Killer in the Shade

by Piers Marlowe

  PIERS MARLOWE

  KILLER IN THE SHADE

  Complete and Unabridged

  For

  D.B.

  who has responsibility

  of a sort

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter 1

  John Cadman opened the front door of 27 Olive Drive and took his tiredness and his bag of tools into the darkness of an early winter morning with no moon and no street lights.

  It was two-thirty by the luminous hands of his watch and the streets were empty save for patches of cold mist which coiled the glow from his hand torch into an opaque rope of luminosity that unwound itself as he moved. His black case containing drugs and a G.P.’s normal portable equipment — or his bag of tools, as he preferred to think of it with a touch of inverted snobbery — felt heavier than usual and emphasized an ache in his shoulders that he had been trying to ignore for the past hour.

  His left foot stumbled on an uneven flagstone halfway along the pavement to his parked car, and he almost dropped his bag.

  ‘Damn those striking power workers,’ he growled aloud as he recovered his balance.

  He reached his car, tossed his bag on the rear seat, and climbed behind the wheel. He tried consciously to relax and to ease the ache in his shoulders. The latest Boon had come into the world fighting every inch of the way, as though thoroughly distrustful of what an ordained arrival would have to offer.

  John Cadman lit a cigarette and for some moments sat smoking and glancing sideways at the irregular line of light showing between the curtains of the room he had just left. Peggy Boon had had a tricky and painful time giving birth to her first child, a lusty eight and a quarter pounds of kicking and squealing male.

  He squeezed his eyes half shut, seeing again the sweat beading the stringy tangles of her blonde hair and the wetness of her labouring flesh. At first he thought he had a breach birth on his hands and only an oil lamp to work by, but he had been spared that.

  He thought, ‘Thank God for Thea,’ who was Dorothea Brimmer, S.R.N., with whom he had worked for years on confinements when his patients insisted on having them at home because that was what their mothers advised. Brimmer, he knew, could cope. Not only with Peggy Boon and her new son, but also with the fresh arrival’s father, a long-haired intellectual type with a leftwing perspective who had been christened Julian and whom he suspected of being lacking in what he thought of, in his dated fashion, as manliness.

  Julian Boon had certainly seemed more concerned about the name he should bestow on his son of thirty minutes than he had been about the health of his drained wife of five years.

  The doctor smiled cynically in the darkness of the car’s interior and glanced away from the thin light between the curtains.

  ‘Good luck, Thea,’ he muttered around his cigarette, knowing very well that, without the deterrent of his presence, Brimmer could not only look like a battleaxe, but behave like one. If that damned fool of a husband didn’t do as she told him she’d chop him into small pieces out of the hearing of his wife. The middle-aged and greying State Registered nurse and midwife had less than no use for hovering husbands during and after confinements. In her lowland Scot’s Presbyterian way, she tended to look on them as a necessary evil the Creator had inflicted on women in a less-inspired moment.

  He threw the glowing butt of his cigarette into the road and switched on the car’s engine. He drove slowly through the unlit streets and their patches of mist that condensed on the windscreen and caused him to turn on the wipers.

  ‘Bloody power shirkers,’ he growled.

  As though to mock him, at that moment the street lights came on as someone in a local power station threw a few switches. The effect was to illuminate the mist more than the surface of the road. He continued to drive slowly in the wake of his headlights’ beam, left into Barling Crescent, and right at the far end into Croft Avenue, where the street light on the corner was out. Twenty yards down the road light from an open front door poured into a front garden, touching a stone path bordered with shrubs and reaching a white-painted gate. As Cadman drew level with this glare of light he braked. He sat watching the open door and the light pouring from the hall. Someone might have gone to bed leaving the hall light switched on, but no one would go to bed while the front door was wide open. He had Croft Avenue to himself. Probably because of the mist and the strike. The radio had advised motorists not to go out unless their journey was essential. The mist would be slow to clear the next day, according to the weather forecaster.

  The longer he sat staring at the light coming through the open front door the more uneasy he felt, though he couldn’t tell why. He told himself he should drive home and get to bed, but couldn’t evade the problem posed by that open door. It was like being offered an unexplained challenge. If he drove on he’d be thinking about that door, and if there was someone in the house who needed help and he found out later he wouldn’t like the person staring back from his shaving mirror.

  Grumbling, because that was the only form of compensation he could provide, he switched off his car’s engine and the main beam of his headlights and climbed out on to the pavement. The white gate squeaked when he opened it, and he winced. He hated squeaking gates. He had to open too many.

  He walked up the path and climbed the steps to the open front door. Beyond was a square hall with tendrils of mist swirling under the central ceiling lamp.

  ‘Anyone at home?’ he called, wondering what thanks his curiosity would earn if he awoke a sleeping house-holder. He was on the point of closing the door and returning to his car when he saw that light was coming from an open door at the top of the staircase.

  So another light switch was turned on and a second door was open.

  This seemed distinctly odd. It was as though someone had left that room in a hurry and come down the stairs and out of the house without bothering to shut the front door. But who in his right mind would leave a house in that way in the middle of the night?

  Someone in a panic?

  But panic about what?

  John Cadman was a man with a rational mind, as he liked to think of himself. He liked answers to questions just as he preferred salt in his soup to suit his own taste. He stood on the top step frowning because there was too much about the tableau presented to his gaze that left him feeling more uneasy than he had been while seated in the car.

  ‘Damn,’ he muttered.

  He entered the house, leaving the front door open, crossed the hall, and stared up the carpeted stairs. Halfway up the stairs he called, ‘Hallo there. Anyone about?’

  No one replied.

  He reached the top of the stairs and turned to the room from which light shone from an open door. He took five paces and brought up short just outside the room. He could see inside and what held his troubled gaze was the sight of the clothed figure lying on its side at the foot of a bed. The figure was that of a man dressed in a brown suit. He had brown casuals on his feet. The light shone on the leather, which, Cadman noticed almost absent-mindedly, had been polished. But what held his attention was the handle of the knife that had been plunged into the man’s back between the shoulder-blades.

  One thing was very certain. The man on the floor had not stabbed himself in the back.

  Whoever had thrust the knife into the man’s back had rushed away in a panic afterwards — or so it seemed.

  With that much registered in his m
ind, John Cadman stepped into the room, careful to avoid the pool of blood beside the still figure. He stooped and made sure the man was dead, then walked backwards to the door, careful to touch nothing. He went down the stairs and crossed the hall to the telephone table. On the point of picking up the instrument he paused and removed his handkerchief from a pocket. He wrapped it around the handset, and using one corner to cover the tip of his right forefinger he dialled 999.

  ‘Police,’ he told the operator who inquired which service he required.

  First a panda car arrived and two constables in uniform with peaked caps came in and asked him questions to which he had no acceptable answers. One of them went down to the police car and radio-telephoned his station. He came back, nodded to his colleague and said to Cadman, ‘You’ll have to wait till Superintendent Drury arrives.’

  The tired doctor reacted. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’ve been out on a case and I’ve had enough for one night. I’ve told you what I know. I can’t tell you anything else, and I’d like to go home. This Superintendent Drury can ring me when he arrives.’

  The constable who had gone out to the car said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I was told to ask you to remain here.’

  ‘Well, how about letting me phone my wife?’

  ‘She knows you’re out on a case, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then perhaps it would be as well to wait till the Superintendent arrives before waking her up. She won’t be expecting you, will she?’

  Cadman swore silently. He cursed himself for meddling in something without being asked.

  ‘How long will the Superintendent be in getting here?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t say, sir. He’s being contacted at home.’

  ‘At home!’

  ‘Yes, sir, this is his division. He won’t be long. I suggest you wait in this room until he gets here.’

  The constable pointed to a room opening from the hall, where his colleague had drawn the curtains and turned on the light after making sure there was no one else in the house. The front door had been closed.

  ‘Very well,’ grunted the doctor.

  He walked into the room and sat down and lit a cigarette. He was smoking his third, watched most of the time by a young constable with dark auburn hair and freckles who tried to act as though he had no interest in the man who had reported the murder, and was staring at his watch, reckoning that he had been an hour and twenty minutes in the damned house, when he heard a car draw up outside.

  Two men came up the front path and the steps. He heard them speaking. The doorbell rang and was opened by the constable who had been wandering about the house. The voices grew more distinct before being lowered. A couple more minutes passed and then the door of the room opened and the constable seated opposite the doctor rose to his feet.

  In the doorway appeared a thickset man with a beady bright gaze. Nothing about him suggested he had been roused from his bed by a phone call made less than an hour before. Behind him was another man, just as thickset but taller.

  ‘It’s upstairs, Bill. Take a look.’

  Inspector Bill Hazard threw a fast look at the man seated with a filter-tipped cigarette in his mouth and left Superintendent Frank Drury to continue towards the seated doctor. Drury nodded to the constable, who followed Hazard out of the room.

  As the door clicked shut he advanced towards the doctor, smiling and extending his hand.

  ‘Nice of you to wait, Dr Cadman.’

  The doctor rubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray he had been using, rose, and grinned.

  ‘I didn’t have much choice.’

  ‘I know the feeling. I was in bed when the phone rang.’ Drury waved the other man back into his chair and drew up another, seated himself, and felt for his own cigarettes. ‘I won’t keep you long. But you’re a doctor, so you can help me if you would.’

  Cadman accepted a proffered cigarette and a light, and said, ‘I just made sure he was dead. I didn’t touch anything or make any examination.’

  ‘Good,’ Drury nodded. ‘You don’t know him?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge I’ve never set eyes on him before I found him up there with a knife in his back.’

  ‘Just tell me how you came to find him, Doctor.’

  Cadman repeated his story. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. Drury sat as though digesting what he had been told before he asked, ‘Do you know what time the street lights came on?’

  ‘About five minutes after I left Olive Drive, where I’d delivered a baby. Must have been about five and twenty to three.’

  ‘And you got here when?’

  ‘Two or three minutes after that. Not more, I’d say.’

  ‘You’ve no idea how long he’d been lying there — dead?’

  ‘Only a rough idea, from the condition of the blood that had pooled and the warmth of the body. As I said, I made no examination. I mean — ’

  ‘I know what you mean, Doctor,’ Drury nodded thoughtfully. ‘How long?’

  ‘Probably less than half an hour.’

  Drury nodded. ‘How much less?’

  ‘Difficult to say, and I’ve been here over an hour,’ Cadman reminded the detective.

  ‘Could it have been just a few minutes?’

  ‘How few?’ the doctor asked cagily.

  ‘Two or three.’

  They looked at each other. What the detective was thinking became apparent to the man watching him. John Cadman cleared his throat before saying, ‘I sat outside for a few minutes debating whether to poke my nose inside.’

  ‘Glad you did.’

  ‘But it could have been only five minutes since he’d been struck down.’

  Drury removed a tobacco shred from his lip, frowned at it. ‘That would make it about the time the street lights came on. Would you agree?’

  ‘I can only agree that it’s possible. As I said, I made no examination.’

  Drury rose. ‘Well, let’s repair the omission, Doctor, if that’s all right with you.’

  Cadman prised himself up from his chair, and said with a look of inquiry, ‘You’re not bringing a police surgeon?’

  ‘Later, Doctor. Just now you’re here, a doctor, and also the man who found him. I feel I shouldn’t waste a unique opportunity.’

  The two men stared at each other. The detective was smiling, but the doctor felt a stab of something he could only describe as fear. Could it be that Drury suspected him of being the killer and acting clever? It was a discouraging and depressing thought, and he found himself suspicious of the Superintendent’s smile of encouragement.

  ‘I haven’t had any experience of police work. I felt you should know,’ he added lamely.

  ‘Most doctors haven’t,’ Drury nodded. ‘But you’re a local man and, as I said, you’re here. You could be very helpful, Dr Cadman, if you would.’

  Put like that the other felt he was unable to offer further objection.

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘Whatever I can do. I’d better get my bag of tools from the car. That’s what I call them,’ he explained when Drury looked surprised.

  ‘Yes, get your tools, Doctor, by all means.’

  John Cadman reached the door before turning to say, ‘If this is going to take some time I think I’d better phone my wife. I wanted to earlier, but one of the constables suggested it might be better to wait until you arrived, Superintendent.’

  ‘He was being careful, that’s all,’ Drury admitted. ‘But this isn’t going to take long. No need to wake your wife — that is, unless you wish to.’

  Cadman frowned, still not easy in his mind at the way the detective was handling him.

  ‘No reason. I just thought — ’ He broke off. ‘No matter. I’ll get my kit.’

  ‘I’ll be upstairs. Join me when you come in.’

  It was as he walked out of the house to reach his car that John Cadman recalled those past occasions when he had imagined himself caught up in a murder drama, a person of perception and unusual
reasoning power, with unplumbed reserves of physical and mental strength, who was able to put the police right when they went wrong. Such thoughts had always been purest fantasy, but now he was involved in a murder case. The dream, the mental game of pretence, had become reality, and all he wished was to be back in his car an hour and a half earlier and driving past that open front door with the light blazing into the garden.

  He was halfway along the garden path to the white-painted gate when he saw her. She was not much more than a shadow etched with light at the edges as she darted from one dark bush to the next. Her shoes made no sound on the lawn.

  One moment she was moving, the next she was not there, but in that moment he had seen her face and read the fear in her eyes.

  He didn’t turn his head. He kept walking as though he had seen nothing, but he had trouble with his breathing, and he tried to convince himself it had been a trick of the poor light, but he knew otherwise. She was there among the bushes. He had only to call to her and she would be discovered, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

  He reached the gate and went to his car, picked up his black bag and returned to the house without looking to right or left, though this time he did see the black letters on the top rail of the gate. They spelled out the name ‘Holly Lawn’. Probably the dark shrubs were holly bushes.

  He walked upstairs, watched by one of the constables, and entered the room where Drury and his assistant were turning out the dead man’s pockets. Someone had removed the knife from the man’s back, and the doctor noticed that the man had a fair moustache. He looked round the room, seeing it clearly for the first time.

  It was a first-floor room overlooking the rear garden. The paintwork was fresh and the curtains clean. There were two divan beds, both covered with candlewick bedspreads of identical design. A padded chair was under the window next to a table with a reading lamp that had not been turned on. There was a hard-backed chair beyond the table with a paperback novel on it. The room had walnut wardrobes, matching in design, besides a large wall cupboard with sliding doors. There were two pictures on opposite walls. Both were still-lifes. In one corner was a wash-basin, with over its mirror some strip lighting and on the narrow glass shelf a bright green-handled toothbrush in a glass tumbler.