A Backwards Jump Read online

  He opened the door, and cool air swept into the kitchen.

  “Why, Percy,” said Martha, who was almost opposite him, “what on earth are you doing?”

  She barred his path.

  She had come sneaking round the back way.

  He was a frail, frightened old man, although he could not really explain why he was so frightened. He only knew that he dared not stay in the bungalow alone with Martha.

  “Percy!” Her voice was sharp.

  “I’m going out,” he muttered. “I’ve got every right to go out if I want to, I’m going out for a walk.”

  He stood squarely in the kitchen doorway, gripping his stick tightly; it was a foot off the ground. He could not see even the vague outline of Martha’s body. He could not see the glitter in her eyes, or the way her lips tightened with a viciousness which few had ever seen.

  She could see.

  There he was, his lips parted, talking in short, gasping sentences, all the colour vanished from his cheeks, the stick held tightly in his hand and half raised, as if to strike her. She did not understand what had happened but was quite sure that this was a panic-stricken flight.

  “Percy, don’t be silly. Go back indoors. I’ll take you out for a walk later.” She kept her voice calm as she stretched out a small strong hand to take his wrists and to thrust him indoors. “I don’t know what’s come over you, to behave like this the moment my back’s turned.”

  “Let me go!” gasped Percy Whitehead, and tried to free himself, but her grip was far too firm. “Let me go, you thieving hussy, let me go!”

  Her grip tightened painfully and she twisted his wrists, meaning to hurt and to drive him inside. She glanced about nervously, but none of the neighbours seemed near. Percy’s shout wasn’t really very loud, his old voice was hoarse and didn’t carry; high in the sky, an aeroplane droned.

  “Let me go!”

  “Get inside, or—”

  She pushed him.

  He staggered, and in staggering, freed himself from her grasp. Panic such as he had never known rose up in him. Her voice and the way she held and pushed him, told him that his fears were justified, and he dared not stay in the house with her. If only he could see. He raised his stick and struck at her, and she cried out. He shouted at the same time, and terror gave volume and pitch to his voice. He struck and struck, and shouted, too, felt her backing away, felt a moment of triumph and stepped swiftly after her.

  He forgot the back door step, missed his footing, and fell.

  With blood welling up from a scratch in her cheek, her wig awry, her knuckles grazed where the stick had struck her, Martha Smallwood was still backing away from the old man when he fell. She felt a great, burning hatred for Whitehead because he had struck her, because he had tried to drive her from this sanctuary. He was there, helpless, with the stick on the ground. He tried to get up and stared at her piteously with those sightless eyes. She could pick up his own stick and beat the life out of him, she could—

  She bent down for the stick.

  She held her breath.

  “Come on, get up and get inside,” she said in a grating voice, “we’ll settle this nonsense there.” She bent down and took his arm and hauled him to his feet. He had never realised how strong she was.

  The Sergeant in the charge room at the police station at Bognor lifted the telephone when it rang, and said: “Police Station,” in a gruff but informal way.

  “Is that the police station?” a woman asked.

  “Yes, madam. Can I help you?”

  “Well, I don’t know, I don’t want help myself, but—” The woman paused, while the Sergeant held on patiently, but began to make notes about another matter altogether; he felt pretty sure that this caller would simply waste his time. “I don’t like spying on my neighbours,” she began, only to pause again. The old so-and-so probably never kept her nose out of other people’s business. “I don’t know whether it’s anything important, really, but I thought he was going to beat her brains out, I really did.”

  The Sergeant stopped writing.

  “What’s all this, madam? May I have your name and address, please?”

  “My name’s Carter, and I live at 28, Garden Road,” she said, “and it’s the blind man two doors away. I saw him attack his housekeeper. They had a terrible fight, and then he fell over. I saw her help him up, and now they’re inside the bungalow, and I didn’t know whether I ought to report it to the police or not. He’s such an old man. I’ve known him on and off for years, I can’t think what could have made him so angry, but honestly, I thought—”

  “We’ll send someone along at once, madam,” promised the Sergeant. “Mrs. Carter, of 28, Garden Road?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where does the blind gentleman live?”

  “Number 32.”

  “And when did this happen, Mrs. Carter?”

  “Well, I don’t really remember, I suppose it was getting on for an hour ago. I couldn’t go out right away, not in my working clothes, and I couldn’t make up my mind what to do, but it worried me so much I decided that I ought to report it.”

  “You were quite right, Mrs. Carter,” said the Sergeant, “we’ll send—”

  “You won’t tell anyone that I told you about it, will you?”

  “We won’t cause you any embarrassment at all, madam,” promised the Sergeant. “Good-bye.” He rang off, but did not immediately lift the telephone, for he could not make up his mind what to do. He could send a constable round, on his bicycle. He could wait until the Sergeant on the beat rang up, with his hourly report; he was due in ten minutes or so. Or he could tell the Super, who would probably send a car but might tear a strip off him for listening to an old woman’s gossip.

  A constable came in.

  “Hallo, Jim,” the Sergeant said, “you’ve got your bike today, haven’t you? . . . That’s good. Pop round to Number 32, Garden Road, and see if everything’s okay there. Looks as if a blind chap who lives there was having a bit of a beano with his housekeeper.”

  The constable, a young man, said abruptly: “His housekeeper?”

  He straddled his bicycle at once, and was outside the bungalow in Garden Road within ten minutes. As he walked up to the front door, he saw the curtains move, and believed that he saw a woman dodge out of sight. He strolled almost casually until he was close to the bungalow, then raced along the path at one side, towards the back. He saw a woman at the end of the garden, climbing a low fence which led to another garden, and a street beyond.

  “Stop there!” the constable shouted, but the woman took no notice, dropped down to the other side, and began to run. The constable blew his whistle. The neighbour who had made the report appeared at her back doorsteps, several other people appeared. The constable vaulted the wall, landing as the running woman reached the shelter of a bungalow in the next street. His whistle shrilling, he tore after her.

  Martha Smallwood was gasping for breath, her hair was loose, and she ran clumsily, but as if she believed she had a chance to get away. Then a dog came out of the house near her, yapping at her ankle. She shrieked and tried to dodge, but the dog nipped her, then squealed as she kicked it. It was her last effort, for the policeman grabbed her arm.

  “Now what’s all this about?” he demanded, and took a chance in a thousand. “Are you Martha Smallwood?”

  “No, no, no!” Martha Smallwood screamed. “No, I’m not!”

  “Let’s go and see what’s happened back there.” The constable tightened his grip. “Come on.” Then two other policemen arrived from a patrol car, and as they approached, Martha Smallwood fainted.

  17

  COINCIDENCE?

  Gideon sat alone at his desk, later that same day, scanning the reports which had come in from the East End Divisions. They could hardly be better. Just
as the death of Lee had caused panic among big-time thieves who had lost their main outlet for the goods they’d stolen, so the arrest of Ma Higgs spread dismay among the lesser fry. Hemmingway hadn’t lost a moment. Once he had made sure that Ma was safely held, he had sent men round to all her credit customers. Some broke down almost at once, others were stubborn; but it was soon proved beyond doubt that Ma Higgs had been a big buyer, and that she in turn had handed the stolen goods over to women – perhaps one woman – in Petticoat Lane.

  “And there’s the go-between with Frisky Lee,” Lemaitre declared. “Ten to one it’s Tod’s wife.”

  “Could be,” said Gideon, as if sceptical. “Got that latest report from Warr ready yet?”

  “Won’t be half an hour.” Lemaitre sat down hurriedly, and drew some papers closer. He avoided looking at Gideon for the next quarter of an hour, and the office was remarkably quiet, until a telephone bell rang. Lemaitre snatched off the receiver as if he wanted to break a record.

  “Commander Gideon’s office . . . Who? . . . All right, hold on.” He looked across, perkily. “Hemmy’s on again, and sounds as if he’s ready to jump as high as the roof.”

  “Thanks.” Gideon lifted his extension of the same telephone. “What’s on, Hemmy?”

  “George, it never rains but it pours,” said Hemmingway, and was as nearly excited as a senior policeman should ever be. “Two of Ma Higgs’s customers say they’ve seen her take hot stuff into Tod Cowan’s. That’s the first time Tod’s been named. He hasn’t had a chance to move anything out of his shop since we’ve been watching him. How about picking him up, now?”

  “Right away,” agreed Gideon promptly. “You go along and see Tod in person, but forget to mention this job. He may feel that someone is going to squeal, but he can’t be sure yet. Work on him about the Frisky Lee murder. Ask him to go into more detail about Ratsy Roden, and exactly what happened that morning. Let him think you’re suspicious of him about that job. Work on him for half an hour, and then ask him to come along here for questioning. If he objects, fall back on the statements you’ve got, charge him, and bring him along.”

  “What’s on your mind?” Hemmingway asked now, warily.

  “I want to find out what he knows about Lee and Ratsy,” Gideon said. “If we get him in the right frame of mind, he might come across. In the end he probably will, because he’ll think it might help him to get off lightly.”

  “Cunning old so-and-so,” said Hemmingway. “Okay. Wouldn’t like Ma Higgs for the rest of the day, would you? I’ve got two policewomen looking after her, and they say she’s the worst bitch they’ve ever had to handle. It took them an hour and a half to search her.”

  “Why don’t you do the dirty work yourself?” Gideon grinned. “’Bye!” He rang off, and Lemaitre, who had listened to all this on his telephone, leaned back and pushed his hands through his thinning hair.

  “So you’ve stopped being stubborn,” he quipped.

  “I know it’s been said before,” said Gideon, keeping a straight face, “but we really do get ‘em all in the long run.

  Then, unbidden, he had a mind picture of the boy Wray.

  Early that evening two Detective-Sergeants and an Inspector were going through Ma Higgs’s shop to see if they’d missed anything when the telephone bell rang at the back of the shop, and one of the Sergeants answered it.

  “Corner Grocery Stores,” he announced.

  “Call from Birmingham for you, please hold on.”

  “Birmingham?” The Sergeant was surprised.

  “Yes, sir, it’s from a prepayment call-box.”

  “Sure it’s—?”

  “Quite sure, sir.”

  The Sergeant held on, wondering what Ma Higgs had to do with anyone in Birmingham, and wondering if this call would become useful later on. He held on for several seconds, until the operator said: “You’re through,” and a woman with a whiney kind of voice came on:

  “Ma, is that you, dearie?”

  “This is the Corner Grocery Stores,” the Sergeant said, and tried to remember where he had heard that voice before.

  Peter Wray’s mother stood in the kiosk at Birmingham Central Station, where she had made the call because she knew it would be difficult to trace. She was waiting anxiously for Ma Higgs to speak, and had one of the big shocks of her life at the sound of a man’s voice. She sensed the truth in a flash. The voice was deep and had a kind of ring of authority about it, not like that of any of Ma’s men friends, or men customers.

  Mrs. Wray said : “Where—where’s Mrs. Higgs?”

  “Mrs. Higgs isn’t here at the moment, can I help you?”

  “I—I dunno,” said Jane Wray, and then went all to pieces. There was danger wherever there was a policeman, and it was all too possible that she would be recognised. “No, it’s okay,” she said hurriedly. “I wanted a talk with Ma, it’s all right, okay.”

  She rang off.

  She went out of the box, wiping her forehead, looking hot and harassed, as if with bad news. She walked slowly away from the telephone box towards the exit, and as she neared the streets, she muttered to herself:

  “They’ve got her all right, she had it coming.”

  Then: “Someone’s bound to find the kid. Bound to.”

  Peter was in a kind of sleep, aware of where he was, aware of wanting the door to open, and yet not longing for it, as he usually did. Near his hand as he lay on his side, was the sticky bag in which the sweets had been.

  None of the sweets were left.

  For the first time since the police had been to the flat, Reginald Dennis felt free to breathe. He had expected a lot of awkwardness and some tricky questions, but hadn’t expected the police inquiry to take so long. Now he sensed from the manner of the Superintendent in charge, the man Sparrow, that the police had almost given up hope: not suspicion, but hope.

  Sparrow asked a few questions which meant little, and then left the flat.

  He was frowning as he walked to his car.

  “I’ll have to tell Gee-Gee that I can’t find a thing to pin on to Dennis,” he said gloomily. “It wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t so sure that the young swine pushed her out of the window.”

  The best way, Robert Carne decided, was to stage a car accident. If he knew anything about any single subject, it was about cars. He knew exactly what made them tick, and what made them stick, and he knew just what kind of little mechanical trouble could cause disaster at the right place and the right time. Marion had a driving licence, and had passed her test several years ago, but she had told him that she hadn’t driven a car for over a year. He had told her how useful it would be if she took up driving again, it would help her to make local deliveries of the accessories, and would take a lot of work off his shoulders, and make sure that he was home more often. She had been delighted. He had taken her out in his car, twice, and judged the quality of her driving. She shouldn’t really be let loose on the road, she was one of those to whom driving would always be something of a mystery. No road sense. No judgment. His was an old car with a gear shift, and she even had some difficulty in changing gear, especially if there was the slightest threat of emergency.

  He could rig the steering column, or the brakes.

  He had to decide what hill she should drive down, and the details of the “accident”. The best thing would be for him to telephone her from somewhere on the outskirts of London, and ask her to come and fetch him. She wouldn’t like to say no. All he had to make sure was that she would have to go down a hill. He accepted the fact that she might not be killed, but with luck she would be. If she was simply injured, or maimed, then he wouldn’t have to worry about her for a long time, and he would make do with the money he’d got for the “business”. He hadn’t spent much of it yet, and directly the accident was reported, he could change his mind, saying that he would have to wait until his wife
recovered.

  That evening, he took her out in the car, and told her to drive. She crashed her gears and hit the kerb, then drove for ten minutes without incident, although she had a tendency to pull in towards the kerb whenever she saw another car approaching.

  “You’re doing fine,” Carne assured her, squeezing her arm. “Don’t worry about being jumpy, precious, you’ll soon get over that. All you need is practice. You want to get out in the car a bit more on your own.”

  “Darling, I feel so useless.”

  “I know – and it’s just lack of confidence, I tell you.”

  “I wish I could agree.”

  “Listen, Marion,” said Carne more firmly, “it will save us ten or twelve pounds a week if you can drive the car, and you’re as capable as the next one. Don’t throw the chance away because you haven’t the courage to go out on your own. Take every chance you can of driving, and in a week or two you’ll forget that you were ever nervous.”

  “All right, darling,” Marion said, in a subdued voice.

  Carne was quite sure that he had got her into the right mood. He had used the words “haven’t the courage” deliberately, and although she hadn’t said so, they had hurt. When he decided on the night of the accident and telephoned for her, she would take the car out if it killed her.

  He grinned.

  If it killed her was right!

  Arkwright would have dropped his inquiries following the chance encounter with Roger Clayton, in spite of the time he had spent on investigating, but for the sudden tightening up at the Yard. He was keenly aware of a chance of early promotion if he could pull off a neat job, and believed that he had Gideon’s goodwill. So he went over everything he had done, including his visit to the Cork Street Registry Office, and decided to go there again. He studied the register closely, and found the Robert Carne-Marion Lane certificate. The initials were almost certainly coincidence. He checked, and found that three other men had been married during the past two weeks, each with the initials R. C. So that didn’t mean a thing. But this Robert Carne had been married on the day that he, Arkwright, had seen Roger Clayton all spruced up and wearing a carnation in his button-hole.