The Z Murders

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  Impressed by the tone of his voice, she responded,

  “Best in the world, Dick—after me.”

  “Good enough! Well, I’m not going to tell you all you’re bursting to know, because the less you know, the easier your job will be.”

  “My job?”

  “Yes—if you’ll accept it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Perhaps, nothing at all. Perhaps just—well, standing by. But, in any case, keeping quiet about this conversation, and being ready to help me if I want help at any time.”

  “Really, you’re distracting!” she exclaimed. “What sort of help?”

  “Well—if my lady friend, as you call her, ’phones again, take the message, and say nothing. Or, if I ’phone, take my message, and say nothing.”

  “I see. A sort of a go-between?”

  “Something of the kind, I expect.”

  “Very much of the kind, I expect! And the person I’m particularly to say nothing to is Inspector James?”

  “You get me.”

  “Yes—I think I’m beginning to get you, Dick,” she replied. “Well, I make no promises, but I’ll do what I can, and I only hope it’s in a good cause.”

  “You can count on that. There’s just one more thing you can do right now,” said Richard. “Peep out of the window, and tell me if anybody’s watching the house.”

  “Watching the house? Good gracious! What next?” She ran to the window quickly and peered into the road. A moment later she was back at the ’phone.

  “Of course, there’s nobody watching the house!” she reported, almost indignantly.

  “Road empty, eh?”

  “There was one man in it, but he was merely reading a paper.”

  “H’m! Just under my height? Dark brown suit? Thinnish?”

  “Yes! How on earth did you know?”

  “I didn’t know. I guessed. And another guess is that he’s not reading that paper, but looking through a hole in it. Well, thanks, Winifred. I’m glad to find you’re the same old sport as ever. If Tom wonders why I’ve not turned up, tell him some sudden business has made me change my plans. Anything you like. You’ve a fertile brain. Good-bye.”

  But before he replaced the receiver she detained him with a sudden question. “Dick!” she exclaimed. “You’re quite sure she’s innocent?”

  “I’m rather glad you asked that,” he responded, after a tiny pause, “though you’d better forget about it again, if you can. Yes—she’s innocent, my dear. And if ever a girl needed a friend, by George she does!”

  “She needs two, apparently,” commented Winifred. “Well, provided I can remain on the right side of my husband and heaven, I’ll try and be the second.”

  The conversation over, she moved towards the window again, but this time more cautiously. The thinnish man in the dark brown suit was still absorbed in his newspaper.

  Chapter IX

  The Second Victim

  Richard replaced the receiver and left the public telephone box, glancing to right and left as he did so. Already a depressing and unaccustomed furtiveness had entered into his behaviour, and for the first time in his life he was realising the sensations of the hunted. “This is bad enough when you haven’t done anything to deserve it,” he told himself. “When you really have, it must be hell!”

  In addition to the consolation of a clear conscience, one other factor helped to lighten his immediate mood. A practical, not a spiritual, factor. The blessed absence of Dutton.

  Dutton had been a terrible difficulty, a difficulty which was not decreased by Richard’s instinctive liking for the odd, annoying fellow. Descending from his contemplative breakfast in the dingy Chelsea shop, he had found the police sleuth buying acid-drops, and had even been offered one. The offer was accompanied by a solemn wink.

  “No, thanks!” Richard had muttered.

  “They’re refreshing,” Dutton had urged.

  “I leave you to the refreshment,” Richard had retorted.

  “Don’t hurry—I’m leaving, too,” Dutton had smiled. “Which way are you going?”

  And then had begun a ridiculous game of hide-and-seek which had wasted valuable hours.

  Dutton’s methods were the reverse of soothing. Sometimes he stuck close. Sometimes he pretended to lose himself. His absence was as nerve-racking as his presence, because you could never depend on it. Just when you believed you had shaken him off, you would spot him up a by-street, or find his reflection in a shop-window. He was never disturbed by discovery. He merely smiled or winked.

  “You think you’re winning, don’t you?” Richard growled once, as they met on top of a bus.

  “Bound to win, sir,” he replied. “I’ve got the whole of the law behind me.”

  “If only you had the sense to see that I’m not against the law!”

  “Then why not join up with the law, sir?”

  “We’ve already discussed that.”

  Dutton nodded.

  “And I’ve told you I’m choosing my own method,” Richard went on.

  “Different methods. Same object. Quite so, sir,” agreed Dutton, and lit a cigarette.

  “Do you really think that your method, at this moment, is leading anywhere?” demanded Richard. “Do you think you’re going to learn anything from me while sticking to me like a leech?”

  Rather to his surprise, Dutton considered the question seriously. Then he responded: “Nothing at all, sir. Good-day!” And left the bus.

  Richard was not deceived. He knew he was still under observation. But, in the afternoon, one of his many ruses did actually succeed when, affecting an air of relief and confidence, he boarded a Richmond train, contrived to leave it without being observed, and returned Chelsea-wards. It was from a telephone box in Chelsea that he had just communicated with his sister, and had learned the satisfactory news that Dutton was reading a newspaper in Hope Avenue.

  But the other news he had learned was less satisfactory. Sylvia Wynne had wanted to get in touch with him, and had failed. Likewise, the detective-inspector, though in his case the failure caused no tears.

  “Confound that fellow Dutton!” Richard growled. “But for him, I might have made a bit of headway by now!”

  Well, Dutton was off the board for the moment, and it would be folly to waste the moment. He turned towards Tail Street, deciding that the first use to which he must put his freedom was to revisit the studio. Perhaps Miss Wynne might be there, waiting for him! The mere thought added speed to his feet.

  He left the telephone box at nine minutes past four. At twenty past he was in Tail Street, right round the curve of it, and facing the blue door. It was nine hours since he had first seen that door. He had spent most of the nine hours wandering fruitlessly about. How had others spent the time?

  Had Richard known how two others had spent it, the frown on his face would have been considerably deeper, and would have meant rather more than, “Yes, but how am I going to get in?”

  He no longer possessed the obliging latch-key. He had returned it, in the bag, to Miss Wynne. Would he have to repeat the performance of ringing the bell?

  On the point of doing so, he changed his plan. He remembered the window at the back of the studio—the window with the defective catch. It had been open when he had left in the morning. If no one had returned, it would still be open.

  “Yes, and if it isn’t open,” he reflected, “then some one will have returned, and it will be up to me to find out who that some one is!”

  He wound his way out of the street, and steered for the narrow back alley. Now he was in the alley, walking with exaggerated stealth. Like Tail Street itself, the alley refused to go straight—possibly it was affected by the habits of the locality—and an angle hid the studio window from view. Despite his stealth, Richard rounded the angle almost at a run.…Then, abruptly, he stopped sho
rt. “Closed!” he muttered.

  Yes, the window was closed, proving indisputably that somebody had been in the studio since his last visit. Who was that somebody? Dutton? Inspector James? Sylvia Wynne herself? Or the as yet unidentified Terror who was responsible for the activities of all three, and also of Richard Temperley?

  More important: Was the somebody still in the studio? Straining, at this very moment, to discover the identity of the new intruder in the alley?

  This thought induced an increase of caution, and Richard bent low as he approached the window, keeping well beneath the level of the ledge. Reaching the window, he raised his head slowly. “If anybody is watching me from inside,” he reflected, grimly, “they must be getting a nasty shock at this moment!” Well, he’d had several, so it was only fair!

  Now his eyes drew up to the glass. For an instant he could only see the reflection of the brick wall behind him. Then, as he advanced his eyes closer, he saw into the room. In the distance, a paper-boy was calling.

  The room was empty.

  Well, that did not mean that the whole place must be empty. There were a couple of rooms off the studio. Probably a small kitchen and a small bedroom. He must get in somehow, and find out whether they, also, were empty.

  He examined the window. The defective latch indicated the obvious solution. In a few seconds he had profited by the defect—how many others had profited by it before him?—and had got the window open. One leg over the ledge. The other leg. Now he was inside once more!

  He stood still and listened. A faint sound came from one of the little rooms off the studio. Faint and regular. He took a step towards the door, and then stopped again. He didn’t like the idea of an open window behind him. Stealing back to the window, he quickly closed it. He discovered that his heart was thumping. The discovery annoyed him. “You mustn’t develop nerves, my lad!” he reproved himself. “That’ll never do!” He put it down to Dutton. Dutton, in spite of his amiability, would upset the nerves of a sleep-sodden toad. “It wouldn’t surprise me to find the fellow sitting at the easel when I turn round,” thought Richard. And turned round swiftly to disprove the unpleasant possibility.

  Dutton was not sitting at the easel. The stool had no occupant. It was lying on its side.

  “Who knocked that over?” frowned Richard.

  The paper-boy’s cry in the distance grew a little nearer.

  This overturned stool was disconcerting. He had not noticed it when he had first dropped in through the window. It could not have toppled over while he had turned back to the window, could it? Perhaps the sound beyond the door had completely monopolised him. His attention had immediately been directed to the sound. Yes, but what had happened to the sound?…Ah, there it was, still! When you are staring in astonishment at an overturned stool you ignore your ears, and when you are listening to a disquieting sound you ignore your eyes.…Faint and rhythmic. Like dripping.…Dripping! “My God!” he gasped.

  He was across the studio floor in a flash. He seized the door handle, and threw the door open.

  Nearer still grew the paper-boy’s voice. Very faintly, the words could now be heard.

  “Another Murder! Another Murder!”

  Richard did not hear the words. He was passing through one of those devastating revulsions that twist our contorted feelings into knots and give us an impulse towards hysterical laughter. He was staring into a little kitchen scullery, and a tap was dripping into a sink. “So that is what’s been sending cold shivers up and down my spine, eh?” he thought. “Yes, really, Richard, you are a bit of an ass!”

  A face grinned back at him, long and distorted. He shook his fist at it. It was his own face, reflected in the bright surface of a pan.

  Well, that was that. The dripping was not blood, but water. Even the water, however, emphasised the fact of a recent presence, and hinted ominously at a rapid departure. A methodical person—the sort of person, for instance, who would keep the surfaces of pans so bright—would not leave a tap dripping and a stool overturned unless the departure were inspired by some special urgency.

  Quickly he completed his examination of the little kitchen, after turning off the tap and terminating its unwelcome music. He found nothing else either to disturb or to comfort him. Leaving the kitchen, and closing the door, he opened the door to the other room, pausing for a moment with his fingers on the handle.

  This would be her bedroom. That necessitated a little breath of reverence. Besides, you had to pause before every new thing you did, especially when you were passing through the studio. You might find another chair overturned, or a moving smudge beyond the frosted glass of the front door that could be glimpsed at the end of the little hall-passage, or a figure emerging from the curtained corner.

  His eyes roamed towards the curtained corner. He had hidden there once himself. Something impressed itself vaguely on his consciousness. A small object on the ground, gleaming dully from a shadow. A handkerchief? The newsboy’s voice was silent.

  Richard entered the bedroom. For an instant he forgot terror and all the unsavoury things that mock at life. His gaze rested on a bed. It was smooth and neat, and a covering of blue silk lay over it. The pillow was also smooth and neat. A chair, a small dressing-table, and a small chest practically completed the furnishing of the room. Silver-mounted toilet articles lay on the dressing-table, reflected in the mirror, and looking very tidy and orderly. A blue boudoir cap hung from a knob on the mirror. “Blue is her favourite colour,” Richard decided. The decision was justified by a glimpse of two blue shoes peeping from under the bed. As his figure joined the toilet articles in the mirror, he paused and questioned it.

  “I say—who was the last figure reflected here?” he asked. “The one before you?”

  The reflection stared back solemnly. It knew no more than did its origin. And mirrors themselves never reveal their secrets. If they did, their stories would put those of mere novelists to shame.

  Regretfully he left the bedroom, and now his eye was again caught by the small object gleaming dully from the shadow. This time it grew into the focus of his consciousness and registered there. He walked to it suddenly, and picked it up.

  It was not a handkerchief. It was a scrunched, orange envelope. “By Jove! Telegram!” he exclaimed.

  He opened the envelope eagerly. There were no contents. This was disappointing, since the message might have told him much. It might have given him a clue to Miss Wynne’s whereabouts.…

  “Yes, but is it to Miss Wynne?” he thought suddenly.

  He flattened out the surface. “Wynne, 4 Tail Street, Chelsea.” That settled the question. She had returned. She had received it.

  “Well, maybe she’s left the form somewhere else,” he reflected. “On a table or something.”

  He began to look around. He went to a desk, opening drawers and poking his hand in pigeon-holes unscrupulously. There was not a sign of any pale pink form. But he made one discovery of interest. He found a packet of white telegram forms—telegrams start white, and only turn pink in transit—and on the top form was the vague indentation of recent writing.

  He studied the indentation closely. He could just make out one-and-a-half words, but simple deduction turned them into two. They were

  “…ribly urgent”

  An open book on the settee suddenly caught his eye. Recognising its familiar appearance, he hurried to it. It was an A B C, open at page 72, and the names of Brimscombe, Brimsdown, Brinkburn, Brinklow stared up at him.

  The paper-boy’s voice rose again, now considerably closer.

  Brinkworth, Brinscall…

  “Another Murder! Another Murder!”

  Brislington…

  “Bristol Murder! Murder in Bristol! Another Murder! Murder in Bristol!…”

  Chapter X

  And How She Died

  It was a memorable occasion for the paper-boy. Two murder
s in one day! You didn’t often have such luck!

  Test Matches and Cup-Ties got one sort of people. Robbed actresses and divorces got another. By elections got another. But murders got everybody, from top-hats downwards, and a couple of murders inside twenty-four hours was almost more than a starved little soul could stand. There is a limit for our capacity to register pure joy.

  Thus, there was no hint of tragedy on the face of the paper-boy when, at twenty-five minutes to five on this auspicious date, an eager young man nearly toppled him over. The eager young man came running round a corner, and a collision was only averted by the paper-boy’s smartness at ducking. He had learned this from intercourse with policemen.

  “Paiper, sir?” piped the paper-boy.

  The eager young man nodded, and snatched the extended periodical. Obviously, here was a genuine murder fan.

  “Old woman, sir,” volunteered the paper-boy, to save time. “Fahnd on ’er ’ead in a ditch.”

  The young man paid no attention to him. He had already begun to read.

  “Blood orl over ’er,” went on the paper-boy, disappointed. “Hupside-dahn.”

  The young man still paid no attention to him. The boy became resigned, and also practical. There was something the young man would have to pay to him.

  “’Aven’t ’ad the penny yet, sir,” said the boy.

  “Eh? Oh,” jerked the young man.

  He produced a sixpence and, while continuing to read, held it out. He appeared to think it was a penny. The paper-boy saw no reason to disillusion him, pocketed the coin, and abruptly departed.

  This is what Richard Temperley was reading in the afternoon paper for which he had unconsciously paid six times its value:

  “WOMAN IN DITCH

  AVIATOR’S GRUESOME FIND NEAR

  BRISTOL

  SECOND TRAGEDY TO-DAY

  “Following on the discovery of a dead man in the smoking room of a hotel at Euston this morning (reported in another column), comes a report from Charlton, near Bristol, of another gruesome tragedy suggesting foul play.