George backed away, his mouth open in an idiotic grimace of terror.
He couldn’t even run away. He stood paralysed, waiting.
Nothing happened.
He fought down the panic that had seized him, conquered it and returned to the door. He rapped again.
There was no one in the bungalow except Crispin: and Crispin was dead.
George put an unsteady hand on the door-latch, lifted it and pushed upon the door. He braced himself and peered into the room. Then breath whistled between his clenched teeth, and blackness dropped like a curtain before his eyes. He clung to the doorpost and waited. Evil-tasting bile rose in his mouth; he wanted to be sick.
Except for the furniture, the room was empty.
George’s heart began slowly to pump blood back to his brain. It was some minutes before he could move again. Then he stepped into the room and stared with unbelieving eyes at the carpet where Crispin had fallen. There was no sign of murder in the room. Fearfully, George looked for the red mess on the wall. That was not there either.
Was he going out of his mind? Had all the fantasies of violence that he had created in the past brought him to this? Were Sydney, Cora, Crispin and all the other nightmare people mere figments of a deranged imagination? Was it possible that the murder had happened only in his mind?
He looked wildly round the room, and then he stiffened.
On the sideboard lay the whip.
There was no question about it. It was there, leather and whalebone, and the little white price-ticket on the handle.
He edged forward and picked it up. He stood for several minutes gazing at it, aware that it was the symbol of his sanity.
Then, in the hush of the lonely room, above the drone of the bees and the rustle of the hollyhocks against the window, he heard voices.
Still grasping the whip, he stepped to the door and listened.
A man was speaking some way off in the garden behind the bungalow.
Moving silently, in blind panic, George slipped out of the house, crossed the path and sank down on his knees under the overhanging hedge. He found a dry ditch that ran along the side of the garden, and cautiously lowered himself into it. He adjusted the leaves of the hedge so that they formed a screen over him.
He found that he had a good view of the bungalow, and he was confident that he could not be seen. He waited, his hand gripping the whip, his heart fluttering against his side.
He heard the sound of feet moving through the long grass. Then round the corner of the bungalow came four people: the Hebrew barman, the two Greeks and the woman with the blonde, untidy hair.
The looked odd and somehow sinister against the background of the peace and fertility of the garden.
The Hebrew wore a double-breasted, navy-blue suit, shiny at the elbows and the knees; on his head was a bowler hat. The woman had on a shapeless cotton dress; it’s pattern of flowers had faded with constant washing. Her thick legs were bare, and blue-black veins crawled up the backs of her calves. Her feet were squeezed into a pair of high-heeled court shoes. The two Greeks were in dark suits and cloth caps. They carried spades on their shoulders, and their boots were heavy with yellow clay.
A cigarette dangled from the blonde woman’s lips. Her fat, loose face was expressionless, but the Hebrew was weeping. He did not make a fuss about his grief. Tears welled out of his eyes and ran down the wrinkles in his leathery skin. He made no attempt to wipe them away.
The woman looked at the bungalow, her eyes bleak. “Was he expecting anyone?” she asked.
The Hebrew lifted his shoulders in despair. “I know nothing,” he said. “He didn’t confide in me. I told him it was dangerous to have a lonely place like this. I told him many times.”
The woman sat down abruptly on the grass. She was only a few yards from where George was hiding. She plucked a long piece of coarse grass and began to chew it.
“Sit down. The sun will do you good.”
The Hebrew and the two Greeks sat down near her. They looked self-conscious, worried. The Hebrew still wept.
“The way you go on!” the woman said impatiently. “I’m his mother. Shouldn’t I be the one to weep?”
The Hebrew took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
“You’re hard, Emily,” he said. “What a burial to give a son!”
The woman, Emily, snapped her thick fingers. “He wouldn’t mind. He didn’t believe in God. Is that what’s worrying you.” She brooded, tearing the blade of grass with her sharp teeth. “What did you expect me to do? Leave him there for the police to find? They would be crawling over us like flies on bad meat in no time. Haven’t they done enough harm?”
When he didn’t say anything, she went on. “Who do you think did it?”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” the Hebrew said, pulling at his long, straggly moustache.
“You don’t fool me,” Emily said. “I know what you’re thinking, don’t I, Max?”
“Do you?”
The two Greeks had lit cigarettes. They were not listening to this conversation. They lolled back on their elbows, their dark faces raised to the sun, their eyes closed.
But Max listened. He sat bolt upright, his long, thin legs crossed like a working tailor, his bowler hat very straight on his pear-shaped head.
“We don’t have to worry about the police,” Emily went on. “He wouldn’t have liked it. We can find out who did it, and we can settle the score, can’t we?”
Max looked across the garden. “There’s the money,” he said. “He should never have brought it here. Seven hundred pounds!”
“Stop worrying about the money,” Emily said sharply. “Is that what you’re crying about?”
“The gun worries me,” Max said, not listening to her. “A razor, yes, but a gun! . . . It’s someone we don’t know.”
“Well, we can find out, can’t we?” Emily persisted. “Does the whip mean anything?”
“It must do. It’s new. Crispin wouldn’t buy a thing like that.”
There was a long pause. A bee droned across the hot garden and lighted oh a hollyhock.
“Who was that girl? The one Crispin thrashed?” Emily said, plucking another blade of grass and chewing it.
“I was thinking about her, too,” Max said. “The whip might tie up with her. Do you mean that?”
“It could do. And the big man. Who was he?”
Max shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen either before. There was something odd about the way that girl behaved. She wasn’t drunk. She was faking.”
“Crispin was a fool to have touched her. She might have complained to the police.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Yes, why?”
There was another long pause while they brooded.
“Maybe they came down here for revenge; found the money and killed Crispin to steal it,” Emily said at last.
“How could they know Crispin had this place? No one knew that he came here.”
“Sydney Brant knew,” Emily said thoughtfully.
“Brant? He hasn’t been around for months. Besides, after Crispin burnt him, he was too scared to come near the place. This is nothing to do with him; but the girl and the big man . . . maybe, I don’t know . . .”
“Well, we can’t waste time. We must settle this business. Whoever did it will have to pay.”
“They’ll pay all right.” Max’s harsh voice floated on the still air, and George shivered. These people, so calculating, so ordinary to look at, plotting revenge in the hot sunshine, had a nightmare quality that made his flesh creep. “We’ll have to find out about the big man. We’ll have to find out where the whip came from. Once we know that, it’ll be easy!”
Emily brooded. “Well, trace it. The price-ticket will help.” She looked across at the Greek, Nick. “Get the whip,” she went on. “I want to examine it.”
With his blood freezing in his heart, George watched the Greek get up and wander into the bungalow. He was away a few
minutes and then he came to the door.
“It is not there,” he called.
“The whip,” Emily said, snapping her fingers impatiently. “Don’t keep me waiting. Bring me the whip.”
“It is not there, I tell you,” Nick said indifferently.
Emily and Max exchanged glances.
“Find it for the fool,” she said.
Max got up and walked stiffly into the bungalow. Nick shrugged. He came back and sat down, a frown of irritation on his flat, ugly face.
“He will not find it,” he said sullenly. “It is gone.”
Emily said nothing, but her fat hands squeezed into fists.
Max called from the window. There was an urgent note in his voice. “Emily!”
The woman got up and stared at the gesticulating figure at the window.
“I told you,” Nick said. “It is gone,” and he lolled back on his elbows and closed his eyes.
fourteen
A week went by. As each day gave way to night, and night gave way to another day, George’s fears receded. He was not, after all, going to be hunted by the police. The murder was to remain a secret shared only by Cora, Sydney and himself, and Emily, Max and the two Greeks. The vast police organization, trained and equipped to track down a murderer, was not going to swing into action against him. He had read so often about police methods, and knew that once the hunt was on, the fugitive seldom escaped. It was the thought of this efficiency and the vast man-hunting machine that had frightened him.
As long as no one discovered Crispin’s body, he would be safe. He had only to keep away from Russell Square and the Soho district to avoid being discovered by Emily and her mob. How could they possibly find him, unless he was stupid enough to visit their territory? They had no organization to trace him. They did not have thousands of uniformed, highly trained men to keep a constant watch for him. They could not circulate his photograph or his description in every newspaper in the country. How, then, could they hope to find him—so long as he was careful?
Although, as the days went by, he began to settle down to his ordinary routine life, the murder continued to prey on his mind. He no longer thought in terms of violence, nor did he read his American pulp magazines. The pictures of the bruised faces of the gangsters after the third degree, the bloodstained, bullet-riddled corpses, the gang battles, which before had thrilled him, now made him feel sick. He had been purged of violence. He had seen a man die violently, and now he had no further interest in reading about murder.
He had bad dreams, too. Continuous nightmares, that began as soon as he fell asleep, drained his vitality. One dream constantly recurred. It was a dream of terrible intensity. He dreamed that Cora came into his room, and he thought she leaned over him with the fainting desire in her eyes that inflamed his blood. And as he reached out to seize her, she seemed to waver before his eyes and slowly transform into the tall, elegant figure of Crispin—Crispin in all his horror: the twisted grimace of terror and blood welling thickly from a great hole in his chest.
George found also that he had to make a tremendous effort to go out each evening to work. He had lost his hearty manner with his prospective buyers, and they now seemed suspicious of his strained, white face and his brooding eyes. He had to make twice as many calls, and even then he sold fewer sets of books.
Saturday afternoon found him restless and uneasy. He was sitting alone in his room by the window, and his mind kept dwelling on that fateful, yet marvellous Saturday afternoon when he had first met Cora. It was about this time that Sydney had telephoned. Even now the house was empty except for Leo, who was somewhere in the basement. George thought of Cora, and his body cried out for her. Somehow, the murder now seemed trivial beside the clamouring desire that was torturing him, had been torturing him for the past days. At this moment he did not care how badly she had treated him. If she came into the room now and offered to be nice to him, he would have forgiven her everything.
“Dunking of her, remembering her, brooding on that exquisite moment of fear and excitement when she had kissed him so passionately in the stolen car, he began to make excuses for her behaviour. Perhaps it wasn’t her fault. Perhaps she had been in the power of her brother, and had been forced to betray George against her will.
Was it possible that she had really loved him all the time, and that Sydney was at the bottom of the whole business?
George got to his feet and began to pace up and down. He must see her again. It was no good torturing himself like this. He must see her, and have it out. She might be longing for him, too, wanting to see him, but afraid of what Sydney would say.
His physical need for her was so overpowering that it swamped all caution and reason. He knew at the back of his mind that she had trapped him into murder, that she was as bad as Sydney, but he wanted her too badly to care.
He didn’t believe really that she could ever love him. In his present mood of frustrated desire, he did not mind, just so long as she would be “very nice to him”: even just once. If he could only have his moment with her, a brief spell of bliss, he would be content, even if she were a beast to him afterwards.
He sat still, gnawing his underlip. If he wanted her so badly, he’d have to do something about it. He would have to see her. Then why was he hesitating? He would go to her flat now—this very minute. As soon as he had made the decision, a great weight rolled from his mind. The decision was something he had been longing to make for the past few days.
He picked up his hat, and as he crossed the room he looked at himself in the mirror. He stared at his white, drawn face in astonishment. It was as if he had only just become aware of himself, and the change shocked him. He had aged; there were streaks of white in his hair at the temples. He had lost weight, his eyes were feverish and deep set, and the thin red scars from the razor-cuts gave him a look of menace. He continued to stare at himself for some minutes, then left the room, uneasy, worried.
When he reached Southampton Row, he got off the ‘bus and walked towards Russell Square. He glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes after four. He wondered if she would be in. What was he going to say to her? Suppose ‘Sydney came to the door? He became more and more undecided as to what he was going to do. But he kept on, refusing to heed the warning note that was sounding at the back of his mind, determined, if he did nothing else, to look at her flat once again.
He turned the corner of her street. People busied themselves with their weekend shopping. The pavement before the row of small shops was crowded with women, small children and perambulators. He could see the greengrocer’s shop over which was her flat. The greengrocer, elderly, bald, and fat, was outside the shop. He was shovelling potatoes onto the scales while a tired-looking woman waited, a string bag ready to receive them.
George stood for some time at the corner, unconsciously assuring himself that it would be safe to cross the street.
Finally, he made up his mind and walked towards the greengrocer’s shop with mounting excitement. As he drew near, he looked up at the window of her flat. The drab muslin curtain told him nothing. For all he knew, she might be watching him, and the thought sent his blood racing through his veins.
He slowed down as he reached the shop. A smell of potatoes, fruit and onions hung in the air. He glanced at the door that led to her flat, and then he paused. There was a notice stuck on one of the glass panels of the door, and a sudden feeling of dread came to him.
The greengrocer had gone into the shop: there was a momentary lull in trade.
George stepped quickly to the door. He read the sprawling handwriting on the notice:
FURNISHED FLAT TO LET Two bedrooms, sitting-room, kitchen, bath.
42/-weekly.
Apply: Harris & Son. Greengrocer. (Next door.)
So they had gone. They had packed up and bolted. In a way, he wasn’t surprised,. It was the obvious thing to do. They were making sure that no one would get on to them; that Emily and Max and the two Greeks wouldn’t get the money from them.
He wondered how long they had been gone. It crossed his mind that they might have left a clue which would lead him to them.
While he was hesitating, the greengrocer came out and glanced at him inquiringly.
Without stopping to think, George blurted out, “I’m interested in this flat.”
“Flat?” the greengrocer repeated. “Yes, it’s still in the market. It’s a nice little place. ‘Ave it meself if it weren’t for the stairs. Can’t manage the stairs now. Not as young as I was.”
“Can I see it?” George asked.
“I’ll get the keys.”
There was a short delay. Then the old man returned.
“It’ll be a month in advance,” he said, a bitter, injured note in his voice. “I’ve ‘ad enough of fly-by-nights. If yer want the place, it’ll be a month in advance.”
”Had trouble with the previous tenants?” George asked, taking the keys.
“Done -a flit,” the old man said, and spat in the road. “Might ‘ave known no good would ‘ave come from those two. Wot ‘e did for a living I never did find out, and she . . . My missus said she took men up there, but seeing’s believing. If I’d caught ‘er at it, I’d’ve ‘ad ‘er out, but I never did. I wish I’d got rid of ‘em before.”
George nodded, and turned to the door. “Don’t bother to come up,” he said. “I’ll have a look round and then talk it over with you.”
The old man grunted. “I ain’t coming up,” he assured him. “Can’t manage them stairs. You’ll find the place in a mess. The missus’s been cleaning it up, but it ain’t quite finished. The way those two lived . . . like pigs.”
George’s heart was thumping as he sank the key into the lock. He pushed open the front door and entered the tiny hall. The flat had obviously been cleaned, but there was still a faint smell of sandalwood in the air. It affected George. He felt alone, miserable.
He went into the sitting-room. Now that the curtains had been washed, the carpet swept and surrounds scrubbed, it looked quite a homely little place. He went through the drawers, looked into the empty waste-paper basket, and the cupboard, but he found nothing. He went into Sydney’s bedroom. He found nothing there, nor did the kitchen reveal anything. He purposely left Cora’s room to the last. When he opened the door, a vein in his temple began to pound. The room had not been touched. He could tell that by the dust on the mantelpiece, the rubbish piled in the grate, and the soiled towel with a trace of lipstick that hung over the back of the chair.
1946 - More Deadly than the Male Page 18
