“What’s that mean?” snapped the Colonel.
“One of these days I might be some use to you.”
“Good of you to suggest it. What d’ye do?”
Crook told him.
“Lawyer, eh? Nothing in that line wanted here. Got all my affairs fixed up.”
“Can’t be sure,” insisted Crook. “F’rinstance, how can you be certain you ain’t breaking the law?”
“Which one?”
“That’s just it. There are about ten thousand. No chap can hope to keep ‘em all.”
“And what can you do? Persuade the police I haven’t broken it?”
“Could be,” said Mr. Crook, modestly.
“Humph!” The old man snorted. “You ought to meet my nephew. He writes books.”
“Oh, yes,” said Crook, looking intelligent. “What you buy off stalls on railway stations. Me, I don’t use the railways much.”
“If they try and sell John’s claptrap at railway bookstalls it’s not surprising railway shares are dropping. It’s my belief he bribes the publishers to put ‘em out.”
“Perhaps his wife,” began Crook, but die old chap snorted.
“John’s not married. He’s a landlady’s pet. And from the look of
him you’d think when she polished the furniture she gave him a polish, too. Face like an apple and eyes like currants. Always the little gentleman. Even in the war …” He broke off an instant, considering. Then, “What’s M.I.5?” he shot out.
“Something hush-hush at the War Office, they tell me.”
“Trust John to get on to something like that. Probably holds the world’s record for listening at key-holes. Did well, he tells me. John Sherren, the Whitehall Wonder. But wear a uniform? Not him. Damn it, man, I said, can’t you even join the Home Guard? But he might have got his dear little face dirty. Pshaw! My brother’s boy. Posthumous. Brought up by women. Not surprising he writes novels, I suppose. The Bright Boy of Brakemouth, that’s John. Faugh! Tell me some more about yourself.”
And, some time later, “Mean to say if I managed to shove this fellow out of the window you could make a judge believe he’d done it himself?”
“Not precisely,” said Crook. “I’d be inclined to plump for self-defense. Your heir waiting to give you a helpin’ hand to the land of hope and glory. Naturally, you can’t allow him to go breaking the law and—well, that’s how I’d see it, and how the old bird on the bench would see it by the time I was through.”
“Dear me!” said the Colonel, and his eyes gleamed. “And I gathered from some nonsensical paper Bligh imported into my house that private enterprise was dead.”
“Not at 123 Bloomsbury Street, it ain’t. Next time you’re in town look me up, won’t you?”
The Colonel carefully wrote down the name and address.
“Better have the home one, too,” Crook invited him. “It’s only a couple of attics in S.W.5,, but at least I have ‘em to myself.”
“No Mrs. Crook?”
“Be your age,” said Crook, rudely. “Do I look like a family man?”
“Quite so, quite so.” The Colonel appeared a little embarrassed, as if he thought one confirmed bachelor should recognize another. “In any case, yours is a sufficiently dangerous existence as it is. If my nephew—but John wouldn’t risk his precious life. What ‘ud happen to literature if he snuffed it out?”
“Ah, well,” said Crook, dismissing the subject of John as unimportant. “It cuts both ways. If there’s a lot of chaps who’d like to
see Arthur Crook under the daisies, there’s just as many who know it’s them or me, and they’ll make it tlieir job to keep me on my pins as long as I can stagger.”
Bligh came in twice more and on the second occasion the old man exploded irritably: “What the devil’s the matter, man? Mr. Crook and I can look after the fire, if that’s all that’s troubling you. Lock up and get off to bed. We don’t either of us want hot milk.”
“It’s long after your usual time,” muttered Bligh sulkily.
“What do you think you are? A nurse? I’ll go to bed when I damn well please. Mr. Crook’s right. I’ve been vegetating here long enough. You’d have me in a wheelchair with an ear-trumpet if you had your way.”
Bligh departed with a very sour glance in Crook’s direction and it was nearly one o’clock before the two men reluctantly left the ashes of the fire and made their way to the ice-cold regions above. The Colonel insisted on showing Crook to his room, and stood in the doorway, complacently admiring his own hospitality.
“Got everything you want, I hope,” he said, looking from the bleak blue blind—he presumably included curtains on his list of womanish luxuries—to the stark furniture, the ragged carpet and the bed, an iron monstrosity with one brass knob missing. There was an enormous washstand supporting a double set of toilet ware, a gigantic wardrobe, an empty grate and a general smell of mice. Beside the bed, on an octagonal bamboo table, stood a china candlestick.
“And you know your way to the bathroom?”
Crook said he thought so, but the Colonel insisted on showing him. It was just as well he did, as Crook would never have found his way alone.
“Handy,” said the Colonel approvingly, looking around the ice-cold barn of a room. “Everything ship-shape.” He drew Crook’s attention to a long thorny object which looked like a strip of shredded wheat eight or ten inches long and which he referred to as a loofah. Crook had seen these Spartan washcloths in many English bathrooms, but never by any furthest chance could he have been induced to use such an instrument of torture. It was secured to a string and fastened to a cup-hook on the lid of the bath; a sponge as big as a man’s head dwelt in a wire basket similarly secured. “All
these flibbertigibbets,” the old man went on. “No method. Get into the bath, find you’ve left the sponge on the basin. I like things to look as neat as my orderly room used to.”
Crook said faintly that was nice, wasn’t it? Yes, he was sure he could find his way back, and listened to the Colonel’s retreating footsteps. They seemed to retreat a very long way. As for Bligh, he probably slept up in the attic or down in the basement or where-ever the kitchen was situated.
It was some time before Crook could nerve himself to remove his coat; as he had anticipated, the bed was as hard as a plank; the linen sheets felt like iron; there was one pillow stuffed with stones, and he caught his big toe in the elaborate fringe of the white mar-cella quilt.
The night seemed endless, as all nights do when you don’t sleep. The house rocked and creaked, the stairs groaned. Once a door slammed loudly, but whether that was Bligh, the Colonel or the storm Crook didn’t get up to discover. He crawled out in the morning convinced he was black and blue, and was instantly relieved to find the rain was over and an optimistic sun had appeared. True, the roads seemed mainly under water, and no man who respected his car would have dreamed of taking it out, but Crook would have backed the Scourge against Noah’s Ark, and he came downstairs whistling vaingloriously to find Bligh putting the finishing touch to the cheerless breakfast table.
“Sun inside and out,” approved Crook, pausing on the threshold. “What d’you do with yourselves all day in this back of beyond?”
“Make ‘istory. Leastways, the Colonel does. D’you take sugar with your porridge? Because there ain’t any.”
“I don’t take porridge,” said Crook.
“Blime, you’re going to be ‘ungry. The old gent don’t keep *ens.”
“What time does the pub open?” asked Crook.
“Ten o’clock.”
“I can last till then. How often does the heir pay a visit?”
” ‘E’s coming today, if you want to know, ‘Ad a card this morning. Why don’t you stop on and meet ‘im?”
But Crook said cheerfully that must be a pleasure deferred.
“Why, you’re not thinking of coming ‘ere again, are you?” asked Bligh, in alarm. “You’ll upset ‘im proper if you do. ‘E’s talking of going to London
as it is.”
“Why not?” asked Crook.
“Why not? Because it ‘ud be the death of ‘im. D’you savvy the old chap’s never seen a traffic light?”
“He ought to be in a museum.”
“If they find ‘im wandering around Piccadilly ‘e probably will be. Nor it ain’t no joke neither. It don’t matter ‘im being cuckoo up ‘ere with only me to know, but in London they’d send ‘im out on a chain, like a traveling bear.”
“Oh, come,” said Crook. “What about the R.S.P.C.A.?”
It was slightly disconcerting when the Colonel came storming in and asked Crook who the devil he was.
“If you’re from the government about the lower meadow you can save time—and gas. I’ve told you already …”
“Not me,” said Crook, “and it ‘ud be a waste of breath, because I don’t suppose I’d understand when you’d finished. Crook’s the name.”
“You remember, sir,” broke in Bligh. “Last night …”
“Probably thinks I’m part of his nightmare,” said Crook, quite unmoved.
The Colonel was staring at Crook in an uncertain manner. “I seem to have seen you somewhere. Why, of course, you’re the chap who drove a rattletrap across the moor in yesterday’s storm. Sleep well? Slept like a top myself. You at the first battle of the Somme, by any chance?”
“Yes,” said Crook.
The old man looked delighted. “Now, that’s a most fortunate occurrence. I am writing the only reliable history of World War One. Now, what is your view of the engagement?”
“Bloody,” said Crook. But not, he decided a little later, much bloodier tlian this breakfast.
As soon as he could, he made his farewells and prepared to depart.
“I have your address,” said the old man, looking as if he’d stepped out of one of the early feature films, say about 1911, “and you may be hearing from me at any time.”
“Always at your service,” responded Crook, and stepped thankfully into the Scourge.
3
BACK in London Crook found his hands full. It was an ill wind that blew no one any good, and the ever-increasing list of controls and prohibitions put more and more names on his clientele.
“I wonder if the old boy takes my advice and drowns his nevvy in the bath,” he wondered aloud to Bill Parsons. “Unless Bligh blows the gaff, the poor devil could turn black before any one thought of looking for him there.”
That was Tuesday. On Thursday Bill came in with an early edition of the evening paper.
“Where there’s Crook there’s crime,” said he, reversing the slogan that had sprung up round the lawyer’s name. “Only not quite the way you expected.”
Crook took the paper from his outstretched hand. He skimmed it rapidly. Tragic end to Thirty-Year-Old Romance, he read, and Jilted Bridegroom in Bath. On the day following Crook’s departure from Chipping Magna, the old Colonel had taken his last bath. According to Bligh, he had entered the bathroom as usual about eight-thirty, locking the door behind him. At nine-thirty, alarmed by his master’s non-appearance and receiving no reply to his frantic bawling, the old servant smashed down the door and found the lid of the bath had somehow fallen, killing the old man instantaneously.
Crook put the paper aside thoughtfully. Coincidence played a large part in life, as he well knew. Indeed, he had come across any number of coincidences that novelists, chaps like this Sherren fellow, for example, would never dare use in a book. All the same, it was damned odd. For thirty years the old gentleman had been taking a bath, and there had never been any mishap. Now, following the combined visits of himself, Crook, and Whatsisname Sherren, the old fellow was out for the count. And yet—that lid had been hooked back securely enough a couple of nights ago. If it had got loose it was because someone had deliberately released it. The question confronting the coroner, supposing he had wit enough to reach the obvious conclusion, was who.
Crook was still pondering this point when he received an unexpected visitor in the shape of a police officer.
“The police are making inquiries about a man called Sherren who was found dead in his bath at a place called Chipping Magna yesterday,” the Inspector began, regarding Crook with about as much affection as a communist wastes on a fascist. “Ah, I see you have the paper in front of you.”
“My publicity expert called my attention to it,” explained Crook.
“In the dead man’s diary is a note of your name and address and his servant tells us you were there on Monday night.”
“Monday night at eight,” agreed Crook. “He thought he might be looking me up at some time.”
The Inspector looked sceptical. “You do realize he hadn’t been away from his home for thirty years?”
“Never too late to mend,” suggested Crook. “It occurred to him a little holiday might be a good idea.”
“Any special reason?”
“Do you need a special reason to come to London?” asked Crook, who would have been happy to spend eternity wandering those grimy streets. “By the way, how about the nephew?”
“What about him?”
“I thought he was payin’ a lightnin’ visit on the Tuesday. Or was Bligh pulling my leg?”
“We’ve seen him,” said the Inspector. “He’s a Londoner, too. According to his own story, he can’t help. Arrived Tuesday midday, left Wednesday morning. The old man didn’t take his bath till the evening, so he was all right then.”
“It isn’t the old man, it’s the lid of the bath that matters. It was hooked back all right when I was there on Monday, and you can take Arthur Crook’s word for it, it couldn’t have unhooked itself. You can also, if you like, take ray word for it that I didn’t do the unhooking.”
“Mr. Sherren says he didn’t notice the bath.”
“Don’t see how he could help it,” objected Crook.
“Didn’t notice anything special, I mean. He didn’t take a bath himself, though apparently his uncle told him he could have it on Wednesday morning.”
“Damned patriotic of hira,” said Crook heartily. “I’m a patriot, too, come to that. It seems we both qualify for the Gaitskell Medal. And I must say, from the look of him, I should think Bligh qualified, too.”
“No doubt,” agreed the Inspector. “Now, you’re quite sure the lid was secure when you were there on Monday?”
“Quite. And what’s more, no accident could have torn the lid from its moorings. Strong as the heart of Sir Galahad, they were.”
“And you didn’t experiment in any way with the hooks?”
“Not me. I expect to be paid for trouble, I don’t go looking for it for nothing. You only had to see the thing to realize what a good tombstone it ‘ud make. No, I left it reverently alone, and did my bit of cleaning up in the basin, a nice, elegant affair with pink honeysuckle all around the rim.”
“That’s what Mr. Sherren says, too. Added that he wouldn’t risk his life in the bath, if it meant turning up on the Judgment Day with dirty fingernails.”
“How about Old Man Kangaroo? The malevolent manservant?”
The Inspector grinned suddenly. “He puts his money on you. Thinks you have an experimental nature.”
“Lucky, ain’t it, British justice needs proof before it can clap a chap into the little covered shed?” observed Crook calmly. “Not that I had any motive, but I know that ain’t necessary.”
“There’s another point. Even if the lid was unhooked, why should it come suddenly crashing down? Its weight should have held it in place.”
“No,” said Crook, slowly. “That’s the ugly part of it. The old boy kept his loofah and sponge hooked onto the lid. Quite a natty idea so long as the hooks held. Then he wouldn’t find he’d left the sponge in the basin when he was nice and cosy in the bath. You see what that means? If he snatches at the loofah and starts scrubbing his spine, he’ll pull the lid forward and if it ain’t secure it’ll come crashing down on him before he can do a thing about it. For one thing, sheer shock ‘ud probably immobil
ize him till it was too late, and even if he did put an arm up to save himself, I doubt if he’d have the strength (in a seated position, remember) to fob it ofiE. It looks to me as though that might be the way it happened.”
“But that’s murder,” ejaculated the Inspector.
“You’re the boss,” said Crook. “If you can prove it, I’ll come to your night school.”
But his face was sober enough. Of course, the old boy had been as crazy as a coot, but all the same he’d had the refreshing flavor of individuality in a stereotyped world. Not Hitler or the present Government would have succeeded in wheeling him into line. It wasn’t nice to think of him in that murderous bath with his handsome, obstinate head stove in.
The Inspector got up. “Thanks for your information,” he said. “You’ll be wanted at the inquest, you know.”
Crook’s face became alert. “Special gas ration? There’s no train service there.”
“Not my department,” grinned the Inspector, “but you’ll man-age.
“Nasty case,” said Crook, drumming his thick fingers on the table-top. “Means, motive and opportunity. That’s your layout, isn’t it? Means—open to all. Motive—your turn to answer that one. I don’t know what the old boy had to leave …”
“Quite a considerable sum,” said the Inspector. “Or so I understand.”
“And the heir?”
“Who do you suppose?”
“Well, not John Sherren. At a guess I’d say Bligh.”
“What makes you pick him?”
“There had to be some incentive to stay in that death-in-life for thirty years. Question is, how much did Bligh know? And John Sherren? He was the only livin’ relative, wasn’t he?”
“Seems like it. This is going to be one of those exasperating cases where there’s no proof anywhere, just one chap’s word against another.”
“With half the community thinking Bligh guilty and the other half plumping for Sherren, and both sides knowing they could handle the case better than the police anyway.”
The Inspector rose.
“Don’t be too modest,” he suggested. “And don’t forget the inquest’s being held tomorrow afternoon.”
Death Knocks Three Times Page 2
