Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic

by John Rowland

  I sat on the old familiar seat on the promenade. I cast my mind over all that had happened in the case. I wondered who there was who might be able to help. Naturally, sooner or later we should have to see how the death of Margerison had affected all the odd people who had come into the case earlier on. But meanwhile I thought that there must be someone who had not been as fully investigated as probably would pay.

  At the back of my mind, like the nag of an aching tooth, was the thought that there was someone whose background had not been looked into as much as it should have been. Then I recalled who it was. Of course! Aloysius Bender. I had not spoken to him much since the second murder. Everything had happened in such a rush, Shelley had come on the scene so swiftly, that, apart from the first words with him when Margerison’s body had been discovered, I had had no converse with the liftman.

  I remembered that I had a note of the man’s address somewhere. Since he was not working the lift (it was still closed, by police instructions), it was highly probable that he was at home. I remembered jotting down his address on the back of an envelope during the early stages of the case. I turned out the contents of my breast pocket, and found the envelope. There it was: “Aloysius Bender, 196 Peter Street.” I wondered where Peter Street was. Then I remembered. The Broadgate Parish Council, for the benefit of visitors, had erected further along the promenade a map of the town. If I had a look at that I should be able to spot the street.

  I strolled along to the big oak frame that contained the map. At first I found it difficult to find Peter Street, but eventually spotted it. It was a narrow, twisting alleyway which straggled from one side of Broadgate to the other, running roughly parallel to the sea front, about half a mile up the hill that led inland from the sea.

  It took me only about ten minutes to find the place. I soon spotted 196. It was an unsavoury-looking cottage. I rapped on the door with my knuckles, since no bell or knocker was anywhere visible. A slatternly-looking woman opened the door and greeted me with a stony glare.

  “Yes?” she snapped.

  “Does Mr. Bender live here?” I asked.

  “He does. But he’s out.”

  “Do you know where I might be able to find him?” I said. “It’s rather urgent.”

  “Where would you find him, but in the boozer?” she snapped back at me.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “Out on the High Street. Place called the Seven Bells. He’ll be swilling in the public bar,” she said, and slammed the door loudly in my face. I wondered if this was Mrs. Bender, venting on me her wrath at the fact that her spouse was drinking. Then I thought that this was not very likely. If this woman had any real power over Bender she would not be the sort to allow him to go drinking at all. She was more likely his landlady, annoyed because money was going in beer which should have been devoted to paying her rent.

  Still, I made my way to the High Street, where I soon saw the Seven Bells. It was a quiet little pub, not unlike the sort of place that must have made Broadgate attractive in Edwardian days, before the advent of chain stores and char-a-bancs introduced the ordinary Londoner to the Kent Coast as “London by the sea.” The saloon bar entrance was on the main street, and there was an arrow painted on the front, pointing down a side alley and indicating that the public bar was tucked away there.

  As I strolled in, I soon saw my friend Bender. He was seated on a wooden form against the wall, propped up and with a pint of bitter on the table in front of him. The place could not have been open more than half an hour (I was a bit hazy about the times of opening in Broadgate), but it seemed that Bender must have been going the pace pretty well. There was a glazed expression about his eyes that suggested he had already imbibed a few pints—unless the beer was a good deal stronger than it usually is in these degenerate days.

  I bought myself a pint and made my way to his side.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bender,” I said. “Trying to drown your sorrows, eh?”

  He squinted at me, obviously finding some difficulty in focussing his eyes.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. London,” he said at last.

  “That’s so. Here’s good hunting to Scotland Yard,” I said, raising my tankard and taking a sip.

  “D’you think that they’ll find him?” Bender said.

  “Find who?” I asked.

  “The man who’s been killing people in my lift,” he replied. “After all, it’ll never do if this goes on. The council’ll shut the lift down altogether if it does.”

  He chuckled in a drunken, almost obscene manner, as if he thought this was a witticism of the most extreme brilliance. I thought that his condition was really a lucky break for me. If he really had much knowledge of what was going on; if he had any kind of information as to the man who was committing these murders, if, even, he had any inkling as to how they had been committed, he was now in a very suitable condition to be persuaded to unburden himself of his weight of knowledge.

  “It would never do if that happened,” I said. “You’d be out of a job, wouldn’t you?”

  He leaned forward over the table, an untidy lock of his red hair dangling over his eye. He put a dirty forefinger alongside his nose, and winked meaningfully.

  “I’ll never be out of a job, Mr. London,” he said.

  “No?” I said. “And why not?”

  “Because I’ve got influential friends,” he answered, stumbling somewhat over the difficult adjective. “They won’t let poor old Bender starve.”

  This was interesting. It might be mere idle boasting, however, I thought. I didn’t quite know how to get out of him the information that I was after. I now had him in an affable mood, and I didn’t want to say anything that would make him in any way suspicious. I felt tolerably sure that if I aroused his suspicions in any way—if I made him think that I was trying in any way to ferret out information—he would shut up like an oyster, and the chance of getting hold of something useful would at once be gone, and quite likely gone for ever.

  And there was something about Bender’s manner which suggested that he had some very useful information, a suggestion of infinite knowledge. Of course, I knew that this might be mere drunken fantasy; but at the same time it was possible that there was a genuine foundation for it. The position was ticklish in the extreme. I wished that Shelley had been there to advise me how to tackle it. But then it was quite likely that, given the presence of Shelley, the man would have had nothing at all to say. After all, a newspaperman is not a policeman. And to a suspiciously-minded individual a policeman is a kind of licensed Nosey Parker to be avoided at all costs.

  “So you know something, do you, Mr. Bender?” I said, trying to make my voice as pleadingly knowing as possible. I thought that the confidential air was what was most likely to go down in Aloysius Bender’s present condition.

  “I know more than most people think,” he said, with a revolting grimace that was, I imagined, meant to be a knowing wink.

  “I’m sure of that,” I said.

  “In fact, Mr. London, strictly between ourselves, I’m not sure that I’m not the most important person in the whole thing.” He looked immensely satisfied with himself. “If the police knew all that I know…well, they’d know a lot more than they do just now.”

  This was intensely irritating to me. These vague hints were all very well. They might mean a lot, or they might mean nothing at all. It was totally impossible, without something more definite in the way of statement, for me to say whether Bender really knew anything about the mystery.

  “And what do you know, Mr. Bender?” I asked.

  “Ah, that would be telling!” he exclaimed, with another of his horrible grimaces.

  “My paper would make it worth your while, you know, if you told us anything that was really exclusive,” I said. “You know what a scoop is, don’t you?”

  “A scoop?” He looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean when
one paper gets in ahead of all the others, gets hold of some news that the others don’t know anything about.”

  “That’s it.”

  He grinned. “And what sort of scoop do you think might come out of this case?” he said.

  “Well,” I temporised. This was the most ticklish spot in a very ticklish conversation, I thought. “You have been telling me that you’ve got some special knowledge,” I said. “If that knowledge is as special as you seem to think, my paper would, I know, be prepared to pay good money for it.”

  “Would they?” I thought that there was a gleam of cupidity in the man’s eye. The suggestion that there was good money in the information which he had at his disposal seemed to be coming to him as a new idea. For a few moments I thought that I really had got hold of something worth while. Then the gleam in his eye appeared to fade.

  “But,” he said, looking immensely knowing, “there’s a thing called libel, isn’t there?”

  “What of it?” I asked.

  “Well, your paper wouldn’t pay for information that might lead somebody to say they’d been libelled, if you printed it,” he objected. I wondered if I had over-estimated the state of the man’s drunkenness. This seemed to be a very sober argument. Still, now that I had gone so far, it was more or less impossible for me to withdraw.

  “The libel attitude does complicate things a bit,” I admitted. “But still, you can’t libel a man by telling the truth about him, you know. And I suppose that you wouldn’t find any difficulty in proving the truth of what you know.”

  “I don’t know.” For the first time during the curious interview Bender’s attitude of certainty and knowingness seemed to desert him. “You can know a lot of things about a man without being able to prove it.”

  “But can’t you give me some sort of idea of what it is that you could tell?” I pressed him. “After all, this isn’t a matter of a cross-word puzzle. This is a murder case; a serious matter. If you’ve got any sort of information that might lead to the discovery of the murderer it is, after all, your duty to pass on to the police what you know. It might well prevent more murders, after all.”

  His eyes gleamed with malice. “You mean that you think there may be more murders,” he said. There was a gloating attitude about the man, something almost ghoulish, which I much disliked.

  “There might,” I agreed. “After all, if a man has done two murders, he’ll have nothing to lose by committing more—especially if he thinks that other murders may mean the death of those who might get him convicted of the first ones. Why”—and here a new method of attack occurred to me—“you might even be in danger yourself, if this knowledge of yours is as important and valuable as you think it is. The murderer presumably knows that you have it; you haven’t shared your knowledge with anyone, and if you were killed it would never get known to anybody. The murderer might take that line. If he did so, then he would see that killing you would at once eliminate any chance that you might give him away to the police.”

  I thought that this threat would be likely to cast fear into his heart, but it seemed to make no impression at all. Bender merely leered at me in a drunken fashion, and said: “He won’t kill me, oh no! I know too much.”

  “But that’s the very reason why he might kill you,” I argued with some irritation and heat. “The fact that you know such a lot is the very reason why he would be likely to put you out of the way.”

  But he wagged his head with annoying confidence. I saw that he was in what I took to be a condition that I could only describe as of alcoholic stupidity. Still, I thought that I would have one last effort at getting some information out of him. After all, even though he may have had too big an idea of the value of his information, I thought it was as well to see what it was that he knew.

  “Can’t you give me some idea of what your knowledge is, Mr. Bender?” I said. “Don’t mention any names, but just give me an idea of what you have been hinting at this morning.”

  He grinned. “It’s the keys,” he said.

  “The keys?” I was puzzled.

  “The keys to the locks of the lift,” he explained.

  “And what about them?” I asked.

  “I know of another set.”

  This, I told myself, was the right sort of information; it was the very sort of clue which would make Shelley want to jump for joy. I only hoped that I should be able to find out something more.

  “But I thought,” I said, “that there were only two sets—the set in your possession, and the other set that hang in the council offices.”

  “Ah,” he said, winking again, “that’s what everybody thinks. But I know better.”

  “And who has the other set?” I asked.

  “A certain gentleman,” he said. “He asked me, months ago, to let him take plaster casts of my keys.”

  “And you allowed him to do that?”

  “Yes; he paid me well to do it.”

  “And what reason did he give for taking impressions of the keys?” I asked.

  “So that he could play a joke on someone.”

  This seemed a pretty feeble effort, but I supposed that it might well be the sort of explanation which would get past a man as stupid as Bender appeared to be.

  “Won’t you tell me who it is?” I asked.

  He shook his head emphatically. “What I know I believe in keeping to myself,” he said.

  And there I was compelled to leave the matter.

  Chapter XVII

  In Which Accusations Are Made

  I kept The Daily Wire fairly satisfied by phoning them a sensational account of the second murder. I provided a little character cameo of the man Margerison, hinted at his double identity (though I imagine that the character of Cyrus Watford was made up on the spur of the moment to keep me quiet), and suggested that further sensational results were pending, as soon as the police had carried out certain routine checks of information that was already in their possession.

  That last, in fact, is always a safe card to play. The average reader of newspapers never seems to realise that the suggestion that the police are on the track of something big is the normal “come-back” of the crime reporter stuck for something to say.

  Still, I thought that I was keeping things up pretty well. I was as sure as I could be of a big splash on the front page for the second day running. I had probably already earned enough to ensure my being able to pay for my stay in Broadgate. And I intended to slap in a fairly heavy expense account soon. After all, I saw no reason why the paper shouldn’t pay for some of the entertainment which I had done.

  That evening I thought that the time had come to relax a bit. It was all very well, I told myself, to concentrate on the job in hand. But everyone needs to relax at times. My mood of the morning, when I had felt impelled to action, had passed.

  I craved some sort of entertainment. And entertainment, with me, usually involves beer. I am no soaker, mind you, but I hold that the national beverage of the Englishman is something which provides a useful sideline to any other amusement which may be on the way.

  So I wandered around Broadgate, wondering which of the many pubs I should honour with my custom. There was the Hartfield, that huge erection at one end of the promenade. It had a sort of dive-bar, which could be reached either from the promenade or from the beach. I had found that a pleasant spot in the past. But it was expensive, and the beer was often luke-warm on a really hot evening. So I gave that a miss. Then there was the Royal George, the big residential place on the front. The saloon bar there kept some first-rate draught beer; but again it was likely to be hot and crowded. I thought that I would like something smaller and, if possible, quieter.

  I remembered the Brewer’s Arms, an unpretentious little pub, originally, no doubt, intended for the fishermen. It was down almost on the quay, on the side of Broadgate which was still more or less like it had been in the old d
ays. You got a few of the visitors here, plus some of the artists and writers who had settled in the town. But on the whole it was a peaceful little pub; and in my present mood a peaceful little pub was just what I craved.

  To the Brewer’s Arms I therefore went. I bought myself a pint of bitter and settled in a corner to study humanity. I often think that a strange pub is one of the best places in the world to do that.

  As I settled down I glanced around me to see if there was anyone I knew in the place. I did not expect that any of those with whom I had come into contact in connection with the case would put in an appearance; somehow it did not seem to me that the type of people I had met up to now were quite the sort who would find the Brewer’s Arms just a congenial spot. But in a few minutes I realised that I was wrong.

  I was conscious, in the way in which one often is, that I was being stared at. Then I glanced around to see who it was who was looking at me. Soon I saw. In the opposite corner of the bar were seated two moderately familiar figures—none other than Maya Johnson and Timothy Foster. I caught the man’s eye and he smiled in a half-hearted sort of way. I was not going to miss any opportunity of improving my knowledge of the case, so I got to my feet, strolled across the bar, and stood by them. They were, after all, in a public place anyhow, so I didn’t reckon that I should be spoiling their tête-a-tête by speaking to them.

  “I hope I’m not butting in,” I said. And I really don’t think that I was. Probably these two had been so consumed with a combination of curiosity and anxiety that they were only too glad to find someone to whom they could talk about the murders. Of course, I didn’t know what Shelley and his minions might have said to them already; but I thought that I could rely on my sense of atmosphere to be pretty sure that I didn’t say anything too stupid, put my foot in it too openly.

  Anyhow, I was sure that I was welcome there at first. For Maya Johnson moved along the old wooden settle thing on which the pair were seated, smiled, and indicated that I should sit down with them.