The Executioners Read online

  1. Check Lancelot Spiers’s artist friends.

  2. Check Lancelot Spiers’s business friends.

  3. Check Lancelot Spiers’s wood suppliers.

  4. Check Lancelot Spiers’s access to a gallows.

  Madame Tussaud’s, he thought; and there were plenty of books on the subject.

  5. Check Spiers and Rachel del M.

  6. See if any association Spiers and Medlake.

  7. See if any association Spiers and Jeremiah Taylor.

  8. See if any association Spiers and any of the missing men.

  Traffic began to move again, and he needed all his concentration to weave through the vehicles. When he reached the Yard, he went straight to his own office. Frisby was standing at the door.

  “Horniman here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll see him.” Roger stood with his back to the window, his face in shadow, as the newspaperman came in, suave, innately sure of himself.

  “Something I forgot?” he asked.

  “Yes. You forgot to tell me that you said enough to Lancelot Spiers to make him hang himself,” Roger said icily.

  Horniman gasped: “No! He didn’t—” He caught his breath, and when he spoke again it was in a hard, angry voice: “It’s that bloody woman. He must have realised why I’d gone to see him, and talked to her. She’s a bitch, I tell you. It is she who has driven him to this, as she drove him to make that model gallows. My God, how I’d like to get my hands round her threat! ”

  “Or put a rope round it, like you did round your friend’s,” Roger said cruelly. “Mr. Horniman, I shall need you here for questioning. If you’d like to talk to your editor, you can telephone him.”

  Horniman looked at him incredulously.

  “Don’t blame me,” he said, his voice high and sharp. “Blame that bitch Rachel.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Witch?

  “Yes,” said Rachel del Monde. She looked like an El Greco painting. “Lance Spiers was in love with me … No, I was not in love with him … Yes, he did the drawings at my request … No, I know nothing about the model gallows … Yes, he was a strange person … I am not a doctor but it would not surprise me to hear that he was psychopathic, his father was, and is, mentally unstable … No, as far as I am aware he did not know Sir Solomon … No, he has never been to me at this house … Yes, I know he had a friend named Horniman, the Art Editor of the Daily Globe … No, I did not consider him a genius but in my opinion he had great talent … No, he did not telephone me today … No, I know none of his other friends … Yes, he has been to visit me at my flat … Yes, I was often at his studio … No, we did not live together…”

  She answered Roger’s barrage of questions flatly, without any sign of emotion or distress, but her eyes seemed to burn. Witch’s eyes? Bitch’s eyes?

  “No, I do not know where these men might be … Yes, I do think they should have been hanged … No, I do not believe in taking the law into one’s own hands, I have already told you so … No, I did not know of the tunnel which led from the campaign headquarters to the empty shop.”

  “Did you post the drawings to Cecil Chayter?” Roger asked suddenly.

  Rachel flinched, but did not speak.

  “Answer me! Did you send the drawings to Chayter?”

  Her eyes seemed to burn. Witch. Her lips moved.

  “Yes,” she cried.

  “Didn’t you realise how cruel —”

  “Cruel!” she cried, and suddenly her eyes blazed and the disciplined calm disintegrated, she jumped up from her seat and leaned across Roger’s desk. “Cruel! Don’t you think it cruel to kill – to murder a helpless girl, a helpless man, a child. Cruel! Don’t you think it’s cruel to leave widows, orphans, friends, all alone in grief. Why, you don’t begin to know what cruelty is, you who waste your sympathy on these devils—devils—devils! They’ve killed, don’t you understand? They’ve committed the worst crime known to man. They’ve taken life. A life for a life is the only answer, and if they’re fed and kept warm and clothed and amused in prison – my God, they let them have films, television, radio, they entertain them! – then when they come out they ought to suffer the tortures of the damned!”

  “They ought to be hanged, you mean,” Roger said with an effort.

  “They ought to suffer hell.”

  “Have you played any part in the hanging?”

  “No!” she cried again, so loudly that she must surely be heard along the corridor. “I don’t know anything about that, all I know is that I’ve made them suffer as my father suffered before he died. They should never know a moment’s peace, not a moment’s!”

  Roger asked quietly: “Do you know any peace of mind at all, Miss del Monde?”

  She caught her breath again.

  “It might be worth remembering this,” went on Roger with some diffidence. “I’ve seen more suffering come out of hatred and a lust for vengeance than from anything else. It burns you up.” He half expected her to scream at him not to preach, but she did not, simply dropped back into her chair, exhausted.

  He rang for Frisby, who appeared in a flash.

  “Fix some tea, Sergeant, will you?”

  “Right away, sir.” Frisby put a note in front of Roger, who glanced down and read: Will you talk to Mrs. Chayter?

  “On the telephone?” Roger asked, surprised and puzzled.

  “No, sir. In the waiting-room.”

  Why on earth was she here?

  “I will, as soon as I can,” Roger promised.

  “Right, sir.” Frisby ducked out, and Roger turned back to the girl.

  She was limp, sagging, a different person from the one he had first met.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

  “Miss del Monde, do you know where any of the missing men are?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anyone who might have any idea?”

  “I do not believe that Sir Solomon knows, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What about his associates – the people on the list of supporters?”

  “I don’t know anyone who might want to hang these men.”

  “Who knew you were sending the drawings?”

  “No one.”

  “Who made the telephone calls?”

  Rachel said: “What telephone calls?”

  Roger believed that she was tying; that she had recovered her poise and was now very wary. There was no doubt that the calls had been in direct relationship to the drawings. If she was responsible for one she must know about the other. Was this the moment to force the issue? He felt a deep compassion for this girl, in spite of all she admitted doing.

  Frisby tapped at the door, and brought in a pot of tea. Roger said: “Miss del Monde is going to make a statement about the drawings. Stay with her, until I’m back. If you care to talk to Detective-Sergeant Frisby, Miss del Monde, it may save time,”

  Coldly, she said: “Thank you.”

  Roger went out through Frisby’s office, reflecting that he could do with a cup of tea, that he could also do with time to think – even ten minutes away from the pressure of the investigation would be welcome. It wouldn’t hurt Julie Chayter to wait, and he needed to clear his head. He reached the door of the big office, where several men were still working at the interminable task of sorting out the reports.

  “One of you go down to the waiting-room and tell Mrs. Chayter I’ll be another ten minutes, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything in?”

  “Not worth worrying you with, sir.”

  Roger went down to the canteen. Half a dozen officers were eating belated lunches or early dinners; some were drinking tea. Several acknowledged, none spoke to him. He took a cup of tea to an empty table, sat down, and pondered. He was preoccupied by the problem of Rachel del Monde. He decided she must be very closely watched indeed. If she had sent those drawings she must have known about the telephone messages, and the accosting in the street; nat
urally she would lie to save herself or Medlake. It would have been difficult for her to deny her knowledge of the drawings, now; she hadn’t admitted a thing more than the police would have found out very soon.

  How genuine had her outburst been?

  Very genuine, Roger convinced himself.

  Whichever way he turned in this case, Rachel’s influence was there, pervasive, dominant, inescapable. She had tried to burn the evidence of her association with the drawings, and Lancelot Spiers, poor devil, had destroyed his part of it at the studio. Was there any possibility that he hadn’t committed suicide? The thought that there might be, began to worry him. He finished his cup of tea and went across to order another, as Kane came rushing in.

  “Mr. West!”

  Roger glanced round.

  “I’m busy,” he said. “Make that two,” he added to the woman behind the counter, and Kane joined him. “Take it easy,” he ordered sharply. “Don’t tell the world when you’re excited.”

  Kane made a palpable effort to calm down.

  Sitting at the empty table his voice was subdued, but elation was there. “We know the timber merchants, sir.”

  “Which timber merchants?”

  “The firm which supplied Spiers wood for his framing and carpentry – and who supplied wood to Medlake’s campaign rooms. It was ordered for shelving Medlake said was to go in the cellar.”

  Roger caught something of Kane’s excitement.

  “Who are they?”

  “Hamble and Hamble, of Petts Yard – just behind Pilkington Street. We found an old delivery note at the studio, and I’ve been along to see them. Talked to the stock-keeper, who sees to all the wood that’s sent out. The delivery went to Medlake’s campaign shop ten days ago.”

  “Where else have they sent a similar order?”

  “I didn’t press the inquiry too far, sir – thought I wouldn’t take any risks until you’d had a chance to think about it.”

  “Right,” Roger said. “What did Fingerprints say?”

  “Only Spiers’s prints were on the chair, and some traces on the rope,” answered Kane. “The chair he kicked away was newly painted and there are traces of the paint on his shoes. Dr. Smith’s had a look at him, and he says all the indications are that it was suicide. I’ve checked very closely, sir. The man Horniman was the only visitor in the past hour, and a neighbour saw Spiers at the window after Horniman left in a little red sports M.G. – the one he came here in, sir.”

  “So we can rule out murder,” Roger said. “How big is Hamble and Hamble’s place?”

  “Pretty big for the centre of London.”

  “Find out if any of the men we want have been seen around the place,” Roger said. “Now I’m going to see Mrs. Chayter, in the waiting-room.”

  “Wonder what’s brought her?” Kane said. “She’s spotted your heart of gold, I’ll bet. Like me to come along, sir?”

  “You’ve got plenty on your own plate,” Roger growled. While fairly and justly applauding Kane’s enthusiasm, he was yet irritated by it. He went along to the waiting-room, ruminating rather ruefully on the fact that justice had never yet succeeded in alleviating testiness.

  As he opened the door of the little brown room with its wooden furniture and plain brown carpet, Julie Chayter sprang up from a chair, almost dropping the cup and saucer she was holding. She looked beautiful, and very distressed.

  Roger shook hands.

  “Mr, West, I wouldn’t worry you if I weren’t myself so dreadfully worried,” she said,

  “How can I help?” asked Roger.

  “I’m desperately upset about my brother-in-law,” Julie Chayter declared, “You know my husband quarrelled, and left the house, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That left me very little option but to do the same. Otherwise people would talk and that would only make things worse. Mr, West, I can talk freely, can’t I? The truth is I’ve no one else to turn to, and—and I must talk: to someone!” She looked as if she would burst into tears.

  “Talk as freely as you like,” Roger encouraged, with a sinking heart.

  “The—the truth is that since Cecil came out of prison my husband and I haven’t been seeing things eye to eye. Cecil’s arrival brought this to a head. I’d—I’d persuaded my husband to invite his brother against his will, and—well, it proved to be a dreadful mistake.”

  “Mistake?” echoed Roger, dropping the word adroitly into the pause.

  “Yes. Well, in a way. Oh, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, I suppose it’s because you seemed so kind and understanding when you came to see us.” How Kane would laugh! “The truth is we haven’t been happy for years, and—and I’ve become terribly attached to Cecil. My husband is always sneering at me because of it, if I were to stay at the house without my husband and with my brother-in-law I would be asking for trouble, in fact I have a feeling that my husband deliberately went out of it to make an impossible situation for us. The result is that Cecil is now entirely alone, and I’m worried about him. Coming back to ordinary life must have been bad enough, but these horrifying things which have been happening, the newspapers, everything—” She was almost incoherent in her painful intensity, “I don’t think he can stand much more of it. I think he ought to be watched, all the time, and I can’t be the one to do it.”

  She paused, gasping for breath.

  “Are you afraid he’ll commit suicide?” Roger asked bluntly.

  She said in a low, tense voice: “Yes. Yes, I’m terribly afraid. And you think he’s in danger, don’t you?”

  “Yes I do, very real danger.”

  “Then can’t you have someone with him? Can’t you even take him into protective custody, or whatever it’s called? I have an awful fear that he will kill himself if he’s left alone. He’s so despondent—so hopeless. And these telephone calls—do you know what the caller says? He says: ‘Why don’t you hang yourself?’ Someone’s trying to drive him to suicide, and—I’m afraid they’ll succeed. Please do something.”

  “I’ll certainly do what I can,” Roger promised. “There is an organisation called the Samaritans who are often helpful, I’ll have a word with them. And I’ll talk to your brother-in-law again.”

  “If he’s left alone even for half an hour—” Julie began.

  “Mrs. Chayter,” Roger said quietly, “if you’re really convinced of the danger, you could stay with him yourself. You could have a friend staying with you, surely.” An idea flashed into his mind. “I ought to be able to arrange—”

  He broke off when the telephone bell rang, glad of the interruption because he had been on the point of committing himself to something he couldn’t carry out. The woman drew back; he did not know whether she was disappointed, or suddenly determined to take the risk involved for herself.

  It was Frisby,

  “I’ve got Cecil Chayter on the other line,” Frisby said. “He says he’s some news for you – presumably about being approached to go somewhere. Can you take the call there?”

  “Yes,” Roger said. “At once.”

  “I’ll warn him you can’t talk freely,” Frisby said.

  In the second or two that Roger waited he wondered what this woman would say if she knew whom he was going to talk to. Then Chayter came on the line, speaking briskly, certainly not in the tone or manner of a man on the point of committing suicide.

  “I thought you ought to know this, Mr. West,” he said. “I’ve had a telephone call asking me to meet a group of people who say they have my interests at heart. I’m to be at Baker Street Station to meet a Mr. Jeremiah Taylor and some friends.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rendezvous

  “Mr. Jeremiah Taylor and some friends,” Roger echoed. “I suppose that’s what I should have expected. What time is this?”

  “Seven o’clock this evening.”

  “Full daylight,” Roger remarked. “Will you take the chance?”

  “If you think it’s worth it.”

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p; “I’m sure it’s worth it,” Roger said. “Don’t leave until six-thirty, that will give you plenty of time, and I’ll have someone come to cover you before then. Don’t go out meanwhile, will you?”

  “No, I’ll be on duty.” Chayter gave a quick, shy laugh. “I feel a different man, now that there’s something I can get my teeth into. Do you think there would be room for me in the police if I behaved myself?”

  “There’ll be plenty of room for you with the police if you don’t,” Roger said dryly.

  Chayter laughed again, and rang off.

  Julie Chayter was sitting in the chair, very stiff and erect, unsmiling, anxious, even eager. As Roger replaced the telephone, she stood up. It would be easy to set her mind at rest, but it would be folly. Why had she come here? Did she mean exactly what she said, or was she lying? There was no way of being sure.

  “If the danger looks like continuing, I ought to be able to arrange some way of helping,” Roger said. “I’ll certainly try. I know it’s useless to say don’t worry too much, but you may be worrying unnecessarily, you know.”

  “I suppose so,” Julie said in a subdued voice, “Thank you for being so kind.”

  “I wish I could do more,” Roger said.

  He saw her to the door, and a constable led the way along the passage. She walked briskly, her carriage and poise excellent. Roger was reminded that she had a very good figure. So had Rachel del Monde. So, he remembered, had Mrs. Jeremiah Taylor. He went along to the lift and to his office, hearing voices in the next room. When he pressed the bell, there was a sudden silence, before Frisby entered.

  “Miss del Monde gone?”

  “Yes,” Frisby said. “And Horniman’s made a statement.”

  “Let him go,” ordered Roger, and asked in the same breath: “Who’s with you?”

  “Kane.”

  “I’ll see him as well.” When Kane entered, Roger went on: “Chayter’s been asked to see Jeremiah Taylor and some friends. This may be what we’re waiting for, or it may be merely an aspect of Jeremiah’s do-gooding. How’s that report on Jeremiah?”