Seven Days to Death Read online

  He wasn’t finished. .

  He grabbed at a beaker on the bench, trying to slide it along the bench toward the tube. Gideon saw it, grabbed, and snatched up the beaker. Smith, still staggering, went closer to Owens. Owens shot out a hand and grabbed his ankle; and Smith pitched forward, arms waving wildly, and the tube still within his reach. Gideon got between him and the bench. Smith fell heavily. Gideon, breathing very hard, went down, heaved the man over onto his stomach, and then chopped with the side of the hand at the nape of his neck. Smith lost consciousness as swiftly as a doused light goes out. The only sound was Owen’s gasping breath, Gideon’s hissing, and a clattering noise as someone else climbed in at the window. Gideon looked round to see Wilson, who was also gasping, and Trabert on the ladder just behind him.

  Gideon looked at the tube of nitro-glycerine.

  “What did we bring the fire unit for?” he asked. “We can do it just as well ourselves. Don’t start rocking the boat, or we’ll all go under.” He picked up the tube, looked round, and saw a small safe with a steel door standing open. Inside it were other tubes like this, as well as containers which held many things he didn’t recognize. Without appearing to take exceptional care, he carried the tube to the safe and saw that inside, on the bottom, there were a number of holes into which tubes like this could be placed so that there was no risk of knocking them down. “Funny thing,” he said heavily, “people live every day doing a job which would blow them to Kingdom Come if anything went wrong.”

  Other police were climbing in.

  Matt Owens was getting to his feet, and a hefty D.I. grabbed his arm.

  “Take it easy with Matt,” Gideon said; “if it hadn’t been for him we’d all be bits and pieces. Matt, if you go oh being sensible, we’ll get you off serious punishment for the break. If you take my advice you’ll see your sentence out quietly and give yourself a chance of getting along afterward; we’ll help you all we can after this. Had any food lately?”

  Owens looked desperately tired.

  “Hardly a bite since we got away,” he said hoarsely, “squeezed into a freight train, been halfway round the ruddy country.” He was shivering, only partly with cold, for he wore an old, tattered coat and beneath it what looked like a new pair of flannel trousers. “Jingo was drunk, Mr. Gideon; he put down half a pint of meths and then he found some alcohol in that bottle. He wouldn’t have been so crazy if he hadn’t been drunk.”

  “It’s a good thing you kept sober,” Gideon said with feeling. “We’ll get you a square meal before we send you home. Take him across to the cafe at the end of the road,” he added to two D.I.’s. “Keep him away from the newspapermen if you can.”

  “They don’t want Owens,” Trabert said, grinning and showing very big, shiny teeth. “They want you. Didn’t you know you’re-a hero?”

  There he was, too.

  Every late edition of the morning newspaper carried a photograph of Gideon, C.I.D. There were flamboyant accounts of what he had done during the night, as well as what he had done in the past. The headlines about Edmundsun and the prison escapes miraculously vanished. The Daily Globe spread itself with a leader on the daily dangers which faced the police, and cited the Gideon capture of Jingo Smith, the policeman who had stopped the New Bond Street raiders, and the Putney policeman who had rescued the woman and her child. It was enough to make Gideon purr; enough to make everyone at the Yard go about grinning, as if a big load had been lifted from everyone’s mind. To help, the weather turned not only warm but fine. May had come some weeks ahead of itself.

  That day, the fifth since the escape of the men from Millways, was one of the best Gideon had known for a long time. Small things went right. There were seven cases up for trial at the Old Bailey, with three of them doubtful in the outcome; the police knew they had the right man but weren’t sure they had a strong enough case. Each went smoothly, each man was found guilty. Birdy, the judge in Number One Court at the Old Bailey, must have read the newspapers; he included a few sentences of congratulation to the police at the end of the case which he’d been hearing for a week. Cummings alone was less happy; he felt more sure than ever that Elliott, Edmundsun’s manager, had also been Edmundsun’s accomplice, but seemed less confident that he would ever be able to prove it.

  About noon, on the fifth day, he came in to see Gideon.

  “Don’t really know that I ought to say this to you, sir,” he said, “but I get a nasty feeling about the whole job. A smell, if you know what I mean. As if Elliott’s covered up a cesspit and I can’t make him take the cover off. When are you seeing Mrs. Edmundsun, sir?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know that I should leave it too long, they might get at her.”

  Gideon said very slowly: “You serious?”

  “All I know, sir,” said Cummings, looking more flabby and pale and ill-at-ease than usual, “is that I’m not happy about it. I know it’s a bit tough trying to make her talk, with her husband only just buried, but if Elliott or anyone else is going to get at her, he won’t let sentiment stand in the way.”

  “I’ll go and see her now,” Gideon promised.

  That was easy. The Edmundsuns had lived in a block of flats in Bayswater, comfortable but not luxurious. Gideon went right away, on his own. A maid opened the door and let him in; he waited in a room which overlooked a garden, vivid green grass and wintry-looking trees, until Mrs. Edmundsun came in. He had only seen her from her photographs, and wasn’t really surprised that she looked not only different but much more attractive. She wasn’t exactly a beauty, but had a figure that didn’t come very often, and she had beautiful grey eyes.

  “I’d hoped that the police wouldn’t find it necessary to worry me again, Mr. Gideon,” she said, turning his card over in her fingers; and she left it at that, as if defying him to be brute enough to question a poor, defenceless woman.

  “We want to help,” Gideon said easily, “and one of the ways would be to clear your husband’s name, Mrs. Edmundsun. All through the investigation, he declared that he was innocent —”

  “And I’m sure he was.”

  “Well, there’s one way to establish it,”’ said Gideon, “and that’s by finding the people who are responsible. For the money is missing, you know, it was paid out on dummy hire-purchase agreements. Did he ever —”

  “I’ve told the police everything I can,” said Mrs. Edmundsun firmly. “And if you aren’t satisfied, Mr. Gideon, then I really ought to consult my solicitor. As if it isn’t bad enough to have lost...”

  Her eyes began to fill with tears.

  A woman in black, with a figure which the mourning dress wasn’t designed to disguise, and with those beautiful eyes and that soft voice, could be as unyielding as a brick wall. Gideon sensed it, and knew at once what was worrying Cummings. This woman was supposed to have been desperately in love with her husband; all the reports which had followed the news of his death suggested that; yet here she was as cool as if the tragedy had been a year ago, not a few days.

  What caused the change?

  Gideon left her, in a noncommittal way, with just enough on her mind to make her wonder whether he or another police officer would soon be back. As he reached the square and the warm sunshine fell upon him, he thought less about her than about Cummings. A man’s appearance could count heavily against him, and Cummings had that paunch, that flabby double chin, the pasty face, and those rather vague-looking eyes. Yet he had “smelled” something. Gideon knew, and everyone else with a flair for C.I.D. work realized it, that once in a while a man arrived with that “sense of smell” - someone who was sure a thing was wrong but couldn’t get his hands on the evidence. Cummings seemed to have it; and if he did, then his appearance mustn’t stand against him.

  “I’ll give him a few weeks on this job,” Gideon said to himself; “if he can get anything out of it, he’ll be set fair.”


  When Gideon reached the Yard, Smedd was waiting in his office, shoulders square, ginger hair bright in the sun, freckles showing up more noticeably than ever, brisk and decisive as he would always be. This was the way of it: not one but several major jobs to think about at the same time, everything to be noted and neatly pigeon-holed, ready to be brought out again when necessary.

  Gideon shook hands with Smedd, and didn’t show the hope that he suddenly felt. Would Smedd come in person, leaving his precious Division, unless he had news that worried him?

  “Sit down, and have a cigarette,” Gideon said. He wanted the man friendly, and felt better disposed toward him than he had at the beginning of the week: Smedd had finally confirmed that he was really thorough.

  “Thanks,” he said, and drew a little quickly, almost nervously, at his cigarette; a kind of mannerism. “I thought I’d have a word with you about this development personally, as I know of your interest.”

  “Good of you,” murmured Gideon.

  “I’ve got a witness who can help us about the cinema,” Smedd said. “Young chap, about Rose’s age, who went to that same performance. I’ve had a man at the cinema with the box-office girl, she recognized this boy as a regular twice-a-weeker.”

  “Yes?”

  “He said he saw Mary Rose by herself,” said Smedd, deliberately. “He swears black’s blue that she didn’t have anyone with her. Noticed her because he knows her slightly, in fact; I think he’s got one of those I-love-you-from-afar crushes.” That phrase sounded odd, in the brisk, clipped way in which Smedd spoke. “That’s all we want to clinch things, I think. I’ve asked everyone about that knife, and Rose didn’t say anything about it being lost. Can’t trace anyone who’s actually seen him with it since he’s supposed to have lost it,” Smedd went on candidly, “but that’s not evidence.”

  Yes, he was thorough.

  “Thing I wanted to check with you, Commander: shall I try to break the girl down now, get her to admit she was lying, or shall I wait until later? Rose is up for the second hearing on Tuesday; he’ll be committed for trial, of course.”

  Gideon said slowly, “I think the best thing is to make sure your new witness is absolutely reliable, and then save him for the trial. We’ll look for others, too - and mustn’t forget that the defence is going to search high and low for someone who saw them both, or for anyone who was told that knife was lost.”

  Smedd shook his head swiftly, rather like a ventriloquist’s puppet.

  “Take it from me, the defence is going for insanity,” he said. “They’ll know better than to try anything else. Thing is, I’d be happier if they weren’t going to put the sister up, lays a false trail - you know how it is. I’d like to let her know we know she’s lying, before the trial comes up.”

  “Well, there’s plenty of time,” Gideon said. “Won’t be up until June, end of May at the earliest. ‘ You certainly didn’t leave much to chance.”

  “It isn’t my habit to leave anything to chance.” said Smedd, almost tartly.

  Gideon didn’t know that at that moment the solicitor who was looking after William Rose’s interests was talking to Rose’s sister and his mother, in the small suburban house on the outskirts of the H5 Division. The solicitor, an elderly man with a lifetime’s experience, a rather tired manner and a shabby grey suit, was sitting in the front room, considering the mother, not Mary Rose. Mrs. Rose, at fifty-nine, looked nearer seventy: old, tired, so very, very sad.

  “What Mary must understand,” the solicitor said precisely, “is that the police will do everything to discredit her statement that she went with her brother to this picture house on the day and at the time in question. Now we need her as a reliable witness for the defence, we do not want her to be browbeaten by the prosecution and – ah – possibly caught out in a lie.” He shot a quick glance at Mary. Mary said, in a quiet, stubborn voice, “They can’t prove that I lied if I didn’t. I met Will in the High Street, and he told me he’d had a quarrel with Winnie and hardly knew what to do with himself, he was so upset. So I treated him to the pictures, because he hadn’t any money.” There was a long pause. Then: “Mary, did you really —” began her mother.

  And Gideon didn’t know that, just after one o’clock that day, Arthur Small was talking to Ruby Benson in the back of the shop in the Mile End Road. Two other assistants were attending to a customer, the door was closed, and the couple kept their voices very low. They were surrounded by dresses, coats and suits, hanging inside transparent plastic cabinets all around the room. Boxes, flat now, tissue paper and balls of string were on a table in the middle of this room.

  “Ruby, try not to worry so much,” Small said, pleadingly. “It’s making you ill, and what good will that do you or Liz? The police are bound to find young Syd sooner or later, they’re bound to.”

  “If you knew him,” Ruby said in a flat voice, “you wouldn’t talk like that. He’s taken the boy away from me, he’s taken my own son.”

  Small, moving nervously about the little room, picked up a packet of cigarettes, put a cigarette to his lips, but didn’t light it. It got very wet almost at once.

  “Ruby, you know how I feel about you, don’t you? I love you more than I love anything or anybody, but—but it isn’t any use pretending about anything, is it? If young Syd can be turned against you as easily as that, then he was never very close to you, was he? He was always closer to his father.” When Ruby didn’t answer, Small tried to light the cigarette, it wouldn’t draw. He dropped it into an ashtray, and went on unhappily: “Ruby, I didn’t mean to be unkind, but I can’t bear to see you torture yourself like this. I – I’ll make it up to you, you know that. If we can bring young Syd round, that’ll be wonderful; but if we can’t - well, we’ve still got Liz, and you and me together.”

  Ruby just looked at him.

  He was older than he seemed at first sight: nearing fifty. He was rather small and white and precise, as reliable and as trustworthy as a man could be. Behind his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes were a clear grey, steadfast, pleading. Since she had known him, he had given her not only comfort but contentment.

  Now, out of her distress, she said,

  “I know, Art, but—but what good am I to you? While he’s alive I can’t even marry you, it’s not fair to you. You ought to go away and ...”

  “Don’t talk like that!” Small cried; his voice was louder and sharper, and it made her stop. He took her arms, firmly. “Now listen to me, and stop this nonsense. You’re getting hysterical. Supposing we can’t get married? We can live together and set up house, can’t we, and who’s going to care whether we’ve got the marriage lines or not? We’ve both got every right to happiness, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t take it. He’ll be in prison for at least twelve years, after this, and I don’t care what anyone says, it would be criminal for you to live on your own all that time. And – I’m – not – going – to – let – you.”

  His grip on her arms was very tight.

  Then, suddenly, they were close to each other; she was clinging to him desperately, and crying.

  Ten minutes later, she looked less haggard. Her eyes were still red from crying, but not so drawn and filled with shadows. He looked bright and perky, with a cigarette at his lips, also damp but at least giving off smoke.

  “That’s settled then,” he said briskly; “we start the day that he’s caught, and they can call it living in sin if they like. Now I must go along to see Rubenstein; if I can buy those dresses for twenty percent less than he’s asking, we should make a very good profit, and that’ll swell the commission.” He kissed her again and went out into the shop. The customer had gone, and the young assistants looked at him knowingly. He nodded to them, and went out. Nearby was a uniformed policeman, he was used to that. Nearby, also, was the plainclothesman from Scotland Yard, Abbott; Small was getting used to him. There were the usual pa
ssers-by, two or three of them looking at the window of the next-door shop; and on the pavement on the Aldgate side of the shop was the simple child, Simon, badly dressed, mouth gaping, drooling a little.

  No one ever took any notice of poor Simon.

  “Afternoon officer,” said Arthur Small to Abbott, “no news yet?”

  “Afraid there isn’t, Mr. Small.”

  “Between you and me, I’ll be glad for your sake when it’s over,” Small said. “You must find it very boring.” He had a bright look in his eyes and a perkier manner than ever, and Abbott guessed that he’d come to some kind of an agreement with Ruby Benson.

  “I get paid for it,” he said dryly.

  They were within a few feet of Simon, when the lad took a small milk bottle with a wide mouth from his pocket. There was liquid in it that wasn’t milk, but thick and oily-looking. Abbott saw that. He was near enough to strike the bottle aside, but he didn’t - because it was poor Simon, and because he did not even dream that Simon might have been put up to do this.

  There were some things that Simon could do well. He swung the bottle, ejecting a stream of liquid toward Arthur Small. That was the moment when Abbott realized what was happening. He cried out, and leaped forward. He felt burning spots on the back of his hand as he struck the boy’s arm aside. The bottle fell; and as it fell, Small clapped his hands to his face and began to scream.

  16. Hospital Case

  Gideon first heard the news when he came back from a late lunch in the pub in Cannon Row. He hadn’t meant to have a heavy lunch, but Superintendent Wrexall, the senior Superintendent at the Yard, ten years older than Gideon and due to retire at the end of the year, had suggested that they should lunch together; he had a “case” he wanted to talk over. Gideon didn’t know anything about this case, but couldn’t very well refuse the invitation, and immediately after he returned from the interview with Mrs. Edmundsun, he went off, leaving a list of Do At Once items on Lemaitre’s desk. A sergeant was in charge of the office until he or Lemaitre returned.