Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries

by Anthony Gilbert

  After that there was nothing for it but to try the hospitals and every other source of information who might know about accidents, fatal and otherwise; every time he got a connection his heart leaped like a fish on a string, and always the reply was the same. He had an uneasy feeling that he was making a prize fool of himself, that whenever a receiver was replaced on its rest someone at the other end was grinning. Another chap taken for a ride, they’d think, and his own heart sickened anew. Oh, if anyone had been taken for a ride, it wasn’t he, but Gillian, his dear love, who, by some appalling misfortune, in which he could still scarcely believe, had been whirled away in a car—the sort of car no honest man can afford to run—and was now—where?

  Next morning he woke with a start, wondering what was wrong. He hadn’t expected to sleep at all, and was rather ashamed that he had been able to do so. Then it all came surging back, and he couldn’t believe it at first. Things like this don’t happen, he exclaimed, but that was all tommy-rot. Of course they happened; you read about them in the papers five days out of seven. What he meant was, nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He snatched up the telephone and defiantly rang Gillian’s number. Perhaps this time someone would lift the receiver, her voice would say, “Hallo, darling....” He felt he would scarcely ask her for an explanation if only he could hear her voice again. But, naturally, nothing of the sort happened. The bell pealed away as heartless as the bright morning light, and at last he gave up and put the receiver back on its rest.

  The morning passed somehow; he envied bus conductors and clergymen taking services, and people cooking Christmas dinners, because they had something to do. He had forgotten that, in Gillian’s absence, he had nowhere to go on what was known as the family feast; he went into a restaurant where he wasn’t likely to see anybody he knew and ate something—it could have been sawdust chips for all he could have told you—and then, because he could stand inaction no longer, he got into his car and once more drove down past Aldgate Pump.

  Mr. Benn’s shop looked much the same by day as it had done last evening, except that he could see it better; but there was one change. On the step stood a small bottle of milk; “So the old so-and-so does live here, and seeing he hasn’t cancelled his milk order, he hasn’t gone away,” Richard reflected. “Well, I’ll get him this time, if I have to tear the place down, brick by brick.”

  It looked as though he might be driven even to these lengths, for no amount of knocking or ringing brought the sound of footsteps, or, indeed, any indication or ringing brought the sound of footsteps, or, indeed, any indication of life. He became very cunning, ringing the bell and stepping back into the middle of the road to make sure no one was huddling behind curtains at an upper window. But all the windows were closed.

  “But the curtains aren’t drawn over them,” he told himself. “There must be someone there.”

  It didn’t occur to him that perhaps they’d never been drawn last night. Realising the impossibility of breaking in through the shutters, Richard now began to explore for an entry by the rear. A narrow lane ran behind the factory and ended in a cul-de-sac, with a high wall obviously enclosing the workyard on Mr. Benn’s further side. And in the wall behind Mr. Benn’s house he found a shabby wooden door that must once have been blue but was so discoloured by time and weather that now it had no colour at all. To his surprise, this opened easily. It never occurred to him that there might be a trap, that other men were at least as intelligent and far-sighted as he; it didn’t even pass through his mind that he might have been seen talking to Crook the previous night—and at this stage he’d no idea that in the underworld Crook was as readily recognised as a Sinatra or a Ray by bobbysoxers in a rather different milieu. On the further side of the door was a little paved yard and an outside privy. And beyond these was the back door of the shop. He advanced, banging mightily and arousing nothing but local echoes, and was about to make a frenzied attack, when it came into his mind to turn the handle. The door opened under his grasp and he found himself in a narrow stone passage, very dark because there were no windows and no light was burning. He switched on the torch he habitually carried. The passage led past a flight of stone steps, giving, he supposed, on to a store-room or coal cellar. He flashed his light on the stairs, and then stood very still, holding his breath. Because there was something at the foot, something dark and unmoving, like an old sack, but, he was convinced, not an old sack. He went down quickly, his breath catching in his throat. It was easy to understand now why Mr. Benn had let the bells ring unchecked and paid no heed to the hammering on the door.

  “He must have been dead several hours,” reflected Richard, straightening himself at last. “Probably was lying here last night.”

  But what connection had that bit of human wreckage with happy Gillian Hinde?

  “Wonder what he was coming down here for in the dark,” Richard reflected, and Crook himself couldn’t have experienced a more startling reaction. From the instant of his discovery, he had been uncomfortably convinced that there was something wrong about the scene, something missing, and now he knew what it was. Light. Since Gillian had talked with the old man not earlier than six o’clock, it followed that it must have been quite dark when he started on his downward journey. Yet no light was burning and, search where he might, Richard could find no trace of torch or candle. He bent again above the little, shriveled face, and a worse fear struck him. This was no accident. A man tripping and falling on those sharp-edged steps would show signs of his fall, there’d be bruises, abrasions, the hands would be outflung to try and save himself; and though there might well be facial injuries, these wouldn’t be on the appalling scale the torch revealed when Richard gently turned the body over. He leaned against the wall, feeling pretty sick.

  “Someone picked him up and deliberately chucked him down the stairs,” he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice was shocking in the half-dark. “Nothing else would account for the fact that the bones of one side of the face were stove in, but there’s practically no other surface injury.”

  Blood was sprinkled profusely on the stones where the dead man lay, but there were no traces of blood on the steps themselves. And then he perceived something else. (“Quite the little Sherlock Holmes,” said Crook, drily, when he heard later.) On the stairs the dust lay thick; his own feet had left marks. But there were no other footmarks discernible.

  “I shall have to get the police now,” he thought. “This is murder.”

  And, as though that most dreadful of words had opened a door and let in a host of fiends, he understood that in the hands of whoever was responsible for this outrage against human dignity and human rights lay Gillian, whom he loved and who, surely, waited for him to come and save her. Anger, pain and fear all swirled together in his heart. It was like someone banging a knocker in his head. He forgot his pity for the dead man, even forgot about ringing the police—(the police?—the only man likely to help him now was Arthur Crook)—and he came surging out of the back door like a storm-cloud, to be brought up short on the step by an apparition so unexpected that for the moment in seemed a chimera of his overwrought imagination, and he lunged forward as if to walk through it.

  The apparition put out a large, powerful arm in a blue sleeve.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said the police officer. “Were you looking for someone?”

  * * *

  The shock of discovering poor Mr. Benn and then running slap into a constable seemed to paralyse Richard’s natural good sense.

  “Where on earth did you spring from?” he demanded. “And what do you want?”

  It is very hard to discompose the police. “I was asking you, sir,” said P.C. Oliver, his voice still perfectly pleasant, but as unyielding as a Sten gun.

  “I came to see someone.”

  “Yes, sir? Did you come the front way?”

  “Of course not. It’s locked, presumably from the inside. I got in the same way you did. What made you follow me? Did I leave the gate ajar?”
>
  “As a matter of fact, you did, but that isn’t why. Someone telephoned the police that a man had been noticed stealing up the back way, and seeing it was Christmas and the place might be untenanted, they thought we might be interested.”

  Richard burst into a staccato laugh. “I can’t imagine that at the best of times there could be much here worth taking,” he remarked.

  “No, sir?” Richard sobered suddenly. What an idiotic thing to have said. Why, there could be hundreds of pounds’ worth of stuff on the premises for all he knew. “Did you—er—find anyone at home?”

  Richard threw his hand up to cover his mouth. There was something so absurdly formal bout this chap, asking if he’d found anyone at home, when you realised, in fact, what he had found... .

  “Yes,” he said after a minute. “He’s at home all right—you’ll find him at the bottom of the stairs. Matter of fact, I was going to call you.”

  The policeman marched into the house with Richard at his side. “Down there,” said the young doctor. “And—he doesn’t seem to have left any footprints in the dust.”

  The policeman turned sharply. “Meaning, sir?”

  “Meaning, I don’t think it was an accident. I’m a doctor,” he added, feeling for his driving licence. “Naturally, you’ll get your own police surgeon, but I fancy his opinion will be the same as mine.”

  P.C. Oliver went sturdily down the stairs; there wasn’t really any need to hesitate. No one, thought Richard, could have been more dead.

  “Did you say he was a friend of yours?” enquired the constable.

  “Living, I never set eyes on him.”

  “And yet you wanted to see him so badly you came in by the back? But never mind about telling me now, sir. I’ll have to let my sergeant know what’s happened, and you’ll be asked for a statement in due course.” He came up the stairs and stood looking left and right. “Where would the telephone be?” he enquired.

  “How should I know? I’ve never been in the house before.”

  The officer opened a door and revealed the dismembered instrument. For the first time he allowed his dismay to penetrate his official composure.

  “Cut!” he observed. “With a knife, I’d say. That’s queer.”

  “Isn’t murder generally queer?” Richard demanded.

  “Murder? As to that we don’t know how the deceased came to his end, not till we have the official report.”

  “I’ll let you into a secret,” said Richard, bitterly. “The deceased met his death through being slung down that flight of stairs as if he were a sack of old garbage; his face was smashed, as you saw, by the stone corridor.”

  “Are you going to offer that as evidence?” asked the policeman.

  Richard shrugged. “I haven’t any evidence to give, beyond the fact that I found him. At all events, I’m the first person to inform the police.”

  He found his companion regarding him rather oddly.

  Richard coloured. “Well, all right,” he said. “I hadn’t got round to calling you. Some other fellow got in first. Which reminds me, what happened to him?”

  “He didn’t stop,” said Oliver, stolidly. “It’s a funny thing how perfectly

  respectable people fight shy of the police. Of course, he might have thought there was more than one of you... . There’s a booth at the corner. I’ll call my sergeant from that.”

  As they came round the side of the factory the policeman jerked his thumb towards Richard’s little car.

  “That yours, sir?”

  “That’s right. What of it? You’re not trying to run me in for a parking offence, I suppose? Well, then, what’s it all about? You aren’t by any chance casting me for the murderer? Good Heavens, I never saw him before and, anyway, he’s been dead the better part of twenty-four hours, I’d say.”

  “Quite so, sir. Perhaps I should tell you that a car resembling yours, a Moonbeam 8, and the same colour, was seen standing outside this house last night. Perhaps you could tell me where you were, round about ten o’clock. Would that be roughly the hour the gentleman was killed?”

  * * *

  An inspector called Oldfield and a sergeant named Waters took over the case. When the police car arrived Richard felt quite dazed, it seemed as if half the Yard must be tumbling out; but they soon resolved themselves into doctor, fingerprint expert, photographer, etc. The doctor’s diagnosis as to cause of death tallied with Richard’s.

  “Some time last night,” he said. “Impossible to be very sure. This passage is like an ice-box. Must have been killed instantly, neck broken. Most likely a man’s crime, if you’re asking my opinion,” he added. “A big chap... .” It was just chance, of course, that his eyes rested for a moment on Richard, who stood six foot two in his socks.

  “I wonder if you’d care to come along to the station and make a statement,” suggested Oldfield. “I’m rather in the dark as to why you were here at all, if the deceased wasn’t a friend of yours.”

  “Do you ever go to the films?” asked Richard.

  The Inspector looked pardonably startled. “Sometimes, if my wife wants to see a picture... . Why?”

  “Because you won’t need to go to one for a long while after hearing my story. It begins with a girl ...”

  After he’d finished speaking, the Inspector said, “But what made you so sure that Benn had anything to do with it?”

  “I wasn’t. But the trouble started after she bought the ring. And the ring must be mixed up in it somehow, because Crook saw this chap make some reference to it. I don’t pretend to understand... .” He stopped when he saw the chagrined expression on Oldfield’s face.

  “Did you say Crook? Would that be ...?”

  “Arthur Crook. He’s a lawyer. I’ve got his card somewhere. Why? Do you know him?”

  “Couldn’t you trust him to come muscling in on a job like this?” muttered the Inspector. “Know him? Of course we do. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprise to hear he’s mixed up in this. One of these days he’ll fall out of the skin of the Derby winner. So he saw Miss Hinde at the Angel. A regular haunt of hers?”

  “I doubt if she’d ever been there before.”

  “Did Crook happen to notice if she went out with anyone?”

  “I told you, he thinks she was given a lift—since when no one’s seen her.

  That is, no one I’ve been able to come across. Look here, Inspector, what is all this? You didn’t seem surprised when you heard of peculiar doings at the Angel.”

  “I wasn’t,” admitted Oldfield. “Dr. Fyfe, how long have you known Miss Hinde?”

  “How long? Oh, about eight months. Since I came to the hospital. What on earth’s that got to do with it?”

  “Do you know her family, by any chance?”

  “She hasn’t any, not in England. There’s a married brother in Germany, and a sister in Scotland. That’s all.”

  “But you know—that is, you have mutual acquaintances?”

  “Only at the hospital.”

  “I see.”

  “Perhaps,” said Richard, holding on to his temper with an effort, “you’d be good enough to tell me what you see.”

  “I’ll be frank with you,” said Oldfield. “We’ve had our eye on a gang of dope-peddlers for quite a while now. We knew the stuff was being passed, and we could put our hands on one or two of the small fry. But that doesn’t help. As soon as we show the smallest interest in any of them something happens. You may have seen a mention in the papers of a chap found floating in the dock recently? We’ve every reason to suppose he was one of them and— well, a chain’s as strong as its weakest link, and sometimes your best policy is to shorten the chain and get rid of the faulty link.”

  “I see,” said Richard. “And this chap, Benn, was another link.” “Looks remarkably like it.”

  “And—oh, no, Inspector, that’s crazy. You’re not suggesting that Jill... . It’s fantastic. She’s a nurse, she knows what drugs do to people. Just a slow form of murder instead of the speedy kind. If
you’d set eyes on her, you’d know ...”

  “But I haven’t,” said the Inspector slowly. “And suppose, just for the sake of argument, you’re wrong? Suppose they got hold of her in some way... . Now, Dr. Fyfe, I’m only trying to answer your question. What can have happened to her, I mean.”

  “Then perhaps you can answer this one, too. Why should she leave a note telling me she was going to the Angel?”

  “In build-ups like this one there’s always danger for the little man, the little woman, too, of course. I mean, the chaps at the top stay put, but the personnel are always changing, just as soon as they stop being assets and start being a danger—to X, I mean.”

  “Blackmail?” Richard felt his head swim.