Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic

by John Rowland

  She nodded gloomily. “Yes, I can see that they would argue that way,” she said. “But it means that we shall have to find some other method of attack.”

  I agreed. “It’s no good, I think, to try to work this case from the angle of trying to prove Tim’s innocence,” I said. “He can probably not be proved innocent. I mean to say, if he were arrested, his counsel at a trial might find difficulty in getting him off.”

  “But what do you think we should do?” asked Miss Johnson, a trace of hysteria again creeping into her voice, though I could see that she was doing her level best to control herself.

  “I think that, since it is impossible as things are to prove him innocent, the angle of attack is to prove someone else guilty,” I said.

  “But who?”

  “That’s the problem,” I admitted.

  “Can’t you think of something?” she asked. “If we don’t move, that Mrs. Skilbeck will be spinning her yarn to the police, and then we shall be in a real jam, you know. After all, Mr. London, you admitted a few moments back that it might be very difficult, if Tim were arrested, to prove that he did not commit the murders.”

  Tim Foster grinned. “Nice callous pair you are,” he said. “The way you talk you might think that I’d already got the rope around my neck.”

  “Tim,” I said solemnly, “the point is to make sure that we do something before the rope is around your neck. If we wait until the police have decided that there is something suspicious about you, and that it is time that they considered an arrest, we may well be too late—or we are, at any rate, making our job of getting you off doubly difficult. That’s what I’m anxious to avoid—and that, I think, is what Miss Johnson here is also anxious to avoid.”

  “That’s right,” she said eagerly. “Now, Tim, think! Can you think of any valuable information which we might not have given to Mr. London?”

  He shook his head. “I told him everything that I knew,” he said. “After all, your questions were pretty exhaustive when you called at the garage yesterday, you know.”

  I had to admit that this was true. Yet I felt in my bones that there must be something which could be done. In a short time I had become quite friendly towards this couple. Indeed, I was in a way very fond of them. I thought that they were the sort of folks one would be glad to help, and I knew that they would be able to do some worth-while jobs in the world, given the opportunity. It is, after all, not every day that one has the chance to do a really good turn to a well-disposed couple, to make their lives happier. I thought that I was lucky to have the chance. But that I should have to have a bit more information than had yet come my way in order to do so I felt certain.

  “Tilsley is the king-pin in this game,” I said. “The murders spring in some way from the life that he has been leading. And only if we get to know something more about his activities and where they led shall we be able to get some concrete evidence of the sort that we’re after.”

  Maya Johnson looked worried. “But won’t the police be able to do all that far better than we can hope to do?” she asked.

  “They’re doing it already,” I said. “And fortunately Inspector Shelley from Scotland Yard, who is in charge of the case, is a good friend of mine. I’ve already been able to help him a bit, and so he keeps me fairly well posted with what’s going on. He knows that I’m working on the case independently for my paper, so that he won’t be surprised at my wanting to ferret out any additional evidence. That is one thing in your favour, Tim; you have got a friend on the inside. If the police do ever think of arresting you, we shall have due notice of the fact, since I’m pretty sure Shelley would tell me if an arrest was imminent. You see, in return for a few good turns which I have been able to do him, he has promised to keep me posted as to what he is doing in the matter.”

  “Well, that’s one good thing, anyway,” said Maya Johnson. “But it is a sort of negative virtue at the best. It’s all very well to know when Tim is likely to be arrested. But what we want to do is to make sure that they don’t arrest him at all.”

  “Agreed,” I said. It seemed to me that we were arguing all around the point anyhow. We had to bring the thing down to earth, see if we could not get hold of some correct points of evidence which would point the suspicions definitely in one direction. And, as I had already said, the matter of the activities of John Tilsley was the crucial matter.

  “Can’t you think of anything more about Tilsley?” I said. “You told me that he was selling spare parts of cars—spare parts that were in short supply—and that he sold them at a price considerably over the price agreed on by the makers as fair and reasonable.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, what sort of spare parts?” I asked.

  “Mainly the small stuff—cotter-pins and pieces of carburettors,” answered Tim. “They were the sort of thing that any competent mechanic could make. But if they were made by an ordinary mechanic they would take a long time, and would be very costly.”

  I seized on this. “Small parts?” I said. “Never things like a cylinder head or a radiator?”

  “I think that he did let me have a radiator once,” Tim said. “But as a rule it was the small stuff. And that was what made me think that they might be stolen. I thought, you see, that he might have a ring of men working in the factories of the various motor manufacturers, with a scheme whereby they could pinch small parts and bring them to him. After all, you could carry home a few small parts in your pocket, and, unless suspicion had been aroused, you would not be likely to be found out. But it wouldn’t be at all easy to carry home a radiator or a cylinder head.”

  “Agreed,” I said. I felt that this was getting somewhere, though just where it was not at all easy to decide. It was, at any rate, a slice of new information, different from what I had previously heard.

  “I suppose that this couldn’t have been a sort of decoy for something else,” I suggested.

  “What do you mean?” asked Maya Johnson.

  “I mean that these spare parts couldn’t have had something else hidden in them—some sort of contraband in which the man was dealing.”

  “Contraband? You mean some sort of smuggling?” Maya said.

  “Yes.”

  Tim Foster thought this over. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said slowly. “Though I don’t quite know what sort of goods could be smuggled in that way.”

  Maya Johnson sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing with the excitement of what she obviously thought to be a pure brain-wave.

  “I know!”

  “What do you know?” asked Tim.

  “I know what might have been hidden inside those spare parts!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Drugs.”

  This, I saw, was a brilliant suggestion. “That is a definite possibility,” I admitted.

  “Cocaine, hashish, and so on,” she said. “Don’t you see, Tim? He was using you to distribute the stuff. No doubt he would tell his clients that they could get the stuff from you by saying that they wanted a new cotter-pin or whatever it was. And the thing would be made hollow, the inside filled with the drug. And the payment would be made partly to you and partly to him—no doubt in advance of delivery.”

  I looked at the girl with admiration. This was an astonishingly brilliant idea. And it was, as I have said, quite a possible explanation of what had been going on.

  “You said, didn’t you, Tim, when I was talking to you yesterday, that the customers who got served were often complete strangers to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that often things that you wanted for your regular customers were not available?”

  “That’s right.”

  I turned to Maya Johnson. “It seems possible that you’ve hit on the right explanation,” I said. “I shall certainly pass this on to Inspector Shelley. It may be the very sort of thing that will lead
him somewhere.”

  “And it might help to clear Tim from suspicion?”

  “It certainly would if it proved to be true,” I said. “No one, I think, would be likely to accuse Tim of having anything to do with a drug racket.”

  She heaved a great sigh of relief.

  “We’re not out of the wood yet, you know,” I warned her. “This, after all, is only a sort of inspired guess—nothing more.”

  “Still, you agree that it is a possible explanation of what has been going on?”

  “Yes,” I said, and then another idea occurred to me. “It marries up, too, with what I have learned about Margerison,” I said.

  “In what way?”

  “Margerison knew Tilsley as a dealer in gold and platinum,” I said.

  My companions looked puzzled, so I went on to explain what I meant.

  “Gold and platinum are two very expensive materials,” I said. “Anyone who buys some will be paying a lot of money for it. And the lumps of gold and platinum might be hollow. That, again, might mean that drugs were hidden somewhere.”

  So altogether I was more than satisfied with the outcome of my talk with Maya Johnson and Tim Foster. We had succeeded in getting somewhere. As I said, it might be no more than an inspired guess, but I felt sure that Shelley would greet it with pleasure.

  Chapter XIX

  In Which I Put a Theory Before Scotland Yard

  When my session with Tim Foster and Maya Johnson was over, I realised that it was too late to do anything with Shelley that night. I knew, of course, that the man from Scotland Yard was wont to keep all hours when he was busy on a case. The normal man’s requirement of sleep did not seem to be in any way a necessity of his in such circumstances. But at the same time I thought it would be unfair to expect him to listen to a new theory at ten-thirty at night. Indeed I had no desire to interfere with his beauty sleep—or with my own.

  I had had two difficult and trying days, and I knew that I needed sleep. But at the same time, when I had got back to my lodgings and gone to bed, sleep seemed to elude me for a long time. It was difficult to compose my mind for it; I found my thoughts going round and round in circles, thinking all about our arguments of the evening. Was it, I asked myself, indeed possible that Tilsley had been a drug-trafficker, disguising his business under the pretence that he was a dealer in car spares or precious metals, or something similarly harmless?

  I was unable to find any flaw in the argument; but at the same time I thought that it would be very difficult to prove the truth of the allegation. Yet I knew that Scotland Yard had their methods. No doubt that they had a group of men whose job would be to deal with the traffic in dangerous drugs. They would deal with all those suspected of having any connexion with this horrid trade, and it might well be that they would have some knowledge of Tilsley’s connexion with drugs, if such connexion really existed.

  I could not sleep for a long time. These things were swimming around my brain. I found that I was repeating all the familiar arguments again and again, not getting any further forward but at the same time losing sleep which I knew would be of vital importance to me if I had to do any lengthy job of investigation in the near future—something which might well prove to be true in the next few days.

  At last I did fall asleep, though it must have been about two o’clock in the morning. And then my sleep was disturbed by the most unpleasant of dreams, in which all those who were concerned in the case were stupidly muddled up. It was with considerable relief, in fact, that I woke up in the morning to find the bright sunshine streaming into my room. I glanced at my watch. It was half-past seven.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. There would not, I told myself, be much competition for the bathroom at that hour of the morning. A tepid bath would be as refreshing as anything could well be, I thought. So I bathed, shaved, and dressed. Then I wandered downstairs. There was no one about—it was only just after eight o’clock. So, for the third morning in succession I went out for a stroll along the promenade. I felt a bit nervous, since for the last two mornings I had found a dead body in the Broadgate lift. I was scared that there might be a third murder.

  Yet I was not going to give in to any feeling of nervousness. I was resolved to face up to whatever might happen. So I went along and sat on the seat nearby the lift. If there was anything to be seen I was resolved to see it, even though it might be a sight just as shocking as those which had met my eyes on the previous mornings.

  Nothing of the kind happened. It looked as if the trouble was over for the time being. I didn’t see Bender. That red-headed, limping figure did not put in an appearance. I wandered over to the little path leading to the lift. The padlock on the lift-doors had clearly not been tampered with, and the notice stating that the lift was out of order was still in position. I knew that the police had decided that the lift should be kept locked, until further notice. But I was in a way astonished that Bender had not turned up. I had expected that he would do so, if only in the hope that the police ban on the use of the lift might be raised.

  He had told me, in fact, that he was paid a small wage, plus a fairly considerable commission on his takings. So it was a good thing for him to have the lift working for the longest possible hours.

  Still, the fact remained that he was not there. So I wandered back to my lodging at nine o’clock, and ate a thoughtful breakfast. This over, I made my way to the Police Station. It was now half-past nine, and I knew that I would find Shelley in possession. Indeed, he seemed to have been at work for hours. As on previous occasions, he was surrounded by papers. I presumed that the reports on the various names in Tilsley’s notebooks were now coming in.

  “Busy?” I asked.

  “Never too busy to see you, Jimmy,” he smiled. “After all, I don’t suppose that you’ve come here merely to pick my brains, for you’ve been able to give me some useful leads up to now, and it may well be that you’ve got something useful again. What do you say?”

  “Well, first of all I would like to pick your brains, as you put it,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I have an idea which I think is suggestive,” I said; “but I shall be able to see better if it’s likely to be any good if I know a little more about what Tilsley was doing.”

  “I’ve got some of the reports on the people in his notebooks, of course,” said Shelley a little reluctantly. “They’re not altogether as satisfactory as I should wish.”

  “In what way?” I asked. This was not quite the answer from Shelley that I had anticipated.

  “Well, I thought that there would be some common factor between them, which would enable us to get some idea of just what the man was doing. But there seems to be little in common between his various business acquaintances.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shelley picked up a bunch of papers from the table, apparently more or less at random, and said: “Well, the materials in which he was apparently dealing seemed to vary. Here’s a man who used to buy radio valves and other small parts. The chap was a radio dealer in Chiswick. And here’s a chemist, who bought all sorts of patent medicines from him. And here’s a man with a music shop in Hammersmith. He used to buy rare and out-of-print gramophone records from Tilsley. As you probably know, Margerison was a dealer in precious metals, and Tilsley used to supply him with gold and platinum, while your friend Tim Foster had a garage, and used to buy spare parts for cars. The different sorts of goods in which Tilsley dealt were so striking that I can’t conceive that any one man could possibly be sufficiently expert to deal in them all. The whole thing puzzles me considerably, I don’t mind admitting.”

  “Have you thought of the possibility that these deals might be a disguise, hiding something else?” I asked.

  Shelley looked at me with a glint of surprise in his eyes. “What do you mean, Jimmy?” he asked.

  “Well, you’ve got so obsessed with the idea t
hat there was some black market racket behind this that I think you’ve overlooked any other possibilities,” I said. “You found no evidence of the black-market petrol business that you originally thought lay behind it?”

  “Very little,” he admitted. “Though several garages were involved in whatever is going on.”

  I now played my trump card, almost with an air of triumph. “Do you think that the answer might be drugs?” I asked.

  “Drugs?”

  “Yes—cocaine, hashish, and what have you,” I explained. “After all, it does seem possible. These other things might be mere disguises for dealing in drugs. And the garage proprietors, radio and music shops, and so on might be totally innocent of any connexion with the case—they might be innocent agents, distributing drugs without any knowledge of what they were selling.”

  Shelley slapped his knee with his hand. “By Jove, Jimmy!” he exclaimed, “I believe that you’ve got hold of something there. It might be an explanation of what has happened. All the things, except possibly the car spares, were comparatively small things; they might easily be vehicles for the passing about of drugs.”

  I was pleased. I had not thought that Shelley would greet this suggestion with so much enthusiasm. It was clear that it had struck him as a worth-while idea.

  “No indication in your reports that such a drug-ring might be in existence?” I enquired.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. “But then one would not expect anything of the sort. After all, if one is dealing in, say, cocaine, one would not expect to have to advertise the connexion. But I will certainly get our drug squad working on this, checking up on all the names in the list and seeing if any of them have at any time been suspected of having anything to do with drug traffic in this country.”

  “How long do you think it will take before you can get a pretty comprehensive report on things from that angle?” I asked.

  “Not more than a few days,” said Shelley. “Of course, one can’t make any sort of firm promise; it all depends on whether these gentry have covered their tracks effectively. If they have, it may take a long time to dig the facts out. On the other hand, if they’ve been a bit over-confident, and have taken things too much for granted, it may be fairly easy to get the information we are after.”