Death of a Postman Read online

  “May, don’t.”

  “We’ll find out who it was, soon,” Roger West put in, sliding smoothly back into the conversation. “Do you intend to go to friends, Mrs Bryant?”

  “Yes, just across—just across the road.”

  “I’ll see you there. Are there any other adults in the front room?”

  “Oh, yes,” said May. “Don’t worry about us, we’ll be all right. Mum, are you sure—”

  “They’ve been looking forward to this party for weeks,” Mrs Bryant began. “I can’t—”

  She couldn’t finish.

  Ten minutes later, Mrs Bryant was out in the street with Roger West. She had slipped on a heavy blue coat, but no hat It wasn’t really cold, but more misty than it had been; if this kept up for long the night would soon be really foggy. The haloes round the street lamps were less sharply defined. Kilby was coming towards them, but didn’t speak when he saw Roger walking across the road with the woman. The house they went to appeared to be in darkness.

  Before Roger knocked, Mrs Bryant said: “I want—I want to know exactly what happened, please.”

  “Let’s see if your friend is in,” Roger said. “I’ll tell you more then.”

  He knocked.

  “Please,” said Mrs Bryant, “I would like to know.”

  And she meant to.

  “It’s very simple,” Roger said. “Your husband was taking the short cut from River Way to the Embankment, and was struck from behind. The doctors are quite certain that he didn’t know what had happened. He had no warning, and it was over very quickly.” Roger still hoped that, even in the grief of this moment, assurance would help. Mrs Bryant asked: “Are you sure about that?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “I see,” she said. She stared at the dark door, and Roger knocked again. “It looks as if Rosa’s out,” she said to herself. “If she doesn’t answer soon I’d better go to Mrs Featherstone’s.” They stood close together, outside the little door. “When—when did it happen?”

  “A little after five o’clock.”

  “He—he promised to leave by five at the latest.”

  “So I was told.”

  “But why should it happen to Tom?” she cried. “We’re finding out,” Roger said. “Scotland Yard is doing everything it can. The men at the River Way Sorting Office are being questioned too, and we’re searching for anyone who was near the alley. But I needn’t go into detail, Mrs Bryant, just be sure that everything possible is being done to find the murderer.” Silence. Then: “Murdered,” she said, in an agonised voice. “My Tom, murdered. Oh, God, why should it happen to him?” She fell silent again, but had turned to face Roger; suddenly she gripped his arms, and the strength in her fingers was so great that it hurt. “Why should it happen to Tom? He was so good, everyone liked him, everyone. A better man never lived.” She shook Roger, fiercely. “I mean that, I’m not just saying it because he’s dead, a better man never lived! He was so kind to everyone, he loved—he loved life.” Now, she gripped Roger’s arms to tightly that it was really painful. She seemed to be fighting down the sob in her voice. “Oh, God, how shall I tell Micky? How shall I tell the younger children? To be struck down like that, to be alive one moment and dead the next, it—it’s so awful.”

  “Yes,” Roger said, and knocked at the door again, but that was only a gesture; there was little hope that her friend would be in. “Hadn’t we better go to Mrs Featherstone’s?”

  “I suppose we had,” consented Mrs Bryant, but suddenly there was no feeling in her voice. Just emptiness. “I wish Rosa was in, she—she would understand so much more, she—”

  She broke off.

  Someone was walking briskly along the street, on the other side; a man and woman. He wondered if this could be the Rosa whom Mrs Bryant was talking about, but the couple passed, and were hidden for a moment by Roger’s car.

  “Mr—” Mrs Bryant began, and then gave a choky little laugh, the kind of sound which suggested that hysteria wasn’t far away. “I don’t even know who you are,” she said, “only that you’re a policeman.”

  “My name is West—Chief Inspector West” Roger took out a card and proffered it, but she didn’t even glance at it. “Which way is Mrs Featherstone’s?”

  “I don’t think I’ll go there, after all,” said Mrs Bryant. “I don’t think it would really help. She’d be very kind, but she would talk so much and—” she broke off again. “I’m sorry to behave like this, I hardly know what I’m saying, but they must finish the party. They must finish the party! All that work, all that trouble, all that longing for it, I couldn’t stand it if they were told before the party was over. Please,” she went on, pathetically, “let them enjoy the party.”

  Now, he was holding her right arm.

  “Come on,” he said briskly. “My home is only ten minutes’ drive from here; we’ll go there. My wife will be in.” He knew that his wife would drop everything and do anything to help. “It’s no trouble at all,” he said, above Mrs Bryant’s protests, and he guided her across the road. Kilby, sensing that he was wanted, came along smartly; the street lights showed the bewilderment in his expression. “Sergeant,” Roger said, “I’m taking Mrs Bryant to some friends. I want you to stay here until I get back, or send someone to relieve you. Don’t say anything to anyone.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Roger had opened the door of the seat next to the driving wheel. Mrs Bryant got in, as if in a dream. Roger slid into his seat beside her, but before he closed the door a new light appeared at the end of the street; the dipped head lamp of a motorcycle. He heard the sharp beat of the engine, and then Mrs Bryant exclaimed: “Wait, please!” She wound down her window swiftly and looked out. Roger could just hear her voice. “It might be Derek, it might—it is Derek! Derek!” Now, she was almost beside herself, and Roger didn’t try to restrain her but got out and hurried round to the other side of the car as the motorcyclist drew up.

  The engine stopped on Mrs Bryant’s shout. “… ek!” was a screech.

  “Hey, what’s all this?” The man on the motorcycle was young and dark helmeted. “Mum, what—”

  “Derek, something terrible’s happened to your father,” Mrs Bryant said quiveringly, “May’s looking after the children, they must finish the party. You go in and help; she’ll feel much better now you’re here, but don’t breathe a word to anyone else, don’t spoil anything for them.”

  “Of course I won’t,” said Derek Bryant, with the over confidence of self assured youth. “But I don’t get it. What’s this something terrible that’s happened to Dad?”

  There was a pause; agonising.

  Then: “He’s—dead.”

  Derek seemed to sway backward. “No.”

  “I’m an officer from New Scotland Yard,” Roger broke in, “and Sergeant Kilby here will tell you anything else you wish to know. I’m taking your mother to my home until the party is over.” Unless this talking stopped, a crowd would collect. “Sergeant Kilby, give Mr Bryant any help and information he needs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But, Mum!” All that cocky assurance melted in that cry. “Mum!”

  “Go—go and help May,” his mother said.

  After another tense moment, Derek Bryant turned away.

  Soon, Roger and Mrs Bryant were back in the car.

  Roger started the engine and eased off the clutch. He didn’t go far, but pulled up round the corner of Clapp Street, took a flask from his hip pocket, unscrewed it, and said: “Take a sip of this, Mrs Bryant.”

  She did as he told her, and coughed; the smell of brandy came strongly. West took the flask back and slipped it into his pocket, then drove towards the Wandsworth Bridge Road, where he would turn left for King’s Road and Chelsea. He hadn’t stopped to ask himself why he was taking this woman to his own home; and he didn’t stop to ask himself what others would say about it. He simply knew that she needed much more help than most.

  Mrs Bryant leaned back, without speaking.r />
  In less than ten minutes, Roger had pulled up outside his house in Bell Street. In another two, Mrs Bryant was in the warm kitchen, where Janet West had blue paper packets of currants and sultanas, sugar and raisins, spread out on one end of the large table. A big mixing bowl contained a little flour and some candied peel. Janet, about the same height as Mrs Bryant, was dark, with curly hair and grey green eyes. She had a surprised and almost harassed look, as if bewildered by the interruption.

  In a few sentences, she knew everything it was necessary to know, and quite suddenly and explosively, she said: “I’d like to hang some men myself!”

  Mrs Bryant, standing at the corner of the table and looking almost dazedly about her, glanced up and said unsteadily: “I—I know how you feel, but Tom—” she stopped, and screwed up her eyes; a moment later she went on in a high-pitched voice: “But my husband didn’t believe in capital punishment. He always said that a murderer was mentally sick, no one would kill if he was normal. He—-”

  She dropped into a chair.

  “Jan, I know you’ll do everything you can,” Roger said. “Mrs Bryant was anxious not to break up a children’s party. They’re having it early because one of her sons is due to embark for overseas tomorrow. We’ll get him compassionate leave, of course; tell her that.”

  Janet nodded, briskly.

  “Where are the boys?” Roger asked.

  “They’re still at the gymnasium; it’s boxing finals night.”

  “Oh, yes,” Roger said, “of course. I’ll be back as soon as I can make it, and if I can’t come myself I’ll have a man with a car here in an hour or so. He can take Mrs Bryant back when she’s ready to go. All right?”

  “You’d better get on,” Janet said. She followed him to the door. “Have you caught anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Well, catch this brute,” Janet whispered in his ear, and then turned and hurried to Mrs Bryant, ignoring the laden table and all the ingredients for the Christmas puddings. Roger didn’t go for a moment, but watched. On the mantelpiece above the modern-type fireplace, with the boiler behind it, was a notice in naming red, drawn by Martin, his elder son. It said:

  9 SHOPPING DAYS TO CHRISTMAS

  and beneath it Richard, the younger boy, had written:

  HURRY UP!

  It was good for a grin.

  There wasn’t anything else to grin about. Nine shopping days to Christmas, and a killer to find, hell burning already for Mrs Bryant and hotting up for her children, and somewhere the murderer.

  Roger was going out of the room when Mrs Bryant cried: “Stop!”

  He swung round, and she came rushing towards him. “I can’t stay here,” she cried. “I must see Tom. Do you understand, I must see my husband. Take me to him.”

  This sudden urge wasn’t surprising; and if she saw her husband it might help her to the courage that she needed. Certainly there was no time to argue; she must have a quick yes or no.

  “All right, Mrs Bryant,” Roger said. “I’ll take you.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Janet decided briskly. “I’ll just pop upstairs and get my coat”

  She hurried off, leaving Roger and Mrs Bryant together, and suddenly the woman began to talk more quickly and more freely. There was one question above all others that Roger wanted to ask her, and now she gave him the opportunity.

  “How much money would your husband be likely to have with him, Mrs Bryant?” He tried to sound casual.

  “Oh, very little,” Mrs Bryant told him confidently. “Never more than a pound or two—money couldn’t be the reason for it.”

  Roger didn’t tell her, then, that the police had found a hundred pounds in the pocket of her husband’s jacket.

  Chapter Three

  Hotting Up

  No one would ever have called Tom Bryant handsome. In death, he looked exactly what his wife had said that he was in life: a good man. This showed in the placid expression, the serenity, the hooked nose, the full lips. His thick, wavy hair was quite grey, suggesting that he was probably ten years older than his wife. Lying on the stone slab, he looked as much alive as dead, and his was the only body in the morgue.

  Roger was on one side of Bryant’s widow, Janet on the other.

  They were not there long.

  Without a word, Mrs Bryant bent down, put her lips against a forehead which was already cold, then moved blindly towards the door. It was chilly in here, but warm outside in the passages. The warmth seemed to melt something inside her and she began to cry again, more freely than she had at home.

  Roger and Janet went out with her into the Cannon Row Police Station adjoining, and Roger said: “I’ll have someone standing by to take you both home, Jan. If she wants to go back to Clapp Street, I’d let her.”

  “All right,” said Janet. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going over to River Way, to see if our chaps have picked up anything,” Roger said.

  He didn’t think that Mrs Bryant noticed him leave.

  Now that the harrowing part of the task was over he felt better; he could free himself from the harsh bite of another’s grief, and see this as a job: to find a killer. He drove, alone, to River Way, which led to the Chelsea Embankment and the broad Thames. The huge new building of West London’s Post Office stood as massive and in its way as commanding as the Battersea Power Station, only a mile or so away on the other side of the river. Every light at a thousand windows seemed to shine brightly. People could be seen sitting at desks near the windows. The great yard, approached by road from the Embankment, was crowded with jostling red Post Office vans; traffic was on the move all the time. The new building dwarfed all others nearby, and in the misty gloom stood out like a monster with a thousand square eyes. Nonsense. Roger drove past it, seeing a police car at one gateway, and then slowed down towards the end of Goose Lane.

  In Goose Lane, Bryant had been murdered. It led from a side of the mammoth building to the Embankment, along which Bryant would have cycled home. It always saved him half a mile and a lot of traffic, and according to the Chief Sorter, whom Roger had seen earlier, many clerks and Sorting Office workers who lived in the south west of London used that short cut – unless they travelled to and from work by bus, when it wouldn’t help them. At the beginning and the end of the different shifts, it was used a great deal; between those rush hours, hardly at all. Normally, a single electric light shone at the near end of the lane; now, it was one of a dozen. Car headlights and a specially rigged searchlight were in position, so that the lane, which was usually very dark, was brighter than any floodlit stage. The bricks of the walls on either side showed up, and all their tiny holes looked black. It was even possible to see where the cement in between had started to crumble. At intervals there were alcoves, for the wall on one side had once been that of a private garden. The path was paved, but some of the old flagstones were cracked, and in places soil had gathered, especially at the sides and spots where the flagstones were broken.

  At the far end was another wall lamp, helping to show that the lane was alive with men. There were the photographers, an inspector from Fingerprints with two sergeants, and other men taking measurements; all these had started before Roger had left, and should be well on with their job.

  If they weren’t, there would be trouble.

  Roger turned into the alley and walked towards the men near the spot where Bryant had been found by another Post Office worker. This man could not have been three minutes behind Bryant; three minutes between life and death.

  A crowd had gathered at the Embankment end, and uniformed policemen were keeping them back. The Press was here in strength. One dead man, a dozen CID men, as many reporters hungry for news, a hundred sightseers – harbingers of thousands who would come next day.

  Divisional as well as Yard men were here, and the Divisional Superintendent, Gorme, was officially in charge. Gorme was a big man, good in his steady way, who never lost a moment sending for Scotland Yard, preferring to make sure that he co
uld at least share the responsibility, if anything went wrong.

  “Hallo, Handsome,” he greeted, “back already?” He sniffed. “Told the family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rather you than me, but I did offer.”

  “I know. Found anything?”

  “We have and again we haven’t,” said Gorme, and gave another sniff; until one was used to that habit of his, it was annoying. “Footprints in the dirt at the side of the lane, made by a chap running. Well, might have been running—toe deep in some mud, heel hardly showing any impression at all. Bit of blood showing on the first three or four prints.”

  “Sent the blood for grouping?”

  “Yes. If you ask me, chap might have killed Bryant and then run off on tiptoe to lessen sound. We took a cast after taking up the bloodstained bits.”

  “Nice work,” said Roger. “Anything else?”

  “Only the usual,” Gorme said. “Got the area cordoned off while we search for more prints and a weapon. Know what I think?”

  “He’d throw the weapon into the river.”

  Gorme grinned. “Two minds with but a single,” he chanted. “Thought I’d wait for you before calling in the River boys. Like me to, now?”

  “Will you?” asked Roger.

  “Like a shot, Handsome, like a shot Be seeing you.” Gorme moved off, sniffing. Roger stood by himself for a few minutes, and no one in the lane took any particular notice of him. Most of the men were gathered round a spot where there were a lot of chalk marks on the ground, made when a man from the Yard had drawn a line to show the position of the body. The men taking measurements from this, so as to establish the exact position of the body, were finishing their job; so were the photographers. One man stood close to the wall, while another shone a powerful torch; he was scraping something off the weatherworn brickwork.

  Roger neared him.

  “What have you got there?”

  “Blood spots,” the man with the torch said flatly. “Highest is at seven feet two inches.”

  “Upward splash, eh?”

  “Not much doubt about it, sir. We’re just scraping off enough to make sure it’s new blood, and to check the group.”