The Bath Mysteries (31 page)

The distance was not great, and, late as the hour had grown, there were still lights burning in the house, one in the study, one in the room to the right of the front door – the drawing room, Bobby thought – and another in a smaller window just above the entrance.

The car drew up on the gravel drive before the front door. Their arrival must have been heard in the quietness of the night, but no notice was taken. Before the car had well stopped, one of the party was out and beating a loud summons with the knocker. There was no response. Bobby said:

“What's that? Do you hear?”

They listened. The local inspector said:

“No. Why? There's water running, that's all. Someone having a bath.”

He spoke carelessly, but to Bobby's ear that last word had grown to have a dark significance.

The man at the front door began again his loud hammering with the knocker, and Bobby, staring at the small lighted window above whence came that sound of running water, saw that, by gutter pipe and waste pipe and porch, access to it was possible. He took a short run, a leap; he began to climb desperately. He heard someone below shout, asking him what he thought he was doing. He heard with a queer distinctness his trouser leg rip as the cloth caught on a projecting nail, but he never knew till afterwards that it had torn the flesh as well. The gutter pipe tore away beneath his weight. He had only time to clutch desperately at the sill of the window above as the pipe bent slowly to the ground. He hoisted himself up to crouch on the sill, and, there balancing himself unsteadily, he smashed the window with his elbow. The tinkling glass fell inwards, a cloud of steam came out; through the opening he had made, he tumbled, scrambled, fell into the room.

Through wreaths of steam he could see Lawrence in the bath, staring blankly at him over its edge, half conscious, half fainting. Both the hot water and the cold were turned on, filling the bath from the taps, running off again by the overflow pipe, but not so quickly but that the floor was flooded. Vaguely, in his state of semi-consciousness, Lawrence was trying to lift himself above the lapping water. Twice his head had gone under. A third time, as Bobby projected himself through the window, it disappeared. Bobby seized him under the arms and dragged him up. His senses had again left him, and he sagged unconscious, unable to help himself. From below the clamorous knocking on the door sounded and then ceased. Bobby thought to himself that the door would not be opened, and that his companions could not follow by the way he had taken, since now the gutter pipe had broken away from its supports. With an effort that took all his strength, he dragged Lawrence from the bath, jerked him out to the slippery floor. The door of the room smashed open, and Beale stood there, a transformed, unrecognizable Beale, with wild, pale face, and eyes desperate and strange behind his heavy, gold-rimmed glasses. At the corners of his mouth had gathered a little scum of froth, and in one hand he held an automatic.

He fired – fired twice. But the steam in the room gathered on his glasses, baulking him, making his vision indistinct. One bullet grazed Bobby's left shoulder, and another, aimed lower, scored Lawrence's cheek with a long red scratch. They did no other harm, and for a split second Beale stopped to snatch off the glasses with the gathered steam on them that prevented his clear sight. In that moment Bobby grabbed at something near – only later did he know it was a jar of bath salts – and flung it almost at chance. It struck Beale on the shoulder, a glancing blow, but so far effective that his third shot was jerked sideways, and then Bobby, stooping so that the fourth shot went over his head, caught Beale in a Rugby tackle. On the floor, slippery with water, they both went down, and the automatic jerked from Beale's grasp and splashed into the bath.

For a moment they fought there on the swimming floor. The water had overtaken the capacity of the overflow now and was pouring out on the floor in a small steady stream. Behind them lay Lawrence's naked body, from which, now, all conscious life had gone. With all his natural, swift agility of movement Beale wriggled, fought, twisted. He got a hand to Bobby's throat, a knee to the pit of his stomach. Uttering a scream of triumph he wrenched himself free, rolled away, got to his feet again, ran from the room and across the landing to the stairs, still screaming, as he went, his hate and his despair. Close behind raced Bobby, clutching at the other's shoulder, his grasp still failing to connect. A third of the way down the stairs, when Bobby's hand was actually upon his shoulder though it had not yet closed, Beale seized the banister rail and flung himself over it and down into the passage beneath, miraculously alighting on his feet.

Bobby, unprepared for this maneuver, shot on, lost time before he could leap after him. The front door was beginning to give way under a roaring cascade of assault, but its lock still held. Beale, he had gained a second or two, dashed across the hall and into the drawing room. Bobby was scarce two yards behind. In the room, between a small occasional table and a large bureau in a recess by the wall, Mrs. Beale sat, her knitting in her hands, mechanically turning the heel of the sock she was at work on, as though all this clamour and sudden tumult into which the night had broken meant nothing to her. As busily, as evenly as ever, her long steel needles clicked as her hands moved to and fro, and the thought flashed into Bobby's mind:

“Did she know what was happening in the bathroom while she was sitting knitting here?” And the certain answer, “Yes,” responded on the instant.

Ignoring her utterly, as though she had been but another piece of furniture, Beale darted by her. He tore open the upper drawer of the bureau, snatched out two big automatics with one simultaneous gesture, turned snarlingly, a pistol in each hand. Bobby was so close behind, that, when Beale turned, the muzzles of the automatics nearly touched him. The front door lock had yielded to the attack upon it, and Bobby's companions were pouring into the hall, were even now upon the threshold, witnesses of what was about to happen before they had time to play their part. Bobby found himself vividly aware, as with actual physical vision of what was about to be, that, with the aid of those two big automatics he handled as a man well accustomed to their use, Beale could easily shoot them down in succession and then make his escape in safety to the hideaway it had been truly said he was certain to have prepared and ready.

From sheer voluptuous delight in the position, in the power of life and death he held in his outstretched hands, Beale hung back for the fraction of a second from pressing the triggers of his weapons. Well he knew, and gloated in the knowledge, that with the crooking of his fingers death would leap to his will, inevitable and plentiful and sure. With a look of such awful hate as Bobby had never known human features could display, Mrs. Beale half rose from her chair and dashed her knitting, needles and all, full in her husband's face.

That one instant of respite was all that was necessary. Before Beale had a chance to recover himself, even while his fingers on the triggers of his automatics began to send a double stream of bullets hopelessly astray, he was seized, tripped up, a prisoner.

“Close shave,” gasped one of the others of the party.

Mrs. Beale turned again all her attention to her knitting, straightening its somewhat tangled strands.

From the floor where he knelt by the side of the prisoner, gripping one wrist, tearing the second pistol from his other hand, Bobby said:

“The bathroom... quick... it's Lawrence there.”

He was unconscious when they found him, sprawling on the floor with the water still splashing over the bath's rim. They pulled him out, wrapped him in dry blankets, and the hastily summoned doctor declared that all he needed was rest and warmth; there was no sign of any serious injury. He was removed, accordingly, to the local hospital, where he was in fact only detained twenty-four hours, and Beale also was removed – though his detention was destined to be longer – while Mrs. Beale, having got her knitting straight again, resumed with care her task of turning the heel of the sock she was busy with.

Lawrence's story, when he was in a condition to tell it, was simple. He had come to give Beale that warning which he believed was necessary, the delay in giving which to Norris had been, he felt, holding himself morbidly responsible, the cause of Norris's unhappy fate. Dr. Beale, to whom he had never given a thought save as another prospective victim, he had decided must not be exposed to the same risk.

But Beale had failed to understand the motive for the other's visit. Lawrence's stumbling, confused explanation had been interpreted by him as a repetition of the hints of knowledge Norris had given, and Beale had supposed that underlying them was the same intention of forcing a share of the booty.

On his side, too, Lawrence had begun to catch glimpses of the truth in Beale's startled and menacing reaction to the warning the other was trying to give him.

“He said things I couldn't make out,” Lawrence explained, when he was questioned later on, “and he looked at me in a queer sort of way. I think I was beginning to understand, and then he said he would explain; and he told Mrs. Beale to bring some sherry and the whisky. I said I would have some whisky, and he poured it out. I felt queer at the first taste. I thought it was because it was so long since I had had any. I remember his saying I must sleep it off. I didn't want to, but he got hold of my arm and we went upstairs. The next thing I knew was someone hauling me out of the bath and water splashing all round.”

For a time Beale tried to maintain a defiant attitude. Lawrence, he protested, had merely come on a business visit and had asked to stay the night. He was having a bath before retiring, and possibly he had been affected by fumes or had fainted. At any rate, he, Ambrose Beale, knew nothing about it, and was not responsible for the state of his guest's health. When he heard the crash of breaking glass and knew intruders had broken in, naturally he supposed they were burglars, and he had attempted to defend himself, his wife, his goods, as any householder was entitled to do. For any misunderstanding, the violent entry made by the police was entirely to blame. That he had adopted the name of his late dear and intimate friend, Dr. Ambrose Beale, who had died in Australia, he would fully admit. It had been by his friend's own special request, since that friend had not wished a name he believed was destined to be illustrious to die out, and it might be added at once that the silly rumours about the manner of the genuine Dr. Beale's death – by drowning, while swimming in the open sea somewhere off the Queensland coast – were entirely without any foundation whatever. In any case there was no legal offense in adopting another name. As for the Berry, Quick Syndicate, he acknowledged freely his interest in it, and that the transactions entered in the books were all imaginary. The reason for that was that he was working out an elaborate system by which speculation on the Stock Exchange would be rendered scientifically certain so that enormous gains would infallibly result. For that, it was desirable to have machinery in readiness for instant action. Indeed, the man had an answer for everything, he waxed confident with the sheer unbelievable audacity of his statements – the secret by which acceptance and belief are often gained, since it is felt difficult to suppose that such claims can be made unless they are well founded – and only when he got to know that it was the wrong attaché case he had thrown into the river, and that the contents of the one he had taken from Norris's flat were in possession of the police, and held in testimony against him, only then did he perceive the hopelessness of his position and so fell into a sullen silence and a refusal to utter another word.

That evidence was in fact so strong that the trial became little more than a formality. The other charges against him were not proceeded with, the verdict of guilt in the Norris case being considered sufficient, and, that verdict once returned, he was sentenced and duly executed without even making an appeal.

Many rumours and stories were of course circulated concerning his activities, and for months no Sunday paper dreamed of going to press without some fresh “amazing” or “sensational” or “exclusive” disclosure of his past, generally hopelessly inaccurate, though once or twice fairly complete and correct accounts were given. But the papers were badly handicapped by official reticence, and by the firm refusal, in spite of the most tempting offers, of both Lawrence and of Alice to utter a single word. Chris Owen was more obliging, but then he knew very little, and Mrs. Ronnie went on a long cruise under an assumed name, and so avoided the attentions of the crime experts.

“If it hadn't been for the attaché case that the Magotty Meg woman got hold of, and for the proof that the hairs on the rubber truncheon were identical with those of Norris,” the Assistant Commissioner told the Home Secretary, who was still taking a personal and somewhat embarrassing interest in the case, “I don't know that we should have been able to prove a thing against Beale. He had taken the most careful precautions. It was certainly he who appeared as a witness at the inquests, growing beard and moustache for the occasion, and then shaving afterwards – a most effective form of disguise. That yarn he invented, too, of a friend of his, threw us completely off the track. We wasted a lot of time and energy over that, kept some of our best men busy when they ought to have been concentrating on what had happened here. We are so terribly short of staff,” said the Assistant Commissioner, with intention, reinforced by a heavy sigh, "we do need more men so badly.”

But the Home Secretary, who had heard that tale before – was used to it, indeed, as the accompanying chorus to every report every departmental chief made to him – offered no comment, and the Assistant Commissioner continued: “Even the panic attempt on Lawrence's life and the shooting on his arrest, he might have got away with. There was his wife, of course. We might have got something out of her, but I doubt it. It's plain she was the woman who passed as Mrs. Oliver, got up as much as possible to look like Mrs. Ronnie Owen. But she was entirely under her husband's control; it's doubtful how much she understood; and there's always the fact that she was his wife. Lord, how she hated him – hated and feared him. Yes, she might have talked, but I don't think so, and, if she had, it's an open question whether she would have been able to give us the legal proof the law will admit and a jury accept. Anyhow, we were all glad to leave her out. After all, she saved the lives of our men. Beale could, and would, have shot them all down but for her. No,” he concluded thoughtfully, “it's a fifty to one chance most of her evidence would have been ruled out as inadmissible – lawyers never enjoy themselves so much as when they're showing that the truth is inadmissible.”