by J F Straker
David felt his cheeks go red. Even after his admission to hospital, and with Paul and his gang safely in the bag, he had been unable to summon up the courage to tell Morgan about the diary. Morgan had learned of it from Winstone; on his next visit to the hospital he had told David in no uncertain terms what he thought of him. But you had to hand it to the old boy, David reflected; he might blow his top, but the fury didn’t last. He had referred to the diary just now as calmly as though it had never been a bone of contention between them.
Would he have been as genial had the case been less successfully concluded?
Morgan took a deep draught of tea. ‘That doesn’t sound like a mass of information, does it? But when you’re not squeamish about method you can get a lot from quite a little.’
David made no comment. At that moment even the thought of Wilhelmina could not cheer him. It was galling to contrast his own stubborn stupidity with Morgan’s magnanimity, and as he munched his bread and jam he carefully avoided his godfather’s eyes. This is where we came in, he reflected sourly — with me as the prize idiot. They search my flat for the diary — I’d told Paul I’d be in Rotherhithe that evening —and when that fails Winstone is detailed to do the suffering husband act and slip me a clue. ‘Robert’ means nothing to them, but they reckon I’m just about bright enough to check with the diary. Then they follow me; and when I give their chap the slip, thinking he’s a copper, they resort to more direct methods. They knock me out and pinch the diary and get to Lumsden that way.
‘Who knocked me out?’ he asked. ‘Dunn?’
Morgan was not happy on the wooden chair. It was hard and small, and his posterior spread and sagged over the edges, which bit into his flesh. Still holding the cup, he stood up and went over to the window.
‘Baker,’ he said. ‘Dunn is a little too impetuous, and at that stage you still had possibilities.’
‘But only until the Sunday, apparently,’
David said bitterly. ‘Was that Dunn? He wasn’t very clever with the knife.’
‘No. That was a little chap named Boretti, one of Dunn’s apprentices.’ It was warm by the window, and Morgan undid his jacket and moved away. He perspired easily, and he did not want his collar to go limp. ‘By then, you see, they knew all about Lumsden. They picked him up on the Friday night, having got his address from the diary.’ He gave his godson another of his sly smiles. ‘You had gone home, tired of waiting and satisfied with leaving a note. They were a little more persistent.’
David scowled. That damned diary again! Why must he keep referring to it? He pushed the bed trolley away and lit a cigarette.
‘If they were so blasted thorough, why did they wait until Tuesday before disposing of him? During those four days he might have changed his mind and gone to the police.’
‘A good question, David.’ The superintendent put his cup back on the trolley. ‘You couldn’t spare one of those pillows, could you? That chair’s damned hard.’
‘Help yourself.’
At David’s request he wound up the back rest. Then he returned to his chair and settled himself on the pillow, a bland look of contentment on his round face.
‘Robert Lumsden seems to have been quite a lad. As you suspected, he was interested not in the girl but in her money. He told Brenn-Taylor so. When they picked him up he was quick to realize that he was reasonably safe until and unless he gave them the name of the girl. So he refused. But he also made them an offer. Although they had been married only a few days, he was all in favour of his wife’s death provided he was not involved. He suggested he should take her down to Cornwall on the Sunday, and they could dispose of her there. Make it look like an accident, with an alibi for himself, and on the day he got her money he would hand over a thousand quid for their services. Plus, of course, the promise to keep his mouth shut about the Rotherhithe affair.’
‘The swine!’ At their first meeting David had rather liked Lumsden. ‘I’m surprised the gang trusted him.’
‘They didn’t. They made him put the offer in writing and sign it; with that in their possession he dared not go to the police. They told him he could have it back when he paid up.’
‘And he was fool enough to believe them?’
Morgan shrugged. ‘Hadn’t much choice, had he? Even without his help it wouldn’t have taken them long to find the girl, and then it would be curtains for both. At least his offer seemed to give him a chance — plus the exciting prospect of enjoying the money without being encumbered by the girl.’ Thoughtfully he stroked his heavy jowls, taking pleasure in their smoothness. ‘He couldn’t know he was already earmarked for death. A thousand smackers was peanuts to that mob, and they weren’t risking their necks for peanuts.’ The superintendent leaned back and flexed the muscles of his arms, the chair tilting dangerously under his weight. ‘That night they killed Nora Winstone and tried to kill you. They reckoned it was in the bag.’
And so it would have been, thought David, had he not interfered. He got some comfort from that. But he did not make this point to Morgan; Morgan would undoubtedly belittle it. He said, ‘I suppose Dunn and Baker went down to Pendwara on the Saturday to establish some sort of an alibi. But how about Paul? What would he have done had I not asked him to join me?’
‘He’d have been in the vicinity, directing operations without actually putting in an appearance. You provided the opportunity for him to be right on the spot, with yourself as his guarantor of respectability. Not in person, of course; you were not expected to arrive at Pendwara. Come to that, you were not expected to arrive anywhere. But your telephone call to your uncle gave him the necessary credentials.’
David nodded glumly. It was galling to learn how completely Paul had used him, but even more bitter to reflect on how readily he had offered himself for use.
The negress was back. She tottered into the room with her cheerful smile and said to David, ‘You’ve got another visitor. A young lady.’ And then, with a sidelong glance at the superintendent, ‘I said you was busy with the police.’
‘That’ll be Susan,’ David said. ‘It’s all right, nurse, thank you. She can come in.’ As an afterthought he asked, ‘You’ve no objection, sir, have you?’
‘Yes, I have. I’m sorry, David, but this is confidential.’ David was puzzled by the broad smile that lit his godfather’s face. Under the circumstances it was unexpected. ‘Ask her to wait, nurse, will you? Tell her I shan’t keep her long.’
‘You’d better not,’ David warned when the nurse had left with the tray. Not if you value her good opinion. Susan doesn’t like being kept waiting.’
‘What woman does? However, we’re nearly through.’
In a voice carefully modulated to avoid monotony, Morgan summarized the rest of the story. On the Sunday evening Winstone had been detailed to discover how David was progressing. When David, on his way to see Susan, had dropped him off at Notting Hill, Winstone had telephoned Paul the information that David not only knew where the Lumsdens were in hiding, but meant to visit them on the morrow. Paul could not risk that. David must be liquidated immediately; and since Dunn was already in Cornwall the task was given to Boretti.
‘And he bungled it,’ David said, with some satisfaction.
Morgan nodded. ‘He lacked Dunn’s skill with the knife. So now they cooked up a new plan; to steal a car and run you off the road on the way down. That was Boretti again. Boretti and Fenner, the sixth member of the gang. He’s a waiter at the Seventy-Seven. Or was. Right now he’s in Brixton.’
‘They couldn’t care less, I suppose, that Winstone happened to be in the car with me?’
The superintendent smiled. ‘A slight lack of co-ordination. They didn’t know about Winstone. You had refused him a lift the night before, and they thought that still went. Nor did they bother to tell Winstone the new plan, or you certainly wouldn’t have found him outside your flat the next morning.’
David echoed the smile. The knowledge that his enemies had also made mistakes made him feel better.
‘Why was he so keen on a lift? What was he planning to do?’
‘Nothing violent. Fix the car on the way down, perhaps; I’m told he’s a bit of a mechanic. Delay you somehow, anyway.’
Paul’s plan had been simple enough. Lumsden would take his wife down to lonely Tremmaes Cove for a picnic, and Dunn and Baker would follow. As Lumsden saw it, the two thugs would dispose of the girl, and be ready to testify later at the inquest that it was an accident, that her husband (the obvious suspect) had been nowhere near her at the time. Paul and his men saw it differently. They had no intention of attending any inquest. The ‘accident’ would involve both husband and wife, and Dunn and Baker would then make themselves scarce; and unless they had actually been spotted in the cove (and they would take precautions against that) it would occur to no one that two complete strangers might have found their way down there unaided, let alone commit murder. Why should they?
‘They had fixed the job for Monday,’ Morgan continued, ‘but because of the rain Wilhelmina could not be lured from the caravan. Not that it mattered. There was no apparent need for haste. Boretti and Fenner would have taken care of you, and the police were nowhere. It rocked them when you and Winstone turned up on the Tuesday.’
David stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I’m glad I managed to cause them some discomfort.’
‘Not a lot, I’m afraid. Paul isn’t easily disconcerted. He sent Dunn and Baker to the camp site to warn Lumsden that you would be around, instructing him to play it tough at first and then appear to yield. But he was to insist that he and the girl had the afternoon to themselves. And that seemed to wrap it up. True, you were around; you might even do a little snooping. But Paul was there to keep tabs on you.’ Morgan grimaced. ‘Had you not insisted on going down to Tremmaes you would never have known he was involved. You and he might have continued as friends until the law finally caught up with him. As it was you forced him to show his hand. Not that it worried him. What, after all, was one more murder?’
‘What, indeed?’ David agreed. ‘Although he might have had some difficulty in explaining my disappearance. He had gone out with me. My uncle knew that.’
‘No difficulty at all. He would claim to have stayed on the cliff-top. Who would expect a one-armed man to attempt such a tricky descent? Did you?’
David admitted he did not. ‘I gather those two johnnies on the motor cycle were genuine campers. They had no connexion with the gang; it was just a coincidence that one of them had lost the top of a finger. Yet Winstone couldn’t have known they would be there to confuse me. Why did he mention the finger at all?’
‘Because you were so insistent that he must have noticed something that he invented the first deformity that came into his mind. Or so he says.’ Morgan stood up, adjusted the hang of his jacket and the set of his tie, and ran a careful hand over the thinning grey hair. It still had a wave which he was anxious to preserve. ‘It’s time I collected your other visitor, David. We’ve kept her waiting long enough.’ He eyed his godson with disfavour. If David had shaved that morning it had been hastily done, for already his chin and cheeks were grey with patches of stubble. Certainly he had not used comb or brush on that unruly mop of his. ‘Is it possible to get one’s hair cut in hospital?’ he asked pointedly.
‘I don’t know,’ David snapped. ‘What’s more, I don’t care.’
Why does the old buzzard always manage to get my goat? he reflected when Morgan had gone. Does he do it deliberately, out of a mistaken sense of duty, a sort of I-must-keep-the-young-devil-up-to-the-mark notion? He’s not a bad old stick really, and he’s been pretty decent over this business. More than decent. If it hadn’t been for him I wouldn’t be alive.
It was Inspector Nightingale who had told David of the events leading up to his rescue. David’s anger at Susan’s betrayal of a confidence had been short lived; and, in fact, because of the accident to the Alvis, her betrayal had given the police little help. When Morgan realized that David had somehow managed to slip unnoticed past the police cars waiting at Redruth and Truro, he had immediately instigated a search in the Helston area. But it had been from Rotherhithe that the real lead had come. On the Tuesday morning Nightingale had visited Einsdorp in hospital, and had learned of Wilhelmina’s marriage and disappearance and of David’s interest in the young couple. That had been enough for the inspector; anything that had interested David interested him. A visit to Lumsden’s lodgings, where David’s letter lay unopened in the hall, had clinched the matter. The letter mentioned Pendwara, and it was to Pendwara that Nightingale and the superintendent had gone, after alerting the local police. Pendwara boasted only the one inn. David’s uncle had put them more fully in the picture, and it was he who had suggested Tremmaes as a likely spot for a murder.
He was still brooding on the drama at Tremmaes, from the gloom of which only the one bright consolation emerged — that in saving Wilhelmina he had ensured Paul’s conviction for the murder of Constable Dyerson, and thus earned his godfather’s gratitude — when Morgan returned. But the girl who followed him into the room was not Susan. She was a curvaceous brunette in a tight fitting two-piece of soft pink, and on her head a little white cap with a dangling pom-pom. The dark eyes under the spiky brows surveyed him cautiously, as though uncertain of her welcome.
David sat up with a jerk that made him wince.
‘Judy Garland! What on earth brings you here?’
‘Me,’ Morgan said. He was standing very erect, contracting his stomach muscles. ‘I thought you might like to see her.’
‘Of course I do.’ David realized that his pyjama jacket was undone, and hastily fastened the buttons. ‘Who wouldn’t? But why should she want to see me?’
‘I heard you was hurt,’ the girl said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Her voice was subdued, and David had the impression that this was not an answer to his question but a timid — even an apologetic — approach. He gave her a friendly and appreciative grin. ‘I’m fine,’ he told her, and patted the bed. ‘Come and sit here. Leave the chair for the aged and infirm.’
The look the superintendent gave him was searing in its contempt. The girl declined his offer, but the cockney voice was more confident as she said, ‘Thanks, I’ll stand.’
She moved to the foot of the bed and rested her arms on the high trolley, her enormous eyes contemplating him. Embarrassed, David turned to his godfather. ‘What’s all this in aid of?’ he demanded. ‘How did you come to meet Judy?’
‘She came to meet me.’ Morgan surveyed the girl with pleasure. ‘She is Robert Lumsden’s girlfriend. Or was until he married Wilhelmina Einsdorp. When she discovered how he had deceived her she decided, very sensibly, to pay me a visit.’
‘Why you?’
‘Well, perhaps not me personally. But I happened to be at the station when she called.’ Airily he waved a well-manicured hand to dismiss the argument, and smiled at the girl. ‘Shall I tell him, Miss Garland, or will you?’
She shook her head, blinking her long lashes at him. ‘You tell him, please.’
Morgan moved to the chair, then paused. He could not sit while the girl stood.
‘You failed to get the full story, David,’ he said. ‘Lumsden married Wilhelmina, but he was in love with Miss Garland. And she was in love with him.’ He looked at the girl. ‘That’s so, isn’t it?’ She lowered her eyes and nodded. ‘From Lumsden’s point of view the marriage was one of convenience; he was reluctant to renounce Miss Garland, but still more reluctant to relinquish Wilhelmina’s nest-egg. After his meeting with Brenn-Taylor he realized he need do neither; he was about to become a widower with prospects. So before departing on his so-called honeymoon he told Miss Garland that he would be away for a few days, but hinted that on his return his circumstances might be considerably improved.’ Morgan turned again to the girl. ‘I know he had kept the marriage a secret, but had you no inkling of his interest in Miss Einsdorp?’
‘I knew he took her to the cinema sometimes,’ she said. ‘I thought he was just
being kind. I wasn’t — well, jealous.’
David could believe that. A girl with Judy’s looks would have no cause to be jealous of Wilhelmina.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘His death must have come as a great shock to you.’
She nodded, the pom-pom dancing. ‘I was that upset I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t only him being killed, you see, but finding out he was married. I got to thinking about how he’d deceived me. And then I thought — well, maybe he lied about the shooting too. Maybe he hadn’t been to the police like he said he would. So I went myself, just to make sure.’
There were no tears, her voice was firm. She might have been upset, David concluded, but her heart wasn’t broken. Yet there was something here that puzzled him.
‘What’s all this about shooting?’ he asked. ‘What shooting?’
There was a pause. Judy was looking at Morgan, obviously expecting him to answer. David looked too. Hands clasped behind his back, feet well apart, the superintendent regarded his godson with an enigmatic smile.
‘Well?’ David demanded.
‘I’m afraid you had it all wrong, David,’ Morgan told him, with obvious relish. ‘It was Miss Garland, not Wilhelmina, who was with Lumsden on the night Dyerson was shot.’
David shook his head in bewilderment. ‘But Lumsden told me himself...’ No, that wasn’t true. Lumsden had not told him, he had merely omitted to deny David’s assumption. ‘You mean — it was you who saw the shooting, Judy? Not Wilhelmina?’
‘That’s right,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘And I wish I hadn’t. There was his face, you see — real evil it was —and the empty sleeve and...’ She shuddered. ‘Oh, it was horrible!’ Her chin came up, and she looked defiantly at Morgan. ‘I know you think it was wicked of me not to tell the police, but Robert said not to. He said it would be all right, that he’d see to it. And I believed him.’
