Death in Albert Park (3 page)

“Unless she has gone down to her sister at Sevenoaks.”

“Any reason why she should?”

“None. She said she was coming straight home. She would have had to get a car for the journey. We have only the one and that's in the garage.”

“We can cross that off then. At any rate for the time being. Anything else?”

“There was this murder,” said John Ribbing miserably.

“I don't think we need worry about that, for the moment, anyway. Lightning does not strike in the same place twice.”

“But if…”

“We must find your wife, doctor, not suppose anything of that sort. Now, her description please …”

It had been a ghastly night for Ribbing. The report concerning Turrell was, when it came through, negative, as the young detective said. He had satisfactorily accounted for his movements that evening. There was nothing to do but wait and thank heaven that the children were away at school.

It was not until nearly 9 o'clock in the morning that Lionel Goggins told him the truth.

“I'll come round at once,” he said in the words he had so often used to the anxious relatives of patients.

But the police were before him. He was in time to recognize the body of Joyce where it still lay pathetically in the rain, not much protected by a privet hedge; then he was led indoors by Lionel Goggins and given brandy.

The investigation this time was on simpler lines for Dyke did not waste much attention on Joyce and her background, but concentrated on details which might help to find the killer. Some enquiries were made by one of Dyke's assistants, however, and these brought to light a rather sordid state of affairs. Raymond Turrell at first denied that his friendship with Joyce was more than casual. He had met her one morning last autumn when they had both been shopping at a famous department store in Kensington and had seen one another from time to time since. Pressed further he admitted that
Joyce had been to his flat and finally that they were lovers. But he denied that they had any plans for the future. Joyce had her obligations to her husband and children and so far as he knew had never thought of leaving them. Asked if Dr. Ribbing knew of the affair, he hedged somewhat, then said ‘Probably'. What did he mean by that? He meant that Joyce had told him she believed her husband had found out, though he had not said anything yet. He had last seen Joyce a week ago and they had not discussed the murder of Hester Starkey.

“I've never been much interested in murder cases,” said Turrell. “Anyway, that seemed a very ordinary one. Women are always getting stabbed or strangled. It was nothing to do with us.”

“And now?”

“It's different, of course,” said Turrell sadly.

Joyce's sister in Sevenoaks was also interviewed. She had known of Joyce's affair with Turrell but had not taken it very seriously. It would have blown over. Joyce was very fond of her husband and children.

Bridge at Mrs. WhitehilPs that evening had lasted from 4:30 till 8 o'clock. The players were all women, Mrs. Whitehill, Joyce Ribbing, Ada Goggins and Mrs. WhitehilPs niece Viola. The time of Joyce's leaving the house was not noted exactly but it was fixed at between 8:45 and 9 o'clock because Mrs. Whitehill remembered the clock in the hall striking just after Joyce said she really must fly. Joyce had left ‘quite cheerful, quite herself,' making some little joking remark about neglecting her husband and had hurried away. Mrs. Goggins? She had stayed almost another hour, ‘having something to eat' with Mrs. Whitehill. She lived only a few doors away.

Among the residents in Crabtree Avenue, if not among the investigating police, a question began to be asked. Why had nothing been heard of either murder at the time? In the second particularly, when Joyce knew what had happened in this avenue three weeks earlier, surely she must have screamed when she became aware of someone following her? Could it be that this someone was known to her, that she had perhaps waited for him to catch her up, that the Stabber (as he had come to be called) was actually a resident in the avenue or someone known to most of them?

Dyke thought it wise to dispel this to some extent by giving a piece of information to John Ribbing. Examination of the body and certain minutiae round the mouth and neck suggested that Joyce had been gagged before she was stabbed. Perhaps someone had approached her and before she could call for help had muffled her with a woollen scarf (a grey woollen scarf, it appeared from microscopic examination) which he held ready, and had then stabbed her.

Though it was admitted, when this was known, that the Stabber might be someone previously unseen by his victims, the idea that it might be a local resident was not completely abandoned and some ugly suspicions began to grow. There were householders in Crabtree Avenue who ‘kept themselves to themselves' and even on the way to the station in the morning did not join in general greetings and discussion of last night's television programmes. There were people about whom nothing was known, and people of whom it could be said ‘I've always thought there was
something,
' and people who were rather disliked for their aloofness or failure to conform to the social standards of the avenue. So instead of these prejudices being forgotten in the common
emergency, the fact that the Stabber might be a local gave them point.

A great deal of sympathy went to Dr. Ribbing, who had always been a popular man, and there were bitter remarks about the police when it was known that he had been questioned twice.

“A pity they don't get this madman with the knife instead of pestering the poor doctor with questions,” was said more than once.

Ribbing had, of course, been able to account for all his movements that evening but even Detective Superintendent Dyke seemed to think this was a formality. He questioned other residents with as much pertinacity as before, and with as little result. No one had seen a stranger in the avenue that evening, no one had heard an unusual sound, and no strange car was reported to have been waiting in the neighbourhood. The weapon had not been found though medical examination decided that ‘almost certainly' it was the weapon used for the murder of Hester Starkey.

So now a picture was beginning to form in the minds of the more imaginative residents and it was a very horrible one. Someone, almost certainly a man, waited on dark or misty nights among the trees of Crabtree Avenue, or perhaps in one of the more shadowed gardens, or among the trees by the school gates at the top of the avenue. He was armed with a butcher's knife, a powerful blade at least ten inches in length. He was either a raving madman, or, more probably and more fearfully, a schizophrenic, a Jekyll-and-Hyde, who could appear perfectly normal at other times. He was waiting for a woman to appear alone at a time when the street was deserted. Any woman, it was thought, for the only thing that Hester Starkey and Joyce Ribbing
had in common was that both were a little less than average in height. His mania was to strike, to kill, and no more.

A Mr. Tuckman, a city man at number 24, was reputed to be something of a psychologist and was listened to on this.

“Although the urge is certainly pathological, and must have some sexual basis, this is no ordinary sex-maniac. The bodies were not mutilated in any way.”

But this gave no reassurance to the residents who were growing increasingly apprehensive. The police were much abused though no one could suggest what might have been done to prevent the second murder, unless it was to make an arrest after the first.

“If they had done that,” boomed Goggins a little obviously, “Joyce Ribbing would be alive today.”

Precautions were, of course, taken by Dyke, though the nature of these were not revealed. A special patrol of the uniformed police covered the avenue from lighting-up time till the small hours of the morning, and there were other steps secretly taken to safeguard those who had to use the avenue at night. But the residents themselves were their own chief protection.

On the night after Joyce Ribbing's funeral, Alec Tuckman called together what he called a nucleus of those concerned and suggested that the men should form themselves into a body of Vigilantes. These would be available “to escort women, to keep their eyes and ears open, and to try to buck up the police a bit,” so that the district could be itself again. He, Whitehill, (an occulist and rather an obscure character sent by his wife to Tuckman's meeting,) Goggins, a man named Heatherwell from number 32, and a young insurance agent named Gates who lived with his aged parents at
number 52, agreed to this and it was hoped to increase the force.

The Crabtree Vigilantes received their rebuffs, however. The Press, though not openly ridiculing them, gave them such prominence that they could not carry out their simple programme unmolested, and the fact that local residents had been forced to form a Vigilante society was made to reflect on the police. When Turn-wright, a somewhat vulgar character from number 28, was asked to join, he retorted with ill-timed flippancy, his reply being considered in the worst possible taste.

“Vigilantes?” he said to Goggins. “What the hell for? For twenty years I've been trying to get rid of my old woman—d'you think I'm going to spoil my chances now?”

But in spite of such set-backs the Vigilantes set to work and there was a good deal of telephoning between their houses and even a search, by three of them with torches, of front gardens in the avenue on a particularly murky night.

All this did not relieve the very real horror of the situation. There really was some kind of madman about and he had evidently chosen this quiet avenue for his assassinations. There really was danger, particularly it would seem for women, but also, it might be, for men. A certain apprehension surrounded the Park. One side of Crabtree Avenue was open to it and though the railings were close together, pointed and tall, it was felt that they would not be sufficient to exclude the kind of demon the Stabber might be. A certain confusion perhaps existed between those two lethal Jacks of the last century, Spring-Heel Jack and Jack the Ripper. The Stabber was rapidly becoming a legend.

“The only way I can see in which he may be caught,” said Tuckman importantly, “is
in flagrante delicto.
Jack the Ripper was never caught. A man who seeks only to
kill,
without any ulterior motive, is almost undiscover-able unless he can be taken in the act. None of the ordinary rules of detection apply.”

“In that case you think some other poor woman…”

“Not necessarily. We may be lucky enough to catch him before he does it.”

There was an unfortunate sequel to this. A few nights later when Tuckman, Whitehill and young Gates were making what Tuckman called a routine patrol of the avenue, they saw a ‘mysterious figure' ahead of them, a man in a felt hat and a raincoat which was buttoned high against the wet and driving wind. His movements from the first were highly questionable, he “seemed to materialize” from the trees near the school gates and start down the pavement in an abstracted way. When he approached the empty house the three Vigilantes stopped to watch him and when he actually pushed open the gate and disappeared into the garden they became tense and perhaps somewhat over-excited.

“We've got him,” whispered Tuckman. “He can't get out of there unless he has a key of the house or the side-door. Come on!”

They went and found the stranger standing on the overgrown small lawn of the empty house gazing about him. With a rush the three were upon him and in the scuffle the stranger went to the ground.

“Call the police!” shouted Tuckman.

“I
am
the police,” said the stranger mildly, from underneath young Gates.

And so it was. There were apologies and regrets for a ‘little misunderstanding' but the incident did nothing
to improve the already strained relations between the residents and the Law. Dyke became a somewhat rude and savage man. This was, he said, the
hell
of a case. There was nothing to get hold of and every prospect of another lethal attack on a woman. Not all the patrolling he could give to the district could eliminate the possibility of this and another corpse would blast his own reputation and that of the police. Yet what more could he do to prevent it? His only chance was to find some clue to the Stabber's identity and so far none, absolutely none, had come to light.

T
HE
third was … but before there was a third victim, the case aroused the interest of Carolus Deene.

This was scarcely to be wondered at, for the Stabber was the most widely discussed murderer since Christie. That case had reached headlines only after the victims were found and the murderer arrested; this received its daily measure of newsprint while the murders were still, as it were, going on, and newspapers could scarcely refrain from speculating on who might be the next unfortunate woman to be stabbed.

Crabtree Avenue, a few weeks before one of hundreds of ugly Victorian streets in the suburbs, had become famous and pictures of it had appeared in most of the national newspapers. Number 46, the Empty House, in the garden of which Hester Starkey's body had been discovered, first appeared and it was a matter of some disappointment that Number 18, the home of Lionel and Ada Goggins was almost a replica of it. Lionel Goggins who had discovered the second body in his front
garden had, however, looked solemnly out of news sheets.