Death in Albert Park

by Bruce, Leo

  “Hold it!” said Carolus with uncharacteristic excitement. “That very expression was used of another person observed in this case. Please try to answer this, Mr. Goggins. What was odd about her?”

  “It’s very hard to say. When I came in I mentioned the occurrence to my wife and she told me that no one had called, no one had rung the bell, no one had been seen by her for the last hour.”

  “You mean that it was odd she should be coming out of your gate? But you said there was something odd about her”

  “There was,” said Goggins obstinately. “There was. I noticed it at the time. But I cannot for the life of me tell you what it was.”

  “Was she preternaturally tall?”

  “She was tall, but it was not that. I don’t notice women’s clothes much, but I gained the impression that she was somewhat overdressed. Yet I don’t think it was that.”

  “You had never seen her before?”

  “No. Yet I had a strange, almost psychic sense of recognition.”

  “Did you see her again?”

  “Never. It was as though I had seen a ghost.”

  “When you say ‘recognition’—who did she remind you of?”

  “No one, at the time. But later it occurred to me when I was travelling up to town with a neighbour of ours named Heatherwell that if he had a sister she might well have resembled the woman I saw.”

  “Did you mention that to Heatherwell?”

  “I did just ask him if he had a sister, and he seemed almost to resent the enquiry. ‘No, certainly not’, he said, and I refrained from telling him why I asked.”

  Ada’s face was contorted by the mastication of an obstinately cohesive caramel.

  “Could the Stabber be a woman?” she asked.

  “I see no absolute and final reason against it,” said Carolus. “May we move forward, now, to the night of the second murder?”

  “That we can tell you more about,” said Ada who had mastered her difficulties and was seeking more with a burnt almond. “I played Bridge with poor Joyce that very evening and Lionel’,’ Carolus remembered that Goggins was Lionel, “discovered the body in the morning. We knew nothing about the lover, though.”

  “My dear, I hardly think…”

  “Well, he was her lover, wasn’t he?”

  “You were playing Bridge at Mrs. Whitehill’s?”

  “Yes. We started after tea. About half-past four. It was nearly nine when Joyce said she had to go. I stayed on to supper.”

  “Nothing unusual occurred during that time?”

  “A few sharp words from Stella Whitehill to her niece. Joyce and I won twenty-seven shillings.”

  “And Joyce Ribbing went off quite cheerfully?”

  “Quite. Said something about neglecting her old man and fled. Nobody thought anything of it at the time. There had only been one murder, you see. She wasn’t the sort of woman you’d think anything could happen to. Capable, you know, and downright.”

  “What time did you come home?”

  “About ten. I had left Lionel some food. He doesn’t eat much, anyway.”

  “So you must have passed within a couple of yards of the body as you walked up to your front door?”

  “Must have, mustn’t I? Nothing in that, though. We don’t have an outside light and the body had been shoved right under the front hedge.”

  “Still, if you’d turned that way you’d have seen it.”

  “If I’d turned that way. But fortunately I didn’t. I should have had a fit.”

  “What I’m getting at,” said Carolus patiently, “is that when the murderer left the body there he did not very much care whether it was discovered before morning or not. He could see the lights in your hall. If it was someone who knew all about your movements he knew that you would be coming home from WhitehilPs and might easily see it. If he knew nothing, he still must have thought you might have to let the dog out, or receive late callers, or something. He did not mind how soon the body was discovered so long as he was out of the immediate vicinity. He made no attempt to conceal it, did he?”

  “None, beyond putting it well under the hedge.”

  “Where you, Mr. Goggins, first saw it in the morning?”

  “Yes. I looked out to see what kind of day it was and saw it at once.”

  “We were just having a cup of tea and a biscuit,” put in Ada. “It quite upset Lionel. He has a very sensitive stomach. Well, its not very nice to find someone you know lying murdered in your garden, is it?”

  “I’ve never had the experience,” admitted Carolus, “but I should think it was highly unpleasant. So the assumption is that Joyce Ribbing was murdered almost outside your gate.”

  “That is so,” said Goggins.

  “And you were in the house the whole time?”

  “I was.”

  “Television?”

  “Yes, indeed. My wife, Mr. Deene, is what I believe is termed a Bridge fiend, and I have become accustomed to passing the hours of her absence with one or another of the programmes.”

  “I see. So even if there had been quite a disturbance in the street you might not have heard it?”

  “I certainly shouldn’t. The set is in the back room.”

  “And your next-door neighbours?”

  “We have no acquaintance with them but I have observed that both have aerials. Well, it would be strange if they hadn’t, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would indeed. Yet it still seems to me even stranger that a woman can be murdered a few yards from a number of dwelling-houses at nine o’clock on a winter evening in England and no one be the wiser.”

  “One of the blessings of television,” said Ada Goggins gaily as she wiped the chocolate from her fingers.

  “There must have been some sound,” Carolus pointed out.

  “The police are of the opinion that there was almost none, I understand. The stabbing was an expert job,” remarked Goggins.

  “Even so…”

  “And what about the first one?” asked Ada. “Up the road, I mean. No one heard that.”

  “True.”

  “We, in this avenue,” said Goggins laboriously, “are of the opinion that the Stabber is someone known by sight in the district. That would account for the absence of alarm in the victims. They had no cause to scream.”

  “I see your point,” said Carolus watching him narrowly. “But what about Viola Whitehill? She certainly did not know the man she saw in the car.”

  “She has told my wife that she tried to scream, but could not. The sound simply would not come.”

  “That might have been the case with the others,” Carolus pointed out.

  “All three?” said Goggins. “It seems unlikely.”

  “You knew Joyce Ribbing well?”

  “Pretty well,” said Ada, at last putting the used tea-things and the empty chocolate box on the tray. “She was devoted to her children,” she added unexpectedly. “One of those possessive mothers who insist on doing everything with the younger generation.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Inclined to boast about it, too. She once told me she had all Roddy’s confidence. That’s the son—a boy of sixteen. At Uppingham, I believe. Or is it Radley?”

  “A mother who believes she has all the confidence of a sixteen-year-old son is asking for disillusionment,” observed Carolus tritely.

  “Joyce would insist on it. She was one of those rather straining women who keep young with their children, use their slang, beat them at games and have long confidential talks with them,” said Ada rather unkindly. “That’s what made it all the more unexpected about this man in Chelsea.”

  “I wonder how that came to be known in Albert Park,” said Carolus.

  “Oh, everything’s known here. I think it first came through the Tuckmans. I’m not sure. Anyway, the Doctor knew.”

  “So I gather.”

  “Though he may not have known how far it had gone.”

  “And how far had it gone?”

  Goggin
s coughed and Ada shrugged her shoulders.

  “Though I don’t believe she planned to go off with the man,” she said after that eloquent lacuna. “She was too wrapped up in the children for that.”

  “Did you know Turrell?”

  “Was that his name? No. We only knew there was someone with a flat in Chelsea. Anything else you want to know? Because I’m starving. Why don’t you stay and take pot luck with us? Lionel scarcely touches anything and I don’t like eating alone. It’s all cold. I’ll have it ready in a minute.”

  Carolus excused himself on the grounds that he wanted urgently to see Mrs. Whitehill.

  “Good time to catch her,” said Ada. “She doesn’t eat till some unearthly hour. That night when Joyce . • • when we were playing Bridge, it was past nine. I don’t know how she holds out.”

  When Carolus was outside he hesitated, then set off briskly uphill. But like an embodiment of his recent thoughts during the conversation of Goggins a figure appeared on the pavement ahead of him, a tall woman walking mincingly away.

  There was certainly something odd about this apparition, but unlike Goggins, Carolus knew exactly what it was. Even before he saw the face he knew why Goggins had thought her overdressed and so on. He decided to count on the luck which rarely deserted him in small crises of this kind and as he drew level with the tall woman looked her squarely in the face and said “Good evening, Mr. Heatherwell.”

  The tall woman stopped and gasped.

  “How dare you?” she said in a high cracking voice.

  “Am I making a mistake?” said Carolus.

  “You . • . you • . . Please go away,” cried the tall woman.”You’ve no right to speak to me.”

  “I only said good evening,” Carolus pointed out, looking at her large hands and feet. “You are Heatherwell, aren’t you?”

  “My name’s Nora,” said the tall woman.

  “Tonight, yes. But normally it’s Heatherwell.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “I want a little talk with you.”

  Suddenly, to the complete surprise of Carolus, he received a fierce jab on the chin, delivered with a large clenched fist, a jab which knocked him back against the railings.

  “Now will you clear off?” said the tall woman in a voice which had suddenly dropped to bass.

  “I must say that as Nora you’ve got a pretty good punch. But I shall be ready for the next one. I wish you’d be sensible and answer a few questions. How long have you been doing this?”

  There was a silence in which Carolus felt that sanity was asserting itself.

  “A couple of months or more,” said Heatherwell at last, unhappily.

  “An irresistible impulse. Does your wife know?”

  “Yes. She’s worried to death, of course. She went away as soon as… it started.”

  “Did it start before the first murder?”

  This seemed to trouble Heatherwell.

  “Yes. It did,” he said, “But it was nothing then. Very rare, I mean. I first did it as a boy. I thought it was a joke then. It hasn’t been that lately.”

  “Do you remember whether this happened on the night of the first murder?”

  “Well, yes, it did. You can imagine how I felt next morning. I must have passed the woman’s body. After that I seemed quite unable to withstand the impulse and went out almost every night.”

  “So you were out on the nights of the other two murders?”

  “I must have been, yes.”

  “Did anyone recognize you?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I can never be sure of that. No one said anything. You’re not going to talk about it, are you?”

  “I can’t promise that. You see I’m trying to investigate these murders.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. If that’s so you’ve chosen a very unlucky time for these excursions of yours. Do you go far from here?”

  “Only just round the park.”

  “You don’t drive about like that?”

  “No. I haven’t a car. Besides there would be no point in that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You see, its the danger …”

  “Yes. I know something about transvestism. And here there was a particular danger, wasn’t there? From the Stabber, I mean.”

  Heatherwell hesitated and said—“Yes.” The grotesque make-up concealed any expression there might be on his face.

  “Was it the murder, the idea of a man looking for a lonely woman, which caused you to carry on this, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so because soon after that first murder it became as I told you an almost nightly occurrence. I wanted to see what would happen.”

  “What did you think would happen?”

  “I didn’t know. I knew there was danger. From the murderer, from the police, from recognition. It was that which drew me, I think.”

  “How did you come to be in the Goggins’ front garden one day?”

  “It was a mad idea. I had been walking round for some time and no one took any notice. I went into the park and even talked to Slatter, the park-keeper whom I knew, without being recognized.”

  “Sure?”

  “Pretty sure. Slatter would have said something. On my way home that day I thought I would call on Ada Goggins and see whether she knew who I was. Just as I was going to ring the bell I saw Goggins coming up the road and decided to flee. I was only just in time. He held the gate open for me, but must have noticed something because some days later he kept staring at me and asked if I had a sister. I suppose that is how you came to know who I was.”

  “Yes. Now I’ve got to warn you, Heatherwell. You say you want danger…”

  “Not now. At this minute I’m simply humiliated and disgusted and can’t think how I can ever have indulged in such lunacy.”

  “Yes. But in certain moods you look for danger of a peculiar kind. I’ve got to tell you that if I have any understanding at all of this case you are in danger, all the time. Danger of a very serious, in fact a mortal kind. I am not going further into details. But I warn you.”

  “You mean, danger of prosecution?”

  “For transvestism? It is far more serious than that. Far more. Has your wife returned to you yet?”

  “No. As a matter of fact I don’t know whether she’ll return to me.”

  “You’re alone in the house, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t ask anyone in. Even if it is someone you think you know. Don’t be alone with anyone, if you can help it. And don’t, on any account, admit to anyone what you have been doing.”

  “That’s scarcely likely, is it?”

  “Your wife knows already. Does anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so. But I can’t be sure. Goggins seems to have half guessed.”

  “For heaven’s sake don’t let them.”

  “You seem very concerned for me. I don’t know who you are.”

  “My name’s Deene. It’s not only for you I’m concerned, Heatherwell. I want to prevent another murder.”

  “You mean, you suspect me?”

  “I suspect everyone till I find out who was responsible. But it’s not only that. I have a particular reason for telling you to be extremely careful.”

  “You mean, the Stabber? One thing I realized was that there wasn’t much danger for me. All the women killed were short. It would take a giant to kill me with that particular downward blow.”

  “For God’s sake, pull yourself together, Heatherwell, and don’t talk like that. You simply have no conception of this case. I’ve said as much as I possibly can and if you ignore what I’ve told you, you’re mad.”

  “Perhaps I am a little mad. I must be to do this, mustn’t I?”

  “I’m not an alienist. I don’t know. But I know your life’s in danger. Is this your house?”

  “No. Number 32.”

  “Then go home at once and don’t let anyone in. You’re wo
rking in the daytime?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  He watched the grotesque figure till it had disappeared into number 32.

  Eleven

  NEXT morning Carolus surprised Priggley by telling him quite seriously that he must leave Albert Park and not return to it.

  “This is no longer a nice cosy case in which I can allow you to play around,” he said. “I’m convinced now that there’s very real danger here and not merely for lonely women going home at night. I’m not going into it all, but you’ve got to go.”

  Priggley protested.

  “Don’t start getting earnest, sir. It doesn’t suit you. There’s no more danger, as you call it, than in any other of your how-d’ye-do’s. Just because three women …”

  “No, Priggley, this is final. I may be wrong about this case. The man who killed those women may be miles away or dead, but I’m not going to take the responsibility. You must go back to Newminster.”

  “Not to Hollingbourne’s, sir? I really can’t take another round of teenagers’ parties.”

  “Away from here you’re no responsibility of mine, thank God.”

  “All right. All right. I’ll go like a lamb. But on one condition. You’ll let me in for the kill, as it were. The final exposition, which you seem to consider your forte.”

  “If there is one, and if by then I’m satisfied that there’s no further danger.”

  “How you harp on that word.”

  “I want your promise that you won’t come back here unless I send for you.”

  “Promises now. How square can you get? All right. Cross my heart. Are you really on to something, though, sir?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, you seem pretty leisurely about it. How do you know there won’t be another murder while you’re making your enquiries?”

  “I don’t,” said Carolus grimly. “That is exactly what worries me.”

  “I don’t suppose the police are actually hilarious about it. You’d better take your finger out, sir. If it’s that full of ‘danger’.”

  “Out,” said Carolus. “On to that motor-cycle of yours and away.”

  “ ‘I go, I go; look how I go, Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow’.”

  “M.N.D. again last term?” said Carolus, and was relieved to see Priggley disappear.