by John Creasey
“Are you a friend of the young lady, sir?” the sergeant asked Mannering, when the Ashtons had gone.
“A business acquaintance,” Mannering said. The pale blue eyes appeared to be studying him speculatively; suddenly recognition dawned, and the man’s face lit up; it made him seem ten years younger.
“You’re Mr. John Mannering!”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“Well, I’m—” he began; then appeared to realise that he wasn’t being correct enough, and stiffened. “I’ll be glad if you will refrain from asking the young lady questions,” he said. “The Divisional Chief Inspector is on his way.”
“Who is he?” inquired Mannering.
“Mr. Ingleby, sir.”
Mannering thought: Well, I have some of the luck.
Ingleby had been at the Yard until a few years ago, and transferred to the Division at his own request on compassionate grounds – he had an ailing wife who could not move out of her home very much by herself. Ingleby would be a good man to work with. As the thought entered his head, Mannering realised wryly that he was taking it for granted that he would become deeply involved. He was not sure that he relished the idea, and was positive that his wife wouldn’t. But there were too many unanswered questions – the mystery of fake jewels which should have been real but were false; the mystery of Rett Laker; the mystery of this cold-blooded killing. There were other puzzles, too: was this clear-eyed, apparently pleasant young man really a stranger caught up in a thick web of crime? Or had he been watching out for Rebecca, and deliberately scraped an acquaintance?
He heard another car pulling up outside.
“Rebecca,” he said quietly, “my advice remains exactly the same – tell the police everything you know.” He saw the sergeant nod ponderously, as he went into the passage. A uniformed constable stood outside the door of the room where the old man lay dead; he stiffened to attention when Mannering appeared. Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a man spoke briskly: “Nothing’s been touched, and no one’s left the premises, have they?” That was the incisive voice of Claude Ingleby.
“No, sir,” an unseen man assured him.
“Good,” Ingleby said, and came in. He caught sight of Mannering, and stopped short. Mannering smiled at him, confident of a friendly if surprised greeting. He was not prepared for the way Ingleby began to frown, the way the man stared at him as if at a stranger; or at least as if at someone whom he did not particularly like.
Chapter Five
Sharp Policeman
“What are you doing here?” demanded Ingleby.
“That’s a long story,” Mannering said, still smiling.
“It had better be a good one,” Ingleby said acidly. “Wait, please.” He saw the uniformed sergeant come out of the big room, and without a pause, he asked: “Is there a room where Mr. Mannering and the youth McKay can wait?”
“There’s the kitchen, sir, or the young lady’s bedroom,” the sergeant replied. He glanced at Mannering as if he also was puzzled by the reception.
Inside the big room, McKay murmured something to Rebecca which Mannering could not catch.
“We’ll use the kitchen,” Ingleby said. “Mr. Mannering, will you please wait?”
“For how long?” inquired Mannering, no longer smiling.
“For as long as it takes me to complete the initial stages of my inquiry.”
Mannering stared at the detective, sensing deep antagonism, wishing that he had even an inkling of the reason for it. Seconds seemed to pass very quickly. It was some time since he had come into conflict with a hostile policeman, but it had happened often enough in the past, and in the past his reaction had always been the same: to be as difficult with the police as they were with him.
“Sorry,” he said brusquely. “I haven’t time.”
“Then you must make time.”
Mannering said: “Chief Inspector, I shall be at my flat in Green Street, Chelsea, from nine o’clock onward, and will be glad to answer any questions if you care to come there.” He waited long enough to challenge Ingleby’s angry gaze, then pushed past the man towards the door. Two policemen were between him and the door, and would try to stop him at a word or a nod from Ingleby. This was a moment of decision, in its way – a testing time. If Ingleby’s manner was dictated from a position of strength, he would exert himself to keep his witness here.
Ingleby called: “Mannering!”
Mannering turned to look at him.
“Yes?”
“You ought to know better than to act in defiance of the police.”
“Yes, oughtn’t I?” said Mannering. “This is a night when a lot of people ought to know better. There’s one thing you might remember, Chief Inspector – a man is lying dead in there, and his daughter needs time and help to recover from the shock.” He nodded curtly, turned away, and stepped past the dead man’s room, then on to the landing outside; neither of the policemen attempted to stop him, so Ingleby had given no silent instruction. There was a chance that men on duty in the street would try to stop him, but none of them did.
Ashton was coming out of his front door, carrying an empty coal bucket. Mannering nodded, and walked towards his car, reflecting that Ingleby might have recognised it as his and then decided that it was unlikely; the Bristol was comparatively new. He took the wheel, his mind filled with an uneasy confusion of thoughts. He would have liked to help the girl more; in a queer way, he felt that he was letting her down. But he would not have been much help to her cooped up in the kitchen. There were so many things to think about, but the one which nagged at him most was Ingleby’s manner. As he turned towards the West End, he said aloud: “He wouldn’t put on that act without a reason.”
What reason could there be?
Mannering reached Green Street, Chelsea, which opened on to the Embankment at the south end, and drove along slowly, wondering whether the police had carried their hostility to the stage of stationing men in the street to watch him. He saw none. He pulled up outside the house where he had his flat, knowing that he would probably have to go out again this evening. As he went upstairs in the small, recently installed lift, he wished that Lorna were in; he could talk about this to her, instead of eating a solitary meal. At least he was hungry; nothing had put him off his food, and he had had a light lunch.
He let himself in with his key, and there was a faint aroma of roasting chicken; left on her own Ethel the cook-cum-maid always fell back on chicken, and she cooked it perfectly. Mannering went to the kitchen, put his head round the door, saw her bending over the oven door, and said: “Mind it doesn’t bite you.” He smiled as she started, and twisted her head round. “How long have I got?” he inquired.
“Well, sir, you’re late already. I can’t help it if it’s a bit overdone, I can’t really.”
“No bath, then,” said Mannering. “Ten minutes?”
“You won’t be any longer, sir, will you?” Ethel was a tall, thin, worried-looking girl, flustered and too hot.
“Not a minute longer,” Mannering assured her. He went into his bedroom, washed at the hand basin, and shrugged himself into a light-weight jacket, looser fitting than the one he had worn during the day. He went into the dining-room, poured himself a whisky and soda, and was sipping it when Ethel came in. Twenty minutes later, he finished an apple fool cooked as with an angel’s hand, feeling as replete as one could be.
He was only vaguely aware that he ought to be much more worried – if not about Ingleby’s manner, then about Rebecca Blest. He went into his small study, sat down by the window, resisted the temptation to switch on television, and began to go over the events of the afternoon one by one. Soon afterwards he began to write down in its proper sequence everything that had happened.
He wished Tom would ring up – Tom could give him more information about the encounter between Rebecca and the motorcyclist.
The telephone bell rang.
He had been half waiting for that since he had come in, and hitched his chair nearer s
o that he could lift the receiver without getting up. It was an even bet between the police, young McKay and the newspapers, he decided; and on the whole the thought of McKay was the most likely.
A man asked: “Is Mr. Mannering there?”
“Yes, speaking,” Mannering answered, sure that the voice was unfamiliar.
“Very glad to have the opportunity of speaking to you, Mr. Mannering,” the caller said; there was a slightly obsequious note in his voice, giving the impression that he was a man whom it would be easy to dislike on sight. “I’ve got a little business proposition I would like to put to you, but it’s very confidential. Are you free this evening?”
“I could be,” Mannering said cautiously.
“Always free if you can make a pound or so, eh?” There was a cackle of a laugh at the end of the ‘eh’, and Mannering now wondered if the man was nervous. “Well, you’ll make plenty out of this, there’s no doubt about that. Could you meet me at the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park in an hour’s time, say?”
“No, I could not.”
“Now, Mr. Mannering—”
“I said no and I meant no,” Mannering insisted, and tried to prevent himself from speaking too brusquely. “I could see you here, if you’re sure that it’s worthwhile.”
“Oh, it’s worthwhile,” the man assured him, and that cackle of laughter came again. “But I don’t want to come to your place.”
“That’s too bad,” Mannering said. “I have to stay at home. Good night.”
The man cried: “Mannering! Don’t ring off.”
Mannering said: “I can’t think why I shouldn’t. You haven’t told me who you are, why you got in touch with me, and what it’s all about.”
There was a pause, which became so prolonged that Mannering wondered if the man had silently rung off, and gone away. Then he heard the distant sound of a car engine, and knew that the line was still open. He was intrigued, and still waited; but it would not be long before he was annoyed. There was enough on his mind without this. At the back of his mind, indeed, there was the possibility that this call had something to do with what had happened earlier in the day – it was almost too much to believe that there would be two separate new mysteries in the space of a few hours.
“Are you there?” he asked at last.
“Listen to me, Mr. Mannering,” the man urged. “This is big money. It’s really big. You’re the best man in the country to handle it, because you’ve got just the right outlet at Quinns. I’ll tell you one thing, for a start – if you want to put your hands on the genuine jewellery that Rebecca Blest thought she had this afternoon, I can put you on to it. That and a lot more. But you’ve got to take a chance. You can’t make a fortune without some risk.”
Mannering said: “I’m not coming out tonight, but I’ll be at home all the evening.”
“Mannering! I tell you—”
Mannering said: “Good night,” and rang off.
The moment he had cut the line he had misgivings, but he told himself that the man would try again if he were really serious; there was no reason at all to believe that he wasn’t. The hunch that this had something to do with the girl’s visit seemed now to have had a kind of inevitability.
He moved from the telephone, lit a cigarette, and tried to interest himself in The Times, but every news item and every article palled. He wondered whether he was more edgy than the circumstances warranted, whether he wasn’t making mistakes. This was the third time within the course of a few hours when he had cut an interview or a conversation short – first Chittering, then Ingleby, now this unknown man. It was one thing to persuade himself that the man would not give up after one call, but supposing he did?
The telephone bell rang again.
“Ah,” said Mannering, with satisfaction, and began to wonder what kind of a rendezvous he could make with the cackler. For the moment he did not want the police to know about it; if the police were near the meeting place, any criminal would realise it, and would also realise that he was on the spot. Chittering might be glad to help – or young Tom, or one of the other younger members of the staff. He lifted the telephone. “John Mannering here.”
“Hold on, please,” a man said. “Chief Inspector Ingleby wants you.”
“Oh,” said Mannering, acutely disappointed. He sat back in his chair, waiting, beginning to frown as the telephone was silent for so long. Then Ingleby came on briskly.
“Mr. Mannering?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry to keep you. Will you be in if I come to see you right away?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks,” said Ingleby. “Say in half an hour.”
He rang off without another word. Mannering put his receiver down, looked up at the ceiling, and smiled uneasily; he was really being hoist with his own petard, and wasn’t sure that he could blame the policeman. Another question came into his mind: why had Ingleby called from the Division? Usually the Yard dealt with him, Mannering, whenever there was need, and he could not recall a visit from a Divisional officer for a long time. Hadn’t Ingleby consulted the Yard? The question itself was almost superfluous; Mannering could be sure that no London C.I.D. man could take this kind of step without having the Yard’s approval. It added still more to the puzzle.
He called the Globe, but Chittering was out.
He called young Tom Wainwright, whose mother answered; Tom was out with a girlfriend.
He put a call to Larraby’s small flat, a one-room and bathroom apartment not far from Quinns; Larraby liked living in bachelor freedom, and also liked being within easy walking distance of his work. The telephone rang on and on, until Mannering remembered that a few days ago his manager had told him that he was going to Covent Garden tonight, for some special charity opera. Mannering rang off, frustrated. A quarter of an hour had already passed since Ingleby had telephoned, so there wasn’t long for the mystery man to call back, and it was beginning to look as if he had made a mistake about that. Well, he could blame no one but himself.
He waited for another ten minutes, smoking more vigorously than he usually did, restless, edgy. Ethel looked in. Was it all right if she went out for an hour? She had promised to go and see a friend. Mannering heard the front door close on her. There could be no more than five minutes before Ingleby was due. This seemed a night when everyone was determined to desert him. He laughed at the thought, and the front door bell broke across his laughter.
“Well, he’s prompt,” he said aloud, and stubbed out a cigarette and went into the hall. If it were possible to make peace, he intended to make it; there was no point in being on bad terms with the police, and it would be much better to confide in them.
He opened the front door.
A man, a stranger, stood leaning against the wall at one side. He had his right hand up against his forehead, the fingers spread-eagled, and through the fingers Mannering could see the crimson of blood on fair hair. There was a splash of crimson on the man’s flabby cheeks, too. His eyes looked glassy. He tried to form words but could hardly make a sound; Mannering thought that he was trying to say; “Mannering.”
Mannering said quickly:
“All right, I’ll look after you,” and kicked the door wider open, then stepped to the side of the injured man. It was impossible to judge how badly he was hurt, but could he have got this far if the injury were really serious? He kept his hand at his head as Mannering put an arm round his waist and helped him into and across the flat, to the bathroom. He pushed that door open, guided the man to a stool, and helped him to sit down. He could hear the other’s whistling breath; the man was almost a dead weight, he had been able only to shuffle along. Mannering propped him up against the wall, and said: “I’ll telephone for a doctor. I won’t be a jiff.” He hurried out of the bathroom with a picture of Rebecca Blest’s father’s head in his mind’s eye; Blest had been killed by just such a blow as this.
He was dialling his own doctor’s number when the front door bell rang. This time, it was Ingleby.
Chapter Six
Cause For Suspicion
Half an hour later, Mannering’s doctor and the local police-surgeon left the flat in the wake of the ambulance men, who had just carried the injured man out of the hall. By the time the first doctor had arrived the man had been unconscious; and if medical opinion were vindicated, he was not likely to live through the night. Mannering could almost hear the doctor saying, as if to himself: “Can’t understand how he got up here – just can’t understand it.”
Ingleby had said very little, but had called the local police-surgeon, talked to the Yard and to the Division, and been briskly efficient. The hostility still existed, Mannering knew, although it was subdued. Ingleby had come by himself, which could be construed as a friendly gesture, but other C.I.D. men had since arrived. The familiar process of searching for clues, checking the polished boards and the rugs on them for blood stains, checking the landing outside for the same things, had gone on while the doctors bad been examining the injured man.
Now Ingleby was downstairs with the C.I.D. man, and for a few minutes Mannering was alone in the flat. It was nearly ten o’clock. He wondered what time Lorna would be home, and toyed with the idea of telephoning and warning her what to expect; but before he went to the telephone, Ingleby came in through the partly open door.
“Has he gone?” Mannering asked.
“Just been driven off,” said Ingleby. “Anxious about him?”
“I’d like to think he would live to talk.”
Ingleby asked: “Would you?”
The question was like the drip of iced water; cold and stinging. An ominous significance was hidden there. Mannering studied Ingleby as he stood with his back to the open door, stern-faced and hard-eyed; his hostility was as real as ever. Mannering said: “I don’t know what’s on your mind, but I can’t say I like the way it makes you behave. Come into the study, and have a drink.”
In the study, Ingleby said: “I won’t drink, thank you.” He sat rather stiffly in a William and Mary slung chair which had been darkened by years of polishing and use until it was almost black, while Mannering sat in a chair covered with wine-red mohair.
