Pattern of Murder

by John Russell Fearn

  “Hell!” Terry muttered. “I’ve as much chance of getting two hundred in a hurry as flying to the moon!”

  Various lines of action weaved through his mind. He thought first of Mark Turner. He was a friendly soul and he might advance £200, but he would want to know for why. He would not approve of his chief projectionist gambling to the extent of £200 a time. It would be tantamount to asking for the sack. Besides, Turner was away this week on a trade-show routine. No chance of contacting him. Terry himself was deputy-manager for the time being.

  Terry’s speculations switched to Dick Whiteley, the second-hand dealer in a sub-standard movie equipment with whom he did a good share of business. That gaunt-faced, tight-lipped gentleman would not be likely to advance a penny, unless somehow the heat could be turned on him.

  Moneylenders?

  “No!” Terry said flatly. “Only one thing for it. Have to make a clean breast of it to Naylor, and see what he says.”

  His mind made up he left the racecourse as quickly as possible and a bus took him into the town—the small but thriving town of Bartonwick. Half a mile down the main street Terry alighted and hurried off down a side road. Here was a huddle of houses and three shops. Two of the shops dealt in antiques and the third in needlework. At the far end of the cul-de-sac was a Dickensian-looking house transformed into a far more commercial purpose. A brass plate said:

  George Naylor—Turf Accountant.

  Terry entered the front door of the house-cum-office, went through the short hall, and into the back room. George Naylor was sprawled in the swivel chair at his littered desk. He was big, and fat, and sweaty black hair lay plastered on his round head to conceal the bald spots. He peered up at Terry through fleshy bags of eyes.

  “Hello, Terry. That’s what I like to see—a prompt payer. Looks as if you took a caning with ‘Pirate’s Cutlass,’ too. Short head! Too bad!”

  “Yes, a short head,” Terry agreed. “Which means I owe you two hundred.”

  “According to my reckoning, yes.”

  Silence. George Naylor lighted a cigarette and blew out the match with an emphatic puff of breath.

  “Matter of fact,” Terry said, “I’ve come to ask a favour.”

  George Naylor did not speak, or move. He lay like a mass of rubber in his swivel chair, waiting.

  “I’ve been robbed,” Terry added. “My wallet was pinched while I was at the racecourse.”

  “Was it now?” George Naylor shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You should be more careful, shouldn’t you? I’m surprised at you, the fly boy!”

  “I’m trying to tell you, George, that I can’t pay up at the moment.”

  Naylor knocked the ash from his cigarette and then leaned flabby forearms on the desk. He peered up at Terry intently.

  “Look, Terry, business is business. I don’t know what crackpot notion prompted you to put two hundred on that nag—and to win too! But when you come here without the two hundred to settle up you’re playing with dynamite. Fact remains, I want the money! I’m not insisting on it right now: two hundred takes a bit of getting, I know. We’ll have to come to some sort of arrangement. Instalments, eh?”

  “Even that’s going to be difficult.”

  “I’m being as fair as I can afford to be. I’ve my own interests to think of. If you can’t stand the loss of two hundred quid you shouldn’t have bet that much, that’s all. That’s commonsense.”

  “I tell you it was a genuine bet! I had the money then. It was stolen from me afterwards.”

  George Naylor heaved out of his chair and drew hard at his cigarette.

  “It’s up to you, Terry. Instalments are the only way out. Let’s say four instalments of fifty pounds each—and I’m being generous at that. Let’s see now—today’s Tuesday. I’ll give you ’til a week next Saturday to get the first instalment. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? Sixteen whole days in which you can turn round.”

  “And suppose I don’t succeed?” Terry asked. “I can plead the Gaming Act, you know, by which all contracts ‘whether by parole or in writing, by way of gaming or wagering, shall be null and void’.”

  “Gaming Act 1845, replaced by a tougher one in 1892.” Naylor gave a grim look. “Don’t try the Smart Alec routine with me, Terry!”

  “You can’t make me pay! That’s the main point!”

  “I can make you smart, though, and by God I will if it becomes necessary. And I don’t think you’d publicly declare anything about being nixed up with the Gaming Act, either. If I don’t get that money I’ll do other things.”

  “Such as?” Terry demanded.

  “Well, for one thing you have a manager who’d cut your throat if he knew you’d been gambling—which is one reason why I don’t think you’ll plead the Gaming Act. I know Turner: he doesn’t even like me as a paying patron because he knows I’m a bookie.... One gentle, well-placed hint would rock the boat for you nicely, Terry, wouldn’t it? It’s so easy to prevent, too. Just get the instalments, and we’ll remain good friends.”

  Terry did not say any more. He turned and left the office, mooching up the cul-de-sac to the main road once more....

  * * * * * * *

  When Terry arrived at the Cosy Cinema at quarter to nine the following morning he was in a black mood. Nor was it lightened any by the greeting of the doorman, busy in the wide foyer with the long, snaking tube of the vacuum cleaner.

  “By heck, Terry, Sid hasn’t ’arf got it in for you! Some time since I’ve seen him so riled.”

  Terry came to a stop and frowned. “Sid has? What the blazes is the matter with him, anyway?”

  “I’m not quite sure, but he’s in a rare tear. Seems to think the time’s come to smear you on the walls!”

  “Oh, he does, does he?” Terry smiled bitterly. “For a second to set about his chief is nearly as bad as striking a superior officer.... Where is he at the moment?”

  The doorman looked about him and then seemed to remember. He snapped his fingers.

  “Last I saw of him he was in the stalls, larking about with the girls. Not that I blame ’im for that. I like a bit of fun myself sometimes. Helps to cheer up this lousy ’ole we ’ave to work in.”

  Larking with the girls was not a pastime of which Terry approved—not from any personal distaste but because his position as chief projectionist made it essential for him to keep his own particular staff in order, or explain to the manager. He murmured something inaudible to the doorman and then finished his walk across the wide foyer and pushed aside the glass doors to enter the cinema’s lower floor. It was wide and barren and smelled of stale tobacco smoke. There was only one naked 750-watt lamp high in the ceiling, casting its pallid light on chair backs and the scarf-wrapped heads of the usherettes as they moved about and dusted.

  Terry paused by the back row, gazing over the expanse. His eye caught Vera Holdsworth’s as she rose from cleaning a seat. She gave him an icy stare.

  “Where’s Sid?” Terry demanded suddenly.

  Low down on the right hand side of the proscenium a figure appeared in a doorway. He had a mop and empty bucket in his hands. Not that there was anything unusual about this. All the cleaning tackle was kept in the storeroom back stage, where once an orchestra pit had been.

  “I’m coming,” Sid Elbridge called, in a surly voice. “Give me a chance, can’t you?”

  He moved up the right-hand gangway deliberately. He was big, ungainly, with sandy hair and turned-up nose. His main virtue was that he was a clever electrician and could be relied on to run a show by himself in a crisis. The only thing he did not like was having to work in the evenings. He was twenty-five, five years younger than Terry.

  “What’s all this rot about wanting to smear the wall with me?” Terry snapped, as Sid came up. “Harry’s full of it. I’ve just been talking to him.”

  “And Harry’s right.” With a clatter Sid tossed down the bucket and flung the mop into it. “I want a word with you, Terry—and right here is as good a place as any.”
<
br />   Terry glanced about him. Heads had popped up behind seat backs in various directions, each head with a coloured duster or scarf wound round it.

  “This is going to be good,” commented Kathleen Gatty, who liked nothing better than a quarrel, providing she was not mixed up in it.

  “What’s the matter, Sid?” called Helen Prescott. “What are you getting so tough about?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Terry said, and to Sid he added, “If you’ve something on your mind let’s go up to the box and talk it over—”

  “To blazes with the box! We’ll do it right here, Terry. I want to know what you mean by slapping Vera across the face as you did.”

  Terry did not answer immediately. He could smell danger. Sid Elbridge was a slow mover as a rule, but when he did get excited he did it properly. Just at this moment he was obviously having a hard struggle to remain calm.

  “I shouldn’t try and deny it, Terry, if I were you.” Vera came up the gangway, tossing a duster from one hand to the other. “You didn’t think I was going to take a wallop like that without telling everybody what a rotten beast you are, did you?”

  “How much else did you tell ’em?” Terry demanded.

  “How much would you like me to tell ’em? I’ve simply made it clear that you’re a low down heel—”

  “Vera means a lot to me, Terry,” Sid cut in, curtly. “I want an apology for what you did to her yesterday, and if I don’t get it I’ll beat you up. You know I can do it, too.”

  Terry did know it. Sid was nearly six feet tall and massively built.

  “Do that, and you’ll get yourself fired,” Terry replied, his voice brittle. “Or have you forgotten that I’m the deputy manager while the boss is away? Lay a finger on me and out you’ll go—on your ear! I’ll see to that!”

  “I’ll risk it.” Sid clenched his big fists. “And what’s more, I think it was a dirty rotten trick to go behind my back on your day off and take Vera to the races. What right had you to go out with her? She’s my girl, and I’m the only one she’ll walk out with—when we get the chance.”

  “I didn’t know she was smitten with you until she told me,” Terry responded coldly.

  “You ought to be damned well ashamed of yourself!” Sid went on. “Betting two hundred pounds on a horse and then losing it! Why, most of us here—in fact probably all of us—hasn’t even smelled that much money. I know I haven’t. It makes me sore. Here am I, scrimping and scraping to get enough money to put down a deposit on a house, for Vera and me to live in when we get married, and then you chuck it about all roads!”

  “What I do with my own money is no concern of yours! And I might add that you’ve kept your attachment to Vera mighty dark, haven’t you?”

  “Why not? You don’t think either of us is going to broadcast our private affairs, do you? I wouldn’t be raising this rumpus now except for the way you’ve been carrying on, Terry.”

  Terry’s eyes strayed to Helen Prescott. She was watching intently from side-stalls. Naturally she had heard every word and by this time must be thinking many things. Knowing only one side of the argument it could only look to her as if Vera had been slapped in the face for no good reason.

  “I’m sorry I hit you, Vera,” Terry said at last, but he did not look at her as he spoke. “I said so at the time. I lost my temper.”

  “I’ll say you did!” Vera retorted. “And two hundred quid as well! You ought to be—”

  “I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I? Let it go at that!”

  Terry swung away, his set face reflecting the bitterness of his emotions.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ROBBERY

  Leaving the stalls, Terry went up the broad, white-rubbered staircase where the cleaning women were busy with buckets, rags, and disinfectants. To their greetings he made no response as they glanced significantly at one another. In a moment or two he had reached the half-turn on the staircase. Here was a polished doorway marked Strictly Private. He opened it, went beyond, and closed it.

  He had passed now from the superficial comfort of the cinema into his own little world. Brick walls, defaced with NO SMOKING signs. White, concrete steps rising upwards to twenty feet. Cold air from wide ventilation slats, and a gradually deepening smell of amyl-acetate and half dissipated carbon fumes. At the top of the stone steps he turned sharp left and entered the low-ceilinged winding room. He stood thinking.

  “Morning, Terry,” greeted the youth at the winding bench, looking up from inspecting the splice in the film he had just repaired. “Not looking too pleased with yourself. Anything up?”

  “Get on with your job and stop asking questions.”

  “Okay, okay! You don’t have to get tough about it.”

  Billy Trent grandiloquently called himself ‘the third projectionist’. To the staff and trade he was simply a re-wind boy. Just sixteen, he had untidy fair hair and the kind of blue eyes and delicate complexion that any girl would have been proud to possess.

  Moodily, Terry departed for the projection room overhead, and presently Sid arrived and began to get busy with the mop. Terry glanced at him, then gazed absently through the porthole of Machine No. 1 into the great, pale-lit void of the cinema.... No sense in keeping up the squabble, he told himself. He, Sid, and Billy were compelled to live their working lives on top of one another.

  “I’m sorry, Sid.” Terry turned finally and shrugged. “I’m just that way out this morning. You see, as far as Vera’s concerned, I thought she meant everything she said. I honestly got the shock of my life when I found she’s as good as engaged to you. You might have let me have some hint.”

  Sid relaxed. Normally good-natured, he took instant advantage of the break in the storm clouds.

  “I couldn’t do that, Terry. We’re not officially engaged. I haven’t the cash yet to buy a ring—but we certainly mean a lot to each other. You can’t blame me for demanding an explanation when she said you’d hit her across the face.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Terry admitted. “There’s something I can’t understand, though. What do you see in the girl?”

  “You saw enough in her to go out with her, didn’t you? In fact you’ve been out with her quite a lot of times. She told me so.”

  “Yes, but...,” Terry mused. “Funny thing, but I never really got to know her until yesterday. I’d always thought of her as a pretty decent girl, though on the lookout for number one just the same. Then yesterday I sort of saw her for the first time. What few virtues she has—and they are few—all seemed to vanish. It was quite a surprise to me.”

  “Vera,” Sid said doggedly, “is one of the best! The trouble is that she’s had a poor upbringing, and her home life is nothing to shout about. She’s all right if you understand her—as I do. I’ve made it my business to.”

  Terry was silent for a moment, and then he shrugged.

  “All right, let’s forget all about it. You can be sure I shan’t bother to go out with her again.... I know I’d better hop down to the boss’s office and see what’s doing. I’d almost forgotten for the moment that I’m his deputy.”

  The owner-manager’s office was at the base of the Circle staircase, marked by a shiny door inscribed Private. Terry pulled out the duplicate key that Turner had given him and turned it in the lock. In the office, bright morning sunlight streamed through a window barred on the outside. Burglaries had led the owner-manager to adopt this precaution.

  Terry sat down in the swivel chair and pondered. Two hundred pounds! The fracas with Sid had been as nothing compared to this major worry. Absently Terry’s eyes moved to the massive safe by the window. It was an old safe, combination locked, and perched on a brick foundation. Terry pushed a hand slowly through his unruly hair.

  “Come in,” he called, at a knock on the door.

  Madge Tansley, the head cashier, entered. In one hand she had a steel cash box, and under her arm was a booking plan on a square of boarding. She was tall, dark, and unemotional.

  “I want m
y booking-plan sheet for today,” she said.

  Terry eyed her and then went to the cupboard where the booking plans were kept. He handed her a new one.

  “I’ll put this cash box in the safe whilst I’m here” she added. “Must be about two hundred pounds in it. That last picture did extremely well.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Terry said. “Usually we take a beating these days, thanks to television.... However, I can’t open the safe. I don’t know the combination.”

  “But I do. Mr. Turner gave it to me before he went away.”

  Terry did not answer. The mention of £200 had stirred his mind into action again. He watched as Madge Tansley took a slip of paper from her pocket, and afterwards he watched every detail. Five right, six left, two right, seven left. The lock clicked.

  When Madge looked again Terry was examining a batch of stills for the next feature picture.

  “That’s that,” Madge Tansley said—and departed.

  Terry looked at the inscriptions in the light dust on top of the desk. He had traced them with his finger...5-R, 6-L 2-R, 7-L. He transferred the information to a slip of paper and put it in his pocket, then he wiped the dust with the sleeve of his coat.

  Two hundred pounds! Enough to pay off Naylor in one sweep. He could lay his hands on it right now—but that would never do. Too bald—too blatant, and no chance of getting away with it. Careful thought was needed. He sank down in the swivel chair and lighted a cigarette absently. He had been smoking it for a few moments before he realized it was a Turkish one that Sid had given him. Sid had a curious liking for them.

  Taking it out of his mouth, Terry made a wry face, stubbed the Turkish in the ashtray, then lighted one of his own brand. It occurred to him suddenly that to remain in the office when there was obviously nothing for him to do might look suspicious—so he left, locking the door.

  Harry, the doorman, came in from the stalls as Terry emerged.

  “Can I order some more Coke, Terry, or do I have to wait for the boss’s okay?”