Killer in the Shade

by Piers Marlowe

  Sam Pettifer leered, but the effect was spoiled by his whiskers, and he shrugged.

  ‘Naturally, I took the oars at first.’

  ‘Like hell naturally,’ Murphy sneered. ‘It’s a wonder you didn’t dislocate something.’

  ‘I did, my temper — when we wasted time reaching open water and saw only a couple of sailing craft. We turned back and just as well, for I’m no damned sailor and the tide was low and there was no point getting out too far to turn round, so you might say we came back on the tide.’

  ‘Did you think to bring a bottle of beer?’ Murphy asked.

  The other grinned at him.

  ‘Now, I knew there was something I’d forgotten, Murphy, besides collecting cash in advance. But then, I don’t know what this is about anyway. I’ve enjoyed a pretty girl’s company, but Carol can be terribly discreet on occasion — like this one, for instance — so you might say, in a sense, I’m all at sea.’ His teeth showed through the beard. ‘I take it we are floating on seawater?’ he added inquiringly.

  ‘Put your tongue over the side,’ Murphy suggested. ‘You’ll soon know.’

  They were gathered in the cabin, Murphy with his back to the sliding door, which was half open, Carol seated, and Rollo leaning against the bulkhead that concealed the small lavatory set amidships.

  Sam Pettifer had just begun mockingly, ‘Ah, a rude Celt — ’ when there was a heavy thump against the bow, the Mudlark rocked sufficiently to cause Rollo to fall over his fiancée and Murphy to slide down the bulk-head door that moved away from him and land on his bottom, and a voice shouted, ‘Anyone at home?’

  Then heavy feet hit the deck overhead.

  ‘Bedad, it’s Drury!’ moaned Murphy. He scrambled to his feet, breathing hard. ‘Now leave this to me. We want a picture of what’s inside one of those sacks. And I intend to get it.’

  It took him a full quarter of an hour to explain what had happened, and how, and why, and when to a trio of policemen who heard him out in a silence that for the most part could have been described as glowering.

  When he had finished Murphy said, ‘So we’ve really done your work for you, Super, wouldn’t you say?’ but his wheedling fell on ears insensitive to blarney.

  ‘No, I damned well wouldn’t,’ growled Drury. ‘You’ve put us to a lot of trouble to find you and prevent your being a nuisance.’

  Superintendent Charcombe brushed his tunic with the fingers of his left hand. He looked almost happy. So did Bill Hazard. Rollo wondered if Drury was putting Murphy through a mental wringer in order to puncture the crime reporter’s cockiness. But he still couldn’t understand the almost masked grins.

  ‘Now that’s a hard thing to say, Super.’

  ‘The truth often is, Murphy.’

  ‘And when we saved these bags from being spirited away by Peel?’

  ‘With an empty fuel tank, Joe?’ Hazard asked blandly. ‘You’re stuck on a bank, anyway.’

  ‘And Peel’s been spirited away himself,’ Drury added.

  ‘You got him in the nick?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Glory be!’ Murphy sounded like a stage Irishman about to cross himself, but he stopped short of that and said, ‘So she killed him with that shot.’ His eyes became alive. ‘What a story.’

  ‘He was knocked down and killed by a bus when someone screamed in a chemist’s and he ran out without looking where he was going.’

  ‘And why did someone scream?’

  ‘She saw the blood leaking through his clothes.’

  ‘So this is the end of the road, Super?’ Murphy turned. ‘Will you let Sam here take a photo of the three of you boarding the boat.’ When Drury hesitated he added, ‘We won’t use it till you give Simpson the okay.’

  ‘Is that all you want? You take that and we get rid of you?’

  ‘Well, there is another shot we’d like. After all, you know we came a long way to get it. But again it won’t be used until — ’

  ‘You mean the contents of one of these sacks?’ Drury said, frowning. ‘I’m not sure I should, especially as we’d have to cut a sack because we haven’t a key to the locks.’

  ‘It’s not as if we want to deplete the sacks, Super,’ Murphy wheedled. ‘Besides, a fine picture with you looking into the sack — ’

  ‘No,’ snapped Drury, his mouth twitching.

  Superintendent Charcombe choked and had to use his handkerchief. Bill Hazard also made strange glottal noises, like a man determined to overcome his hiccups.

  ‘All right, a picture with Bill looking in the sack.’

  ‘No,’ snapped Hazard.

  ‘But you can be looking in the sack, Murphy. What about that?’ Drury sounded almost conciliatory.

  Murphy looked from Rollo to Carol and then to a patently puzzled Sam Pettifer. There was something wrong about this, but he couldn’t say what it was and his newspaperman’s instinct was accordingly suspicious and becoming more so with each minute that passed.

  ‘All right, me,’ he said, ‘though Dan Simpson will have me whited out. It’s not Gazette policy to show the staff at work. Hell, we’re not bloody actors!’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Drury grunted, and Murphy started to get his hackles up.

  ‘Now what in hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh, cut one of the damned sacks and let’s get this nonsense over, Bill,’ Drury said over his shoulder to Hazard, who produced a knife and attacked one of the sacks.

  It took some hacking and sawing, for the material was stout and tough, but when the sack had a gaping hole under the lock Murphy pushed forward and looked inside. He gasped. A look of anguish spread over his face.

  ‘Bloody newspapers!’ he shouted. His hand dipped inside and drew out several. ‘Not even a copy of the Gazette.’

  There was a click.

  The Irishman turned in fury on the smiling man with the camera and said, ‘If you show that to Dan Simpson, boy, I’ll break your goddamn neck.’

  Carol took the newspapers from the Irishman’s limp hand. She stared at Drury.

  ‘You outsmarted him, Mr Drury,’ she said quietly, a note of growing wonder in her voice. ‘That terribly conceited uncle of mine never had a chance, did he? Not against you.’

  ‘Oh, he had a chance all right, Miss Wilson,’ the Yard superintendent informed her. ‘That murder of Arbuthnot was bold and callous and horribly successful. But he slipped when he became too clever, and that was when he went out for revenge against Vic Clayson. That’s when he started to fumble the ball.’

  ‘Super,’ said Murphy, ‘sorry to be a man with a one-track mind, but how come there’s old newspapers in these sacks. You fixed it?’

  ‘Not directly.’

  ‘You mean indirectly.’

  ‘Not for publication.’

  ‘Of course not. I’ve got a personal narrative, haven’t I?’

  The newspaperman and the detective measured each other with shrewd and knowing glances.

  ‘I got someone else to fix it.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Well, let’s say I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the chief security officer of the National City Bank arranged it.’

  ‘And you put him up to it!’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Murphy, and you can’t.’ Drury sounded severe.

  ‘Not yet,’ grinned the Irishman, happy again. ‘Not until Dick Barrett says I can.’

  ‘You know him?’ Drury sounded doubtful.

  ‘Let’s say I looked him up a short while back when I was considering angles to this case. I think the National City Bank won’t prove shy of some useful publicity. After all, they’ll need some fresh angle to cover up the disappearance of a certain bank manager, won’t they? And it would help if I had something else to talk about except these sacks. Something that could be photographed, let’s say.’

  ‘Hell, he’s got something up his sleeve. Tell him to bring it down,’ muttered Bill Hazard.

  Drury nodded. ‘You heard him, Murphy.’<
br />
  ‘I heard him,’ said the crime reporter. ‘Pictures would help — with you, of course, Super.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you show me,’ Drury grunted.

  Murphy hesitated, only to be reminded, ‘You could take all the time in the world thinking it over if you spent the night in a cell.’

  Murphy said no more. He bent down and retrieved from under the table the satchel he had pushed there after sliding down the closing bulkhead door. He opened it, took out two newspaper-wrapped parcels. From one he spilled a glittering collection of jewellery made up of necklaces, brooches and rings, and gold bangles with inset jewels.

  ‘The stuff he didn’t dispose of,’ he said.

  From the second parcel wrapped in newspaper he poured tied bundles of currency, all in ten-pound notes.

  ‘He’d been holding out on his pals, Super.’

  Drury leaned closer.

  That was when Sam Pettifer’s camera clicked again — twice rapidly.

  ‘Lovely, lovely,’ softly exclaimed the bearded freelance.

  It was then Joe Murphy demonstrated his natural ability to cope with awkward situations that made him good at his job. Drury was looking dubious about letting him get away with it, Bill Hazard was about to grab the camera, and Superintendent Charcombe was making ready to finger the Irishman’s collar, as the police slang has it.

  Murphy said, ‘What about one with Superintendent Charcombe? After all, his police boat found us, and I’m handing the stuff over to him — officially.’

  A quick smile replaced the frown on the local superintendent’s face. The fingers that had been about to grasp Murphy retreated to smooth his tunic.

  ‘Well — ’ he said, and somehow managed to get between Drury and the display on the table as Sam Pettifer’s camera clicked again.

  Julian Boon stroked his long array of girlish locks, opened the front door, and allowed Dr John Cadman to pass him into the night.

  ‘Very decent of you to turn out again, Doctor,’ he said patronizingly. ‘I really appreciate it. Because knowing there’s nothing to fear will let Peggy get some sleep. You know how it is, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I know very well,’ the doctor said sardonically. ‘It means the husband can sleep too.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  John Cadman thought the young man’s hide was thicker than its owner would ever know. He was on the point of turning and walking to the front gate, feeling relaxed for the first time, and that mainly because he was grateful for Carol ringing to tell her aunt and uncle that she was on her way home with her fiancé and that everything was all right and there was no need to worry. Fuller explanations would have to keep till she was back.

  He had stepped down on to the path.

  ‘Oh, Doctor, there was something else,’ Julian Boon called to him.

  He turned around. ‘What is it, Mr Boon?’

  ‘You know we were having trouble finding a suitable name for the boy? Well, after picking a couple of names we decided neither would do.’

  That meant, decided John Cadman, the father had changed his mind, if he really had one.

  ‘You’ll find one. All babies collect a name some time.’

  Julian Boon gave another demonstration of the thickness of his skin.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m not worried about that, Doctor. But we want something uncommon, you know. You said once your niece was engaged to a man you called Rollo, wasn’t it?’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘What is Rollo short for?’

  ‘Roland.’

  ‘Roland? Oh, yes, I like that. Roland — definitely yes. But why was he ever called Rollo? I mean, it’s not my idea of a sensible nickname.’

  ‘When he went to school he found he preferred it to the only alternative.’

  ‘What was that, Doctor?’

  ‘Butter.’

  Dr John Cadman turned and walked away, leaving the young father with a mystified look on his face. When he let himself into Olive Drive and walked from the gate of No. 27 towards his car he turned to look back. Julian Boon was still working at the problem the doctor had left with him. The light from a street-lamp reached his face and his mouth could be seen moving as he repeated the same word over and over, and Dr Cadman knew it wasn’t Roland.

  He got into his car and took the short cut home down Croft Avenue. It wasn’t until he had turned into the road at the far end that he realized he hadn’t glanced sideways at Holly Lawn. He felt encouraged to start humming. It was a tuneless sound that amazingly gave him a great deal of gratification, not to say pleasure.

  He stopped the drone to address a new thought to himself and the night beyond the windscreen. It had been inspired by what he had left at No. 27 Olive Drive.

  ‘The sooner Rollo marries Carol and gets her pregnant, so they both stop this damned gadding about, the better.’

  Only instead of actually saying the last word in his mind he had substituted ‘butter’.

  When he realized the slip he burst into a peal of laughter, and a man on the pavement leading a dog for its nightly airing turned to look at him resentfully. There was no one about, so the man yelled, ‘Bloody drunk!’

  The happy man of medicine felt inspired to push his head out of the car window and retort, ‘Butter … balls!’

  After which he began humming the same tune again.

  Much louder.

  THE END

  A Note on the Author

  Piers Marlow is one of the pen names of Leonard Reginald Gribble (1908–1985), a prolific English crime writer born in Barnstaple, Devon. In 1953 he was a founding member of the Crime Writers Association. He wrote thrillers, crime and mystery novels as well as non-fiction on criminology.

  Discover books by Piers Marlowe published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/PiersMarlowe

  Cash My Chips, Croupier

  Hire Me a Hearse

  Killer in the Shade

  For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

  This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  First published in Great Britain in 1973 by Robert Hale Limited

  Copyright © 1973 Piers Marlowe

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The moral right of the author is asserted.

  eISBN: 9781448214518

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