Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (23 page)

Chapter XXVI

In Which I Penetrate Behind a Curtain

I knew now that I was entirely dependent on my own efforts and my own ingenuity. But that didn't worry me overmuch. I don't think I'm an unduly conceited man, but I
do
know my own worth and my own qualities. I knew well enough that I should need some luck. But, given reasonable luck, I thought that I could get away with it. I don't look like a typical policeman, and it was the police that the gang we were up against would be looking for.

I peered down the corridor that lay behind the curtain. It was dim in there. The windows, such as they were, were heavily curtained. It was clear that whoever was responsible for this place was taking no risk to anyone seeing anything from outside.

The corridor looked a long one. There were a number of rooms running off it on either side. I thought that this was a tougher business than I had anticipated, since one could not tell which of half a dozen or so rooms was the one that I was after.

And at any time, I told myself cheerfully, I might be interrupted by some plug-ugly who would ask me what I was doing. There might well be some pass-word, which was unknown to me, and my ignorance of which would land me in real trouble. The whole proceeding was a most hazardous affair. Still, I did not worry. My life was now on the laps of the gods, and all that I could do was to carry on and hope that I should not make too many foolish blunders.

I hesitated opposite the first door on the left. I put my ear close to it, but was unable to hear any sound. I turned the handle very gently, but the door did not give to pressure. It was at once obvious that this was a locked door, and I could do little about it. Unless there was some special code of knocks which would open it, there was nothing that I could do in the way of dealing with a locked door. Just opposite to it was another one.

This time it turned and the door gave slightly. Inch by inch, almost millimetre by millimetre, I opened the door. Inside the room it was dim—almost as dim as the corridor in which I stood. I glanced inside. The room was furnished like an ordinary lounge, but the curtains were drawn. There were a couple of leather-covered armchairs and a settee. A table stood in the middle of the room. On it was a picture. I tried to see, from the doorway, who was in the picture, but I was too far away to see in that dim light. I didn't think it was really important enough to merit spending time on it. And I had a lot more to do than explore rooms that, superficially, looked harmless enough.

I slipped out into the corridor again, glancing swiftly around me. No one was yet in sight. I congratulated myself on having managed things well enough as yet, though I knew well enough that this was not due to any brilliance on my part. It was, I knew, due more to the fact that luck up to now had been on my side.

A little further on was another door. This was likewise unlocked, as I found on turning the handle. And this looked as if it might be a bit more promising. At one end, underneath the window, was an open bureau. On it there was a pile of papers.

I was not silly enough to think that these gentry would commit to paper much of what they were doing, but at the same time I guessed that some details of their business must be written down—if only some sort of financial account. And I thought that here might be something worth while.

I shut the door gently behind me. I couldn't afford to have anyone else snooping into what I was doing. I knew that it would now not be at all easy to get back into the corridor unobserved; but this was the sort of risk that I had anticipated I should have to take.

I glanced at the mass of papers on the bureau. At first glance it did not seem a very promising source of information, since the papers seemed to be inextricably muddled up. But it was, I thought, probably here that I should find something valuable.

There were a lot of letters. Mostly they were typewritten, and they came from addresses scattered all over the east and south coast, from Herne Bay to Eastbourne and Brighton. They seemed for the most part to refer to deals in something totally unspecified. They merely said this sort of thing: “I was very well satisfied with the last consignment. I enclose five pounds in cash. Will you please send a repeat order, and arrange for delivery as before?” That was one of the letters, from an address in Hove. It might, on the surface, look harmless enough.

Anything at all in the way of raw materials or other goods might, indeed, be covered by the letter. But equally possibly the letter might refer to cocaine or hashish or some such dangerous drug.

I realised, of course, that I could not expect to find here a letter which said, in as many words, that the money was paid for a drug. But I thought that the gentry we were up against had obviously worked out a sort of formula for the letters. They were almost all couched in practically identical terms.

There did not seem to be much to learn here. Apart from these letters there was nothing really suspicious. There were a few letters that seemed to be purely personal—references to holidays, relations, weddings, and all the other usual adjuncts of personal correspondence abounded. I had hoped that there might be something in the nature of account books, but there was nothing of the kind. No doubt these would be kept somewhere safely under lock and key.

I had not time to spare, otherwise I would have gone very carefully through the business letters and noted all the names and addresses involved; but these would have taken a long time, and in any event Shelley would no doubt be able to get hold of them when he wanted them.

I edged my way towards the door again. This time I knew well enough that I had a rather dangerous move ahead of me. I put my hand on the door-knob, turned it silently, and opened the door just a crack. Then I paused. It was just as well that I did so, for I could hear footsteps coming down the corridor.

I stood still, as if rooted to the spot. Just what I should do if the stranger came into the room I was in, I did not know. I just hoped that he would pass by…and pass by he did. The footsteps, firm and decisive, went on past the door. I hadn't opened it widely enough to be able to look out—indeed, if I had done so, I should probably have invited the attention of the man outside. But I could listen, and when I heard those firm footsteps I was sure in my own mind that this was the big white chief we were after. Certainly the steps were not those of one of the drug addicts we wanted to save.

I was pretty sure that the steps of a man or woman in any way under the influence of drugs would have been halting and uneven, very unlike those of the man I had heard.

The footsteps went some distance along the corridor. A door opened and then closed with a slam. Then all was silent once more. The man had gone into a room further along, though, of course, I had no way of determining which room it was.

I thought that this was in some ways satisfactory, in some ways totally not so. Still, I was now more or less at liberty to get out into the corridor again.

Inch by inch I edged the door open. Soon I was outside. I shut the door gently and looked around me. There was no one in sight, and no indication that the corridor had in any way changed while I had been exploring in the room. But I thought that I was becoming aware of a change in the psychological atmosphere, almost as if I knew that I was being watched.

I looked about me more or less apprehensively, but could see no one. Nor could I see anywhere which could be a possible vantage point from which anyone could be watching me. It was all most annoying, but I didn't see that there was much that I could do about it. It might, of course, be that my nerves were feeling the strain of this dangerous work of exploration, though as a rule I am in no way a nervous person. But I certainly felt that I was under observation from somewhere, though where the watchful eyes might be I was unable to say.

I tried another door—opposite to that of the room from which I had just emerged. No luck there. This was locked. I wished that I had provided myself with some sort of pick-lock or skeleton keys; but I hadn't and there was nothing that I could do without such implements. After all, I was not an expert burglar, who would no doubt have been able to get those doors open with a penknife and a pin. I had to give up the locked rooms as totally impossible.

So I moved a little further along, in the direction which those firm footsteps had taken. I had tried to estimate just how far the man had gone, but had found it impossible to achieve anything more than the roughest of rough guesses. And that guess told me that as yet I was nowhere near the spot at which he had gone into a room.

Several more doors, in fact, awaited me before I came to the spot where I considered the man had left the corridor. The only way I could get on with my work of exploration was to work steadily along the rooms as I passed them. This I proceeded to do, though now without much confidence that they would lead me to anything really worth while in the way of information or evidence that Shelley would find useful.

Many of the doors were locked. Here, as before, I was completely stumped. Those which were unlocked opened into rooms that seemed to be innocuous enough. One was a lounge, not unlike that which I had seen at the beginning of my excursion down this corridor. Another was a dining-room, with a fine old round oak table, set out ready for a dinner for four—and a dinner which was intended to be a pretty big meal, judging by the array of cutlery and the sherry, port, and brandy glasses which flanked the knives and forks.

I wondered who was intending to dine there that night. I wondered, too, if we should manage to get hold of them before that dinner took place.

I was still working my way along the lengthy and silent corridor. I was, indeed, more than a little surprised that I had been allowed to get that far without any sort of interruption. When I remembered that previously there had been almost a continuous flow of customers, in and out of the curtained doorway that now lay some distance behind me, it seemed to me queer that none—except the one man I had heard, and I was sure that he was not a customer—had come into the corridor since my first entry.

I was suspicious about it, actually. I thought that they must somehow have seen me, and were just giving me enough rope to hang myself, while turning off the tap of visitors, so to speak, so that I should get deeper and deeper into the recesses of this odd old pub. This feeling of suspicion tended to deepen my previous feeling that I was being watched. I shrugged my shoulders, as if to rid myself of the feeling of nervousness; but the nervousness would not be forced away.

Shelley had certainly given me a tough assignment. I wondered if, when he had cheerfully invited me to take this on, he had realised how tough it was. Still, there was no way to back out of it now. If I made my way back into the saloon bar, which was my way to freedom, and took the next bus back to Broadgate, I should be admitting ignominious defeat.

To admit defeat is something that no one likes to do. Besides, there was the undoubted fact that this might be the only way that I could get the information that would save Tim Foster from the gallows. I knew that my own life was now probably in danger, but, having come so far, I didn't see that I could help matters by being unduly cautious.

I reckoned that by now I should be somewhere near the spot at which the man I had heard had gone into a room. Just opposite me was a door. Was this the room that hid the secrets we were after? My heart thumped in my chest. This was, I thought, almost certainly the climax to which the events of the last two or three days had been building up.

I put my hand on the doorknob and paused. Everything was silent. From the saloon bar that I had left I could hear a faint sound of laughter. It was not easy to envisage the happy cheerfulness that I had left behind. I had ventured into a nightmare kind of world, from which there was no way out.

I turned the handle and put my ear to the door. Not a sound came from inside. I pushed the door gently. The hinges creaked slightly as the door opened.

I looked inside. The room was a rather cosy little study. Bookshelves lined the walls, and in one corner there was a curtained alcove which no doubt hid the window. The room was in complete darkness save for a solitary desk-lamp which stood on a table on the far side. No one was there, but I could smell the smoke of a Turkish cigarette which had very recently been smoked in there.

I took a pace forward. My nerves were tingling now. That consciousness of being watched had increased until I thought it was a practical certainty. But I could still see no one. That, indeed, was not surprising. The room was so dim and distant that it was not easy even to imagine that it was ever light and airy.

I shut the door quietly behind me. This was the crucial moment, I told myself. I made my way over to the table on which the desk-lamp was standing. With every pace my apprehension increased, though I could still see no one who might be watching me.

On every side there seemed to be advancing shadows. I looked around with each step. It did not appear to be possible that, if anyone was going to attack me, they would be able to do so without my knowledge. I grasped the cold butt of the revolver in my blazer pocket. That weapon gave me the only touch of reassurance that I had.

On the table there were some papers, kept in place by means of a stone sphinx. I lifted the sphinx silently and put it on one side. I lifted the top layer of papers and glanced below. I was very surprised to see that they consisted of newspaper clippings—and clippings of my contributions to
The Daily Wire.
This at once resolved all the doubts that had been in my mind. There could be no question that this was the place where the murderer had been hiding. He was reading what I had written about the crimes. I felt subtly flattered that he had thought it worth while keeping my hastily-telephoned material. It looked as if he had thought that I was on the track of something.

Then…a hard metal tube, no doubt the barrel of a weapon of some sort, was pressed into the small of my back. I had, in glancing at those press clippings, for a moment relaxed my vigilance.