Hide My Eyes (27 page)

“I won’t frighten him!” Picot drew his narrow coat round his hips and turned up his collar. “I’d have to shout to make myself heard against this perishing rain.”

He plunged out into the downpour and disappeared in
the
direction of Edge Street. Luke waited for a while. The road gave every appearance of being empty. All the houses were dark and the police discreetly out of sight. Finally he sighed and grinned towards the shadow which was Mr. Campion.

“I hope you’re comfortable, captain. This may take all night.”

The thin man hunched his shoulders. “I was thinking how amazingly like any other big game hunt it is, except that here one is spared any guilty feeling about being secretly on the side of the animal,” he remarked. “There’s something reptilian about this particular quarry of yours, Charles. Tortuous, dexterous, and very near the ground. Contrary to my usual reaction, I rather hope this chap will hang.”

Luke grunted. “Hang! Everybody talks to me about hanging,” he exploded. “How am I going to
charge
him, that’s what’s worrying me.”

There was silence while Mr. Campion stared out at the drowned faces of the houses opposite.

“How very extraordinary,” he said at last. “I hadn’t noticed it. Nothing quite jells, does it?”

“Exactly.” Luke made it a growl. “Every lead I pull out is as thin as a bit of cotton. There are hundreds of strings, but nothing that promises to plait up into a rope. The man is careful and he’s tidy, just like I prophesied this morning.”

“What will you do? Take him in and question him and hope for the best?”

“It’s all I can do.” The Superintendent kicked the stucco with his heel. “Anything may turn up at any moment. The lab boys may be lucky. The drinking club girl may come across with some trinket which can be traced. The bullet in the lawyer may match those in the Church Row shooting. We may get positive identification of the waxworks in the ’bus from all five witnesses. But so far every clue relates to a different crime, and whereas we might try to prove method we might also come an unholy cropper doing it. He’ll have a slap-up defence, remember.”

“Who will see to that? The newspapers?”

“Or the old lady.”

“Dear me.” Mr. Campion was apt to use the term when shaken. “He could get clean away.”

“Over my dead body.” Luke spoke grimly. “We’ve had one little break and Donne has stayed at Tailor Street to investigate it. The commissionaire in the vestibule at the solicitor’s office turns out to have been employed in his youth as a spotter at the Casino at Le Moulin. All gambling houses have these chaps, who are specially trained to remember a face whatever disguise its owner adopts, so that banned gamblers may be slung out without trouble. If by chance he took a good look at the delivery man he will be able to pick him out at an identity parade. That could be enough to convict, all other things being equal. But the old boy would have to be very sound in the box.”

“Suppose you get the gun?”

“That would do it. That’s why I’m sitting so quiet. If Hawker doesn’t get wind we’re after him he may keep it on him. If he smells a rat he’ll ditch it first thing. There are a lot of ifs, too many.”

Mr. Campion considered. “Very often this kind of criminal is betrayed,” he ventured.

“I don’t see who could do it.” Luke indicated that the thought had been in his mind. “I am very much afraid that he’s that rare bloke who is not dependent on any one or fond of anyone. You can’t be betrayed by someone you’ve never trusted.”

“What about an enemy?”

Luke stood up. “There’s just a chance, but only if it’s someone he’s never suspected, and I should say he’s a character who suspects everyone. Hullo, see who this is?”

He took a step forward as Chief Inspector Donne stepped swiftly out of the rain into the porch. They could not see his face.

“Did he come across?” Luke’s voice was husky.

“The commissionaire? Oh yes, he thinks he’d know the vanman again.” Donne sounded surprisingly casual. “He’s very old and quaggly, though, poor chap. I don’t think he’ll live till the trial. This has been a terrific shock to him. I’ve sent him home with his daughter and told her to put
him
to bed. But don’t worry, Super, we’ve got Hawker. He’s in the bag once we get our hands on him.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Luke was suspicious. “Something turned up?”

“Yes.” Donne emitted a long breath. “The damnedest thing. I’d just finished with the old man and was feeling pretty doubtful about developments when a message came through from the sub-station in Siddon Street. The proprietor of a small restaurant just across the road from the Royal Albert Music Hall had brought in the dead solicitor’s wallet which had been left on a table in his shop by a customer who just got up and walked away after taking all the money and a couple of letters out of it. The rest was intact.”

“Phillipson’s wallet? I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t blame you. It’s not credible.” Donne had forgotten all his affectations and was a plain policeman, very nearly incoherent with excitement. “But his name and address were all over it. That’s how we got it so soon.”

“Can anyone there remember the customer?”

“Oh, it’s Hawker all right. The waitress and her mother who minds the urns say they could swear to him. They noticed him particularly because he put on some sort of act. They say he was frightened by a letter he read. After he went out two young working chaps, who were facing him in the eatery, spoke about him. They are regular customers. They’d know him too. He gave himself away completely and utterly. He must have had a brainstorm.”

Luke began to laugh softly in the moist darkness.

“There you are, Campion,” he said. “Who betrayed him? Friend or enemy?”

“The only man he didn’t suspect, at any rate,” said Mr. Campion.

Chapter 21

TETHER’S END

UP IN THE
gay room which looked so homely with the old woman sleeping heavily in her chair, Gerry went on with his preparations. He was in a state of mind which was new to him. The suppressed excitement of the morning had left him quiet and intelligent at first but now a fresh change had taken place and he had become clumsy, his body feeling heavy and unwilling to obey, as in a nightmare.

Although convinced that he had all the time in the world, he was trying to hurry but was finding it very difficult. The black shadows under his skin had intensified. His clothes hung upon his stiffening muscles and there was a sweat on his forehead like a mould. He kept his eyes away from Polly now, turning his head like a sulking child whenever he passed her.

Yet so far all had gone fairly well. With both door and window sealed, the little chamber was already growing airless and the fire was burning blue and very low. In an hour, perhaps less, he would let the flame die and then the gas, insidious and lethal, could pour out into the room.

He looked down at the stove for a moment and then crossed to the door and turned to survey the scene. The little adjustments he had made to the original scheme to meet the new circumstances were satisfactory enough. The chair drawn up on the opposite side of the hearth to Polly’s own looked as if it had always been there, and he had put an occasional table beside it to hold the second beaker. He felt sure he had nothing to fear. With reasonable luck the tragedy must appear the most natural of accidents. An old woman and her unsuspecting visitor chatting over the fire, unaware that the door had swung shut behind them. Any coroner’s jury, after hearing of the gas official’s warning, would bring in misadventure, adding the usual rider drawing public attention to
the
dangers of imperfect ventilation, and another accident in the home would make a half day’s wonder in the press.

Gerry opened the door and stood listening at the foot of the stairs leading to the upper floor. The house was quite quiet in its cage of hissing rain. He hesitated and his thought was quite apparent as he glanced over his shoulder towards the room where the soft cushion he had chosen lay ready on the table. Upstairs the girl was doubtless in her first deep sleep.

He made a movement, paused, glanced down at his hands, and appeared to change his mind. It was clear that he found the improvised plan, which had been made necessary by the accident of Annabelle’s visit, difficult or perhaps even distasteful, and he was reluctant to implement it until the last moment.

At length he went back to the room, set his own empty glass and Polly’s beaker on the tray ready to take down, resumed his raincoat and strapped the belt tightly round his ribs as he liked to wear it.

Just before he took up the tray he felt in his pockets and missed the gun. Incredulous astonishment appeared in his eyes, but cleared at once as he glanced over at Polly and smiled with the same half-amused exasperation with which he had watched her on that other rainy night when she had stood in his path and he had sent a taxi to take her out of his way.

He found the weapon at once. He knew exactly where it would be. He opened the glass cupboard, lifted the lid of the tureen and took it out, together with the handful of assorted documents under it. Polly was a creature of habit and this was the place where she always hid the things she did not want to lose but was yet a little ashamed of keeping. He had seen her slip the trifles there a hundred times.

The yield on this occasion was much as he had thought it might be and included a wad of raffle tickets for a working man’s club draw, bought at the door, a treatise on vitamins to restore energy from the packaging of a patent medicine, and a current driving licence renewed every year although she did not own a car and had not driven since she came south.

He put them back, his mouth twisting suddenly out of control. He remembered her so vividly. Then, thrusting the gun back in his pocket, he took up the tray and went swiftly down to the kitchen.

The room welcomed him with its warmth and faint smells of food and ironing, and he took his time washing the glass, polishing it, and when he set it back in the cupboard he held it with the cloth. He rinsed the beaker very thoroughly indeed and made it dirty again immediately with some dregs of milk which he found in the saucepan on the draining board. And that too he held and wiped with the cloth when he replaced it on the tray to take upstairs again.

His next problem was the boiler. This square coke-burning box of cream enamel matched the stove beside it and they were both crowded into the original square hearth where the Victorian range had once stood. Gerry opened the door at the bottom and found that, as he had feared, the fire was dead. The ragged jacket which he had crammed into the top whilst he was waiting for Polly to come home had stopped the draught completely.

He got up cursing, and went over to the cupboard beneath the sink where he found a half used packet of the old-fashioned firelighters which she always used. They were pale brown slabs of greasy wax which looked like fudge and smelled like turpentine and were used broken up into small pieces and lit directly beneath the solid fuel.

He prised the jacket out of the top of the boiler, filled the cavity with coke which he found waiting in a tall thin galvanised hod or scoop by the stove, and spent the next few minutes and a third of the lighters getting it to burn again. Once he was sure of it he got up, dusted his hands, and gave his attention to the jacket which lay, a smouldering mass, upon the shining black top of the closed stove.

He could not be sure if it was actually burning or if it had merely retained some of the smoke from the original fire, and he prodded it dubiously. It was warm but by no means hot and the padding on the shoulders looked indestructible.

He was turning the garment over in an attempt to find out if any part of it was alight when his hand touched something
bulky
in the inside breast pocket. A sudden stab of apprehension touched his heart and, with colour flooding savagely into his face, he put in his hand and drew out a roll of notes and Polly’s letters to Matt Phillipson, both of which he had taken from the dead man’s wallet while he was sitting in the café. He remembered he had put them in his coat as soon as the waitress had warned him about displaying the money, and he had not thought of either of them since. From that instant they had vanished from his mind as completely as if a sponge had wiped them off a plate.

He stood holding his breath, realisation breaking over him in a wave.

The wallet. Where was it?

To him the most terrifying thing was that he knew, he knew quite well. He had known all the time. He knew he had walked directly out of the café, leaving the leather folder behind him on the table, and he had done it almost but not quite deliberately. Only the finest veil of unawareness had hung between him and that suicidal act.

He shied away from the certainty in trembling fury and searched through every other pocket both in the jacket and in the clothes he wore, and finally opened the boiler-plate again and, with a gesture which he knew was futile, thrust his bare hand into the coke.

At last he became very quiet. His shoulders were hunched and all his movements became a little smaller as if he was shrinking into himself as the old seem to do. He took up the jacket and the firelighters and pushed them together into the empty coke hod, and turned from the stove. His glance travelled slowly across the room to come to rest on the dark window sprinkled with raindrops, and in that instant his eyes met another pair of eyes looking in.

Sergeant Picot, who had been watching from the yard ever since the light had appeared in the kitchen, stepped back at once and would have taken his oath on it that he had not been seen.

Gerry gave no sign of alarm but he slid the paper money and the letters into the hod which he was carrying and walked on smoothly to the door with it, where he turned up
the
switch. Then he drew his gun, and, with that in his right hand and the scoop containing the smouldering jacket in his left, he crept back to the window.

There is always a certain amount of light from a city sky, but while he could just make his way about the house by the faint glow from the window, the garden, lying low between high walls, was in complete darkness, and out there he could see nothing.