“Or conversion. Or just blue funk. The authorities don’t look kindly on these dope rings, and no one likes the idea of spending years behind bars.
Sometimes, particularly with women, they fall in love, want to cut clear, make a fresh start. They can swear till they’re blue in the face that they’ve put the past behind them, don’t remember a thing, but X and his friends aren’t going to take a chance like that, and they’d be mugs if they did,” he added, candidly. “So, you see ...?”
“Eric in the dock, Benn in the basement. What’s this leading up to? Gillian on the bomb-site? I keep telling you, she knew nothing.”
“She knew where Benn hung out, and she’d told you.”
“She didn’t tell me,” Richard interrupted. “She just said he had a junk
shop near the market—and his name. I looked him up in the telephone book.”
“And came to see him?”
“He was the last person I could get hold of who had seen her. I don’t count the crowd at the Angel, I didn’t know who they were. But if there was anything—wacky—then Benn was probably in it. So I came down, last night, but I couldn’t get any answer.”
“And you came again to-day?”
“I had to do something. And he might have been back. When I saw the milk I was pretty sure he was on the premises, and I meant to get some information out of him, if I had to... .” He stopped abruptly.
“Break his neck, you were going to say. Dr. Fyfe, when you realised the young lady hadn’t come back, why didn’t you ring the police?”
“I didn’t want to see her name in capitals in every rag in the kingdom, and find my doorstep cluttered up with Press hounds,” returned Richard,
savagely. “Besides, you’d only have told me it’s a free country and if a girl chooses to change her mind about who she’ll go out with, I mean, that’s no concern of yours.”
“You don’t do us justice,” returned the Inspector drily. “Nothing else occur to you? Then I don’t think we need detain you any longer, Dr. Fyfe. You’re not thinking of leaving London for the next few days, I take it?”
“I’m a doctor,” said Richard, his voice as dry as the Inspector’s. “You can’t walk out on a crowd of sick people, you know. Anyway, until I’ve got some information about Miss Hinde, from you or anyone else ...”
“If you should get any information about Miss Hinde from any other quarter, I rely on you to pass it on to us at once,” said the Inspector in a sharp tone. “And whatever you do, don’t try and pull the chestnuts out of the fire yourself. For some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, amateurs always get the idea they can outwit the professionals.”
It wasn’t often that Arthur Crook found himself in agreement with the police, but he’d have given them an ungrudging hand on that.
“It wouldn’t help us to have you hit over the head,” the policeman continued. “We’re short-handed as it is ...”
“And so’s my hospital. Try and get it into your head, Inspector, that I haven’t the slightest desire to find myself in the mortuary queue behind Benn and that other chap you found in the water.”
The Inspector said politely it was nice they understood each other, but when he found himself alone with his sergeant, he said, “I don’t like it; I don’t like it a bit. I don’t think this young chap’s implicated, but say he found out the girl was and came hot-foot to see Benn—he was in the neighbourhood last night, he admits it himself, and Benn was killed some time between six and eleven, as far as Burgess can say.”
“He came round again to-day,” his sergeant reminded him.
“They do it. You know that as well as I do. Some can’t stand the suspense.
Has he been found? Am I suspected? What’s happening? Some of them even think it’s a smart thing to be the one that finds the body. And he said he was going to telephone us, but when Oliver met him he was coming out of the house and he hadn’t tried to ring us—he knew the house was on the ’phone, remember, because he’d looked it up in the book to get the address. If someone hadn’t happened to see him sneaking in the back way, should we have learned about Benn’s death as early as we did?”
* * *
“Ever done a jig-saw puzzle?” Crook enquired cheerfully of his companion. “Ever find a bit that don’t seem to fit in anywhere, and say, ‘This must belong to something else,’ and then you find you’ve got the bits in wrong and your mystery piece does fit, after all?”
He was talking to Richard Fyfe, who had gone round to see him on the evening of the Bank Holiday. There was still no news about Gillian.
“Who’s your odd bit in this puzzle?” demanded the young doctor, wishing people wouldn’t talk in riddles when your head ached like blazes and you were so sick with anxiety you could scarcely distinguish a migraine from a meningitis.
“The chap who gave the alarm. In the police’s shoes, I’d have wanted to know quite a lot about him. What was he doing in an empty street on Christmas Day? He didn’t live there or he’d have hung around. Why didn’t he stop to meet them? And why should he care if a perfect stranger, in broad daylight, mark you, or as broad as we ever get it in this country in December, tries to get into a house by the back if he doesn’t get in at the front. More.”
He wagged an enormous pudgy finger at his audience. “How come he was there two days running and could identify your car? Well? Want to know the answer?”
“You tell me,” agreed Richard, feeling rather overwhelmed by Crook’s boisterous energy.
“My guess ’ud be he was set to watch the house and report in due course. He saw you come down on Christmas Eve—well, obviously, or he wouldn’t have known you were there. You didn’t get in, so Bob’s your uncle. But the next day you go down and you go for the back way and you don’t come out again. Didn’t you say the street was a cul-de-sac?”
“Yes,” agreed Richard, thinking this was perhaps how patients felt when they found themselves confronted by some medical authority of immense reputation—tongue-tied.
“So,”—Crook plodded on, the most pertinacious of elephants— “when you didn’t come back he did a bit of arithmetic and guessed you’d got inside. And he knew what you were going to find there. Well, of course he did. Otherwise, why should he care if you got in or not? The police are like rats, you know. They hang on. Someone’s going to swing one of these days for Benn, just as they will for that chap they pulled out of the dock, and your shadow didn’t see why it shouldn’t be you.”
“Shadow?” repeated Richard.
“Well,” said Crook politely, “you didn’t mention you were bringing a friend with you.”
“I didn’t. I haven’t spoken of this to anyone else.”
“Just as well,” Crook agreed. “It ain’t healthy to know too much. If I could persuade chaps of that, the undertakers ’ud have a lot more time on their hands. Now, just drift up alongside and tell me if you’ve seen that type on the other side of the street before.”
He was leaning casually against the window-frame as he spoke. Richard came over, stood an instant glancing up and down the street and turned away.
“No,” he said. “Do you think he’s there because I’m here?”
“I don’t think, I know. Point is—did the rozzers put him on to you or could it be X? Didn’t notice if he tailed you home from Aldgate Pump?”
“No. Do you think he could have been the chap who gave the alarm? He wasn’t in evidence after the police arrived.”
“Would you be, in the circumstances? No, no; depend upon it, he was shut up nice and tight in a telephone booth giving his boss the lowdown on developments. Made your will?”
He shot out the question so suddenly that Richard’s eyes bulged. He spun round. “You don’t suppose ...”
“My dear chap, do be your age and remember you ain’t playing a panel game now. Also that the most bloodstained murderer can’t hang twice. If these chaps think you’re the slightest danger to them they won’t give you time to say your prayers. Take my ti
p and don’t go hanging about dark corners by yourself; if a chap stops you and asks for a light, ask him what’s wrong with buying himself a box of matches; and if he wants a lift remind him that Providence equipped him with two feet. And if he should happen to be a one-legged man,” he added, “it shows he’s a careless type, anyway, and not to be trusted. Don’t keep any appointments without checking up that they’re with the right dick, and, above all, don’t let a stranger stand you a drink.”
“In short,” suggested Richard, “about the only place where I shall be safe is the churchyard.”
Crook looked disgusted. “If you want to play safe I don’t know why the hell I’m wasting my time on you,” he said.
* * *
Richard hadn’t been back long when he received a telephone call.
“Dr. Fyfe?” said a voice. “Just thought you’d like to know the little lady’s fine, which is how you’d like her to stay, I guess. Well, then, don’t go starting anything, will you?”
“If you mean the police, you know as well as I do it’s out of my hands.” He couldn’t really believe he was talking to someone who knew where Gillian was. “Let me speak to her,” he exclaimed in sudden fury. “I don’t believe you’ve got her.”
“It ’ud be a shame to deprive her of her beauty sleep,” said the voice.
“And I don’t mean the police. The police ...” It appeared that the speaker’s opinion of them tallied with Crook’s. And Crook’s was the next name he heard. “Been seeing much of him lately?” asked the voice. “Got a big nose, hasn’t he? Might drop him a hint it ’ud be healthier to keep it out of matters that don’t concern him.”
There was a sharp click as the receiver was replaced. Richard’s first impulse was to dial 999. Then his hand dropped to his side. He didn’t know much about tapping telephone wires, but he didn’t believe this gang would leave much to chance. “Mind you tell us of any developments,” the Inspector had said. It’s your duty, he’d meant, but what did he, Richard, care about duty if Gillian was the penalty for being a good citizen? Let the police catch their own criminals. Wasn’t that what they were for? He walked over to the window and there was the same fellow hanging about at the corner. He marched down the stairs and across the street.
“Who put you on to watching me?” he demanded.
The man turned, staring. Richard felt a pang of misgiving. Was this the same man? He hadn’t really seen him properly.
“Watching you?” said the other. “Why? If you think I’ve got nothing better to do than hang about on your doorstep you should have your head examined.”
He threw away the stub of his cigarette, stuck his hands in his pockets and swaggered off. Richard went into the house again and asked the telephone operator if a recent call could be traced. It couldn’t, of course, having been made on the automatic exchange. When he put back the instrument Richard stole across and looked out of the window. There wasn’t anyone to be seen; he looked again a little later, but there was still no one there. But when he drew the curtains and turned on the light the watcher came out of his hiding place and resumed his patient vigil.
* * *
In a house whose address she didn’t know, Gillian lay on her back and stared at the ceiling.
The little room into which they had now moved her was not much larger than a cell and contained very little more furniture. Each day the woman the men called Lena led her down to the bathroom, and she realized vaguely that this must be quite a large house, her prison being on the top floor. She had never seen her bag again, and though they let her have her powder compact, they withheld the lipstick.
“You’re not going anywhere, you don’t need lipstick,” Lena chaffed her. “Are you afraid I’d write a message on the bathroom wall?” They hadn’t broken her spirit yet, though no one could complain they hadn’t tried; in that bare little room, so old-fashioned there wasn’t even electric light, just a little gas-jet high in the wall and a rusty little iron grate. They didn’t give her a fire, only an oil-stove during the day. At night the door was locked on the outside.
Another man had turned up; they called him Pug, and it was he who did the endless questioning.
“Who’s Richard?”
“A friend.”
“What’s his real name?”
“Just Richard.”
“Where does he live?”
“In London. Where am I now?”
“I’m asking the questions. Why did you give him Benn’s address?”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t. I don’t know it myself.”
“Found your way there all right.”
“It was an accident. Because of the fog.”
Pug laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. “Too bad.”
“Why do you keep me here?”
“Why did you muscle in? Now it’s too late.”
Too late for what? she wanted to say, but she couldn’t speak the words. Sometimes she thought she was really going mad. That was what they wanted her to believe, of course. There was a tiny window in her room, looking over precisely nothing.
All she could tell was that the house was isolated; only a few sounds floated up to her, and no one ever went walking along the waste space that was her view. But once she saw a van going past, and she shouted and screamed and pounded on the glass—she couldn’t open the window, it was screwed down.
The driver didn’t hear her, but the others did. They came bursting in and pulled her away and tied her hands and feet; they put a gag in her mouth and threw her on the bed—they didn’t worry about being gentle—and while “Dr. Belvedere” pasted dark paper over the glass, the woman told her what to expect if she tried any more tricks.
“You’ve got a pretty face,” she said. “It would be a pity to get it spoiled.”
She didn’t know what day of the week it was, how long she had been there.
Two days, three days, a week, a month? Time had stopped like a clock that had run down. At the back of her mind was the realization that they couldn’t keep her here forever, and how would they ever dare let her go, except to a deeper darkness still?
* * *
The woman came in, carrying a tray. “Ready for your dinner?” she said. She brought a box of matches with her, and she lighted the gas-jet. “Eat it up and then I’ll give you some news.”
Gillian looked at her, perplexed. Her fair, pretty hair was lank and uncombed, her face shadowed—she seemed quite old when she saw herself in the glass.
“What day is it?”
“What does that matter to you?”
“How long have I been here?”
“Not long enough to learn sense, it seems. What a silly girl you are, Gillian Hinde. Living in the dark like a troglodyte. Now eat up and you shall see a newspaper.”
Panic flared up in her. “What’s happened to him?” “Happened to who?” Lena’s face was cunning. “Richard.” The word was a breath of sound.
“Dr. Fyfe? Oh, yes, we know who he is; so do the police.”
“The police?” She was falling back into her silly habit of repeating the last words she’d heard.
“That’s right. Eat your dinner and I’ll tell you.”
Gillian gulped down the unpalatable food. She ached with cold and hunger and the pummeling she’d so recently received.
“That’s better. Now—that column. That’s right.”
Poor Mr. Benn hadn’t attracted much attention in life, and in death he didn’t rate more than a few lines in a side column.
Police are investigating the death of a marine-store dealer known as Hassan Benn, believed to be of Arab descent, who was found with his neck broken at the foot of a flight of stone stairs behind his shop on Christmas Day. This is the second mysterious death in this area during the past month, the other being that of Eric Boxer, whose body was taken out of the St. Julian Dock
less than two weeks ago.
Gillian laid the paper aside. “It doesn’t say a word about Richard.”
“Ah, but he was there.
It so happens a friend of ours was passing and he saw a young man breaking into the house by the back, so he rang the police, and when they came your Dr. Fyfe was beside the body. Now do you understand? You told him where to go and he went and he lost his temper and pushed the old man downstairs. That’s murder, Gillian Hinde, and murderers hang. We’re doing you a favour really, keeping you hidden, because there’s something called accessory before the fact....”
Gillian got up, her eyes wild. “It’s all lies. Richard ...”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” insinuated the voice. “You could get him on the telephone.”
She closed her lips tight. You could be a coward and shiver in the dark,
wondering what your tormentors’ next step would be, but, even so, you wouldn’t betray your dear love.
“Shall I get his number. It’s Pleasance 1948, isn’t it? He must be quite anxious about you. Such strange things happen to girls who go where they’re not invited, especially after dark.”
Gillian learned against the blacked-out window; it was another trick, of course. The trouble was that, sooner or later, they’d catch you off your guard and you’d say the fatal word... . Her head swam; what was the fatal word? She didn’t even know the answer to her own question.
“Come,” said the woman, putting an authoritative arm round her shoulders, “lean on me and we’ll go downstairs. The telephone’s downstairs. What? You won’t come? Very well, if you won’t talk to him, I will. I’ll leave your door open so you can hear. I’m afraid you don’t trust us very far, do you?”
She walked out of the room and down the stairs; light came in from the landing. Gillian stole out and leaned over the bannisters. There was the sound of a telephone dial being spun. She held her breath. Then the woman’s voice came pealing up the staircase.
“Dr. Fyfe? That is Dr. Fyfe speaking? Hold the line, please. Miss Hinde would like a word with you.”
Richard’s voice came quite clearly over the line, though she couldn’t hear the words.
Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries Page 14
