Carriers of Death (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  ‘Yes,’ said Kerr.

  ‘If he removes that, our chance of finding him is small,’ said Craigie. ‘I’ve men checking up every one of Marlin’s clients, and we haven’t found anything yet. The so-called American fellow might be anyone: it’s no true indication. Well, now, anything else------?’

  ‘There’s one little thing,’ Bob Kerr smiled, glancing at Timothy Arran. ‘Miss Smith, Tim.’

  Craigie already knew that Miss Penelope Smith had been close to extinction, and had been checked aboard the steamer for Calais. He said as much, and Timothy grimaced.

  ‘Yes, I know. She’s come back, drat her. I’m afraid I was a bit short, but I’d been telling myself she was miles away and safe enough. I mean—well, she’s been seen and probably identified, and I don’t like Messrs. Marlin and Kelly. Seeing her at Dover really got my goat. I think,’ he ended gloomily, ‘that I upset her.’

  ‘The understatement of the week,’ grinned Bob Kerr. ‘I think she’d have enjoyed treading on you, Tim.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Timothy coldly.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right.’ Kerr was opening out, Craigie noticed, glad that the other had got on top of himself. It was essential for his men to harden themselves even against catastrophes like the Pockham affair: they could not afford to brood over failures. ‘But—Tim: she claimed she’d followed you, right? Doesn’t it strike you as odd she should have gone to London, watched you there and followed you down to Dover? Followed us, that is. She must have carried on to Dover when we turned off for Pockham, so—‘Kerr was frowning, ‘—one, she didn’t want to chance your seeing her on the Pockham road: and two: she knew you’d be going on with me to Dover.’

  There was a moment’s silence in the room, while Craigie rubbed his chin. Then Timothy broke the silence with a gusty:

  ‘Are you suggesting Penelope’s in this?’

  ‘No...’ said Kerr, although his denial did not sound genuine. ‘But I should like you to find out just what brought her after you, Tim. Damn it, man, we can’t let things like that go unexplained, can we?’

  Timothy forced a smile.

  ‘I can see you and me falling out before long,’ he said, ‘but I suppose you’re right. That means, I take it, that I’ve got to hunt London for her. And when she sees me...’

  ‘She’ll be so sorry for you, the way you look right now,’ said Kerr unkindly, ‘that she’ll forgive you.’ He left the subject, although Craigie realised he was still very interested in Penelope Smith, and with good reason.

  The same thing had jumped into both men’s minds.

  The Arrans had been Department men for a long time, and anyone who had ever known the Department or watched it working would have discovered that. Penelope Smith had come to London just at the time when Craigie’s activities in America must have begun to worry Marlin and his friends—and thus just when the obviously unoccupied Arrans would be his likeliest choice to investigate any suspect situation at the London end.

  True, that letter had come from Jeremy Potter—so far as they knew. But the timing of it had left the Arrans no chance to check with him whether he had actually sent it, even had they wished to.

  According to the Arrans, Kerr was thinking, the girl had not been looking forward to her visit to the South of France. But then, if she wished to make a sudden reappearance seem more plausible, she could have given that impression deliberately. Dammit—they could not even be sure that the girl was Potter’s niece: they had never seen her before.

  Of course, he reflected, there had been that attempt to run her down when she had been with Tim. But then—and Kerr took a deep breath as the thought struck him—it had only been an attempt; and Tim had been the only one they fired at. Had the car missed them intentionally—an elaborately cunning ploy to ensure that no suspicion of any kind devolved on Penelope Smith?

  Kerr left the flat with Craigie, and as they walked along together he voiced his suspicions aloud.

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Craigie agreed. ‘Better go see Potter, yourself—if there’s anything funny about this girl, he might be able to help you. Apart from that, he won’t talk with just anybody: he’s one of the old school.’

  ‘What’s his business?’

  ‘Cotton and yarn. The Potter Mills were some of the biggest in the Preston district at one time, but they’ve not been doing so well, lately.’

  ‘Cotton, eh?’ mused Bob Kerr. ‘Well, they use a lot of the stuff in armaments, not to say clothing. This girl’s come from him. Just supposing, Craigie, that she isn’t his niece. She might have been keeping an eye on Potter: might know the real niece and know about the letter through her—if it’s genuine. It’s even possible the real Penelope is at Cannes now.’

  His next words, when they came, showed how thorough was his appreciation of the situation: ‘Can you find out whether Potter’s factories—or mills—have any Government contracts?’

  ‘I think it certain they have,’ said Craigie. ‘I’ll—but wait a minute. Halloway will know, and he’s near here. We’ll go and see him.’

  ‘I seem to have heard the name?’ queried Kerr.

  ‘You’ll have had a job to miss it, lately,’ Craigie said drily. ‘The Permanent Under-Secretary for Defence.’

  Kerr had been away from home too much to know just how loud was the outcry for an adequate defence system for Great Britain. But Craigie’s reminder was enough. Sir Kenneth Halloway had been very much in the news, of late.

  He greeted them with an easy informality which somehow combined an undisguised respect and liking for Gordon Craigie with an equally obvious pleasure in meeting the famous airman.

  Kerr had wondered if he might demur at giving information before a stranger—even one sponsored by Craigie himself. But the defence of Britain was clearly Sir Kenneth’s favourite topic of conversation. He had, moreover, a remarkably good memory. He nodded immediate assent when Craigie asked whether the Potter Mills had any Government contracts.

  ‘Yes, indeed. They’re one of the major contractors—naval and military clothing. Not my meat officially, of course, but...’ he grimaced wry admission of his preoccupation with the subject ‘—you can take my word for it.’

  ‘That all you need to know, Kerr?’

  ‘Ample,’ said Bob Kerr, cheerfully.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d joined Craigie’s Iron Men,’ smiled Halloway. ‘Be careful, Kerr.’

  ‘He doesn’t know how to be,’ said Craigie. ‘You might find him pestering you, Halloway—he’s working on the sabotage business. You’ll give him any help you can, without waiting for me?’

  ‘Of course—any time,’ said Halloway, warmly. ‘The best of luck, Kerr. And if you can put your finger on Gregory Marlin, you might give him a little unofficial punishment.’

  Kerr smiled.

  ‘You know Marlin?’

  ‘Who doesn’t? And I’m particularly interested. The man had twenty thousands pounds’ worth of bearer bonds from me the day he disappeared. He cashed them before going, of course.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Kerr. ‘And you’re not the only one to suffer, of course.’

  ‘I’m certainly not. Cathie—’ the Scottish Sir James Cathie was a man many people believed out of place in the Cabinet ‘—lost a bit, and I think Wishart suffered. Of course, he had a genius for making money—he probably made up in profits to his clients twice as much as he’s filched. But he must have collected a cool hundred thousand pounds, before he went.’

  They left Halloway at the Carilon Club—he was a bachelor—and walked to Whitehall. Kerr did not go into Department Z, and Craigie left him to prepare for his trip to the north. There was certainly a good chance that Jeremy Potter could give them some valuable information.

  The journey from London to Preston would have taken most men five or six hours at least; it took Kerr an hour and a quarter, for he went by air in a specially commissioned Hawk. There were advantages in being known, in person or by reputation, at practically every airport in England...<
br />
  The Hawk behaved perfectly and he reached the landing field at Preston—avoiding the big Liverpool airport to save time—at nine o’clock. He had arranged for a car to be waiting, and drove at once to Preston police headquarters, where he introduced himself. Craigie had already sent word through the Yard for him to be given every assistance, and he arranged for the Buick he had hired to be followed at a respectful distance by a police car with two armed men. He did not seriously expect trouble, but he was anxious to be prepared for it if it came.

  It was dark, and he saw very little of Preston and its environs. Jeremy Potter lived in one of the residential suburbs on the Lancaster Road, and he reached the house soon after half-past nine.

  The Larches was old but not gloomy and its porch was well-lit. From two or three of the windows lights shone cheerfully. He waited until he saw the police car pull up fifty yards past the house before he entered the short drive and drove slowly to the front door. The strains of a wireless programme, apparently from the basement regions, came to his ears. Everything about the place was so unexceptionably ordinary that his earlier conviction that he had struck something promising now seemed absurd.

  ‘A wasted journey,’ he told himself irritably, as the door was opened by a manservant.

  ‘Good evening, sir.’

  ‘Is Mr. Potter at home?’ asked Kerr.

  ‘I believe so, sir.’

  ‘Ask him if he will see me, will you?’

  Taking out a card, he scribbled on the back of it: ‘On Government business’. That ought to make him more amenable to interruption, he told himself drily.

  The man took the card with polite disinterest and ushered him into a small sitting-room off the entrance hall, then went silently out. Surveying the room, Kerr reflected that the house would be a positive treasure-trove for collectors: the furniture was both old and beautiful. The Potter Mills might be suffering a certain decline, but the family fortunes must still be fairly sizeable.

  The door opened suddenly and he rose, prepared to see an old and probably crotchety gentleman. It was a shock to see instead a petite and attractive woman of perhaps thirty years of age, who greeted him with a pleasant enough smile. He could not immediately hide his surprise—could this be the real Penelope Smith?—but he recovered himself quickly as the smile widened.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he explained, returning it, ‘but I expected to see Mr. Potter. Is that possible?’

  ‘I think so.’ Her voice was attractive but just a little formal. She glanced at the card: ‘Can I tell him what business?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s confidential,’ he said.

  ‘I see,’ She turned to go, then paused in the doorway to add with another quick smile: ‘Mr. Potter likes me to see everyone who comes. He is a very busy man, and I’m afraid he is bothered a great deal by callers.’

  She was probably only Potter’s secretary, after all, Kerr decided wryly. Which would leave Miss Penelope Smith as much of an enigma as ever.

  She had left the door open, and he waited as her footsteps echoed up the staircase and died away.

  For a moment or two, there was silence—then suddenly, startlingly, the high-pitched cry of a woman. As he heard the agitated clatter of her feet on the stairs, he reached the door in one stride and stepped into the hall...

  And told himself he had never seen such an expression of horror on the face of man or woman.

  9

  Potter gives a clue

  She was half-way down the staircase when Kerr looked up; staring wildly ahead of her, her mouth agape: a travesty of the self-possessed young woman he had seen only minutes before. She was on the point of hysteria, he knew, and he took a dozen strides to reach the foot before she did. Gripping her arm, he shook it roughly.

  ‘That’s enough!’ he snapped.

  She stopped dead still and her eyes stared into his: the horror in them made him shiver.

  ‘Steady,’ he said more gently. ‘Where is it?’

  A dozen men would have asked what was the matter and thus risked an outburst probably impossible to stop. He had chosen the right approach. She drew a deep breath, and now he could feel her trembling.

  ‘In—in his study.’

  She was still shivering, her breath coming in deep gasps. But stiffly, automatically—and obviously unconscious of Kerr’s helping arm—she started back up the stairs. They reached the landing and turned a corner. He could just see into a room through an open door, and the first thing that caught his eye was a telephone. So at least he could call for assistance if necessary.

  She stopped a yard from the door.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘All right,’ Kerr soothed. ‘You go downstairs and call the menservants.’

  Kerr watched her stumble away—then drawing a deep breath, he stepped across the threshold. With one glance, he took in the signs of struggle: the overturned vase, the pipe obviously dropped while still alight—the carpet now smouldering around it and beginning to fill the room with acrid grey smoke. But the thing that mattered was stretched out by the fireplace: a ghastly sight, with the thickening scarlet circle vivid around its throat.

  Kerr felt a strong desire to be sick. But he forced himself to cross the room—careful to touch nothing as he went—and throw open the window. He leaned out and the police-car driver, immediately alert, nodded sharply at his urgent gesture and pressed the self-starter.

  Kerr withdrew his head and faced the room again. Potter, dead—murdered in his own hearth! One half of his mind was still hardly able to grasp the fact, but the other was already coldly weighing and assessing it. Potter was in this thing somewhere, he decided, grimly.

  Footsteps clattered up the stairs and he reached the door as the first of the servants appeared. A stout man of middle-age, he was puffing hard and had obviously led the way as of right, and not because the younger men behind him could not have beaten him. His large, white face was set in alarm.

  ‘What—what is it, sir? What has happened?’

  ‘Steady.’ Kerr pushed the man into the passage and pulled the door behind him. ‘Is every manservant here?’

  The large man regained his breath and his sense of his own position together.

  ‘I insist, sir------!’

  ‘Answer the question!’ snapped Kerr. ‘You are the butler, I presume?’

  ‘Yes—yes, sir.’

  ‘Good—then keep your wits about you. Are all the men-servants here?’

  The stout man glanced round at the other three and nodded.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right: one of you go down and open the front door—the police will be here in a moment.’

  ‘The police?’ The butler’s eyes widened again. ‘Sir, you really must tell me-----’

  ‘There’s been a nasty accident,’ Kerr explained, with a typically sudden switch to gentleness. ‘It’s best you don’t go in there, Mr.—?’

  ‘Oakwood, sir. But...’

  ‘Because,’ Kerr persisted, still gentle, ‘there’s positively nothing you can do. I’d suggest------ah, the police!’

  Kerr had never in his life before taken any official part in a murder investigation. But the two detectives were obviously looking to him for a lead, and he gave instructions quickly and precisely.

  ‘Telephone for the usual men,’ he directed, ‘and the local Inspector, if you can get him. If I were you, I’d keep these fellows up here. I’ll go round with the butler and check that the women are all present.’

  The taller of the two detectives nodded respectfully, and Kerr went downstairs with the trembling Oakwood. His first step was to ask for whisky and glasses. Oakwood clutched thankfully at his tot, and Kerr was feeling ready for his own. It was a grim business, and a lot had happened in a day.

  The police reinforcements arrived in twenty minutes and included an Inspector by the name of Moor, whom Kerr liked on sight.

  Oakwood had meantime rounded up all the female staff as well, but the Inspecto
r’s enquiries drew a frustrating blank.

  None of the servants had admitted a stranger—or indeed, anyone at all—to the house that day. None of them had seen or heard anyone with Jeremy Potter. And as Kerr quickly discovered, there was no possible access to the study via the window.

  Jeremy Potter was officially identified by Oakwood and by his secretary, Mrs. Lilian Trentham, who had worked for Potter for two years. A stiff brandy had steadied her considerably and apart from an understandable pallor, she seemed as self-possessed, an hour after the crime had been discovered, as she had been when he first saw her.

  The Inspector from Preston had arrived by now, bringing with him a surgeon, a photographer and a finger-print man. Kerr watched all the formalities with considerable interest. The thoroughness of it all surprised and impressed him—although he did not disabuse the locals, who clearly assumed him to be an expert from the Yard.

  He telephoned Craigie, who promised to try to get Miller to go to Preston in person, if at all possible.

  ‘Meantime,’ he advised, ‘just do what you can. I’ve called Davidson and Trale back from Pockham—they can come up, if you like.’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ said Kerr. ‘But I don’t think Arran had better come, do you?’

  ‘No.’ Craigie sounded grim. ‘I’ll keep him busy elsewhere.’

  Kerr rang off with a feeling of real satisfaction. Craigie’s confidence in his judgement and capabilities bolstered his own quite considerably—and intensified his desire to justify such faith in him.

  The first thing, he told himself, was a talk with Mrs. Trentham. He asked Inspector Moor for a room in which he could interview her, and chose the small lounge where he had waited before the discovery of the tragedy.

  The door closed behind the woman and she stared at him, still with a reflection, of that horror in her eyes. Kerr hated the job, but he dared take no risks and lose no time.