Inspector West Takes Charge (7 page)

‘Who did the talking?’

‘Mrs Prendergast. Potter nodded a lot and looked like a cold fish. Is he always like that?’

‘When he wants to be,’ Roger said. ‘Was anything in the way of a clear-cut proposition put to you?’

‘No.’ Harrington threw the half-smoked cigarette into the fire. ‘That’s what intrigued me most. They hinted at my taking an interest in
Dreem,
pointing out that Claude was the only member of the family left, and that he had no head for business as well as no desire to enter it. I had a feeling that some kind of bribe was round the corner, but they didn’t get round to it.’

‘When was this meeting?’

‘Yesterday morning.’

‘How did you know where to find Claude?’

‘I’m working at Kingston,’ said Harrington. ‘I rang up the London house, thinking I could go there to see him. He wasn’t there, but they gave me this as his address. It’s not far from Kingston, so I decided to come on the off chance. I found Claude and your friend Lessing, who was very amiable but not informative, and they told me that you’d be able to explain more than they could. I was getting pretty tired of the mystery business before you arrived. It looked to me like another attempt to involve me.’

It all sounded reasonable, and Harrington mode it seem convincing.

The door opened, and the old servant announced Dr Tenby. Tenby was a short and stocky man, florid of face and abrupt in manner. He nodded to Roger and Harrington, bowed to Janet, and went upstairs. Soon afterwards, Mark came down.

As he came into the room, a scream broke the near silence. It went through Roger like a knife, and Janet jumped wildly.

It was high-pitched; obviously from a woman; and came from above their heads. Roger broke into a run for the door. Harrington beat Mark to it by a foot. Janet stayed by the fire, white-faced, fearful of a repetition.

There was none, but someone was crying near the landing. Hurried footsteps thudded. Roger was halfway up the stairs when he saw one of the servants, her hands over her face.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What’s the matter?’

She took her hands away, and stared at him, so pale that she looked bloodless.

‘A man,’ she gasped. ‘The study –’

‘Come on!’ said Harrington.

He was ahead of Roger when they reached the landing, then turned and hesitated.

‘Second door on the right,’ Mark called.

Claude’s room was to the left. From it Dr Tenby showed himself. He disappeared from sight again when he saw the others. The old servant hovered about the landing as Roger turned the handle of the study door.

He thrust it open, stood aside for a moment, then ducked and ran in. The others followed in a rush.

The study window was open wide. The light was on. They saw the top of a man’s head above the window-sill, and a pair of hands clinging on to the sill. Harrington went forward with Roger at his heels, but before they could touch the hands the man had dropped from sight.

‘Got a torch?’ demanded Harrington.

Roger, peering out and down, saw the figure of the man darting towards the big lawn, just visible in the yellow light. Roger climbed out, lowered himself gradually as the intruder had done. It was second nature to notice that the study had been ransacked. He saw a torch in Mark’s hand, and Harrington heading for the window. Then Roger hung from the windowsill. He didn’t know how far it was, but he dropped.

Soft soil took his weight, and flower stems broke. His knees doubled but with little or no jar. He turned at once. The light was bright enough to show the man disappearing into a shrubbery perhaps thirty feet away.

Roger plunged after him.

He heard the rustling in the shrubbery, the cracking of twigs, the swish of shrubs. He reached the bushes, while the noises were still audible, but then his own progress made listening difficult, and muffled other sounds. Near the drive a torch light was shining; Lampard’s policeman?

There was a patch of uneven meadowland between him and the road. Harrington caught him up, lighting their way with the torch which he had obtained. It was difficult going. Hollows and mounds made them stumble from side to side. Their progress was fairly quiet now, and occasionally they could hear the man in front.

They heard him padding along the hard surface of the road. Roger realized that he was heading for the gate through which he and Janet had driven. Breathing heavily, he and Harrington turned left as they reached the road. Suddenly their quarry came into view, for a faint glow of light showed ahead of him.

‘Car,’ gasped Harrington.

The car was coming along the road. Its headlights picked out the white-painted gates, and the running figure of a small man. Roger felt acutely disappointed because it was not Charlie Clay; Charlie could do a lot of things, but not make himself as small as that.

There had been two men at Mark’s place last night.

The car itself did not appear in view. Its engine was loud enough to deaden the sound of their footsteps as the fugitive reached the gates and ran across the road. The car engine revved and roared.

‘My God!’ cried Harrington. ‘Look out, look!’

The car came into sight. Its radiator struck the running man, and sent him flying, not sideways but downwards on to the road. There was a sickening, crunching sound. The car lurched, and then went on. A scream, that echoed high and wide about them, drowned the whine of the engine as the car gathered speed.

It was out of sight when Harrington and Roger reached the hideous remnants of what had been a man.

Experiences of London in the blitz had hardened Roger; but the suddenness and the deliberate brutality of the crime sickened him. Harrington switched off the torch, and said in a shaky voice: ‘I’d like to get my hands on that driver.’

‘Will you go back to the house and telephone the police? The local Inspector is on the way, but you’ll find someone at headquarters.’ He gave the number. ‘You all right?’

‘If you’re worrying about me, don’t,’ Harrington said. ‘Your friend Lessing should be here in a moment.’

The shock had made Roger forget Mark. Now he looked about him, but there was no sign of anyone. Roger borrowed Harrington’s torch, and began to examine the area. The smashed body was in the middle of the road. Nothing could pass.

‘I’ll have to move him,’ Roger said. ‘Shine your torch, and then keep it pointing down the road to stop anyone who comes along.’

‘We’ll hear them coming,’ Harrington said. ‘I’ll help you.’

Before they had started, the whine of a car came out of the quiet, and the twin orbs of sidelights and a single headlamp masked according to regulations came into sight, on the shortcut from Guildford.

It was Lampard, with a sergeant. They were shaken by the killing, and talked in low voices as the body was moved, on a car rug, to the side of the narrow road. Soon the sergeant drove along the road to fetch the policeman on duty. He came back with two. Lampard stationed one with a torch to divert traffic at the actual point of impact. No other cars arrived until a squad of men summoned by telephone, came out from Guildford.

It grew cold. A wind which had been gentle at first soon stiffened. Flashlights lit up the hedges and trees as photographs were taken, a floodlight was run from a police car. Roger stamped his feet against the cold, and wished Mark would show up. Harrington returned to the house with Lampard’s sergeant, with orders to have the study door locked until Lampard and the photographers arrived.

Roger began to suffer a kind of delayed shock. He had no doubt that the car driver had waited for the fugitive, and run him down in cold blood.

Lampard made little comment, beyond: ‘We’ll get the swine.’

In the floodlight the body, covered with an old canvas sheet, looked dark and sinister. Lampard joined Roger.

‘Did you get a good look at him?’

‘I got a look.’

‘Didn’t recognize him, did you?’

Roger said; ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’ He knelt down and pulled the sheet away from the small face, which was unmarked. A little hooked nose, tiny cauliflower ears, a weak chin; this was a burglar named Abie Fenton. In Roger’s mind, Potter’s voice seemed to be speaking insidiously. On the bus and at the Yard Potter had implicated Abie Fenton, not Clay.

Now Abie Fenton was beyond everyone’s reach.

‘Why,
I
know him,’ said Lampard, with a rare flush of excitement ‘Half a minute. He’s been on wanted posters Fenton. That’s right, Fenton. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Roger agreed.

He was thinking: the three Prendergasts, now Fenton, and God knows who next.

He thought with a stab of fear - where the hell is Mark?

The glow of a cigarette in the darkness caught Mark Lessing’s attention. He was twenty yards or so behind Roger and Harrington, for his coat had caught on a hook, and he had been a long time getting through the window. The glow puzzled him, but as he passed it he realized what it was. He did not draw up at once, but ran on for a few yards, then stepped on to the grass verge. He made no sound as he retraced his steps, peering through the dark night until the red glow showed again. It was farther away from the road than when he had first seen it, moving slowly across the thicket. The noise of a car engine sounded, followed by the squealing of brakes, but he did not let himself be distracted.

He took advantage of the car noises to hurry forward. He needed to go faster than his quarry, who was walking diagonally away.

The glow curved an arc towards the ground, and remained there, fading slowly.

They were at the edge of the copse, and a field stretched beyond, with the man’s figure discernible. Narrowing his eyes, Mark could see the head and shoulders. They stopped moving; a faint sound told Mark the other was climbing over a stile.

Mark followed into an open field.

The other’s footsteps made a padding sound on the soft and springy turf. The wind swept across the field, piercing, unpleasant.

Mark was thirty yards or more behind his quarry, and the wind was blowing into his face; there was little chance that he would be heard, certainly none that the man would hear him.

A second stile was different from the first. High hedges rose on either side. Mark caught his coat on the right hand side, and the jerk almost threw him. The other was walking more quickly along the road away from the gates and from Roger’s party.

Mark stepped into the roadway.

He heard a rustle of movement, half-turned, and saw a shadowy figure close behind him. He struck out, but before he struck the other, felt a heavy blow on the back of his head. He threw his hands up to keep off a second blow and plunged forward, not losing consciousness but with a furious pain in his head. The second blow came, jolting his forearm. He threw himself forward, fear almost at screaming point.

He was aware of voices. A man flung himself at him, seeking for his throat. He remembered vividly the moment when he had been attacked in bed, believed that this was the same man. The pressure increased remorselessly. Mark felt his lungs swelling, tried to breathe, gasped and struggled.

He felt blackness sweeping over him like a great wave.

His two assailants dragged him into the hedge, and a torch shone into his face.

Charlie Clay said: ‘It’s the b... Lessing.’

‘He’s going to get his before long.’

‘We wanted the other so-and-so.’ Clay swore under his breath, and stirred Mark with his foot. ‘What do we do with him?’

‘Leave him,’ said the other man. ‘He didn’t recognize us.’

‘What would the Guv’nor say?’

‘Let’s lift him.’

Clay bent his back and the other helped to hoist Mark on to Clay’s shoulders. Clay staggered under the weight but recovered and began to walk along the road. Despite the burden he walked more quickly than his companion. They walked for five minutes before reaching a narrow path leading off the road. On either side stretched gorse-clad land, and here and there the black outline of fir trees stood against the stars.

Beneath their feet the fine sand of the path gave way. They slipped and slithered. Clay’s breathing grew laboured, but he stuck it until the path began to slope upwards. He put Mark down.

‘Let ‘im roll down into the ditch.’

‘Go easy,’ the other said urgently.

Clay laid Mark on the side of the path and deliberately kicked him into a ditch. He lay huddled in it, out of sight, and unlikely to be discovered even by day in this stretch of country, which was wild and desolate.

‘Tie ‘is ‘ands and feet,’ Clay ordered.

That was done, and a handkerchief was forced roughly into Mark’s mouth. Then the others went on, by the light of the stars. The path led to a wicket gate and a small cottage. They passed this, reached a wide drive, and approached a house with a long roof showing unevenly against the star-lit sky. They went to a side door, which the smaller man opened with a key.

‘Let’s have some light,’ said Charlie Clay.

They stood blinking at one another in bright light, and then went in different directions. Charlie walked heavily along a red-tiled passage towards a low, oak-beamed hall, and up a flight of oak stairs which turned in the middle at a half landing. He had to duck to avoid hitting his head against the beams, and his shoulders hunched when he reached the landing and went along the main one of two passages.

He tapped at an iron-studded door.

Potter’s thin voice came: ‘Come in.’

Potter was sitting in a high-backed chair a finely carved monk’s seat. He was behind a leather-topped desk. His dark clothes and high collar, and the gloom in the room, which was lighted only by the flames from a blazing log fire in a red-brick fireplace, put the clock back. Potter looked like a soul-less judiciary, an image of Bloody Jefferies. The firelight made one side of his face red, and set the other in shadow, just a pale blur.

Clay gulped, and did not look towards the fireplace. Sitting there in a more modern chair was a man whose face was entirely hidden in shadow, but whose eyes glinted red in the dancing fire.

‘Yes, Clay?’ said Potter.

‘Never got him,’ Clay said, after a deep breath. ‘Got the Lessing b . . .’