The Figure in the Dusk

by John Creasey

  She broke off.

  “Meg?”

  “Meg’s a—er—Meg’s a friend of mine,” said Georgina Sharp, weakly.

  “You’re better at telling the truth,” said Roger. “Even if you don’t tell us, we can find it in half an hour. Who is Meg?”

  “My—sister. But she doesn’t know I’ve come; she—”

  “You’re protecting your little sister’s good name, are you?”

  “Little? She’s older than I, and hates anyone to know she’s made such a fool of herself. I only forced it out of her because she’s been so funny lately—couldn’t sleep, always got a headache and brooding. I knew it was a man. She always goes like that when a man’s let her down; she can’t hold them, somehow; but this time—the brute—”

  “What did the brute do?”

  Georgina Sharp looked suddenly wise and very young.

  “I don’t have to tell you. It might be slanderous, and I’m not going into any police court, nor is Meg. It would just about finish her off. I think—think I want to see a solicitor.”

  Roger laughed.

  Peel, unexpectedly, chuckled, and moved across to the girl.

  “I’ve forgiven you,” he said. “Like a cigarette?”

  “Oh, thanks!”

  Roger gave her a light.

  “Do policemen always behave like this?” she asked. “I shall expect to be offered a cup of tea next. Or is it only when they want to get something out of—er—a person?”

  “That’s right; we’re full of deep cunning,” said Roger. “Whatever you think Mr. Latimer has done to your sister, you can tell us in confidence. We shan’t let you down, and—”

  “Oh, no,” she said sarcastically. “If I made a charge against him and you wanted to prove it, you wouldn’t make Meg and me go into the witness-box, would you? I’m not that young. I do want to see a solicitor,” she added firmly. “That’s if you’re going to ask any more questions.”

  “Let’s see,” said Roger. “Where do you live?”

  “Kensington.”

  “In the gutter, or a shop doorway?”

  She put her head on one side.

  “You’re quite a wit, aren’t you? I live at 122 Middleton Street, Kensington, which is near Barkers, and I share a top floor flat with Meg. It’s a hole, really; but we do the best we can with it. Meg’s wonderful with a few odds and ends of materials.”

  “And you’re an artist’s model?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind. How long have you known Latimer?”

  “On and off for years, but it’s only lately that I’ve got to know him well.”

  “And Meg?”

  “Oh, she’s been going with him for about a year, I think. She—” The girl paused, and bit her lip.

  Now that she had recovered from her outburst, she looked candid and attractive. To his eternal credit, Peel was watching her with amusement, and at the same time keeping an eye on the door. “Listen, Mr. West—or do I call you Chief Inspector?”

  “Mister will do.”

  “If I do tell you, will you have to take any action?”

  “I might.”

  “And would you need Meg as a witness?”

  “If I knew what you were talking about, I could tell you. If it could be done, I’d put up other witnesses, to avoid causing anyone distress.”

  “And anything I said would be in confidence?”

  “Safe and sound.”

  “The brute’s been fleecing her,” said Georgina abruptly. “Nearly five hundred pounds. That’s a fortune, for us. He promised to pay her back a hundred; last night he was to have come to the flat. I was there waiting for him. But he didn’t turn up.”

  “Perhaps he knew you were waiting,” said Peel.

  “That’s nothing to do with it.”

  “And you suggest this was theft,” said Roger mildly.

  “Of course it was!”

  “Did she lend it to him?”

  “She lent him some, but he stole the rest.”

  “Sure?”

  “Meg says so, and Meg doesn’t He to me.”

  “I see. It could be argued that if she’d lent him some he took the other in good faith, I suppose,” said Roger, with a blank expression. “On the face of it, it’s not a charge; but it might become one. Nothing worse?”

  “If you don’t think five hundred pounds of my sav—”

  Roger looked into the pretty, startled face, as she broke off.

  “So it was your money.”

  “Well—”

  “Did you lend it to Meg?”

  “I—it—no! Oh, forget it!”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Roger.

  “I’m a complete fool,” declared Georgina Sharp, forlornly. “I ought to have kept my silly mouth shut. Meg always said I talk too much. It was our money, really; we have a joint account.”

  “And Meg forgot to tell you how much she was drawing out, and when you discovered it, told you the truth,” said Roger. “What time were you expecting Mr. Latimer last night?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “How long did you wait for him?”

  “All the evening.”

  “And he didn’t show up at all?”

  “I don’t think for one moment he intended to,” said the girl. “I don’t think I ever did, but Meg was sure he would. In spite of everything, she still thinks he’s wonderful—but weak. She—is—quite—impossible. Sometimes I wonder how we ever came to be sisters. But you don’t want to be worried by my troubles or Meg’s. I wonder if you could—er—just suggest to the brute that if he doesn’t repay the money, there will be trouble.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Roger. “Do you know any of his other friends?”

  “A few,” she said carelessly. “He gathers women to him as moths to an electric light. You see how modern I am!” She was being facetious to cover up her nervousness. “He’s quite an Adonis, if you like them dark and languorous.”

  “I’m not dark,” Peel said.

  “I just saw a man hiding—anyhow, your arms hid your head,” she said defensively.

  “I’m not languorous, either.”

  She laughed. “He’s not always. When I first met him I thought he was quite something. I couldn’t believe that Meg was on to a good thing at last—and wasn’t I right!”

  She glanced round and saw the man’s photograph, next to Mrs. Arlen’s.

  “Is that him?” asked Roger.

  “Yes. Look here, why were you here?”

  “Waiting for him.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “We had authority. I shouldn’t worry about that. Will you do something for us, Miss Sharp?”

  Her eyes were round and guileless.

  “Will it get Ralph in trouble?”

  “It might.”

  “He may be a heel, but I don’t have to be,” she said.

  “You’d never know, and all you’ll do is to save us a little time,” said Roger. “Go home, and write down the names of his friends—with their addresses, if you know them, and the places he usually goes to. Where he takes your sister out to dinner, for instance.”

  “She takes him out,” sniffed Georgina. “Yes, I’ll do that; I can’t see that it will do any harm, but—I won’t tell Meg. I don’t want to upset her, and she’s upset enough as it is. Do you have to come and collect the list?”

  “Bring it to me, at Scotland Yard.”

  “Love us,” said Georgina, “me at Scotland Yard! Oh, well, you’ve been pretty nice about it all. I’ll see what I can do. Of course, Meg knows more about his friends than I do, but I can probably squeeze some tit-bits out of her. May I go now?”

&n
bsp; “Yes.”

  She stood up, and turned to Peel.

  “I am really sorry about that nose,” she said, “I couldn’t see you properly, it’s dark in that corner, and I thought you—he—was hiding from me, and I just—”

  “Think no more of it,” said Peel, handsomely.

  “Thanks. Fancy policemen being human beings,” said Georgina.

  She shook hands gravely with each of them, turned and went out, without looking round. They let her open the front door herself.

  It had hardly closed before Roger said:

  “After her.”

  “Right!” said Peel, who was already on the move. “Mind you, I shall keep my distance.”

  He grinned, and went out cautiously, then closed the door.

  Chapter Seven

  Search for Latimer

  Peel had left a pile of books on the table in the living-room. There was an address-book, bank statements, other books which showed that Latimer was a contact man for several small firms in the West End – introducing business which varied from jewellery to cosmetics, furs to gowns and hats and a variety of other commodities. He lived on the commission, and apparently lived fairly well. The bank statements showed nothing of unusual interest; he had a few hundred pounds to his credit.

  Roger sat at the table and ran through the address-book. There were many entries, both of men and women. Against some, always women, were little red dots. There were seventeen of these.

  Roger stretched out for the photographs album.

  There were fourteen photographs in it, and nine were signed with Christian names which coincided with the Christian names of the marked women. There was no one named Sharp, and Mrs. Arlen wasn’t in the address-book.

  He made copious notes, put back everything as he had found it, went through the clothes again and satisfied himself that nothing was bloodstained and nothing’ had been washed or cleaned. He didn’t think it would be worth having a more thorough examination of the clothes at this stage. He had been here over an hour and a quarter, and but for the intervention of Georgina Sharp, it would have been ordinary dull routine; the kind of routine which sometimes led to results, but was seldom spectacular.

  He put the album under his coat, took the photograph of Latimer from the frame, and went out.

  The caretaker-porter was sitting in a little cubbyhole in a corner of the hall, and the detectives were sunning themselves at the entrance.

  They smartened up as Roger appeared.

  “One of you stay here,” Roger said. “Don’t speak to Latimer if he comes in, and telephone me at once.”

  “Right, sir!”

  “The other come with me.” Roger went to his car.

  Nothing had come in at the Yard. Sloan was out. Roger studied Latimer’s photograph, and wondered why women found him so attractive. He was a dark-haired man with a long jaw, good-looking in a heavy, languorous kind of way. He sent it to the Photographic Division, to have copies made, and went through the names and addresses of the seventeen young women. He sent a list of these to Records and fifteen minutes later was called on the telephone.

  “Bray, here,” said the Inspector in charge of Records.

  “Anything?”

  “Care to come over?”

  “All right,” said Roger, hopefully.

  Records was a room of shelves and filing cabinets, a library of known criminals. Bray, big and plump and nearly bald, sat at a small desk with his back to a large window. He had a button of a nose and a loose mouth, and talked as if he were eating plums.

  “Siddown, Handsome. Not much here, but one or two int’resting things. See.” He pointed to three photographs, smaller than those from the album, but obviously of three of the women. “There’s Elizabeth Morris, up twice for taking drugs, had a six months’ cure last year, haven’t heard anything about her since. Spiteful nature, see that—clawed the skin off a man’s nose once.”

  Roger grinned.

  “What’s funny?” asked Bray, who was not renowned for his sense of humour. “Then there’s Lilian Brown. Remember her? Of course you don’t; no memory, some of you people. Lil got twelve months for helping old Corry the Con. Wonder what’s happened to Corry; haven’t heard anything of him since he came out. Never a big cheese; how anyone ever fell for his spiel I could never understand. Talk about a fool born every minute! Pretty as a picture, Lil was; nice kid gone wrong. Then there’s Maude Pepper; got twelve months for running a disorderly house. At twenty-three, mind you! She was a hard case, Maude was. Haven’t had any reports on her since she come out, either.”

  “I’ll have them all checked. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing about the Sharp women?”

  “Not at that address, and not those Christian names,” said Bray. “You can’t tell; lies run off their tongues sometimes. You know that.”

  “Latimer?” asked Roger.

  “Nope.”

  “All right, thanks. Let me have the report, and I’ll get busy on them.”

  He went to the office of Superintendent Abbot, his immediate superior, and spent five minutes with him – a satisfactory five minutes, because he was given full charge of the case.

  Sloan was in the office when Roger got back, writing a report in his bold, schoolboyish hand; he still tucked his tongue into the corner of his mouth when he was concentrating on a report and at such times looked almost foolish; blond and brainless. There were few shrewder men at the Yard. He glanced up but didn’t stop until he had finished a sentence and made a full stop with great deliberation.

  “Latimer went out at half-past twelve last night, and didn’t come back,” he announced.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes. There’s no porter on duty after nine-thirty, but a man in the next door flat saw him go. He’d been out from five o’clock to about nine, that’s certain—and that’s all we know about him. He may have been out between half-past nine or so and midnight, and come back just for a wash and brush-up! He hasn’t been in any of his usual places today. I’ve been taking it easy, and haven’t given anything to the Press, but—”

  “Don’t yet,” said Roger. “But get some more men on the job. Any one of these women might know where he is.”

  He gave Sloan the album.

  Sloan glanced through it.

  “Phe-ew!”

  “He’s an eye for a pretty face,” said Roger. “I couldn’t find anything on his clothes; on the other hand, he wasn’t around at the time that matters. We’ve a photograph of him now; better have it sent round to all stations and mark it not for public release.”

  “Right.”

  “Nothing in about the bullets in Aden’s head?”

  “Not yet,” said Sloan.

  “I’m going up to Ballistics,” Roger said.

  Scrymegour, in charge of the Ballistics Department, was an unusual man for a London policeman; he was short and thin. He sat between rows of rifles, automatics and revolvers of all shapes and sizes, which lined the walls. A bench near the window was equipped with a microscope and several other instruments – mysterious to most people, simple to Scrymegour. He was writing in a swift, flowing hand, and on the desk were two bullets, each with a piece of thin string tied round them and with a small label attached.

  “Arlen job?” asked Roger.

  “Always in a hurry, that’s your trouble,” said Scrymegour. “Yes. These are .32, probably a Smith & Wesson; but you can say I’m guessing and you’ll be right. The bullets were fired at close quarters—you’ve seen these, haven’t you?”

  ‘These’ were photographs of Arlen, after death.

  Scrymegour pointed with a pencil.

  “Singe-marks on the temple and cheek, big blast opening inside the head; I’d say that they were fired within a couple of inche
s. Each would have been fatal; but you’ve had the medical report on that, I expect. Usual marks on the bullets; but we’ve never had any with the same marks before—unknown gun. Find us the gun, and we’ll prove these were fired from it, though.”

  “I know you will,” said Roger. “Well, if that’s the best you can do, I’ll be off.”

  He nodded and disappeared, before Scrymegour could make a comeback. But he wasn’t feeling particularly bright.

  He went to the Assistant Commissioner’s office. Chatworth was out, and that made him feel brighter.

  It was nearly five o’clock.

  He checked that the only prints found at 7 Merrick Street were those of Arlen, his wife, Peter and the servants; the thief hadn’t left any, and that made the thief pretty smart. Was Latimer smart? True, any little crook knew the danger of leaving prints and could protect himself against doing so, but usually there were some traces. The attack at Merrick Street and the assault in the car suggested a man of strong personality who knew exactly what he was doing – that was if they could take Mrs. Arlen’s story at its face value.

  He’d call in and see her again on his way home.

  He drove to Middleton Street from the Yard. Kensington High Street was crammed with people and with traffic, crowds were disappearing into the station in droves. He turned left and then right and came upon Middleton Street. A few people were walking along, but there was no sign of Peel.

  This was a street of tall, narrow houses, built in terraces; not the best type of Kensington property. Many of the houses had Apartment notice-boards up, and 122 was one of these.

  Peel wasn’t in sight.

  Roger parked his car near 122, and entered the house. The front door was open, as was often the case in apartment houses. There was a notice-board, with cards pinned on to it, and at the top was a card reading: Miss Margaret Sharp, Miss Georgina Sharp. The card was curling at the edges and yellowing with age; they’d been there for some time. He went up narrow, carpeted stairs, to a gloomy landing. The three doors were each fitted with Yale locks. Someone came into the house behind him, but stopped on the ground floor. He reached the third and top floor, where there was only one door – also fitted with a Yale.