Except For One Thing

by John Russell Fearn

  By this time they were some distance from Garth, but there was no way of telling whether he had heard the nickname of ”Ricky”. Glancing anxiously back across the smoke filled room, Joyce limping painfully beside him, Richard saw that square, broad figure still standing by the table-tub, cheroot jutting from the corner of the mouth, the impassive rigidity of the death-mask on his face.

  CHAPTER XIII

  To Richard’s surprise Joyce did not flare at him for his almost brutal demand for her to cease calling him “Ricky”. Instead she set her firm little jaw and walked with him in silence to the lift — and so down to the theatre foyer. She still said nothing as they crossed the road to the car park. Richard did not attempt to break the quiet as he drove through the busy streets to the neighbourhood of the Blue Shadow, but when at last they were both seated at supper with the tireless Alberti retreating from them Richard looked at the girl curiously.

  “Sorry I spoke so snappishly, Joyce,” he apologised. “It was just that that name gets on my nerves.”

  “Name?” Joyce repeated absently, looking at him, and he felt a shock at the whiteness of her face. “Oh, that…I’d forgotten about it. It’s something else. What did Inspector Garth mean by asking you if you were coming down in the morning?”

  “Why the devil do you have to question every one of my actions?” he demanded fiercely. “Hang it all, Joyce, I’m not accountable to you for everything I do!”

  “Maybe not, but why should you want to go and see Inspector Garth?”

  “Why not? You heard him say I do pathological work for the Yard sometimes. That fact you know yourself…” Richard seized his chance. “And that’s what I’m doing now, but of course the fact can’t be advertised in case it helps the criminals.”

  “What criminals? Those connected with Valerie Hadfield and Rixton Williams?” Richard looked at her fixedly and answered, “Yes!”

  “Then I don’t understand it!” she said, sighing. “What need is there of your services at the Yard at this juncture? I’ve read the few details about the case, same as everybody else, but…Well, both this actress and her apparent lover have vanished into thin air. As far as I can see there’s no need for a pathological investigation.”

  Richard took out a cigarette and lighted it. His nerves steadied a little as he inhaled. Absently he watched Alberti called away urgently by an under-waiter and wondered disinterestedly who could want Alberti at this hour. Never gave the man any rest — like himself…

  “You forget the chauffeur, Joyce,” he found himself saying. “Pathology is playing quite an important part concerning his death. There’ll be an inquest on him and the Yard is ranging the facts. I’m in on that. That’s the important business I’ve been on, only I’m not supposed to tell anybody.”

  “Garth didn’t seem to mind me knowing,” Joyce pointed out, looking at the supper as though she wondered what it was.

  Richard turned and faced her directly.

  “Look here, Joyce, what are you getting at? What’s on your mind? If you are nursing some absurd, dark suspicion then for God’s sake drag it out into the open — but don’t keep on with these confounded pin-pricks.”

  Her face was still white.

  “I can’t help remembering,” she said slowly, “that inhuman look on your face when I called you “Ricky” in front of Inspector Garth — granting that he heard it. It was a terrible look…It frightened me!”

  “You’re imagining things, Joyce!”

  “I’m also remembering something else,” she went on steadily. “You said you were going out of town and couldn’t see me for a week, and yet dad noticed that you’d found time to build a little bit of your garage. That means you told me a deliberate lie…And what is more,” Joyce continued, with strained emphasis, “the week you were missing — or said you would be missing — was the same week during which Rixton Williams appeared and disappeared, according to the newspapers, anyway. The final disappearance occurred last Friday, and on the Saturday morning you came to me and said all your business was finished. You couldn’t have been working for the Yard then because the disappearance of Valerie Hadfield and Rixton Williams hadn’t happened before last Friday.”

  Richard looked at the coffee going cold, then across the cafe to where the diners were flocking in from the night shows — and, unusually, Alberti was still leaving things to the care of the under-waiters.

  “From all of which tangled jumble of nonsense and coincidence you infer what?” Richard asked finally, a razor-sharp edge in his voice.

  “I don’t know.” Joyce got to her feet abruptly, deathly, her dark eyes half frightened and half bitter. “But the feeling is so strong on me that there is something wrong that I’m not going any further with our engagement…” She tugged at the ring on her finger and dropped it on the spotless cloth. “Good night,” she added.

  Richard couldn’t believe it for a moment. He stared at the ring, then at her slender figure in the blue costume as she went gracefully across the cafe. Irritably he put the ring in his pocket and motioned a waiter.

  “But you haven’t eaten anything, sir!” the man protested, as he was asked for the check.

  “Never mind that!” Richard retorted. “Give me the check…And where’s Alberti, by the way?”

  “Talking business with a gentlemen, sir…” The waiter put the check down and bowed his way from the table. Scowling, Richard paid at the cash desk, and then stalked outside. No sign of Joyce. Presumably she had gone to the Underground station.

  He got into the Jaguar, drove away from the kerb, leaving behind him Inspector Garth and Alberti in the manager’s office.

  Garth was pacing slowly up and down, cheroot between his teeth.

  “And that’s all you can tell me, eh? The manager wouldn’t know any more if he were here?”

  “Nothing more at all, sir,” Alberti slapped his hands on his fat thighs emphatically. “I tella all that I know. Meester Harvey he comes in here many times — so, an’ often with thees Miss Prescott…”

  “For how long has he been doing this?” Garth snapped, jaw muscles bulging.

  “Er, for perhaps eight months, mebbe a beet more. But no less. I tella the truth!”

  “Has she ever called him by the name of “Ricky” within your hearing?”

  “Reeky? Ah, no — not as I know.” Finally Garth shrugged. “All right, thanks,” he said briefly. “And don’t forget to keep this conversation to yourself. Good night.”

  “Gooda the night, sir…”

  Garth left the way he had come, by the side door where the diners could not see him. In the alleyway outside he climbed into a taxi where his wife was waiting.

  “Why did we have to chase Mr. Harvey and Miss Prescott in that fashion, Mort?” she asked curiously. “What in the world suddenly bit you?”

  “Perhaps a mad dog,” he answered broodingly. “I’ll know for sure as time goes on.”

  *

  As he drove home, Richard was thinking furiously. He had mapped out everything to the last tiny detail, yet at every step he made now some new unexpected thing seemed to crop up. It was frightening, and a killing strain on the nerves.

  Had Chief Inspector Garth heard the name “Ricky,” and was he even now working things out in his analytical fashion; and would Joyce think further, abandon all pretence of love, and go and tell Garth everything she suspected? Well, what if she did? They still could not produce Valerie Hadfield’s body!

  But it was galling, stunning even, to have fought so hard for the girl he loved, to have twice come so near to possessing her, and then to find her turned away by some new suspicion. The idea of wiping her out — as he had the chauffeur — before she could say anything was the thought furthest from his mind. He felt that this showed how much he loved her. What failed to penetrate the blur of his egomania was the fact that he didn’t want to kill Joyce for three reasons: he wanted her for himself; he knew another murder after the chauffeur incident might easily prove his undoing; and he was afr
aid of Dr. Howard Prescott. A good deal of calm, calculating reasoning went on behind that ready smile. The murder of his daughter would arouse every outraged instinct and might turn the pleasant philanthropist into a ruthless avenger.

  When he got into the house, leaving the Jaguar in the drive because he did not want the bother of garaging it in his present turbulent state of mind, Richard found that the Baxters had as usual gone to bed.

  He made up for his missing supper with sandwiches he prepared for himself in the kitchen; then instead of going to bed he went into the laboratory, switched on all the lights and studied the place circumspectly from end to end. It took him an hour, but at the end of it he was completely satisfied that not a single clue remained if Garth should ever get this far.

  If Garth should ever get this far…There was a vast difference between him perhaps having heard the name “Ricky” to getting a warrant issued for murder. No corpus delicti either — and a cast-iron alibi.

  Somewhat easier in his mind Richard left the laboratory and went up to his bedroom. Thoughts, grim and macabre, kept him wakeful.

  *

  By dawn, after a hellish night, Richard had come to a decision. He would continue to stay beside Chief Inspector Garth and give him no reason to think he was afraid. If the worst happened he still had his alibi and the knowledge of the missing corpus delicti. Even if Joyce decided to talk it could only end the same way…Suspicion would be piled on suspicion, certainly, but without proof it couldn’t mean anything.

  Immediately after breakfast, and a glance through the morning paper, which failed to tell anything, Richard set off for the city in the Jaguar, made his first call the establishment of M. Cardieux. The money was ready and waiting in a large heavily sealed envelope. Richard took it, thanked the philatelist gravely, and put the envelope away carefully in the cubby-hole of his car.

  Returning home again, he went through to the study with the package. He transferred two thousand in ones into his safe, and the remaining amount he locked away in a drawer in his desk. Then, somewhat relieved, he went out to the car again and so back to the city. It was close on eleven o’clock as he mounted the stairs to Chief Inspector Garth’s office.

  Sergeant Whittaker admitted him and he entered slowly, expecting to find a pair of merciless eyes upon him, but instead Garth greeted him with a cordial wave of the hand and stabbed a finger towards the armchair by the doorway.

  “Still waiting for my downfall, Dick?” Garth asked dryly, leafing through the papers on his desk.

  “Why not?” Richard asked. “Every time I come to see how you’re getting on I find you squatting here reading reports and letters…How are things going?”

  “Oh — not at all badly.” Garth sat back, selected a cheroot, then thumped his chest meditatively. “I’ve got the full reports from Divisional Inspector Whiteside and Superintendent Chalfont. Whiteside’s report tells how the chauffeur left the theatre at such and such a time, how a neighbour at the end of the avenue in which he lived and garaged the car saw him turn into the avenue and head towards the garage about eleven-thirty…Said neighbour was just drawing the curtains in the bedroom preparatory to switching on the light…One of those little things that I said might happen.”

  “Interesting,” Richard acknowledged. “Peter Cranston had somebody with him in the Daimler,” Garth added. “Naturally it was too dark to see whether it was man or woman, but it doesn’t require genius to know that whoever it was who murdered Cranston was that person.” Garth deliberated for a moment. “Unfortunately there are no details about this person, no clues as to why he or she did it, or what he or she did. The person was extra careful evidently since all the fingerprint impressions we can find on the front of the car, where this unknown person was seated, were Cranston’s own.”

  “And those in the back of the car, not yet identified?” Richard asked.

  “Probably from a friend of Valerie Hadfield’s. A man friend, since prints are distinctive of sex. It would be too big an assumption, without a good deal of corroborative evidence, to say that they belong to the person who murdered her. We prefer facts here — not guesswork.”

  Richard said nothing, mentally cursing the neighbour who had been drawing bedroom window curtains. Garth turned aside and picked up another report.

  “This is from Chalfont — a very commendable report on the comings and goings of the mysterious Rixton Williams. He first appeared in Twickenham on the afternoon of Thursday, October tenth, and came and went pretty methodically, sleeping some nights and not others…I’ll not weary you with all the details and times,” Garth added, grinning, “but you can take it for granted that we know almost to the minute the times he came and went. Most of the information has come from Timothy Potter, who has been invaluable to us.”

  Richard wished he could ask for the details without sounding too suspicious — but that simply could not be.

  “Well,” he admitted, “you’ve been busier than I thought. What happens now?”

  Garth shifted uncomfortably. “At this moment, I’m going to have a brandy-and-soda and try and shift this infernal breakfast lodging in my chest. Hand it over, Whittaker. Join me, Dick?”

  “A bit early for me — but I don’t want to be unsociable,” Richard said.

  Whittaker poured out the drinks and then went back to his own small table in the corner, began to work at a noiseless typewriter transcribing from shorthand notes.

  “I like your fiancée, Dick,” Garth commented presently, setting down his empty glass and stifling a belch. “Nice girl…Known her long?”

  “Long enough to be very fond of her,” Richard answered, and he drained his own glass and put it on the desk. Then he waited, on the defensive, but Garth did not pursue the subject.

  “You were asking what I’m going to do next? Well, frankly, I don’t know! I have to attend the inquest on that chauffeur at eleven-forty-five. Shouldn’t take long, but it means I’m not going far from here…So I’m afraid there isn’t much that will interest you.”

  Richard nodded and got to his feet. “All right — then I’ll get some business of my own finished up. This afternoon, maybe?”

  Garth’s pale eyes looked at him through the haze of the cheroot.

  “Surely! I’ll probably have had the bank reports in by then. That should start the wheels moving again.”

  At the door Richard hesitated and looked back, a taut smile on his big mouth. “No power on earth will make you admit that this is a perfect crime, will it?” he asked dryly.

  Garth looked up. “What makes you think it is?”

  “Everything! Total disappearance of Valerie Hadfield, and even more total disappearance of her killer — if she was killed — and likewise total disappearance of Peter Cranston’s killer. No clue — not as much as a fingerprint. If that isn’t a perfect crime, just what do you want?”

  Garth smiled suddenly. “This isn’t such a perfect crime as it may look superficially, Dick. Later I’ll probably tell you why.”

  Their eyes met for a moment, full on, but Richard read no hint of hostility or suspicion in those colourless depths. With a faint smile he turned and left. Whittaker stopped typing, got to his feet and came over to the desk. Garth sat looking at the drained glass of brandy-and-soda Richard had used.

  “Okay, sir?” Whittaker asked.

  “Get it tested,” Garth said briefly, and the sergeant straddled his fingers inside the glass and carried it from the room. In a few minutes he was back.

  “They’ll report as soon as possible,” he announced; and then he looked at his superior pensively. “Do you really think that Mr. Harvey is mixed up in this lot, sir?”

  “In this business, Whittaker, I’m not entitled to think — only to prove certain conclusions on known facts. Richard Harvey has known this girl Joyce Prescott for approximately eight months — if Alberti at the Blue Shadow is to be relied upon — and the general impression is that he loves her deeply. All right…so fish around and see what you get out of that
fact.”

  “A motive?” Whittaker suggested.

  “Exactly!” Garth confirmed, slapping his palm on the desk. “The one damned thing that has stopped us so far in this business has been the reason for killing Valerie Hadfield — or otherwise causing her to disappear. We still don’t know if she is dead. But now we see a motive — purely theoretical, on which we cannot pin an atom of guilt as yet. But consider: suppose Richard Harvey is the man who has been in Valerie’s life, and that he fell in love with somebody else whom he liked much more? What course then but to kill Valerie Hadfield?”

  “There might have been other ways of shaking free of her, sir.”

  “Not Valerie Hadfield!” Garth declared. “You study the reports, take a consensus on them all, the folk who knew her, and you’ll soon see that she was not the forgiving type. I imagine that once her hooks landed in a man they’d stay there — until death us do part.”

  “It’s — it’s unbelievable!” Whittaker said finally. “A man like Mr. Harvey doing such a thing…Wealthy, clever, genial…”

  “In our business, Whitty, we’ve known murderesses with a face like the Madonna and child-stranglers as holy-looking as an archbishop. Remember we’ve more or less satisfied ourselves on the point that Valerie Hadfield would only take on a man of position and money, not the kind of man Rixton Williams seems to have been. Richard Harvey, I’m sorry to say, fits the bill for money and position. We have also to remember his scorn for Scotland Yard and his skilled handling of chemistry. That makes him damned dangerous, even clever enough to perform the perfect crime he’s always talking about…”

  Garth scowled from beneath lowered brows.

  “About a fortnight ago we were on the topic of perfect crimes at the Stag Club, with relative anecdotes concerning Crip-pen and a few others. Dick bet me that a perfect crime could exist even in these scientific days, and I’m — almost — sure…”

  “But there’s not a single clue anywhere to show that Mr. Harvey had any connection with Valerie, sir,” Whittaker pointed out. “Her flat has been turned inside out, her car examined, her acquaintances cross-examined, and nobody has ever mentioned Mr. Harvey.”