Rolling Stone

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Spike.”

  “Oh dear,” said the voice—“but your sister doesn’t call you Spike, does she?”

  Afterwards it was this question that really made Peter see red. Not very rational perhaps, but human enough, because poor Louie Spedding who had never harmed anyone was lying dead, and the woman who had murdered her used her name to trap him with. But at the time he did not know that Louisa was dead.

  He said, “No, she calls me Jimmy,” and heard the voice broken by a fit of coughing. It emerged in a fragile condition.

  “Well then, you are to go at once to the corner of Massingbourne Crescent. Take a suit-case and anything you want for the next few days. That is all. Goodbye.” The receiver clicked at the other end of the line.

  Peter went back into his room and packed. His mind was seething with conjectures. Was this a flitting consequent on the Turner having become a bit too hot to hold on to, or was it a further plunge into crime?

  He had a look at a tape-map, and located Massingbourne Crescent. Without going more than fifty yards out of his way he could pass the telephone-box at the end of Sitfield Row. He thought it very unlikely that he would be followed. He thought he could make sure about that, and he thought it would be just as well to give Frank Garrett a ring before he went trekking off into the unknown.

  He paid his bill and walked out of the Edenbridge, carrying his suit-case. The fog came up against him like a wall. At the corner of the street he stood for a while, accustoming his eyes to the dazzle of it. Well, at any rate he could not very well be followed in a fog like this. And then half way up the next street it thinned. He found Sitfield Row quite easily, and walked along it to the telephone-box at the corner without any idea that Louisa Spedding had walked this way to her death not so many hours before. He stood on the very spot where she had been shot and dialled Frank Garrett’s number. The receiver clicked. A man’s voice with a strong Cockney accent said,

  “’Ullo?”

  Peter assumed a much higher register than his own.

  “Can I speak to Colonel Garrett?” (This was Hopkins, and Hopkins might know his voice.)

  “Colonel Garrett is h’out,” said Hopkins, dealing firmly with an extra H.

  “Do you know where he is? I want to catch him.”

  “No h’idea.” Then, after a pause, “What abaht a message?”

  Peter considered. He failed to think of one that would be any good, said “No, thank you,” and rang off.

  He tried Frank’s office, drew a blank, and gave it up.

  It took him a considerable time to reach Massingbourne Crescent. The fog was bad in patches, as London fogs are apt to be. He lost his way once or twice, and found that other people had lost theirs.

  In the end he arrived at one of those crescents set back from a thoroughfare with a belt of trees in front, the whole drowned in fog and apparently dead. Not a light showed anywhere. Peter thought it just the place for a nice secluded crime. It occurred to him to wonder whether his employers had conceived the idea of putting him on the spot. His right hand went down into his overcoat pocket and took hold of the neat little pistol which he had bought for a hike through Anatolia last year. He had never had to use it there, and he derived a certain macabre amusement from the thought that he might be about to loose it off in defence of his life in the very heart of London.

  A taxi was standing by the farther kerb. Its lights made misty orange pools. Someone got out of it and moved towards him. The misty lights showed him that it was a woman. She stood between him and the taxi and coughed, a hand at her chest, her body bowed and shaken. On the last of the paroxysms he caught the words “Oh dear!” and moved towards her. This was certainly the woman who had talked to him on the telephone, and as certainly he could have nothing to fear from her. He put a flavour of Irish-American into his accent as he said,

  “I think we’ve just been talking on the phone. The name’s Reilly.”

  “Spike Reilly?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You’re late, but I suppose it was the fog. Oh dear! You’d better come along and get in.”

  She weighed heavy on his arm as he helped her into the taxi. As the door slammed, the car started up and they were moving along the dark crescent as they had done an hour before with Terry Clive. But Peter was not to know that—not yet at any rate.

  The woman sat back in her corner coughing and shaking. He thought she was old, and that she had no business to be out with a cough like that, but he sat in his own corner and held his tongue. If anyone had got anything to say, let them say it. Mr. Peter Talbot would be all attention.

  When they had gone a little way the woman’s cough stopped, and she said in a thin voice with an odd tang to it,

  “You’re to take your orders from me, Spike Reilly.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am taking you to a house. You will be on guard there. You were in a kidnapping case in the States, weren’t you?”

  “Sure I was.”

  “So I heard. What happened?”

  Was this a trap? He didn’t know. Neither did he know what had happened when Spike Reilly was in America, except that he had had to leave in a hurry, from which one might deduce.… He put a growl in his voice and said,

  “There was an accident—I had to clear out.”

  The woman coughed.

  “This is a kidnapping case. And there are to be no accidents. Do you understand? It’s a girl who was at Heathacres—a little fool who looked out of her window and saw what she wasn’t meant to see. She’ll have to go of course, but it’s got to look like suicide, so I’m choosing the time and the place. Meanwhile there’ll be three of you there—two always on guard, and you’re to be one of the two.”

  “All the time?”

  She repeated the words, and accentuated them.

  “All the time. I don’t trust the other two not to play tricks. They’re useful, but they’re rough. And she’s not to be mauled about. There mustn’t be any marks on her when she’s found. I had to bruise her arm just now, and we’ve got to wait for the mark to go, and the mark of the hypodermic too. You’ll get five hundred down when it’s over, and a share of whatever we get out of the insurance company for the picture. Does that suit you?”

  While she was speaking Peter’s thoughts raced. Here—here beside him, moving smoothly through the fog, was the woman whom he had come into this job to find. The woman Spike Reilly had named when he was dying, the woman Frank Garrett had been after for years, the woman he had talked about to Louisa Spedding—Maud Millicent Simpson. He knew her only as a shadow in the fog, a tenuous voice and a skillfully acted cough. If he let her go now, what had he to identify her by? Nothing, and less than nothing. If he could make something to identify her by—He had had an idea about that before he came to keep this appointment. It mightn’t be any use—but it might.… Where there was nothing to go on at all anything might help. Anyhow, no harm could come of it unless he was clumsy. He mustn’t be clumsy.

  His hand went into his pocket, and came out with the nail-scissors which he had slipped in there just before he started. They were new scissors and very sharp. Maud Millicent talked. He answered. And as he answered, his hand went out with the scissors in it and snipped five nicks in the rather full old-fashioned skirt she wore—five tiny nicks about knee level where the black stuff lay spread out on the seat between them. Something to identify her by? The best he could do anyway.…

  If he jammed his pistol into her ribs here and now and told her the game was up—what then? The driver was in it of course, and he couldn’t really shoot her. That was the snag.

  And then there was the girl. She had looked out of her window and seen what she wasn’t meant to see. Why, of course he had seen her looking out when he was waiting in the bushes outside Heathacres. And she must have done it again and seen—well, he wondered just what she had seen. He thought how she had come running along the terrace and down the steps to get the pearls away from him. A plucky kid. What w
as her name? Garrett had given it to him with all the other names.… Terry—yes, Terry Clive—Aunt Fanny’s little friend. He thought about Terry Clive. If he didn’t let them take him to the house where they’d got her, what would happen—with the guards who were too rough to be trusted?

  As he hung in the balance of decision, they passed through a patch where the fog was thin. The light of a street-lamp flickered across them from knee to crown. He was looking at where the woman sat in her corner. The unexpected light passed over her and was gone again. He saw a black dress and a feather boa twisted high about the throat. He saw a black hat tilted forward. He got no impression of any features—only pallor, and the light flashing back from large round glasses which covered her eyes. He might have seen more if he had not seen right away in the first flash of the light her right hand bare upon her knee, and in it, not much longer than the hand itself, an automatic pistol.

  He thought that settled it. They were two to one, and the advantage lay with them, because they would have no reluctance at all about shooting him out of hand. He reflected that being a decent member of society could be quite a handicap. He could not, for instance, have brought himself to shoot Maud Millicent Simpson in cold blood, yet in no other way could he hope to come alive out of a scrap with the two of them. And even if he had their ruthlessness at his command, how would he explain two corpses to the police? And what meanwhile would be happening to Terry Clive?

  The woman’s voice cut through his thoughts. It had a taut, impatient sound.

  “Well, what about it? Not very responsive—are you?”

  Peter made up his mind.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about what you said. I didn’t know you wanted me to talk.”

  “I don’t—I want you to listen. And I want to be sure you’re clear about your instructions. Will you repeat them to me.”

  He sat right back in his corner, facing round towards her.

  “I’m in charge with two men under me—that’s what you said, isn’t it?”

  She gave a short laugh.

  “That is what it amounts to.”

  “Who are the other two?”

  “Jake, and the Bruiser. You’ll have to watch your step with them—they’re tough. But they won’t be there together. They’ll take shifts.”

  “And I’m on all the time?”

  “Yes. It’s only for a few days.”

  “All right.”

  She leaned forward.

  “Now listen to me! This is the way you’ll play it. It’ll take three or four days for the marks to disappear, and we can’t get her off till then. There mustn’t be any marks when she’s found. So no one’s to lay a finger on her. You’re there to see that no one does. Grey said you put the come hither on the girls. Well, you get along with it and put it on this one. The rougher the others are, the better she’ll like you—do you see? That’s your part. Play it for all it’s worth. Let her think you’re standing up for her—that you’ve fallen for her—that you’ll try and get her out of the mess. Then when we’re ready she’ll go with you and be glad of the chance. We can’t use a drug, or there’d be traces afterwards, and it’s much safer to take her alive than dead. So she’s got to go willingly, and you’re the one to get her to do it.”

  “And where do I take her?”

  “You’ll be told later. Now listen! She’s in the basement of a house I use sometimes, and she’s to stay in the basement. There are doors at the top and bottom of the stairs leading up to the ground floor. They are locked, and I have the keys. The girl is to have no opportunity of approaching the windows which look into the area. She’s not to be alone in any room with a window from which she might signal. The room she is in has shutters. They are locked, and they are to stay locked. Do you understand all this?”

  Peter laughed, and was astonished at the sound of his own voice.

  “Sure—that’s easy! No need to tell me things like that.”

  “You’ll listen all the same!” she said with a sharp note of authority. “She’s to be well fed, well treated, and kept happy. You’ve got to make her trust you. And there’s another thing. She’s not to see a newspaper—not on any account. I won’t have one brought into the place. You didn’t buy one as you came along just now?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s up to you to see that Jake and the Bruiser don’t bring one in. I’ve told them, but you’ll have to keep them up to it. No one’s to bring a paper into the place at all.”

  Peter wondered why. And as if she had heard his thought, she said,

  “I don’t want her upset. Every rag will be splashing her case all over the front page. They’ll put ideas into her head.”

  He wondered still. The thing stayed like a question in his mind. When he knew the answer, he thought it was a tidy stroke of business to have got Louisa Spedding’s brother out of the way and out of the reach of the Press before the story of Louisa’s murder broke.

  But at the moment, for all he knew, Louisa was cooking Sir John Morleigh’s dinner and wondering whether she had said too much about Mrs. Simpson to Peter Talbot.

  The car moved on, and stopped presently in a quiet, foggy street.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Peter stood in a basement kitchen and heard the car recede.

  They had come to a dark street where tall old houses rose like cliffs and were lost in the fog. And then down area steps, the driver going ahead and ringing a bell which could be heard giving a prolonged tinkle from somewhere inside the house. After an interval footsteps, and the door opening an inch or two upon the chain. A mutter from the driver, and he turned on his heel and was off up the steps to his taxi. The door swung wide, and Peter came in upon a dark, stuffy passage. There was a slam behind him, and the turning of a key in the lock. The man who had let him in went past him without a word, and through a half open door on the right.

  Peter followed him into the lighted kitchen. He took stock of it now. A good-sized room lying to the front of the house below the street level. Two windows furnished with strong wooden shutters looked into the area. The shutters were closed. They had been painted, but the paint was scaling off. There was an old rusty range, a deal table, some wooden chairs, and two more of basketwork very down at heel, with padded backs and seats covered in a chintz whose pattern had long been lost beneath successive layers of dirt. A fire burned in the range, and the room was hot.

  There were two men at the table, with a pack of cards between them and an unshaded electric light bulb overhead. The man who had let him in had his back to the door and was dropping into his chair again. A gentleman whom Peter had no difficulty in recognizing as the Bruiser stared at him out of small piggy eyes—a powerfully built hulk of a man with a pale, heavy face and a blank, bald forehead. Peter nought it must be a long time since he had been in the ring, and that he would be put to it to last a couple of rounds today, but he still had a fist like a ham and a formidable reach.

  Then it was Jake who had let him in and who now turned to look at him out of a pair of bright, shifty eyes. Not a very likeable person Jake. Quick on his feet, quick with his hands, and quite possibly quick with a knife. Black eyes in a sallow, dirty face. Black hair, with a lock falling forward. Long, delicate fingers, and nails well rimmed with black.

  Both men stared, and Peter gave them an indifferent nod.

  “Spike Reilly,” he said, and went over to the fire. “One of you can go off now. Which is it going to be?”

  Jake threw down his cards and got up.

  “We tossed for it, and he lost,” he said. “Twelve hours on and twelve hours off—what a life!”

  Peter stopped him.

  “Just a minute. You’ve had your orders the same as I’ve had mine. No papers to be brought in—that’s very particular.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “What about food?” Peter threw back his head and laughed. “We’re to be well fed—that’s orders too.”

  “O.K. There’s enough in the larder.
But we’ll be dead if we eat our own cooking.” He took the door key out of his pocket and tossed it to the Bruiser.

  “Come along and lock up after me,” he said.

  The two men went out together. There was a whispering in the passage. The outer door banged. The sharp click of the lock came to Peter in the silence, and the rattle of the chain.

  The Bruiser came back, sat down again at the table, and began to deal the cards. Presently he jerked his head in Peter’s direction and said in a hoarse voice,

  “Play?”

  Peter said, “Presently. I’ll take a look at the girl first. What’s the lay-out?”

  The big head jerked in the direction of the door.

  Peter went out into the passage and along it. There was a locked door facing him. He had two keys tied together with a bit of string—the key of the girl’s room and the key that locked her shutters. Neither of them fitted this door. The passage went on, and brought him to two more doors. The first was ajar—a lavatory with a dirty basin, a cracked piece of soap, and a grimy roller towel.

  One of his keys fitted the last door. It opened, and he felt for and found the switch. The light poured down from the ceiling and showed him a small room with linoleum on the floor and a narrow iron bedstead against the farther wall. There was some bedding. Blankets and a couple of pillows. And Terry Clive, lying on her left side facing the door. She was still in her blue dress, but the hat had been thrown on to a chair, and they had taken off her coat and put it over her. It covered her to the waist. Her right arm lay outside it, the hand hanging downwards quite open and relaxed. Her bright curls were rumpled, her lips parted, her eyelids not quite closed. There was a glimmer of grey between the lashes. She had the pallor of very deep sleep, and the innocent, unguarded expression.

  A cold, still anger came up in Peter as he looked at her. He put up his hand to the switch, but before he could pull it down Terry Clive had opened her eyes and was looking at him. He remembered her eyes—lovely eyes, wide and clear and candid. They stared at him without a trace of fear, but with the utmost surprise. Then she got up on her elbow.