Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (12 page)

Chapter XIV

In Which Everything Happens Again

When I woke the next morning the June sunshine was flooding into my bedroom. I stretched lazily in my bed. Everything seemed to be well with my world. I thought that it was good to be alive, at the seaside, in an English June.

Then I remembered, suddenly, that I was a newspaperman, given the job of investigating a highly unpleasant murder. Even the sunshine seemed to lose some of its tonic quality. I got up, had a hasty bath, shaved, and dressed. I wandered downstairs, glanced at the clock in the hall, and cursed as I saw it was a quarter of an hour short of nine. That meant that I shouldn't be able to do anything in the way of breakfast for at least twenty minutes. Mrs. Cecil served breakfast officially at nine o'clock, but it was invariably five to ten minutes late.

I might as well go for a stroll in the sunshine, I told myself. The newsagent at the other end of the promenade opened at half-past eight, and I could get a copy of
The Daily Wire,
and see what sort of a show Mick was giving me. Since I was being paid space rates, the amount of my stuff that had escaped the attention of the subs was what would determine my pay for the week.

And he had done me well. There was a flaming headline on the front page, with a personal note about me, stating that James London, well known as a criminologist, would be reporting the crime. The murder they described as the most mysterious affair since Jack the Ripper—which seemed to me to be pulling it a bit strong. Personally, I could think of several in recent years that might be in the running for the mystery stakes. Still, who was I to grumble? The thing gave me a good build-up, and enabled me to get well and truly back on the map. I sat down on a seat on the promenade and read the stuff through. As far as I could remember, they had used pretty well everything that I had phoned through. Probably Mick's orders were that they should use as much as possible of what I was sending; and thankful I was that they were doing it.

Then I heard a sudden shout from behind me. I wheeled round and looked in the direction from which the shout had come. I had been so interested in the paper that I had not really noticed just where it was that I had sat down. I now saw that I was just opposite the lift. And for a moment I had a nightmare feeling that, by some magical art, I had been transported back twenty-four hours in time.

From the little path that led to the lift a man was staggering along. It was the ginger-haired lift attendant whom I had seen on the previous morning. And Aloysius Bender was pale as death. It was obvious, as on the day before, that he had suffered a pretty considerable shock. He staggered over to me, and a gleam of recognition came into his bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, it's you!” he gasped, rather obviously.

“It's me, brother,” I said. “But what on earth's the matter with you?”

“It's happened again!” he said.

“What has?”

“There's another dead man in my lift!”

“What?” I fairly yelled. This certainly seemed to justify the headlines in
The Daily Wire.
“Another? Who is it?”

“I don't know. Never saw him before.” Bender seemed to be recovering his poise now. I suppose that even the discovery of corpses is something which may become more or less normal if it happens often enough.

“Were you going to open up?” I asked.

“Yes. The police gave me the keys back last night, and said that they had done all that they wanted to do with the lift, and I could restart and run as usual today. And now this has to happen!”

I got to my feet. Once again I was in at the start of the case. But this time, I thought, I should have to get Shelley.

“You know the police station?” I asked, rather obviously.

“Yes.”

“Go there, and ask for Inspector Shelley. Tell him that I sent you. Say that there has been another murder, and get him to come along here without delay. That'll be easy, anyhow. Once he knows what has happened, you won't be able to keep him away,” I said.

“I'll go,” he said, and made his limping way off.

“Just a minute,” I murmured.

“Yes?”

“Did you lock the lift up again?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I think that the next ten minutes were the longest ten minutes I ever spent in my life. I re-read my story in the paper time after time. I even descended to reading the advertisements, but scarcely took in what I was reading. All the time I had my eyes fixed on the end of the street down which I knew Bender and Shelley would come. I suppose that had I been unscrupulous enough I could have taken the keys off Bender and had the chance of examining the dead body before the arrival of Shelley, but I thought that the man from the Yard would probably take a poor view of it if I tried again to get in ahead of him. And it was now getting doubly important that I should keep on the right side of Detective-Inspector Shelley.

After all, I was now in a specially privileged position, and since the second murder made it sure that this was to be one of the greatest criminal cases of the century, I thought that it was as well that I should firmly establish myself as the expert writer on it. Mick would be pluming himself on having on the spot the man with inside knowledge. And when the case was over, I should more or less be able to pick my job on Fleet Street.

In spite of these thoughts—pleasant thoughts, most of them—which went through my mind, I found the waiting a difficult business. But I knew that Shelley would be on the spot in the fastest possible time. And I was a good enough friend of the detective to be certain that he would be in the police station by nine o'clock in the morning. He had, indeed, probably been there since eight.

Now I saw him coming, and I rose to my feet, my heart thumping in my chest. Not for the first time in this case I felt an almost unsupportable sense of excitement.

“Hullo, Jimmy.” Shelley was calm and quiet as he approached.

“Good morning, Inspector,” I replied. I hoped that I did not show the overwhelming excitement which was possessing me.

“You seem to be in on the violent deaths in Kent, don't you, Jimmy?” Shelley said with a savage sort of grin. I had to admit that it seemed as if I was one of the born witnesses in a case of this sort. But I didn't think that there was any sort of
double entendre
in what Shelley was saying. Indeed, I was pretty sure that he was merely saying something which would give him a chance of talking, while he gave all his attention to the matter in hand—that is, a second murder, which must have come to him as a pretty severe shock.

“Can I have your keys, Mr. Bender?” he asked of our red-headed friend. Without a word, Bender produced the keys and handed them over.

Shelley walked slowly and steadily towards the lift. No sort of excitement was visible in his manner. I thought that I had seldom seen a man so completely master of his environment.

The detective looked carefully at the padlock. “When you opened it this morning, Mr. Bender,” he remarked, “there was no sign that it had been in any way tampered with?”

“No sign at all, sir,” said Bender in a trembling voice. I thought that the liftman was still suffering from shock as a result of what he had gone through.

Shelley inserted the key in the lock, and soon removed the padlock from the staples in which it was inserted. Then he swung back the gates.

I peered over his shoulder. I was to some extent prepared for the sight which met my eyes. The body of a tall, massive man was lying inside. A knife, similar to that which had been used to kill Tilsley stuck out of his back in almost the same position as that which I had seen in the previous case. I could not see the man's face, for he had clearly pitched forward as he had been stabbed.

Shelley stepped inside in a meticulously careful fashion.

“Come in, Jimmy,” he said. “But be careful where you step. There is a lot of blood in here, and I don't want us to mess it up with our footprints. There may be some clues here for the footprint experts, if we manage to keep clear of the blood ourselves.”

I was only too pleased to follow the man from Scotland Yard. This was getting exclusive news with a vengeance! I looked at the prone figure that lay there. The murderer's victim was a man, I thought, of middle-age. His hair was greying around the temples, and his figure was that of a man in his 'fifties. A gold watch-chain, with its watch attached, had fallen out of his waistcoat pocket as he had been struck down, and it lay across the floor of the lift. Obviously robbery was no motive in this crime.

Shelley bent down and deftly removed the fat wallet from the dead man's hip-pocket. He opened it. It contained what, at a glance, I should have estimated as being more than fifty pounds in pound notes. Again, no sign of robbery. I said as much to the Inspector.

“No, Jimmy, robbery had nothing to do with these crimes,” he agreed.

“Any sign of the man's identity?” I asked. Shelley was now turning out the contents of the wallet.

“That's just what I'm trying to find out,” the detective said slowly, as he turned out various papers from the wallet.

Then he looked up at me. “Does the name Margerison, Henry Margerison, convey anything to you, Jimmy?” he asked.

“It strikes a chord somewhere,” I said.

Shelley grinned. “Your memory is o.k., is it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well you remember the people whose names were included in the little notebook that belonged to Tilsley?” he said.

“Yes.”

“There was one Broadgate address—Miss Maya Johnson's, you know,” Shelley murmured.

“I know,” I interrupted him, “and the other was Henry Margerison.”

“Quite right,” Shelley said. “Well, we shan't get any information from Mr. Margerison, I fear. I don't know what his connexion with the first murder may have been, but to my mind it is quite clear that there was some direct connexion. That must account for his death.”

While he was saying this, Shelley was still running through the papers in Margerison's wallet.

“There you are, Jimmy,” he said after a few minutes. He held out a piece of paper. It was a receipt, and recorded the payment by Margerison to Tilsley of the sum of a hundred pounds. Here, at any rate, was confirmation that the two men were connected.

“In the racket, you think?” I said, but Shelley gave me a warning glance, with a side-glance at Bender. He obviously thought it a trifle indiscreet to talk in front of the liftman, though I thought that Bender hadn't enough commonsense to be in any way dangerous. Still, I knew that Beech, the local man with whom Shelley was presumably working in this case, would very much disapprove of any outsider knowing about anything, just as, in fact, I was aware that he strongly disapproved of my getting in on the case. And, while Beech was not present at the moment, no doubt he would be told the truth of what went on, even in his absence—that is one of the troubles about living and working in a small place.

And now Doctor Gordon appeared, that lean Scot, who seemed somehow to thrive on murder and sudden death. Police surgeons seem, in fact, to be a race to themselves.

“I don't think I'll use this lift any more, Inspector,” he said with a sardonic grin. “Unhealthy sort of thing, judging by its recent customers.”

Shelley smiled. “Have a look at him and give us a rapid verdict, if you can, Doctor,” he said.

“Speed, that's all you policemen think about nowadays,” the Doctor retorted. “How you expect a man of science to do his work soundly, I don't know. Anyhow, what do you want me to tell you that you don't know already?”

“How the man died, when he died, and where he died,” said Shelley. “That'll be enough to begin with.”

The Doctor snorted. I had already realised that he was not exactly an easy man to get on with. He was obviously a man of very strong opinions, and he was not prepared to compromise in any way.

“Where he died is something for a detective to settle, not a Doctor,” he said. “In fact, it's your pigeon, as they say in the civil service. As to how he died, well yon knife sticking out o' the poor fellow's back should be good enough as a cause of death. And as to when he died, well I gave ye a good lecture on
rigor mortis
and the tricks it plays yesterday. I'll no commit myself to anything very close, I warn you of that.”

Shelley smiled. He had had enough experience of crusty old Scots not to let Gordon put him off his stride.

“Give us an estimate, Doctor,” he pleaded.

The doctor had been examining the body meanwhile, flexing muscles and bending arms and legs.

“I'll say about the same thing as I said about the other body I saw yesterday morning,” Doctor Gordon replied. “Between seven o'clock and midnight. That's as close as I could get to it; and even there I'm maybe being a bit more exact than I should be. Maybe the margins should be extended a wee bit.”

Shelley made a grimace of distaste. “Can't you get it any closer, Doctor?” he asked.

The doctor shook his head emphatically. “No,” he said. “It's a very tricky business, settling the time of death, and I'll no do anything which hasn't strict scientific sanction.”

I could see that Shelley was irritated; but there was indeed nothing that he could do about it save accept the doctor's word on the matter. It would, he knew, be no use at all to try to force the doctor to a decision in which he did not believe. And that is what it would have amounted to had he tried to pin the man down any more accurately.

“Well, that would appear to be that, then, Doctor,” Shelley said.

“That's so.” The doctor's mouth closed with a decisive snap.

“The ambulance will be here shortly, I expect,” said Shelley. “We shall want a post-mortem done, of course, though I don't anticipate that you'll find anything of any importance at it. That knife-wound is only too obvious as the cause of death, and I don't expect that you'll find the man was drowned or poisoned.”