He Dies and Makes no Sign: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  There was still no sign of Civita. The swing-doors opened again, letting in a chill blast of air, this time to admit another larger party, even more clamorous than the first.

  It was headed by a tall, almost incredibly slender woman, whose hair, even apart from the vivid, shimmering green dress in which she was literally sheathed, would have made her conspicuous in any gathering. It was of that rare shade, real auburn, and it crowned her curious, arresting face like a gorgeous halo.

  Even Arkwright, whose imagination was not easily stirred, was reminded of a mænad leading her Bacchanalian rout, so untrammelled and exuberant were her gestures, so clamorous her high, incessant voice, screaming witticisms over her shoulder to her companions as she swept them through the lounge and into the restaurant.

  “Well, I’m blowed!” murmured Arkwright’s companion, almost reverently.

  Arkwright’s smile was grim.

  “That’s one of the people we’ve been advised to deal tenderly with,” he said. “Lady Malmsey, the Duchess of Steynes’s cousin. According to Doctor Constantine, there’s precious little love lost between them, but it’s kid gloves for us, all the same.”

  From where he sat he could see through the doors into the restaurant, and he watched the buoyant progress of Lady Malmsey and her train with an amusement that turned to disgust as he saw her pause opposite the bank of flowers that encircled the orchestra, clutch the sleeve of the negro singer, pulling his head down to hers until she could whisper in his ear.

  Apparently what she said was worth hearing, for the man straightened himself with a gleam of white teeth and then doubled up with laughter. She passed on to her table, dropping a word here and there to friends as she went.

  Wace, Arkwright’s companion, had been on duty at one of the Labour Exchanges that morning. There had been trouble with some of the men waiting for their dole, and for a few minutes it had looked as if the police were going to get the worst of it. Wace, remembering the white-faced, half-starved wretch he had pulled from under the trampling feet of his own comrades, found it in his heart to agree with at least some of the incoherent denunciations that had fallen from his lips as he dragged him to safety.

  “There’s enough money wasted here in one night to keep an out-of-work family for a month,” he said gruffly.

  “And most of it goes into Civita’s pockets,” was Arkwright’s comment. “I’d like to know what this place is worth to him, apart from that jolly little sideline of his. Enough to have kept him on the level you’d have thought.”

  As he spoke one of the diners appeared in the doorway. He hovered for a moment there, then disappeared, but neither of the watching men had missed the almost imperceptible jerk of his head that signalled the approach of Civita.

  Arkwright swung round in his chair, so that his back was towards the restaurant; his companion, who was engaged in lighting a cigarette, watched the door through the cloud of smoke that obscured his face.

  “Coming down the centre now,” he murmured. “Reached the door. Damn it, he’s turning right! It’ll be the flat after all. I’d better give the office to the chaps outside. No, he’s stopped to speak to someone.”

  He dropped his matchbox on the floor and bent down, fumbling for it.

  “He’s turned left up the stairs. There’s Ferrars.”

  He straightened himself and watched the other detective make his leisurely way up the stairs.

  “Fancies himself in those clothes, Ferrars does,” he remarked with a chuckle. “He was quite short with me when I told him I’d taken him for one of the waiters. He’s got his hat in the cloakroom upstairs. If Civita’s gone to his office, he’ll let us know.”

  The two men summoned the waiter and paid for their drinks. Then they rose and made their way quietly up to the next floor. Ferrars, who was leaning on the counter chatting to the cloakroom attendant, joined them.

  “All set,” he said, as together they approached a door on their right.

  Arkwright turned the handle softly, opened the door and went in, followed by Wace. Ferrars took up his position, leaning negligently against the wall outside.

  Civita, who was sitting writing at his desk, with his back to them, turned at the click of the latch.

  For the space of a second he was transformed. Rage, brutal and unrestrained, banished the secrecy from his eyes and twisted the corners of his thin lips. Then, as if a hand had passed over his face, it slid back into its accustomed form, and the old Civita was before them, calm, authoritative and impassive.

  “You wished to see me, Inspector?” he enquired in his full, rather unctuous voice.

  But Arkwright was already by his side, a hand on his shoulder, uttering the usual formula of arrest.

  As his lips formed Meger’s name he heard the soft hiss of escaping breath, saw the thick white lids drop for a moment over the inscrutable eyes, and knew that he had indeed taken Civita unawares. He braced himself for action, but the muscles under his hand merely slackened and Civita, that one tense moment over, sank back in his chair and looked up at him, a faint, ironical smile curling his lips.

  “Isn’t this a little fantastic?” he said. “I was not even in the same room with the unfortunate man when he died.”

  Arkwright’s right hand slipped down to the cut of Civita’s dinner-jacket. Wace, he knew, had a working acquaintance with ju-jitsu, but he was taking no risks.

  “I’ve warned you,” he said, “but, if you care to make a statement, I’m ready to hear it in the proper place. Meanwhile, I must ask you to come with me.”

  His fingers closed more tightly on the cuff.

  Civita stood up. The two men, facing each other, were well matched. If Civita had increased in bulk during the years of his prosperity, he had gained in weight, and at close quarters might prove a tough proposition for Arkwright for all his fourteen stone of sheer bone and muscle.

  But Civita, apparently, was too sure of his position to jeopardize it by resisting the police.

  “Certainly I will come with you,” he said with a sardonic lift of his eyebrows. “But I think you will have some difficulty in explaining this. Just to satisfy my curiosity, perhaps to you will tell me how I am supposed to have brought about the death of a man who was not even on the same floor as myself?”

  And Arkwright, herding his man inexorably towards the door, made the mistake of his life. If he had kept silent then, the evening might have ended very differently.

  “We have proof that Meger was dead before he fell from the window,” he said briefly.

  Once more Civita’s breath came, this time in a gasp of utter consternation. He stopped dead, bringing the two men to a halt with him, and the face he turned to Arkwright had changed in that second past all belief. It looked dead in its grey pallor, as if a light had been clicked off behind the lifeless eyes.

  When he spoke his voice sounded dry and cracked.

  “That is—very interesting,” he said.

  His free hand went to the pocket of his dinner-jacket, and, as it did so, Wace’s fingers closed round the wrist.

  Civita’s lips jerked into a travesty of a smile.

  “It is only a handkerchief. You can take it out, if you insist.”

  Wace ran his fingers over the outside of the pocket and released his grip, his watchful eyes on the hand that disappeared, to come out with a neatly folded square of clean linen.

  Civita shook it out and passed it first over his forehead, then over his lips. Then he straightened himself.

  “I am ready,” he said.

  This time there was nothing strained about his smile, it had even a hint of triumph behind it.

  The little procession moved on towards the door, and had almost reached it when Civita reeled suddenly and pitched sideways with a force that almost sent Arkwright to the ground.

  Instinctively he tightened his grip, only to feel the man’s body heave and arch backwards in a convulsion that loosened his hold. He saw Wace’s futile grab as an even more violent contortion foll
owed, and Civita, with a scream that was the more horrible for being strangled, crashed heavily to the ground.

  As they bent over him he rolled over on his chest, raised himself on his hands until his face, a grinning, tortured mask, was lifted to Arkwright’s.

  “I will go—in my own way,” he gasped, through the spasms that shook him.

  “The doctor, on the ’phone, quick!” jerked out Arkwright, already on his knees beside the agonized body, but he knew as he spoke that he was too late.

  Wace was at the desk, the receiver to his ear, dialling rapidly.

  Civita’s back arched until only his feet and hands were on the floor. It looked as though these were the last supreme convulsion, and Arkwright cursed himself for having allowed the thing to happen.

  He knew no more till he found himself writhing and gasping on the ground, floored by what felt like the kick of a horse in his solar plexus.

  In the midst of his agony he heard the sound of the opening door, followed by a terrific crash, as Ferrars landed inside the room on his head, blocking the doorway.

  He caught a glimpse of flying heels within an inch of his face, as Wace, with a running jump, shot over him, only to land just short of Ferrars, trip over him and come hurtling to the ground.

  When he did get to his feet and stand huddled and retching, Civita had vanished, and, with him, Wace.

  Ferrars was on his knees, his face a ludicrous mixture of fury and dismayed astonishment. From his temple where he had hit the door-knob in passing, a thread of blood was trickling.

  From beyond the door came the sound of a revolver-shot. “Hell!” groaned Arkwright, as he made for the landing, with Ferrars lurching behind him.

  He reached the top of the stairs, swerved, and ducked just in time as a bullet whistled past his cheek, took the first four steps in one, ducked again as Civita fired, then leaped once more, vaulted the stair-rail, and dropped on to the thick carpet below.

  And all the time he was conscious of two things: Civita’s massive figure, etched in black and white against a throng of blanched, staring faces, and the tumultuous sound of Ferrars’s descent as he tripped and pitched on his face down the stairs behind him.

  He charged round the foot of the stairs into the lounge. The white faces receded, revealing a black mass on the ground that he knew to be Wace, and, bending over it, a figure incongruously dressed in a hat and overcoat.

  Of Civita there was no sign.

  He brought himself to a slithering stop, dropped on one knee beside Wace, and found himself staring into the face of Constantine.

  “Badly hit?” he demanded.

  “Thank God!” was Constantine’s answer. “I thought it was you.”

  The face he raised to Arkwright’s was white and strained.

  A voice, husky but undaunted, came from the ground.

  “Got me in the shoulder, sir,” it said. “I’m all right. You carry on.”

  Arkwright cast a look at Constantine, received a reassuring nod and leaped to his feet.

  He looked round him. Civita was gone. Wace was gone, and there was not one gleam of helpful intelligence to be found in any of the staring faces that hemmed him in on all sides.

  He felt a pull at his sleeve and turned to find the cloakroom attendant at his elbow.

  “Through the restaurant,” he breathed, “with your man after him.”

  Before the last word had left his lips Arkwright was off the mark. He raced through the restaurant, his eye taking in two service doors on his right, another, leading to places unknown, on his left. He halted and looked round him.

  The restaurant was deserted save for a few people scattered here and there among the tables.

  He realized that they were all staring at the Palm Court at the end of the room.

  “Which way did they go?” he demanded.

  A voice answered him.

  “The Palm Court,” it said, and he started again.

  He reached the short flight of stairs leading to the Palm Court and was half way up them when Ferrars cannoned into his arms.

  “He’s slipped me, sir!” he panted. “I saw him turn right at the top, but that fall had knocked the wind out of me and I got here too late. He’s taken cover somewhere. Must have. There’s no way out.”

  Arkwright, looking down, saw that he was holding a revolver in his hand.

  “That’s his,” Ferrars informed him with a grin. “He chucked it at me and nearly got me on the head too.”

  Arkwright ran up the steps. The Palm Court was apparently deserted. In front of him rose the blank wall that gave on to the gardens of Steynes House. Tall palms masked it, and in front of them clustered a host of little tables with their attendant chairs.

  Behind the banks of flowers a plain, wooded dado skirted the two ends of the Court. Above it, and across the whole of the restaurant side, was glass. Except for the opening at the top of the steps on which he stood, there was not a door anywhere.

  “Keep the opening here,” snapped Arkwright, “and stop him if he tries to bolt. And for God’s sake don’t use that thing! He’s behind those palms somewhere.”

  But Civita was not behind the palms, and, beyond a tipsy-looking chair half on its side and a matchstand on the floor, there was no sign of his passage.

  Arkwright stood in the middle of the Court scratching his long chin, while Ferrars babbled meaninglessly of miracles.

  It was at this moment that Constantine arrived on the scene, escorted by a straggling procession of the Trastevere’s best customers.

  “No need to worry about Wace,” he announced. “There was a doctor present, fortunately, and he’s in his hands. It’s nothing but a flesh wound. What’s wrong?”

  Arkwright indicated the empty Palm Court.

  “He’s gone! Vanished! And there isn’t a door in the damned place! I’ve muffed this job all right,” he said bitterly, “and I shall hear of it!”

  Constantine swung round and plunged into the little crowd behind him. Arkwright realized that he was calling to him to follow, and leaped in pursuit.

  “Waste of time to try to break through it,” Constantine was saying as he reached his side. “We shall have to go round. Get hold of as many of your men as you can.”

  “Where to?” shouted Arkwright.

  “Steynes House. He’s gone to earth in the garden. There is a door there, but you wouldn’t see it. Behind the big palm, matches the panelling. There’s a keyhole, but if you weren’t looking for it . . .”

  Arkwright suddenly remembered.

  “And the Duchess has got the key. Of course he kept one, I ought to have thought of it,” he groaned. “Let me get on ahead, sir.”

  He charged through the crowd in the lounge, Ferrars at his heels, through the swing doors, past the taxi into which a pallid Wace was being helped by the doctor, wasted a precious three minutes in giving the word to his men outside, then pelted, this time in the wake of Ferrars, down the side street that led to Steynes House.

  Once there he jabbed a finger on the bell and kept it there. After what seemed an eternity the double doors were flung wide. The butler stood in the opening, and behind him, tall, lean, and mildly surprised, the Duke.

  Arkwright was by his side before the butler could intervene.

  “Beg your pardon, your Grace,” he panted, “but this is urgent. I must ask you to let us search your garden.”

  The Duke peered at him.

  “Inspector Arkwright, isn’t it?” he enquired. “The garden is at your disposal, but you’ll have your work cut out for you, I’m afraid. Portland, show the inspector the way.”

  “Is there only the one door, your Grace?” demanded Arkwright.

  “That’s all. It’s at the end of a passage leading from this hall. What are you looking for? A burglar?”

  “Bigger fish than that, I’m afraid,” said Arkwright. “Civita, the proprietor of the Trastevere.”

  The Duke’s good-humoured face hardened.

  “Then you’re going the w
rong way,” he said shortly. “He left this house by the front door at my request a minute or two ago.”

  Ferrars, standing in the doorway, had the advantage of Arkwright. He was down the steps and had run to meet the police car before the inspector was, over the threshold.

  His first glance told Arkwright he was too late. Save for the Duke’s car standing at the bottom of the steps, the little group of plain-clothes men straggling round the corner and the police car which had just swung into it, the street was deserted.

  “I’ve no idea which way he went when he left here,” said the Duke’s voice behind him, “but I’ve no doubt he picked up a taxi. There’s a rank just round the corner.”

  Arkwright watched the police car turn and tear down the road, saw a couple of his men doing a very creditable sprint in the opposite direction and tasted the bitterness of defeat.

  He turned to the Duke.

  “If I might use your telephone?” he said wearily.

  The Duke led him into the library. While he was ringing up the Yard, Constantine arrived. Out of tail of his eye he could see him deep in conversation with the Duke.

  “I must get back,” he said when he had finished.

  “We’re only wasting time here. I suppose Civita got into the house from the garden.”

  The two men laughed.

  “Tell him,” besought Constantine.

  “I’m sorry to appear heartless,” said the Duke, his lips twitching, “but, not content with being made a fool of, I’m afraid I made a pretty complete fool of myself. The fellow’s nerve is amazing! I came out of this room and found him standing in the hall. There was nothing in his appearance to arouse my suspicion. He seemed perfectly cool and collected. To say that I was surprised and annoyed to find him there is putting it mildly, and I was flabbergasted when he told me that he was fresh from an interview with my wife. He admitted frankly that she had written to him concerning his lease of the Trastevere, pointing out to him that, owing to the use to which the restaurant had been put, she must ask him to terminate his agreement with us. He declared that he had come in the hope of persuading her to change her mind, but that he had seen her and been unsuccessful. He accepted her decision and was willing to take any course that we considered suitable.”