The Executioners Read online

  He recognised Chief Inspector Lomax, from the laboratory. In his right hand was an iron bar – the one which Joe Mason had used. A label was tied to it, for identification.

  Lomax, mildly startled by the intensity of the three men’s attention, noting the Commander close behind him, said defensively: “Here’s your iron bar, Mr. West – no trace of hair spray. And here are the hairs – no trace of fracture or bruising, but they’re thick with hair spray, both under chemical test and under the microscope. It’s one of the new, so-called non-lacquer sprays. That what you need to know?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alarm

  Roger felt his nerves tensing with excitement. The laboratory man sensed the sensation his news had caused, and twisted round to see Coppell’s hand stretched out for the piece of iron piping. Coppell took it, carefully testing its weight. All three men stared at Roger, as if at an oracle.

  “The burned papers, we now know, were drawings, and we have a faked assault,” he said softly. “Rachel del Monde wasn’t struck with that bar. She loosened her hair and sprawled over the desk in an attempt to give the impression of an attack. I didn’t think it very convincing at the time.”

  “Better pick her up,” Coppell said.

  Kane began to say: “No!” but broke off; no one could doubt that he stopped only because it was Coppell who had spoken.

  “If we don’t get a move on, she’ll have flown,” Frisby said. He touched the telephone. “Who do you want to do it?”

  “No one yet,” said Roger.

  “Have you gone mad?” Coppell demanded. “Once she talks to us—”

  “What makes you think she’ll talk?”

  “They all do.”

  “Not this woman,” Roger said, with absolute conviction. His leg throbbed, his head throbbed, yet his mind still felt crystal clear. “We want her watched and followed without her knowing anything about it. We want her background, history, everything we can find out about her.” He was staring at Frisby. “We want to know the relationship between her and Medlake. We don’t want her to know we suspect her.”

  Frisby was disapproving, Kane discreetly delighted, Coppell unconvinced.

  “You think she let Mason into the house, don’t you?”

  Roger couldn’t sit still any longer, but hoisted himself to his feet and moved towards the window; walking was more painful even than he had feared. He turned back towards his desk.

  “I think we should consider the possibility that she arranged for Mason to come to Blenheim Terrace so as to fake the attack on her, and to fake or to make an attack on Medlake while I was there. The purpose would be obvious – to convince me of the menace of men like Mason. The thing could have been laid on after I’d made the appointment. If this is what happened, there’s no way of telling whether Medlake was in the know or not. His manner with me was certainly strained – it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a party to such a plot. But I don’t think it would be any easier to make him talk than to make Rachel del Monde talk. If Joe Mason could sing we’d have a better chance, but he can’t for a while. In any case Medlake has powerful friends. We have to make sure we don’t make any mistakes where he is concerned. I think we should give them all the rope they want, keep them under close surveillance, and start the search for the missing men. We want to trace their disappearance and the drawings back to Medlake and his secretary, not the other way round.” After a pause, Roger went on harshly: “If we ever move against that couple, we want to make sure they can’t slip through our fingers.”

  Coppell said brusquely: “All right, have it your own way.” He moved towards the door. “But find those missing men, find out what’s going on, understand? I don’t like the situation at all.”

  Kane stepped forward and opened the door for him. He went out, growling over his shoulder: “Look after that leg of yours.”

  The door closed.

  “So he’s human,” the laboratory man remarked faintly. “Who’d have thought it?”

  Roger hardly heard him.

  “Now we really have to move,” he said, I’ll go round to the back room myself and see the Press. We want photographs of all the missing men, on television and in the newspapers. By tomorrow morning we want those faces to be known to everyone in the country.”

  Kane said quietly: “May I speak, sir?”

  “‘What is it?”

  “You know what an impression this will make, don’t you?”

  “Certainly I do. It will make half the country suspect that we think these men who have murdered once, might do it again, and that’s why we’re after them. So every eye will be skinned. We’ll be flooded with reports that they’ve been seen from Glasgow down to Penzance at one and the same time. We’d better warn all County and County Borough Forces to be ready for the avalanche.”

  He limped towards the door.

  Five minutes later, in the small office opening on to the Embankment, he met a crowd of seventeen newspapermen, then went outside to let a television crew take pictures, talking briskly and to the point all the rime.

  From the moment he finished, the story went out …

  By seven o’clock, there was the first television news flash with photographs of three of the missing men. By nine-thirty, each channel had shown all seven photographs. By half past ten, the first editions of the morning papers were hurtling north, east and westwards, by nine o’clock the next morning practically every man, woman and child in Great Britain knew of the search.

  And rumours spread …

  They spread from the drab, grey streets of the East End of London to the huge new blocks of flats, built after Nazi bombs had made so many people homeless. They spread along the waterfront of London’s river, from the Pool of London between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, where ships with cargoes from every corner of the world were worked – where Boyden, one of the missing men, had been a docker. They crept away from the river, to the tiny homes of the Old Kent Road, among the costers and the pearly kings and their courts; Smith, another of the missing men, had been a costermonger; but now that he was not there to push it, his barrow was idle. They sped along the wider streets to the ancient borough of Camberwell, across the green, and eventually to Clapham Common with the near-by Victorian houses of solid grey stone – Leep had lived in such a house.

  There was no stopping them.

  From the mean, little houses to the solid middle-class homes of Fulham, to the quaint mewses and the graceful crescents where Pepys had once lived, where, it was said, one of those missing had killed a man caught rifling a safe. On, on, they flew, through streets of Mayfair and the green pastures of the parks – in one of which a man now missing had strangled the girl who was to bear his child.

  The rumours and the half-uttered fears touched the newly built suburbs with their fresh bright houses and gay gardens, Regent’s Park and the fine crescents built by Nash – in one of which Sir Solomon Medlake lived and Rachel del Monde worked.

  And they spread to the common-land of Hampstead over the sparkling pond and past the homes of millionaires, all standing in their plots of almost priceless land.

  News of them was pushed through the letter box of Number 21, Link Street,

  Cecil Chayter walked along the passage as the radio announced A Thought For The Day, as Julie put the second batch of cut bread into the toaster, and as Paul appeared at the top of the stairs, shrugging himself into his jacket. Cecil pulled the thickly folded newspapers out of the letter box, opening them as he turned. The Daily Globe and the Daily Telegraph came every day, the one folded inside the other. He spread them out, looked down – and stopped as suddenly as if he had been pole-axed,

  “My God,” he breathed.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Paul sharply.

  “Did you call?” Julie inquired, coming to the door of the kitchen. She caught sight of Cecil, and her cheeks paled. “Cecil!”

  Cecil Chayter looked down on the photographs of seven men, spread across the top of the front page,
just beneath the huge headline

  HAVE YOU SEEN THESE FACES?

  Each face was clear and easy to recognise, each had obviously been touched up a little, and beneath each was a name – James Boyden – Michael Leep – Geoffrey Waters – Arthur Sanderson – James Smith – Augustine de Vaux – Alec Bull—

  Across half of the front page beneath these names, the story began:

  Last night Scotland Yard launched the strangest hunt in the history of crime. Seven men, each a convicted murderer, each of whom has paid his debt to society according to the law, disappeared. The police are anxious to find them. Each man, they say, might be in danger – and each man might be able to give them information about a bizarre, even a grotesque, campaign of vengeance which has been launched against at least seven men reprieved after they had been sentenced to death before the law of tins country was changed.

  IF YOU HAVE SEEN ANY ONE OF THESE FACES YOU SHOULD REPORT TO SCOTLAND YARD (WHITEHALL 1212) OR TO YOUR NEAREST POLICE STATION, WITHOUT DELAY.

  At the bottom of this, at the foot of the three column spread, there were some bold italics:

  For full story and further details – see pages 8 and 9.

  Cecil Chayter stared down at the newspaper; his hands were unsteady as he ruffled feverishly through the pages. Paul stood on one side of him, Julie on the other. There were some of the menacing drawings and many more smaller photographs spread across the top of page 8, from one of which his own eyes stared up at him. Beneath it – as beneath all the pictures – there was a potted version of what he had done.

  Cecil Chayter, aged 45, convicted for the murder of a girl he claimed to have mistaken for his fiancée whom he thought was having an affair with another man. Sentenced to death by Mr. Justice Whatley. Sentence commuted to imprisonment for life by The Rt. Hon. Cavendish Law, then Home Secretary. Released on May 17th this year after serving twenty years and fourteen days of the sentence. Home: N.W. London.

  For a long time the only sound was the rustling of the newspaper. It seemed an age before Julie managed to say: “Oh, dear God, it’s wicked.”

  “Wicked?” Paul stuttered. “It’s hideous.”

  Cecil didn’t speak.

  “Cecil—” Julie began.

  “Do be quiet, Julie, let him speak for himself,” Paul said harshly. “Go on, Cecil, what do you think of it?”

  Cecil Chayter said: “I—I can’t begin to think.”

  “My God, you can’t! You never could. If you’d thought at all you would never—”

  “Paul—” Julie began, pleading.

  “I told you to be quiet.” Paul glowered at her. “Now are you satisfied. Write to my brother, offer a home to my brother, be patient with my brother—and this is what happens. Every friend I have will see this, every customer. It’s hideous, I tell you.”

  “Paul!” exclaimed Julie, “please don’t make it worse.”

  “It couldn’t be worse!”

  “Paul, how can you be so cruel?”

  “Cruel? I’ve done everything I could, I—”

  “It’s all right,” Cecil said heavily. “I’ll go.”

  “You can’t go!” Julie cried.

  “Now it’s too late he’s beginning to think,” Paul said viciously. “If these bloody killers had been hanged—” he broke off, passed a hand in front of his eyes, and muttered: “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t know what I was saying. It’s been on my mind so much. Cecil, I’m terribly sorry …”

  Julie asked herself: “What’s changed him?”

  One moment Paul was raging against Cecil, the next he was full of sympathy for him. It isn’t like Paul, thought Julie, but she was so relieved that the pressure was eased from Cecil that all other considerations were swept from her mind. She laid a hand on Cecil’s arm, and said gently: “It will soon be over, my dear. Don’t worry, it will soon be over.”

  “It will never be over,” Cecil Chayter told himself despairingly.

  He felt more hopeless and despondent than ever in his life, even the love for him which glowed in Julie’s eyes, even the sustaining power of her understanding, her compassion, made no difference. This was the end of hope. His past would haunt him as long as he lived. There could be no happiness, no contentment, no forgetfulness, only the fear of recognition and some strange and deadly retribution. There was nothing he could do, no way in which he could expiate his sins. He would injure everyone he touched, everyone – even Julie. He would have to go, soon, Cecil knew; go a long way away, as far as he possibly could – far enough for Julie not to be directly affected – and then kill himself. It was the only thing left he could do for himself, it was all he could ever do for her.

  He felt her hand on his arm.

  Paul had turned on his heel, and was moving towards the kitchen.

  Suddenly, from the sitting-room overlooking the street, came the crash of breaking glass; and another crash; and another; and above these sounds, a woman’s raucous scream.

  “Murderer!” the woman cried. “Murderer! They should have hanged you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Friends

  Detective Officer Brown, of the N.W. Division, was both worried and anxious. He eyed the crowd outside Number 21, Link Street with an apprehensive frown. There were thirty people at least, and some were already restive. A police constable was stationed opposite the Chayters’ house, big, stolid, a deterrent to most, but Brown didn’t like the way three or four long-haired youths hung about, laughing, as at some secret design, among themselves.

  Four men and two women drew up in a shiny black Rolls-Royce, got out, and gathered in a circle, standing near the house but a little apart from the crowd; their formation was rather like that of a prayer meeting, or a Salvation Army group. They talked among themselves, in low-pitched voices, taking no notice of anybody else. The leader was a solid-looking man with the big white beard of an Old Testament prophet. At every execution in the past thirty years, he had led the prayers for the condemned man, outside the gaol gates, and used the hanging as another weapon with which to fight capital punishment. He was Jeremiah Taylor, known to every Member of Parliament and a host of others for his passionate denunciation of what he called legal murder. He did not appear to notice when another car turned into the street, slowed down, and stopped fifty yards away. Two men and two women climbed out, and one of them opened the boot of the car and took out a wooden box.

  The constable drew near Brown.

  “Think we need any reinforcements?”

  “A patrol car is due round every ten minutes, we’ll wait for that.”

  “Right,” the constable said. Then his voice rose. “Now what’s on?”

  One of the men from the car stood on the box, and began to speak in a loud, carrying voice, so that no one in the crowd could fail to hear.

  “It’s a crying shame, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a crying shame.” He paused, while some of the crowd turned towards him. “Here we have the front page of every newspaper in the land”—he held a copy of the Daily Globe high above his head—“full of this sordid story of murderers. They are being glorified, that’s the truth – they are being glorified by this publicity when not one of them should ever have been released from prison.”

  A woman called hysterically: “An eye for an eye!”

  “Each one of these men is a convicted murderer, who …”

  “Ought to be dead!” screeched the second woman from the car.

  “… As it is, the whole of the resources of Scotland Yard have been mobilised to find men who should never have been released, I believe …”

  “Chayter should have been hanged!”

  A burst of raucous laughter came from the long-haired teenagers. The constable looked troubled as he moved towards the speaker on the box, whose voice was rising to a point near frenzy.

  “… The law ought to be changed back. Allowing such men as these to roam free in our lovely land is a crime in itself …”

  “Give it ’em, Sam!” called
one of the youths.

  “Loverly—loverly!” called a second.

  “… preventing the police from carrying out their proper duties of protecting the citizens and their property …”

  One of the women suddenly swung round from the speaker, took something out of her bag, and hurled it at the Chayters’ window. It was a brick. The crash of breaking glass was like an explosion, and the four youths began a wild cheering. The policeman braced himself and strode towards the window, where the woman stood shaking her fist. Brown glanced up and down, anxiously, then went to the uniformed man’s aid.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Madam,” the policeman said to the woman. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  “You leave me alone!” the woman cried. “You ought to be arresting that bloody murderer in there, not me.”

  The policeman touched her arm.

  “Now, Madam, please—”

  “Leave her alone!” the nearest teenager cried. “Take yer filthy hands off ’er.”

  “Leave ’er alone!” screeched another.

  All four of the youths moved towards the policeman. Brown cast another almost despairing look in search of the patrol car, then strode up to the policeman, but before he could reach him, the little prayer-group began to move in single file, forcing their way through the crowd as they chanted a hymn. Jeremiah Taylor, steady as a rock, led the singing in a voice both deep and penetrating.

  As they walked, they unfurled banners and held them above their heads. All the familiar Abolitionist slogans were there:

  Hanging is a crime against God and Man.

  Hanging is Barbarism.

  Thou shall not kill.

  Legal murder is still murder.

  While men are hanged, all men’s hands are stained with blood.

  They went on singing.

  The woman was trying to free herself from the policeman’s grasp, but she could not. One of the youths said more savagely: “Let the old girl go.”