do you want, please?”

  “Police.” Alice made herself say carefully. “This is Acton 01523. Someone is trying to kidnap my baby.”


  “Will you please—”

  Alice put the receiver down quickly. It seemed an age before she moved, but she tried the door handle, with the same result: and then she threw back her head and screamed.

  There must be someone up there; she felt sure that it was the baby-killer, but it was not only panic which made her scream; she wanted to frighten anyone who was up there.

  She heard footsteps above her head, and thought she heard a cry. In one swift movement she reached the radio and switched it off, and then screamed again. Her heart was pounding, and she felt an awful fear, but she knew that she had to do something. She went to the window overlooking the back garden, and her fingers trembled as she unfastened the latch. She was trembling all over when she flung up the window. She saw the light at her neighbour’s window opposite, but they had the television, and it was usually on loud.

  She climbed through the window, and as she stepped on to the path leading from the street to the garden, she heard, a man shout: “What’s the matter?”

  “Help!” Alice shouted. “My baby! Help, help!”

  She heard heavy footsteps not far away. There was light at the street, and as she raced towards it, she saw a policeman swinging towards the little gate, only twenty yards away from her.

  “There’s a man upstairs. He locked me in!” she cried, and did not know how to speak coherently. “There’s a man—”

  “Got the front door key?” the policeman snapped.

  She had forgotten that; she had been so cool and determined, but she had forgotten that vital thing. She turned on her heel, but the policeman said: “Get to a telephone and dial 999.”

  “I have, I—”

  “All right,” the policeman said firmly. “I’ll stop him. Probably just a burglar.” He swung towards the front door; and she saw him bend his elbow as he reached the front room window. Glass crashed. He seemed not to worry about splinters, but put his shoulder forward and climbed through. A man on the other side of the road called out: “Anything the matter?” Alice saw the policeman climbing, and went after him blindly. The street lamp showed just enough light for the man, and she knew that he would be able to see the door.