The Toff on Fire (7 page)

 

 

Where there had been the hempen rope and the miniature gallows arm, the holed top hat, the cuckoo clock, the guns and knives, the poisons, the nylon stocking and the other trophies of the hunt, there was only the bare wall and a few fittings which looked bare and woebegone; as if the wall was aware that life had been stripped from it. In places the cream coloured wall-paper had faded. Here and there nails stuck out. The wooden back of a small box which had held three tubes of poison, used by a doctor who had killed three wives, had been broken. A litter of odd bits and pieces of fittings were on the floor. That was all.

To Rollison, it was a kind of sacrilege, so stunning and unexpected that at first he could only stand and stare. Last night –
this very morning
– he had stood here and talked about so many of the trophies, touching them with the pride and fondness which one felt in old friends.

He said in a strangled voice: “One day I'll put his skull up there.”

He kept staring. It was a great physical effort to move round, turning his back on the bare wall, and to go into the lounge hall. He saw the contraption which had been put just above the door, saw how delicately the trip-arm was poised – when the door opened a foot, it would push the arm, and—

What?

He took three long strides towards it as if, in his rage, he would wrench the booby trap down. A yard away, he stopped abruptly. He moistened his lips, and then moved much more slowly and cautiously, fetched a chair, and stood on it. Now he could look down on the booby trap. The incendiary shell was about the size of an egg, and was actually egg-shaped; the shell itself looked fragile. He didn't know what was in it, but felt quite sure that the man outside was right, and that if this fell and struck him, or the floor, it would explode. And it would spread fire and death; no man would have pretended to be so frightened as the man outside.

He lifted the ‘egg' down, held it in the palm of his hand, and then stepped off the chair. At the last moment, the chair wobbled. He drew in a sharp hissing breath. The ‘egg' rolled a little in his palm, but didn't fall; he kept his head, and did not grip it tightly. When he reached the floor, he was in a cold sweat again, and stood staring at the thing for fully ten seconds. Then he looked round, trying to decide the safest place to put it. There was nowhere in here. He went into the bedroom, took a pillow off his bed and tossed the pillow on top of the wardrobe, using his left hand for all this. Then he climbed up on another chair and deposited the ‘egg' on the pillow. At least it wouldn't fall by accident, or topple over if anyone pushed the wardrobe.

He went back into the big room, glanced at the wall, and smoothed his forehead. When he opened the door, he was half prepared for trouble, and his hand was about the gun in his pocket, but there was only the man on the floor; wriggling. He was very close to the edge of the staircase.

Rollison pulled him in by the collar of his coat, dragged him across the hall and into the big room. Then he shut the front door, went back, undid the tie and pulled the man to his feet. He stood swaying.

“Did you take those things?”

“Ye-ye-yes.”

“Doctor's orders?”

Gulp. “Yes.”

“Passed on by Maggie?”

“Yes, I—Rollison—”

“Why take them if you were getting ready to burn the place down?”

“First—first we were told to take everything off the wall; it wasn't until afterwards that—that we had to lay the egg, we—” the man couldn't go on.

“How did you get the second order?”

“One of—one of the Doc's runners brought it; you—you don't seem to know a thing about the Doc.”

“Tell me,” Rollison invited.

He was feeling a little less tense; but very little. He hadn't slept for nearly thirty-two hours, and there had been the succession of shocks, none greater than the discovery of the old couple in their old world home. He was at a stage when he knew that unless he was very careful he would make some appalling mistake. He needed rest, and also time to think much more clearly – and he needed to know much, much more about the Doc. This man told him a little, mostly confirmation of what Grice had said, although with a few added items; for instance, that the Doc used runners who relayed messages which often came at third, fourth or fifth hand. The Doc had succeeded in covering his own trail so that he baffled not only the police, but the men who worked for him.

Rollison questioned the man for ten minutes, but learned little else. His name was Galloway, and letters in his pocket were addressed to J. Galloway, 51 Crane Street, Fulham. His driving licence had the same details. He knew his partner as Jack, but didn't know his surname, and he'd met him by appointment; certainly the Doc did not let anyone know too much.

Rollison took him into Jolly's bedroom, where there was a large wardrobe, made Galloway get inside and locked the door on him. It had been used as a temporary prison before, and there was no danger that the man would get out. He moved back into the big room, went across to the cocktail cabinet, and poured himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. As the soda was squirting, the telephone bell rang.

Grice?

He glared across, in no mood to talk to anyone; but there was no sense in that. He picked up the receiver, and barked: “Rollison.”

A girl said, in a startled way: “Eh?” He knew that it was Esmeralda, and the last thing he wanted was to exchange light badinage with her; but he had to be civil.

“This is Richard Rollison—”

“But Lothario,” protested Esmeralda, “you sound as if you've failed to make a conquest for
months.”

“I don't forget you that easily,” said Rollison, and for once he silenced Esmeralda. “Where are you speaking from?”

“Jane's house. I thought—”

“How's the baby?”

Esmeralda answered in a different, lighter tone, as if she was now talking about something which really mattered. The change was almost startling, and it brought Rollison his first moment's relaxation since he had reached Scotland Yard.

“Oh, he's
sweet,”
said Esmeralda. “He's so tiny, it's hard to believe he'll grow up to be a—well, a grown-up. I haven't had much to do with babies, but if they're all like this I think I'll have to get better acquainted.” She laughed as if she was coming out of a kind of trance. “Rolly, how did you sleep?”

“I didn't, I had to go out,” said Rollison, “and I'm so tired now that I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“Poor, sweet Lothario,” sympathised Esmeralda, “and I had to choose this minute to worry you. When do you think you will have had enough sleep?”

“Supposing I call you?”

“Do that,” agreed Esmeralda, with surprising mildness, “but make a note of my flat telephone number; I've arranged to go back to Shepherd Market. It's Mayfair 91321.” She paused while Rollison scribbled. “Got that?”

“Yes, thanks,” said Rollison, “I'll call you some time tonight.”

He heard her laugh as she rang off, and felt irritated, but that was as much with himself as with the girl.

He remembered what little he knew about her – partly from gossip, partly from what she had told him last night. She had thought herself likely to be wealthy all her life, but her parents had died leaving little money. Rather than sponge too much on her richer relatives, the Wylies, Esmeralda had modelled a little for reputable artists and photographers, had worked as a mannequin, had tried unsuccessfully to get on to the stage.

It was not exactly a unique story.

Nor was the tale of murder.

He could not get the sight of the old couple at Rose Cottage out of his mind. Why had anyone, the Doc or any human being, thought it necessary to snuff out their lives as if it did not matter?

Who was the Doc?

Why had he talked of driving him, the Toff, out of the East End? Was it simply to avenge pretty Jessica Gay? How right was Grice in believing that there were people in the East End who believed that he, Rollison, had failed them? The East End seemed a long way off, but to Rollison it was as much the heart of London as was Mayfair. He felt a longing to go back there, to meet old friends by the dozen, to prove Grice wrong, to walk along the narrow, mean streets past the houses which had withstood the years and the bombing.

He made himself think of other things, and glared at the window, for no good reason, and tried to decide on the best thing to do next. Above everything else he wanted a reliable report from the East End on the Doc, and Ebbutt was the best source

Why had Ebbutt been so cool?

“I'd better have forty winks,” Rollison said. “If I tackle Maggie or anyone else in this shape, I'll make a hash of it.”

At any other time he would have asked Ebbutt to send men to watch Maggie's hotel and Maggie herself, but Grice's talk of distrust was too vivid in his mind. He had to tell the police, or else let Maggie wait for an hour or two; and certainly he had to rest.

He went into his bedroom, glanced up at the top of the wardrobe, and suddenly wondered whether he could have been hoaxed. No; that man had shown genuine terror. He loosened his bow tie and collar, kicked off his shoes, and dropped on to the bed. Outside, the clear October sunlight showed that it was still no more than midday. Lying on his back, he telephoned Grice, not to say what had happened but to ask him whether the Wylies' home was being guarded yet.

“Yes, all laid on,” Grice assured him.

“Fine,” said Rollison. “Thanks. Now I'm going to have forty winks.”

He rang off, telling himself that he could tell Grice more when Galloway had been in the wardrobe for a few hours; he might talk more freely, then, and so give Rollison more that he could tell Grice.

What else?

There was this ‘Maggie'; his next job was to visit her. There was the baby, who should be quite safe now. There were the two fugitives from the Doc, Evie and Dan, who might now be his prisoners, and who might now be dead.

There were the trophies.

He had never realised how much they had meant to him. It had been easy to scoff at himself and the hobby of collecting, and at Jolly, his man, who had first disapproved of the trophy wall and finally become its curator. But now they were gone, almost certainly destroyed—

Had he any reason for thinking that?

There was no need to take them away to destroy them, that could have been done in the flat. So why had they been removed? He found himself wondering more about that, until it threatened to become an obsession. Then, with no warning at all, he dropped off to sleep.

While he was asleep, many people were thinking about him.

There was Esmeralda, sitting back in a taxi with a suitcase beside her, being taken from the Wylies' Mayfair home to her flat in Shepherd Market. She looked very
chic
and sweet; she sat with her knees close together and her hands folded demurely in her lap, and she watched the whirl of London traffic wide-eyed, as if she had never seen anything like it in her life; but there was another expression in her eyes, a kind of wicked mischief.

There was Jane Wylie.

She was in the spare room which had once been her own children's nursery, on the first floor of a large house in Mayfair, not ten minutes' walk away from Gresham Terrace. The crib in which the baby slept was an old one. She stood looking down at the sleeping child, and her expression had the softness common to all women when looking at their own children, but to few when they are looking at the children of others. In the room were photographs of her own three boys and the family – John, twenty-seven when the first child had been born, forty-one when the last had been, forty-nine now. And there were her own pictures also showing the passing years.

There was Grice, talking to three C.I.D. men about the Rose Cottage murder; the Chief Constable of Surrey had called the Yard in.

There was a little, insignificant-looking man sitting in the corner of a third-class carriage on the way from Birmingham to London. He looked for all the world like a gentleman's gentleman, and that was not surprising, for that was what he was. He wore a black coat and striped trousers, and a bowler hat and furled umbrella were in the rack above his head. His once brown hair, grey now except for streaks here and there, was brushed as if lovingly across his high forehead, his face was lined and wrinkled, like that of an elderly man who had once been fat, and had lost weight. In losing weight, he appeared to have acquired a quality of sadness, which showed in his doleful, soulful brown eyes.

This was Jolly, who served the Toff, on his way to Gresham Terrace.

During the three hours while Rollison slept, all of these people thought a great deal about him. So did the Doc. So did men who served the Doc. So did Maggie, who had been warned that the Toff was likely to come to see her.

The child did not think at all, of course, but lay sleeping.

Jane Wylie, at three o'clock that afternoon, had a bridge party, and was out of the Throgmorton Square house, but among the staff was a children's nurse-turned-cook, who was probably even more capable than Wylie's wife.

It was the parlourmaid at the house who opened the door, just after three o'clock, to a good-looking young man who said that he had come to give the television its quarterly servicing. This was done regularly, and there were two television sets, one in the drawing-room on the first floor – across the landing from the nursery – and one in the servants' quarters.

“Better fix madame's set first,” the maid said, “then you can come down to the kitchen and have a cup of tea while you're doing ours.”

“Suits me fine,” the young man said, “or it would do, if I had time.” He grinned – and as the maid opened her mouth to scream, he dropped a cloth over her head and pulled it tight.

She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled.