“No, not that. Just poor. Poor for a client’s wife.”
There was a pause. Luke dropped his hand on Donne’s wrist and the other man nodded, and his pencil traced a phrase on the blotter. ‘Gal hasn’t a clue.’
Edna took advantage of the pause to collect herself.
“Of course, it could be only carelessness on his part,” she announced. “You do recognise that, I hope? Gerry wouldn’t steal a handbag. He’s not that sort of person. That’s ridiculous. Wait until you meet him.”
Luke did not look at her. “How does he make his living?”
“I can’t tell you exactly.” She conveyed that she could make a very good guess. “I told you he never discusses his affairs. I should say he does a bit of car dealing, tunes up racing cars for other people, and has a private income.” There was a faint primness, an old-maidish satisfaction on the last word which stood out like a visible flaw on her hard façade of sophistication.
The two policemen eyed her as if they could actually see her feet leaving the ground.
“Is he sometimes much more flush with money than at others?” Donne suggested.
“That’s true of everybody but it’s particularly so of him. Sometimes he’s—oh—quite absurdly over-generous and extravagant.”
“Are these intervals regular?”
“How? Oh, I see. No, I don’t think it’s when the dividends come in. It’s when the deals go through, I fancy.”
Luke sighed. He had a kindly disposition.
“At the time of the cottage at Bray, was that one of the flush periods?”
“I’ll say it was.” She looked suddenly gay and mischievous.
“I hadn’t seen him for ages, and then he came in saying times had been fearful but that he’d got something cooking up. When I saw him again it had all gone through. The client had sailed earlier than expected and Gerry had got the cottage on his hands. That’s one thing about him, he doesn’t worry you with his worries. We had a wonderful time. There was money to burn for a bit.”
Luke rose slowly to his feet and stood looking down at her. His face was sombre but not unkind.
“Did you ever wonder what kind of a deal it was?” he said slowly. “Money to burn. Did he get that from commission on a deal with a man whose wife had a cheap plastic handbag, with initials which she tried to stitch on herself?”
There was silence and the atmosphere of the little office was unpleasantly noticeable. The woman sat watching the Superintendent with that particular look on her face which indicates that a half-thought question has been dragged out into the open.
“What do you mean?” There was no bravado there, no defiance, only the simple query. “What are you saying?”
“How much did he get from them? If it was a lot, was it all they had?”
“But it couldn’t have been. They were going away by sea and …”
“Did they go? The woman left her handbag.”
They were unprepared for her sudden movement. She struggled up out of her chair and stood breathing heavily, as if she found it difficult.
“Do you mean … like Haigh?”
“What makes you say that?” Luke had crossed round from the desk and was holding her arm as if he feared she might fall. “Why did you say ‘Haigh’?”
“I didn’t. I … Oh, it couldn’t be! Oh, my God.”
Luke lowered her gently into the chair and put a cigarette in her mouth, which he lit.
“Now come on,” he said, “be a good girl and clear your mind. We shan’t involve you if we can help it but you must do all you can. Come on, what made you say ‘Haigh’?”
She pushed her hand through her hair, ruffling the hard shell into untidiness.
“Haigh was the man who—who put—who got rid of—who bought … acid …”
“Forget the acid.” Luke was talking firmly and gently as if to a child. “Haigh was the soft-spoken friendly little crook who went the one stage further. Most crooks will take anything and everything from their victims, except the one final item. Haigh was the chap who thought that one final refinement was silly.”
“Don’t!” The word was a suppressed scream and she sat looking at him wildly. “That’s what Gerry said. That was his word.”
“Silly? About Haigh?”
She nodded, her eyes growing darker and her mouth pallid round the edges of the lipstick.
“We were discussing him one night and I said the man must have been mad, and Gerry said no, he was simply not silly, and that if he hadn’t lost his nerve and confessed, he’d be alive today still picking up a good living in a logical … Oh no, don’t take any notice of me, I don’t know anything.”
“I should tell us anything you do.” Donne made the recommendation sound friendly. “We shall get to know the whole story in the end and we’re clumsy beggars. We make less mess if we’re helped. Unless you still want to try to shield him, of course.”
“Shield …” She spoke the word as if she had never heard it before. “Oh no, I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Not if it’s that.”
Her voice ceased abruptly and she sat staring ahead of her, all traces of charm and femininity in her face giving place to the stark practicalness of a human being confronted by the reality of self-preservation.
“You’d better look out if you take him,” she said. “He was carrying a gun this afternoon. I felt it when he kissed me.”
Donne glanced sharply at Luke and the thumb of his right hand turned upwards. When he returned to Edna he was very gentle.
“We shall want a statement, Miss Cater,” he said, “but take your time. I should just sit here quietly and have a cup of tea if I were you. Then you can tell the sergeant the whole story and he’ll read it over to you before you sign it.” He smiled reassuringly at her stricken face. “Don’t worry too much. We shall be as discreet as we can. We don’t go out of our way to make life difficult for anybody with a job to hold down.”
Luke said nothing and indeed had no chance to do so, for at that moment a Detective Constable slipped quietly into the room and spoke with his back turned carefully towards the witness.
“Will you come outside, sir?” he murmured. “They’ve picked up the Lagonda.”
Chapter 18
IT OCCURRED TO MR. CAMPION
MR. VICK HAD INSTALLED his telephone in a small pantry at the back of the barber’s shop, choosing it, no doubt, because his butterfly mind had noted that it was about the same size as a public booth. Since the cupboard was also used to store certain unguents and as a hide for the charwoman’s equipment, it was not entirely satisfactory.
The uniformed Inspector making an interim report to his headquarters was forced to stand with one foot in a pail and his eyes on a level with rows of bottles of hair restorer, an expedient irritating to any man as bald as he.
“To return to the subject of the car. A Lagonda, details as previously stated,” he was saying carefully. “It is drawn up outside the shop here, as given in my preliminary message. The boot is unlocked and is empty. There are, however, eight bricks … what? Oh, they’re red and they’re old. Just ordinary bricks. Eight bricks which are arranged as wedges behind the tyres of the car. The road slopes. Have you got that?”
He listened while the paragraph was read back to him, and continued.
“There are a number of wooden boxes of varying size in the near vicinity. In this street it is the custom of shopkeepers to put their refuse out on the pavement at night and amongst heaven knows how much other junk there are several crates. The refuse is collected in the early morning … You’ll send a couple of chaps? Okay.” He sighed. “The barber lives in a two-room flat above the shop,” he went on. “I shall bring him in as soon as he’s in a reasonable condition. At the moment he’s upstairs, drunk as a lord, and my blokes are working on him. He has no idea how long he has been home, full stop.”
There was an aggrieved query from the other end of the line and he relaxed.
“Sorry, Jack, but I’m clearing my own mind. I’v
e got a story out of the man but it’s no sort of statement. Either he’s more than ordinarily plastered or he’s a damned funny little man when sober. He says the car belongs to his dear old friend Major Chad-Horder, whose real name he doesn’t know although he can take me to a man in a pub who does, and they’ve been to see Moggie Moorhen together and have been on the stage with him all the evening. Check that, please. They appear to have returned home tight and I understand that the Major put his friend to bed and made up another for himself in the sitting room. After that point he seems to have vanished. There’s a rug and pillows on the couch but they’re not warm. There is no sign of him in the house and the front door is unlocked, so he must have gone out again, presumably on foot. Have you got that? Right, that’s all for now. I’ll report again. Goodbye.”
He hung up and his message, when it was re-dressed in official language and flashed to Tailor Street, presented a single idea to Superintendent Luke’s experienced ear.
“Hullo,” he said, swinging round on Donne as they stood together in a corner of the C.I.D. room under the illuminated street map of the district, “did you hear that? The suspect is rigging up another alibi.”
The Chief Inspector’s eyes opened wide for an instant between their thick light lashes.
“Busy chap, isn’t he?” he said absently as his mind fastened on the suggestion and weighed it. “He could be ditching the gun,” he began.
“Why should he? He doesn’t know he’s coming unstuck, unless he’s psychic.” Luke spoke with savage satisfaction. “Anyhow, wherever he’s gone, it would appear that he intends to come back, so our chaps can just sit by the hole and watch like pussy. Tell them softly softly. The Chief Superintendent is very anxious that we don’t put any further temptation in his way. As he points out, the recruiting figures are down.”
As Donne stepped aside to give the necessary orders Luke remained alone looking at the map. The barber’s shop on the side road off Edge Street had been ringed with a crimson marker and he could see at a glance just where it stood in relation to the Garden Green area, down in the adjoining Division.
It was not in the same manor but it was on the way there and as he stood tracing the streets which crossed and re-crossed in little loops and squares without pattern or shape, he felt the thrill of catching wind of the enemy and he began to play with the coins in his pocket so that they made a music of mounting excitement.
When Donne returned he was still standing there, his neck looking very long and his head thrust forward. The Chief Inspector returned looking faintly embarrassed.
“That woman is coming out with the lot,” he observed. “Goodness knows how much of it will be relevant, she’s holding nothing back. I don’t think she can know much of value because she had no idea what he was up to, but the shock has certainly loosened her tongue.”
Luke turned to him. “Is she vindictive?”
“No. It’s awful. She’s dependent on him physically and suddenly finds …” He left the rest of the sentence in the air and Luke returned to the map.
“Little to depend upon,” he said primly. “Poor wretched bitch. We’re trying to comfort her with cups of tea, I suppose. Where the blazes has that chap gone, Henry? There’s a whole section of his activities we haven’t touched, you know. We’ve only got half the picture. Where’s Campion?”
“There’s no sign of him yet. He’s a funny chap, isn’t he? More like himself than one expects, somehow.”
Luke made no comment. He was frowning.
“Campion wasn’t altogether satisfied with the old lady and the pretty girl at the cock-eyed museum,” he said presently. “I was. I may be hiding my eyes but I just cannot see either of them involved in anything of this sort. We could go and rout them out of bed and ask them a lot of damned silly questions which ought to wait at least until the waiter has remembered where he saw the old couple the first time.” He hesitated. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, answering his own question, “I don’t.”
“You took a fancy to them, did you?” said Donne, unaware of trespassing. “Funny how one does sometimes. Hullo, see who this is?”
Luke glanced up as a splendid figure strolled towards them.
“Wot’cher, Cully,” he said, “how’s the Ambassador?”
Superintendent Cullingford was one of those stolidly handsome men who appear to be the rule in Security. He and Luke were old friends and each amused himself by pretending that the other’s was the glamorous job.
“Hullo, Charles, you’re in the thick of it, I see.” Cullingford managed to sound wistful. “When I stepped out of the lift on this floor I thought there was a fire, there was so much excitement.” He nodded to Donne and stroked a magnificent yellow moustache. “Luke still finds it absorbing even though he can’t hang ’em any more.”
His friend’s dark face became a shade blacker.
“That’s not a very popular line of talk, Cully,” he was beginning when Donne ventured to reply for himself.
“We’ll hang the chap we’re after now all right,” he said.
“Think so?” Luke sounded spiteful. “At the moment I’m wondering if we’ve got enough evidence to bring him to trial.”
“It’s murder, is it?” Cullingford made the enquiry as a civility.
“It’s about ten murders,” Luke said, lowering at him. “The bloke is lost in a snowdrift of suspicion, but snow has a way of melting at the Old Bailey. If under the new regulations we’ve got to see him sentenced twice before he’s eligible he may well escape topping. I can’t see the public standing for two trials for murder, first conviction no hanging, the second it’s laid on.”
“You don’t like the new legislation?”
Luke began to get angry. “I neither like it nor dislike it,” he said testily. “Once I’ve delivered the man to the court I reckon my business is done. I’m the dog. I bring in the bird. I don’t expect to have to cook him.”
“Oh, what a very interesting point of view.” Cullingford had some of the manner of the eminent dignitaries whose safety was his care. “Should I be an impossible nuisance if I bothered you now with the little matter which has brought me up here looking for you? It won’t take a moment. I telephoned your own office and they told me where you were. It concerns an old crime but I thought perhaps I should pass it on.”
He was being long-winded deliberately and there was the ghost of a twinkle in the back of his eyes. Luke, who was aware he was being ragged, produced a packet of cigarettes.
“Try one of these, Your Excellency,” he suggested. “They won’t hurt your throat. Just bung it up solid, I hope. Get on with it, you pompous old police officer, while we’re still kicking our heels waiting for a witness.”
“Very well. Have you ever heard …” Gullingford split the question to light his cigarette, “… of the Church Row shooting? It happened some time ago I believe, and concerned a silk-stocking salesman who lost a glove.” He paused and looked round to find both men staring at him with fixed expressionless interest. “I don’t bore you, I hope?”
“Not yet. What do you know about that case?”
“Nothing at all. But about twenty minutes ago a very charming friend of mine … you must know her, the delightful old lady whose family runs The Grotto … told me over the telephone a very curious little story concerning the glove in that case. She thought nothing of it at the time but tonight something else happened which sent her into quite a panic. By the way, I’ve sworn to keep the family out of it.”
“All right, if they’re not involved already.” Luke was not particularly gracious. “Get on with the something else that happened tonight.”
“Well, that’s another shooting. In Minton Terrace this time. A solicitor was killed. I’d rather assumed that you would know about it. Don’t you?”
“Not quite as much as we’d like.” Luke spoke cautiously. He was regarding Cullingford with a sort of superstitious awe. “Does this woman you know link those two cases?”
“Yes, she does.
She has no proof, of course, but she was sufficiently frightened to get her son to telephone me tonight. As I understand it, she has an old friend who …”
Luke groaned aloud. “Oh, these old friends,” he said wearily. “I thought for one blessed moment that you’d come staggering in with a genuine bone. The friend thinks she may have purchased the gloves, I suppose, and the friend never could make up her mind if the gloves which she gave as a present to someone or other (who afterwards turned out to be a disappointment) were the gloves in the murder mystery. And now when this new crime occurs the friend …”
“All right, Luke.” Cullingford was frankly huffy. “You know much more about this sort of case than I do. It’s hardly my province. I merely pass the story on because I thought it might be of use to you. But if it’s a commonplace reaction….”
“Sorry, cock, I’m hungry. Takes me that way.” Luke was contrite. “Sit down and I’ll take the information in a decent copperlike fashion. Name and address of your friend, please.”
“Mrs. Sybylle Dominique, The Grotto Restaurant, W.1.”
“Thank you, sir. And the name of her friend?”
Superintendent Cullingford was on the point of replying when he was interrupted by a clerk who came hurrying up to Luke.
“Mr. Albert Campion is on the telephone, sir. He’d like to speak to you direct if possible.”
The dark man sprang off the desk, and thrust his pencil at Donne.
“Henry, do this, will you? I’ve been waiting all night for Campion.”
Donne did not reply. He was looking doubtfully at the Security man and Luke, after following his glance, took himself in hand abruptly.
“That’s right,” he said, “that’s right, Henry. You take Campion’s message. Now, Cully. Sorry for the interruption. What is the name of your friend’s friend?”
Cullingford took his time. Presently he looked up from the neat pocket diary which he was studying.
“Her name is Mrs. Polly Tassie,” he said slowly. “That is spelled T-a-s-s-i-e. The address is Number Seven, Garden Green. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s an obscure little district just off the Barrow Road.”
Hide My Eyes Page 18
