Death of a Shadow (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

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  Death of a Shadow

  by

  George Bellairs

  1

  The Unseen Watcher

  ‘WILL THE owner of car with registration number GE 03567 parked in the English rose garden of the hotel, please remove it to the official car park?’

  A quiet, determined, feminine voice came over the hidden loudspeakers in French and then repeated it in precise German and hesitant English.

  Littlejohn heard it through a fug of cigar smoke and brandy. Like hearing the telephone in the middle of the night and trying to make out whether or not it’s the alarm clock.

  A pause. Everyone in the room looked around to discover if the culprit was there. Nobody reacted to the message and the hum of conversation and the rattle of coffee cups was resumed.

  But the loudspeaker wasn’t giving up so easily.

  ‘Will the owner of car with registration number GE 03567 …?’

  French, German, English, to accommodate the cosmopolitan crowd of guests at the banquet.

  Littlejohn took it all in again, but it didn’t register. He was in that state of semi-trance which occurs after a mixture of good food, good wine, pleasant conversation and the babble of voices all around. He was also doing his best to answer questions about Elizabeth I’s secret service, asked by the wife of the police chief of Madrid, whilst her husband tried to justify bullfighting to Mrs. Littlejohn. It was Mrs. Littlejohn who disturbed the conversation.

  ‘Isn’t that the number of our hired car?’

  It was. Littlejohn confirmed it by a glance at the old envelope on which he’d recorded it. But he still hesitated. The whole business seemed ridiculous. What was the car doing in the sacred rose garden, of all places? He had put it in the official car-park under the palms and facing the lake, a small red Sublime, looking like a proletarian intruder wedged between a Rolls and a Cadillac.

  ‘Will the owner of car …?’

  It was like a third-degree. The loudspeaker was evidently determined to make somebody confess. Littlejohn excused himself to his friends, and rose. All eyes were upon him with complete sympathy, humour, good will, and a certain amount of admiration for his audacity. It was a dinner given to members of the police conference by the Geneva police and it added spice to the event that the English representative should commit a parking offence in the very middle of it. Littlejohn made his way through the crowded room and into the vast main hall of the Hôtel du Roi. It was packed with a milling throng. It was late May and although the holiday season had not yet opened, Geneva was overflowing with visitors. Four international conferences were in progress, Disarmament, International Cotton Manufacturers, Moral Improvement and Police. There were also a number of minor jamborees ranging from boy scouts to squabbling potentates from the Middle and Far East and Africa. People of all colours jostled for attention and space. Politicians, financiers, scientists, philosophers and cranks made speeches and attended banquets and parties. There were present at the police dinner fifteen Ministers of State from all over the world, including Sir Ensor Cobb, the British Minister of Security.

  Outside, the night was clear and cool. The lights of Geneva and the resorts strewn round the edge of the lake competed with the stars. On the opposite side, at the head of the lake, the celebrated fountain cast up a floodlit jet of water which seemed to vanish in the outer darkness. An illuminated lake steamer waddled its way from Evian loaded with Moral Improvement delegates who had been celebrating there. The smell of the lake met Littlejohn as the revolving doors thrashed him out into the open. It was an all-pervading, nostalgic aroma, dear to all Genevese and other lovers of the city. To Littlejohn, it was a reminder of the damp stone floors of old English country houses.

  The little car was right in the middle of the rose garden parked beside a fountain, with four dolphins spouting water at a naked nymph, and guarded by an indignant porter in uniform and gold braid. It looked at the same time, very small, lonely and impudent, the axis around which were incessantly revolving the splendid cars of the wealthy patrons of the hotel. It had been driven into the darkest part of the unlit garden, shaded by trees and flowering shrubs, as though the driver had wished to conceal the intrusion. The loudspeaker system was still in full blast. ‘Will the owner of car with registration number GE 03567 …?’

  The porter didn’t know Littlejohn but sensed that he was of the police. He was Swiss and trained to tolerate the antics of the eccentric. When he saw the joker was an Englishman his curiosity left him.

  ‘I would have moved it, sir, but it is locked.’

  That was all. No reproach, no demand for explanations. There would obviously be some financial recompense for his trouble and solicitude and the man was content to leave it at that.

  But how had the thing got there? Locked, and the key in Littlejohn’s pocket. Littlejohn unlocked the door with his key.

  The first impression he got as he put his head in the car was a faint waft of perfume. It was certainly not that used by his wife. This was more pungent and exotic. Something probably with a name like Passion, Toujours à toi, or Amour Furtif! He switched on the interior light of the car.

  Then he saw the bundle in the back. A triangular erection under the car rug. He removed the rug, and there it was. The body of a man, dumped on the back seat in a sitting posture knees up, arms sagging, quite dead. The eyes were wide open and staring, as though death had come upon him suddenly and shockingly.

  Littlejohn took a closer look and whistled through his teeth. The dead man was Alec Cling, the detective assigned, for some unknown reason, to protect Sir Ensor Cobb. Sprawling there, drawn up on himself, one hand still extended, as though making an appeal or emphasising a point, Cling still seemed alive. He was a man who had spent the bulk of his official life since the war in following V.I.Ps. all over the earth. He had earned his place not through social graces, but on account of his physical strength, assiduousness and cunning. His technique as an official bodyguard and unseen watcher had been superb. Now, someone more adept than he must have turned up and ended it.

  Cling, with the open staring eyes in the back of the small car was not a big man; medium built and slim, in fact. Brown-skinned, hawk-faced, slightly bald, with a large fleshy mouth, and around fifty. He was very neatly dressed, as became his status, and invariably wore a smart slouch hat. The murderer had carefully placed the latter beside him on the seat.

  Littlejohn took it all in very quickly. Cling had been killed by a single purposive blow from a blunt instrument on the back of his head before he even knew what had hit him. That was obvious. The blood had coagulated round the wound and there was none in the car. He had probably been killed elsewhere and dumped.

  Littlejohn thought of the plethora of policemen he had left inside the hotel. Many of them very young and full of new ideas, scientific routine, paper work. They thought the old hands at the game, Littlejohn and his contemporaries, were out of date and slow. At a time when some of the advanced moderns were even talking about computers in the detection of crime, the methods of the old brigade were regarded as formless and catch-as-catch-can.

  His friend Dorange from Nice was one of the party indoors and he vaguely wished he could have sent in for him, the best collaborator he had ever had and another who was now regarded as a bit passé. Instead, Littlejohn behaved like an ordinary citizen and sent the porter to bring a policeman who was patrolling the wat
erfront. A tall, fair young man, impeccably turned out in the Geneva fashion. He looked inside the car and withdrew, casting upon Littlejohn a reproachful look as though the Superintendent himself had committed the crime and thus disturbed the civilised reputation of the city. Littlejohn made haste to introduce himself. The young man drew himself up and saluted efficiently.

  ‘Will you, monsieur …?’

  ‘I’ll wait here until you report the matter.’

  The officer looked hastily in the direction of the hotel, as though wondering whether or not to go there, and erupt into the banquet and announce his alarming news. Then he changed his mind and pointed to a telephone box along the quai.

  ‘I will telephone headquarters …’

  ‘That would be better.’

  One could imagine the commotion caused by casting a murder in the midst of the feasting policemen!

  Littlejohn stood in the open air waiting for the next move. The lake was silent and still, like the blackcloth of a theatre, with the lights of buildings and the lamps of the promenade reflected in it. Somewhere, in the distance, an orchestra was producing nostalgic music on a battery of violins. On a seat in one corner of the forecourt two lovers obliviously locked in each other’s arms.

  Then the police arrived. A tall, dark inspector in uniform, with close-clipped hair, two detectives, and an elderly man, evidently a doctor, with a shrivelled skin and a cough which he got off his chest repeatedly without removing his cigarette.

  Littlejohn introduced himself to the inspector and gave him the key of the car. They spoke in French.

  ‘I’ll give you a statement when you’re ready. The dead man in the car is called Cling and is the personal detective of Sir Ensor Cobb, who is, just now, present at the police banquet in the hotel.’

  The young inspector was deferential.

  ‘If you care to wait in the hotel, sir, I’ll meet you in the hall in a few minutes.’

  ‘That will give me a chance to let Sir Ensor know what has happened and explain my absence to my wife.’

  Indoors, the news hadn’t yet leaked out and the banquet was still going on. Sir Ensor was on his feet, reading a speech in halting French. The light from the great chandeliers above him made his bald head glow incandescently.

  ‘… In these days of scientific progress, of high ideals, of enhanced public welfare, the fate of world civilisation is still in the hands of the police …’

  And he leaned forward and made a gesture like a pat on the back of every policeman present.

  In the face of such eloquence and profound sentiments the tragic death of Alec Cling seemed pathetic and small. There, was, however, nothing to be done but to prick the bubble and bring Sir Ensor down to earth. Littlejohn scribbled a note on a leaf of his diary, tore it out, and sent it to the chairman, Dr. Sorgius, an eminent Swiss criminal lawyer, by a chasseur.

  Dr. Sorgius looked surprised at the interruption and, still under the spell of Cobb’s eloquence, absent-mindedly fished in his pocket and handed the astonished flunkey a two-franc piece for his services. He awoke, however, when he read the note.

  Sir Ensor Cobb’s detective, Cling, has just been found murdered outside this hotel.

  Dr. Sorgius hesitated. Hoaxes of this kind were becoming a little too frequent and he called back the footman and asked him whence he’d got the message. The man pointed to Littlejohn, now standing at the door awaiting results. Littlejohn nodded in confirmation.

  The chairman, known as a man of direct action, at once seized Sir Ensor’s coat-tails and dragged him down from his flights of fancy. He then handed Cobb the note.

  The effect was remarkable. Sir Ensor was a florid man with a pear-shaped body, long legs and a large bald head fringed by silver hair. He tottered at the news, the blood drained from his features, leaving them pale and lined with purple veins. He seemed suddenly to grow old and afraid. Dr. Sorgius snapped his fingers at the head waiter, who, reading his thoughts, advanced upon Sir Ensor and gave him brandy, which didn’t seem to improve his condition at all, for he sank lower in his chair, as though settling himself for a nap.

  The guests in the body of the banqueting hall sat, at first, like an audience awaiting the resumption of a film show after a power-cut. They didn’t know what had happened. Many of them had seen Littlejohn scribble and hand the note to Dr. Sorgius and the effect it had produced. Some wondered if the British government had fallen; others if some kind of disgrace had fallen upon Sir Ensor.

  Dr. Sorgius rose to dispel their curiosity.

  ‘I fear we must now end the proceedings. I regret to inform you that Sir Ensor Cobb has suffered a bereavement …’

  There was a rumble of condolence among the guests.

  That was too much for Cobb. He’d never liked Cling, who had been thrust upon him after he had received anonymous telephone calls and letters threatening him with bombs and bullets. He rose unsteadily to his feet, for he’d consumed a goblet full of brandy. He wasn’t having anyone thinking Cling was a close relative of his. He held up his hand for silence. You could have heard a pin drop, except that in the kitchens somebody was singing Capri in robust bel canto.

  ‘I regret that I am unable to finish my speech. My personal detective has been found dead outside this hotel and it would appear to be murder …’

  Almost a dozen reporters rushed out to the nearest telephones, on their ways concocting stories, supplementing from imagination what they hadn’t learned in fact. Some of them even approached Cobb for a statement and a television squad with full apparatus glided down upon him for a close-up news conference. Dr. Sorgius chased them all away.

  Having delivered his bombshell, the Minister of Security sagged again, seemed to lose all interest in what was going on and was assisted unsteadily from the room.

  It was then that the newspaper correspondents realised that Littlejohn was big news, but they were too late, for the Swiss police arrived and led him away.

  2

  The Two Clings

  THE DAY after the death of Alec Cling, the police conference was wound up and Littlejohn found himself among the last of the visitors. He had remained behind at the request of the Geneva police but now, it seemed, he had ceased to be of much service and he was packing his bag. His wife had returned to London earlier that day to attend a wedding.

  The death of Cling was still baffling the police. With characteristic thoroughness the Geneva force had tackled the case, solved the initial problems of it and then reached a dead end. Chief Inspector Lindemann, in charge, had kept Littlejohn fully informed. They had got on very well together and their collaboration had resulted in a warm friendship.

  Littlejohn was quite sure that he had locked the little red Sublime car when he had left it in the car park at the Hôtel du Roi. How had the murderer opened it, placed the body in it, driven it to the rose garden of the hotel, locked it again, and left it there? This was soon answered.

  Enquiries at the car hire depot of Gessler A.G., disclosed that Cling himself had obtained a duplicate car key from them. On the evening of his death, he had appeared and asked for it. The office clerk who dealt with car hire had, at first, resisted such an unusual request. Cling had then told a very good tale. His colleague, Littlejohn, he said, had set out for Montreux in a friend’s car to spend the evening there. They had broken down at Vevey. Littlejohn had telephoned to ask Cling to make himsef known to Gesslers, obtain a duplicate key for his hired Sublime and drive to Vevey to pick him up.

  The story, the clerk added, had been a convincing one. Cling had arrived in a hurry. Not only had he stated that Littlejohn was a colleague from Scotland Yard; he had also given proof. Gesslers already had Littlejohn’s personal details filed with his application for the hired car. Cling now produced not only his own passport, but his warrant-card from Scotland Yard and his letter of instructions about duties with Sir Ensor Cobb. The clerk had not hesitated after that. The time of his visit to the garage had been around eight o’clock.

  A post-mortem at
the medico-legal institute had revealed that Cling had died between nine and ten o’clock in the evening. Littlejohn had parked the car at a quarter to seven. So, Cling had not been long in acting. Nor had the murderer. The report was in no doubt about its being murder. The weapon had been a small fire-extinguisher, part of the equipment of the hired car, discovered under the seat next to that of the driver.

  Sir Ensor Cobb had been staying at Ferney-Voltaire, a few miles from Geneva, just over the French frontier. His son-in-law was a consultant surgeon at Gex and did a fair amount of work in Geneva, too. He lived at Ferney for convenience. Sir Ensor made a habit of staying with his daughter whenever he visited Geneva.

  Cobb was as baffled as the police by the murder.

  ‘I can’t think why such a thing should happen to Cling. The fellow didn’t know anybody in Geneva. He was always a bit of a lone wolf and, as far as I can gather, had no contacts whatever there. He wasn’t attending the police conference and seemed to spend his offtime sightseeing on his own.’

  Asked by Lindemann why Cling had accompanied him, Sir Ensor had been quite candid.

  ‘It was against my wishes. I didn’t want a detective breathing down my neck all the time. Although I must say that Cling was a very good man at the job. I hardly knew he was around.’

  ‘But surely you were in no danger, sir. Why did you need a personal bodyguard?’

  Sir Ensor looked a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Between you and me, a criminal lunatic had been making threats against me. A little over a year ago, he went bankrupt. He was a Lancashire cotton merchant who attributed his failure to some legislation I’d been seeing through parliament. I was Minister of Industry at the time. He went quite off his head and attacked me. He was treated sympathetically, placed in a home, and escaped. The next thing was a home-made bomb went off at my house. Luckily, the man didn’t know much about explosives. The only damage done was that all the glass in the conservatory was shattered. He was arrested, and this time sent to Broadmoor for safety. A fortnight ago, he escaped again and is, as far as I know, still at large. He wrote me a letter, postmarked London, saying that he was still on my track. The Home Office thought I’d better have someone to keep an eye on me. I resisted the idea until the Prime Minister himself insisted.’