Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (20 page)

“No; but John interpreted it as such.”

And from that position I was totally unable to move her. She was, I thought, completely obsessed with the idea that Foster had killed Tilsley. Every statement, every fact, was viewed from that idea. If you've ever dealt with a person suffering from a genuine obsession, you will realise the total impossibility of arguing. Nothing penetrates into the mind of the person which tells in any way against the obsession. Only one side of the case makes any kind of impression.

And yet Mrs. Skilbeck was in many ways a sensible, rational woman. But on this one point rationality was suspended. I hoped that Shelley would read her character as I was reading it; otherwise it was a poor outlook, I thought, for Tim and Maya. As I left the Charrington Hotel I thought that this had been, on the whole, about the most unsatisfactory of all the interviews which I had so far undergone.

Chapter XXII

In Which More Surprises Occur

I was in no way satisfied with my interview with Mrs. Skilbeck. I think that you will understand that. I had hoped that something might come out of it which would lead me to definite proof of Tim Foster's innocence. Instead of that, all that I had managed to secure was a repetition of the vague accusations that Shelley had told me about, without a vestige of proof in any shape or form.

Mind you, I was not accusing Mrs. Skilbeck of lying. I did not now think that she was telling lies. I merely thought that she was so hopelessly biased against my friend Tim that she was entirely unable to look at the matter of his guilt or innocence with anything like an open mind. And the witness who is, albeit unconsciously, biased is the worst possible witness to deal with. It is difficult to account for the bias without oneself acquiring a bias in the opposite direction.

I was quite prepared to admit that I had a pretty considerable bias in Tim's favour. Indeed, Maya Johnson's belief in him was in a way enough to convince me that he could not be a murderer. But I did not know whether I should say that my bias in his favour had been increased by all that Mrs. Skilbeck had said. I knew that Shelley would have said that it was. And Shelley, after all, was the genuinely unbiased observer. The police, in spite of all that has from time to time been said against them, do genuinely want to get the guilty man. They have no desire to arrest a man who is innocent. Apart from everything else, there is the very severe danger that they may arrest an innocent man, and then go through the trying ordeal of seeing that man's counsel drive a coach and four through their case when it comes up for trial.

So when I made my way back to the lodgings for lunch I was feeling a bit dismal. I had enough material, it was true, to phone another pretty sensational instalment to
The Daily Wire
that evening. But, while my main job was as a journalist, the fact remained that I had set my heart on solving the mystery, on presenting Inspector Shelley with a cast-iron case on which he could make an arrest. And I thought that there now seemed to be less and less chance that I should be able to do anything of the sort.

At the end of lunch I took a cup of coffee and went to drink it in the lounge. I wanted to think, and I knew that the dining-room would be a buzz of conversation—no doubt mainly concerned with the murders. That went without saying. These mysterious deaths now provided the main topic of conversation in Broadgate, and one couldn't go anywhere without hearing them discussed. I was utterly fed-up with the most fantastic theories which I had heard quite seriously advanced by people who in actuality knew nothing at all about the case.

As I was sipping my coffee and smoking my cigarette—without much pleasure, I must admit—I heard the telephone ring outside. I didn't give it a thought. Then Mrs. Cecil came into the room, looking rather puffed and hurried.

“Oh, Mr. London, I'm so glad that you're here,” she said with an almost comic sense of relief.

“Why, Mrs. Cecil?” I asked.

“Because you're wanted on the telephone.”

“Who wants me?”

“A Mr. Foster. He said that it's very urgent, and that I was to get you at once.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cecil,” I said. But I still felt fed-up, wondering what on earth Tim Foster could have to say to me that he couldn't have said earlier in the day. Still, I made my way to the telephone.

“Hullo,” I said.

“Jimmy London?” queried the voice at the other end of the line.

“Speaking.”

“Tim Foster here,” he said.

“Yes, Tim, what is it?” I asked.

“Can you come round to the garage at once?” he asked, a suppressed eagerness in his voice.

“I should think so. Is it something very urgent?” I asked.

“Very urgent. I think that we've got some evidence that might well support the theory we were discussing earlier. I can't say much on the telephone, but I think that if you come around here, you will be as excited as I am.”

He certainly sounded excited enough. He even infected me. I said “I'll be with you in a few minutes, Tim,” slammed down the receiver, rushed up to my room to get a hat, and was out of the door within what could not have been more than a minute.

I hurried along the street. The sun was boiling hot, but I was quite prepared to run, should running appear to be in any way necessary. What on earth, I told myself, did Tim mean by the theory we had discussed earlier? Did he mean the theory about drug-peddling? Or did he mean some theory with regard to Mrs. Skilbeck which we had formed? I ran over in my mind what we had said, but I couldn't make up my mind what he had meant.

I had intended to go and see Shelley after lunch, to try once more to pick the brains of the man from Scotland Yard. But Tim had sounded so insistent that I thought I must go and see him first. After all, if he had succeeded in getting some sort of concrete evidence, that would be all the better. I should have something worth while to hand on to Shelley when I did see him—and I didn't intend that meeting to be far ahead.

Within the promised few minutes I was at the garage. As I came to the end of the road I could see Tim. He was in the street outside the garage, pacing up and down the pavement as if he could not contain himself in patience anywhere indoors. He waved wildly to me as he spotted me, and I waved back as sedately as I could.

Still, as I have already said, he had infected me with his excitement, and I found it very difficult to maintain my equanimity. I was sure now that Tim had got hold of something really worth while.

“Thank God you've come, Jimmy,” he said as I drew near. He grasped my arm with an iron grip and drew me near to the outer door of the garage.

“Here, easy does it, Tim!” I expostulated. “My arm's not made of steel, you know. No need to do a lifelike imitation of a vice when you see me.”

“Sorry,” he replied. “But I'm so excited, Jimmy, that I scarcely know what I'm doing.”

“Keep yourself under control,” I advised him. “Whatever it is that you've found out, it'll keep for a few minutes longer, you know.”

“I'm not sure that it will,” he said.

“Well, I'm the best judge of that,” said I. “Lead on, my lad, and let me see what it is that you've found that you think is so very important.”

Without a word he turned on his heel and led the way in. I followed as speedily as I could. He led the way into the inner office of the garage, where I had first seen him. Then he shut the door as soon as I had entered, and swung round to face me.

“You know,” he said, “that Maya suggested that the solution of this problem might well be something in the nature of the smuggling of drugs?”

“Yes,” I replied, “and I passed the suggestion on to my friend Inspector Shelley.”

“What did he say?” asked Tim Foster with much eagerness.

“He was very interested, and promised to put the drug squad from Scotland Yard on to the matter. He said that they could easily check up on all the addresses from Tilsley's notebook and find if there was anyone mentioned there who has been known or suspected of having any connexion with the traffic of dangerous drugs,” I explained.

“Any results yet?”

“I don't know. I was just going to see Shelley, as a matter of fact, when you phoned, and it sounded to me as if your message was more urgent than my going to see Inspector Shelley.”

“It certainly was,” Tim said. “In fact, it may well be that what I have found will be of some use to you—and to Inspector Shelley, if he's really anxious to get to the solution of this business.”

“Well,” I said impatiently, “what have you found, Tim?”

He pulled open a drawer of his desk. “Do you know anything about sparking-plugs?” he asked.

“Nothing at all,” I said, “except that they are the things that go wrong when you're driving a car, and leave you stranded miles from anywhere, down a lonely lane when it's pouring with rain on a pitch-black night.”

Tim grinned. “I suppose that is the ordinary man's opinion,” he said. “Well, it so happens that a few months ago sparking-plugs—good ones of the well-known makes—were very difficult to get hold of. And Tilsley provided me, from time to time, with quite a number. They were very useful to me, though I once fitted one to a car of my own and found it no good at all. Just refused to spark, in fact.”

“Well, get on, man!” I snapped irritably. Tim Foster seemed to be taking a terribly long time to get to the point of what he was trying to say—seemed, indeed, almost to be trying deliberately to spin the yarn out as long as he could. I found it all most tiresome.

“Sorry. I was just allowing my thoughts to ramble a bit,” he explained, “so that you should have some chance of getting straight the background of what I was trying to tell you.”

“Well, don't let the old thoughts ramble any more,” I advised him. “I'm only anxious to know what it is that you've found. If you take such a long time to tell it, I shouldn't think that it can be all that important.”

“It's important enough,” he said, and, diving into some papers in the drawer which he had opened, produced a small tin, containing a sparking-plug. At least, it bore on its lid the name of a well-known make of plug, and I presumed that it contained one of these plugs inside.

He opened the tin and took out the little plug. “This, in fact, is the plug which I fitted to my own car and which was so poor,” he said. “I cleaned the points and did all the usual things that one does, but nothing happened. The thing just completely failed to work.”

Now I thought that I was beginning to understand what he was getting at. We had heard a lot about the business connexions of John Tilsley, but this was the first time that we had actually been able to lay our hands on something which was part of the stock-in-trade in which the dead man had been dealing. It was clearly of some importance, and I again began to feel nearly as excited as Tim Foster.

“When did you think of this?” I asked.

“Only after leaving you this morning. You remember, Maya had suggested that there might be some possibility that Tilsley was using his various deals as a sort of blind for some other material—material which was illegal. I wondered whether we couldn't lay our hands on something. I had nothing, I thought, which he had sold me—and then I suddenly remembered this plug. It had actually been intended for a customer of mine, but it had happened that just when he brought his car in I had had a consignment of half-a-dozen sparking plugs direct from the makers. So I fitted one of them on his car and shoved this away in a drawer. Then, some time later, when I had plug trouble, I remembered having this one and got it out. I was in a hurry—going to meet someone at the station, and when I found it was defective I hauled it out and put another one in.”

“And that's the last time you handled it?” I suggested.

“Yes. Until today. Then I remembered it again, and I thought it would be a good idea to examine it with the greatest possible care, to see if there was anything in the suggestion that Maya put forward.”

“And was there any?” I asked.

“Wait!” he cautioned me. Then he unscrewed the top of the plug—it was a very neatly made little piece of apparatus, I thought—and removed it. He spread a large sheet of blotting-paper on the table and tipped up the inner part of the plug on it. A small amount of white powder emerged on to the blotting-paper.

“There!” he said with an air of triumph. And I really could not find it in me to blame him for his moment of excitement.

“What do you think it is?” he asked, after a few moments' silence.

I dipped my finger in it, took up a few particles and placed them on my tongue. There was not much taste about it, but there was a queer tingling sort of sensation about my tongue afterwards.

“I would be prepared to guess that it's cocaine,” I said. Tim Foster sat back in his chair with an air of absolute triumph.

“Maya was right!” he exclaimed.

“Maya was right!” I echoed.

“Do you think that your man from Scotland Yard will be satisfied with this?” he asked.

“I'm sure that Shelley will find it very interesting,” I said. “It certainly seems to provide the proof that we were after, with regard to the job that our friend Tilsley was doing.”

“And do you think that it lets me out of the soup?” asked Tim.

I looked serious. “I wouldn't altogether say that,” I warned him. “In fact, I wouldn't say that it doesn't put you deeper in the mire.”

“In what way?”

“Well,” I explained. “Look at it through the detective's eyes. His view would be that he thought you had some sort of connexion with this man. Tilsley was dealing in drugs, and here you are—with drugs in your possession. I know that your story is true, and Shelley might think it probably true. But he has to remain sceptical about everything that happens. And the obvious explanation is that you were in with Tilsley on his deals in drugs. And that might in some way provide the motive for the murder. See?”

Tim Foster saw. I have seldom seen a man so taken aback. But I thought that, after all, I had been wise in not allowing him to fill his mind with a false optimism which the events would not justify.