The Tick of Death

by Peter Lovesey

  Nor I, thought Cribb. He had not gone to so much trouble merely for a glass of beer. ‘I was doing my job, no more. It was simply a matter of exercising the rules.’

  ‘That may be so,’ said Devlin, ‘but ’twould have been easier to have held your tongue. The sport could do with more of your kind, mister—men of principle, that take their duties seriously. Incidentally, you’re not wanted for the high jump, or anything, are you?’

  ‘Lord, no.’ Cribb shook his head decisively and transferred the official rosette slickly into his pocket. ‘We tend to specialise in one event, you know.’ He smiled. ‘The rules get more complicated all the time.’

  ‘Sure, and don’t you think I know that? It’s taken me a year and more to master the art of turning in a pesky little seven-foot circle.’

  What an opening! Cribb took a sip of beer and casually said, ‘It’s an art your friend Mr Malone doesn’t appear to have mastered yet.’

  Devlin returned a sharp look. ‘Malone? Malone’s no friend of mine.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Cribb. ‘I apologise for the error.’ As Devlin showed no sign of wanting to enlarge on his statement, the sergeant went on. ‘I had assumed you were constantly competing together. In England, the principal hammer-throwers comprise a very—if you’ll pardon the expression— small circle.’

  The reference made no impression on Devlin. He stared absently into his beer.

  ‘And then again,’ said Cribb, determined not to drop the subject, ‘I should have thought you would have got to know each other tolerably well on the voyage from America. I presume you were all on the same Cunarder.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Devlin, ‘but Malone was travelling on his own ticket like a gentleman. The rest of us were steerage. The first time I spoke to him was after we had docked at Southampton.’ He emphasised his words in a way clearly intended to remove any question of his involvement with Malone.

  But if that line of inquiry was closed, another was now open. ‘He is somewhat detached from the other members of the team, then?’ said Cribb.

  ‘That’s about it,’ said Devlin, relieved that the point was taken at last.

  ‘He isn’t quartered with the rest of you, I dare say?’

  Devlin shook his head. ‘He’s taken a suite in some flash hotel in Piccadilly—the Alcazar. The rest of us are dos-sing down in something not much better than a common lodging-house here in West Brompton. It’s convenient for Lillie Bridge, but there the convenience ends.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Cribb.

  ‘Ah, we wouldn’t really want to be in a hotel. We’re not accustomed to it. Shanahan and I are at college, you see, and Creed works in a druggist’s store. We’re all dependent on the club for our upkeep here.’

  ‘Not so Malone?’ said Cribb.

  ‘Not so Malone.’

  ‘He is a man of private means, then?’

  ‘I think you could say that.’

  ‘I follow you now,’ said Cribb, as if Devlin had been struggling all afternoon to make himself clear. ‘If a man is a passable athlete and can pay his way, the club will allow him to wear its colours. Ah well, it may seem unjust that a man can buy himself a place on an international team, but after all, the same thing happens in every other sphere of human activity, Mr Devlin, and I daresay there are less wholesome things to be bought with money than athletic club vests. The exercise Mr Malone is getting must be most beneficial. Perhaps he will blossom into a champion by the time you all return. He’s got the physical capacity, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘He’s a big fellow, I’ll grant you,’ Devlin conceded, ‘but he’ll need to learn the rudiments of turning in the circle before anyone can call him a hammer-thrower.’

  ‘That was evident this afternoon,’ Cribb agreed. ‘But surely he will improve with practice? I cannot believe that a man so enthusiastic about his athletics as to cross the ocean for competition is not taking the most elementary steps to improve his style.’

  ‘Believe what you like,’ said Devlin. ‘You saw him this afternoon. He’s been here since February.’

  ‘Really? How very odd!’ said Cribb, pleased at the way the conversation flowed more freely now it was concerned with the demands of hammer-throwing. ‘If the man doesn’t practise, how on earth does he keep himself in condition? Does he have a set of bar-bells at the Alcazar Hotel, do you think?’

  ‘If you want to know, I reckon he’s more accustomed to lowering pints than lifting weights,’ said Devlin. ‘The only exercise he gets is in the contest when he represents the club. He gets by on sheer size and brute strength. He knows he’s less than fit, too. That’s the reason why he entered for the shot-putting as well as the hammer this afternoon—to shake some of the lead out of his limbs.’

  Cribb nodded. The last assumption was probably true. If Malone’s training for athletics was restricted to Saturday afternoons, he would want to take all the opportunities of exercise that the programme of events offered. Of far more interest was what kept him from practising at other times, what had brought him from America—for it was evidently not hammer-throwing.

  ‘He’s a drinking man, you say? That’s unusual in an athlete, isn’t it? I’ve heard of pugilists sneaking into public houses or carrying their little bottles of liquor about with ’em, but I thought you amateurs trained upon temperance principles.’

  Devlin grinned. ‘You don’t know much about the Gaelic American Athletic Club, then. We’re none of us averse to a drop of the hard stuff once in a while—and what do you think we use for embrocation?’

  ‘He can’t possibly spend all his time at the bar,’ persisted Cribb.

  ‘I’ve never thought it part of my business to ask him.’

  There was enough rebuke in the answer to show Cribb that he would not get any further. Whatever Devlin privately thought Malone was doing on the other six days of the week, he was not going to be drawn into discussing it that afternoon. The sergeant got to his feet. ‘Ah well, it takes all sorts to make an athletics team, eh, Mr Devlin? I think I’ll amble back to the ground now and see how things are progressing. What time is the shot-putting expected to start?’

  ‘Four o’clock, I believe.’

  ‘It’s almost that already. I wonder whether Mr Malone will fare any better without a bar attached to the weight than with one.’

  As it happened, Cribb had no intention of finding out. After looking in briefly at Lillie Bridge and satisfying himself that Malone was still there (in fact, limbering up conscientiously for his event), he hailed the first hansom cab that passed along Seagrave Road and told the driver to take him to the Alcazar Hotel in Arundel Place.

  The streets of Brompton basked in the sunshine which had finally broken through, their Saturday afternoon somnolence altogether remote from dynamite and death. As Cribb watched the parasol parade from his cab, the smell of tar from the joints of the Earls Court Road’s wooden pavement was wafted through carriage-dust to his nostrils. Memories of perambulations in winsome company on summer afternoons drifted across his mind, until the sight of a blue helmet jerked him back to his present commission. He trained his thoughts on Constable Bottle and his ignominious end, and pressed himself farther back against the leather upholstery. It was not impossible that the Clan already had him under scrutiny; his doings at Lillie Bridge had been a calculated risk. What if Malone had not been taken in by the top hat and official rosette? The dangers in this business were extreme, and all the more unnerving for being played out in such unlikely spots as railway stations and sporting arenas. In all truth he would have felt more comfortable face to face with his enemy in some ill-lit back room of an Irish public house.

  Arundel Place, one of those odd little culs-de-sac within a few yards of Piccadilly Circus, yet quite detached from the hub of the Empire, was approached from Coventry Street. It was well-known to the Vine Street police—on whose strength Cribb had served in his time—as a peculiarly rewarding point of duty. Lambert’s, the silversmith’s on the corner, paid the Force thi
rty shillings a week to have a constable on night watch outside, and in return for keeping his eyes open (or closed, according to circumstances) the fortunate officer could make almost that amount in tips from the distinguished residents of the Georgian houses and three hotels that comprised the street. At the end, it broadened into a small square, in which the Alcazar Hotel was prominent, its Georgian portico projecting on to the pavement, with twin potted ferns at each side of the open front door.

  Cribb paid the cabman and climbed three carpeted steps to the hotel foyer. It was ten years at least since he had last been there, at the night-porter’s invitation, for a glass of something warm in the small hours of a January morning. He was half-prepared to be recognised, for hotel staff have long memories, but he retained a hope that the silk hat and morning suit were sufficiently unsuggestive of helmet and great-coat to preserve his incognito. It chanced that no one was present when he entered, and after a short appraisal of The Bath of Psyche over the mantelpiece, he settled on a sofa to wait. Without knowing the location of Malone’s room, he did not propose to wander aimlessly about the hotel. Nor was he moved to make a rapid examination of the register lying open on the reception-desk; unless there were over-riding disadvantages in the procedure, he preferred to conduct his inquiries in a civilised fashion.

  Just as well, for the receptionist appeared rapidly and without warning from a door behind the desk, a young woman with hair cut square over her brow and loosely knotted behind in the modern style. To his relief, Cribb had not seen her before.

  ‘I do apologise, sir. You haven’t been waiting long, I hope?’

  ‘A few minutes, no more. I believe that you have a Mr Malone, from America, staying here. I was desirous of meeting him.’

  ‘Mr Malone? Oh, yes—the sporting gentleman. I am not sure if he is in. He comes and goes rather, and doesn’t always advise us of his movements. If you’ll kindly wait a moment, sir, I’ll arrange for a page to go up to his suite. Do you have a card, sir?’

  A card! The topper and tails were making an impact. ‘He doesn’t know me by name,’ Cribb explained. ‘But if the boy would care to mention the Metropolitan Athletic Club . . .’

  He made sure he was within earshot when the page reported, and heard the receptionist send him to room 206. He managed to look fittingly disappointed at the news, a few minutes later, that Mr Malone was not in his suite.

  ‘You are welcome to wait, if you have the time,’ the receptionist told him. ‘There is a lounge to your left, and the smoking-room beyond.’

  He nodded his gratitude and moved in to the lounge, a large pink and white room. It had a deserted, Saturday afternoon look. One elderly resident dozed by the window under a copy of The Morning Post. He ventured through into the smoking-room, all leather and mahogany, and quite uninhabited. A baize door to the right of the fireplace attracted his attention, more than likely an entrance used by servants. The chance of getting upstairs by this route was too good to forego. He pushed through the door into a narrow, uncarpeted passage. Some fifteen yards ahead, where it turned to the right, was a spiral staircase. Voices were coming from somewhere, too indistinct for him to make out individual words, but apparent from the tone that two or more female domestics were exchanging confidences. With luck, they would be too occupied with their conversation to disturb him. He hoped so; morning-dress might be an advantage in an hotel foyer, but it was difficult to account for in the servants’ quarters.

  He reached the stairs and mounted as noiselessly as he could to the second floor, where he made his way along a passage similar to the one he had first come through, and found himself in a linen-room stacked with bedding. He listened at the door, and hearing nothing, pulled it open and stepped on to the carpet of the second floor corridor, not without a flutter of self-congratulation. Perhaps, after all, there was a future to be had in the Secret Service.

  The corridor was as deserted as the rest of the hotel. He stepped boldly along it, counting the numbers on the doors until he came to 206. To be quite sure it was locked, he tested the handle; a pity his training at Woolwich had not included the forcing of locks. Short of sitting down to wait outside the door for Malone’s return, there was one other expedient left to him. It called for the kind of heroics he would normally have entrusted to Thackeray, but this afternoon he had to take the initiative himself. He walked to the end of the corridor, pushed up a window, and peered out.

  Thirty feet below, a pigeon was crossing Arundel Place. From Cribb’s position, its waddling progress looked awkward in the extreme. Strange how a change of perspective altered the appearance of everyday things . . . He looked left along the side of the building, on a level with the second floor. More pigeons were clustered there, perched proprietorially along a ledge projecting some nine inches from the wall. It provided exactly what he required: a means of reaching the window of suite 206.

  He removed his jacket and placed it neatly out of sight with the silk hat behind the folds of the curtain. He folded his shirt-sleeves and lowered himself from the window to the ledge without another glance downwards. He hoped anyone who chanced to see him would suppose him a window-cleaner or house-painter going about his lawful employment. The square was deserted, so far as he could tell. He flattened his palms against the wall and began to move sideways. The pigeons did not disdain to leave the ledge as his feet appeared among them, but contrived to find a way around the invading shoes, grumbling chestily at the inconvenience. A small stone was dislodged and he heard it hit the pavement below. He wondered whether anyone was down there by now, looking up at him. He thought of Malone, and pondered how long it took to complete a shot-putting contest. He began to move with more urgency.

  The window of 206 was partially open, and easy to push up far enough for him to climb inside. Secure again, he looked down into Arundel Place to satisfy himself that his manoeuvre had not been observed. The pigeon was still in sole occupation.

  Devlin had been right when he said Malone lived in style. The bedroom in which Cribb found himself was half as large again as any hotel-room he had been in before. He felt the pile of the carpet respond to the weight of his feet as he got up from the window-sill and crossed to an enamelled ash tallboy. The drawers contained clothes—collars, shirts and under-garments—and nothing to interest Scotland Yard. He tried the wardrobe and found two suits and an overcoat. The pockets were empty except for handkerchiefs.

  He crossed to the bathroom. The luxury extended there in a gleaming chrome and enamel hot water geyser and a flawless white galvanised bath, but Cribb’s attention was claimed at once by a bottle on the shelf over the wash-basin. It contained a purple-coloured liquid. He removed the top and sniffed it: methylated spirit, without any doubt at all. He sniffed it again for pure relish—the virtual confirmation that Malone was the man Thackeray had met in The Feathers in Rotherhithe. And beside it on the shelf was a box containing an ivory-handled manicure-set.

  There was one more room to examine: the sitting room. It bore more traces of its tenant than the others, a pile of copies of The Irish Post on a table beside a decanter of whisky; a number of books, including the London Directory, and a collection of sporting impedimenta—Indian clubs, chest-expanders, even two throwing-hammers—stacked in a corner of the room from which all furniture and ornaments had been cleared, evidently to provide a small gymnasium.

  Cribb bent to examine one of the hammers, an item of personal luggage unlikely to be tolerated in less exclusive hotels, he thought, particularly when it belonged to a whisky-drinking Irishman. On picking it up, he was surprised to find it lighter in weight than the hammers he had handled at Lillie Bridge. There was half a stone difference, at least. As he turned it over thoughtfully in his hand, he noticed a join midway along the wooden handle. He twisted the two halves away from each other and felt them give, and unscrew. They were hollow. Inside, were four glass tubes he recognised at once as detonators. It might have been a throwing-hammer he was holding, but it was also an infernal machine. He did not ne
ed to prise open the head to know that it was stuffed with dynamite.

  The moment when a man discovers that the object in his hands is a bomb is not the best to take him by surprise. It says much for Cribb’s cool-headedness that he did not drop the ‘hammer’ altogether at the sound of the lock turning in the door of the room. He swung round, still reassembling the handle, prepared to point out that any shot that felled him would surely account for his attacker too, and watched the door open. A young girl, not more than fifteen years old, marched boldly in, carrying a pillow-case.

  ‘Oops! I’m sorry, sir! Thought you was out. I’m only the chambermaid, wanting to turn back the sheet on your bed.’

  Cribb nodded. ‘You carry on, young lady. Don’t mind me. Just taking my daily exercise. I was about to go out, anyway.’

  She bobbed a small, blushing curtsey and scuttled through to the bedroom. Cribb replaced the hammer in its original position and moved just as quickly out of suite 206 and into the corridor. Stopping only to retrieve his hat and coat, he located the main staircase and passed rapidly downstairs, heartily relieved when he reached the bottom without meeting Malone coming up, but retaining sufficient presence of mind to raise his hat to the receptionist as he crossed the foyer. He had done it, by Heaven! Single-handed, he had run a dynamiter to earth within hours of being assigned to the case. Inspector Jowett was due for the surprise of his career!

  He hailed a four-wheeler that had appeared in the square. ‘Great Scotland Yard,’ he told the cabman. ‘Make haste, man. Important business. Double fare!’

  He climbed inside, sat down and found that he was not alone. Devlin was sitting opposite him. There was a gun in his hand directed at Cribb’s chest.

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE WINDOWS ON THE right were covered. Devlin leaned forward and pulled down the blinds on the left without shifting gaze or aim from Cribb. A small rear window some six inches square admitted sufficient light for the two men to see each other, but it was impossible for Cribb to follow which direction the cab was taking without turning in his seat and craning for a view, a manoeuvre he decided in the circumstances not to attempt.