Murder Must Wait (Department Z) Page 4

  ‘Yes. A very difficult type to handle.’ Loftus frowned. ‘Of course, with some real pressure he would break down, but...’

  Craigie shook his head.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘What about Bunce?’

  His voice sounded tired. It was said that he never slept: actually, he slept in patches, and years of self-discipline had trained him to be always mentally alert.

  ‘Bunce,’ Loftus said slowly, ‘is more like a trained ape than a man. When he came round after the bang I gave him, he said: “Whaddaya t’ink I am?”, and repeated it in answer to every question. He doesn’t know what fear is, and is devoted to Pinari—who says he’s English, but his accent is one hundred per cent Bowery.’

  ‘A queer mixture,’ Craigie reflected.

  ‘Not as before, in my experience,’ agreed Loftus. Again he yawned. ‘Lord! I’m tired!’

  ‘Too many late nights with Diana Woodward,’ said Craigie, with a ghost of a smile. Loftus looked the least bit disconcerted. No one, he believed, knew how his feelings had developed for Diana; but Craigie had an uncanny habit of reading people’s thoughts. ‘She tells you that she’s helping de Casila because he helped her,’ Craigie continued. ‘What did Clement say?’

  ‘In effect, the same. His manner’s as smooth as cream—and just as thick! It looks certain that de Casila, Diana and Clement are working together—de Casila and Clement at least knowing that it’s for the Ring. Diana? Well, she probably knows too.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ said Craigie. ‘And the others?’

  ‘Pinari, Bunce, and the Englishman—Doom—who lives in Paris. We-ell—they are enemies of the Ring, or at least of de Casila.’

  ‘I’ll have Doom looked after,’ said Craigie. ‘Where have you sent Pinari and Bunce?’

  ‘Ned took them to the Nursing Home,’ Loftus answered.

  ‘Good.’ Craigie leaned forward and picked his meerschaum from a pipe-rack, and began to stuff it with tobacco. ‘You carry on, Bill, and get what sleep you can. I’ll send word if I want you.’

  ‘You’ll have the lady followed, won’t you, now that I’ve had my marching orders?’

  ‘Closely,’ promised Craigie. ‘You stand by for the emergency.’

  ‘Not inside eight hours, I hope,’ said Loftus, and went out.

  Craigie sat smoking, his eyes closed. The meerschaum drooped on to his chest. The office was silent. Not even a clock ticked.

  He would have liked it better had he had more facts. De Casila, Clement and Diana Woodward were obviously associated, but whether they were actually controlled by the Ring was not yet proved.

  Craigie’s thoughts turned to one of his latest institutions, inspired by Loftus—or ostensibly by Loftus but, Craigie sometimes thought, actually by Bob Kerr, who had retired with the loss of an arm after an affray in Europe six months before. Kerr’s wife, Lois, had been the first woman agent in the Department. Now the Kerrs ran a small country house in Surrey, ostensibly a guest house, although only friends—or enemies—stayed there. Loftus had christened it the Nursing Home. On those occasions when it was necessary to keep men in captivity but not in a police cell, the Department used the Kerrs’ house.

  Each report he had received went through the screen of Craigie’s mind. After three-quarters of an hour he stood up, went to a telephone, and dialled one of his leading agents, Wallace Davidson.

  ‘You’re going away for a few days,’ said Craigie, ‘with Dodo. Bring him round, will you, as soon as you can?’

  ‘Yes. Cake?’

  ‘Yes. Iced.’

  ‘Well, well, well!’ exclaimed Davidson, as he replaced his receiver.

  Dodo Trale, the oldest agent in years of service on the Department’s books, shared Davidson’s Audley Street flat. Between the two men there was no apparent affinity. Dodo was short, over-energetic, and seemingly highly strung. Wally was tall, languid, and gave an impression of perpetual weariness.

  Both men had been asleep when Craigie telephoned. Dodo Trale was still asleep. Davidson marched unceremoniously into his friend’s bedroom, and pulled eider-down, blankets and sheet off the bed.

  ‘Time to get up, my friend. Craigie’s been on the blower. We’ve a job on hand.’

  In ten minutes both men were dressed; in another ten they were arriving at Craigie’s office. An hour later, on Craigie’s instructions, they were on their way to Paris.

  • • • • •

  Out of the front door of 18, Rue de Mallet, stepped a small, thin, wizened looking man who, judging by his dress, was very obviously English. His suit had the unmistakable stamp of Savile Row, his hat of Bond Street. In his left lapel he sported a red carnation.

  This was Mr. Octavius Doom.

  The house he had just left was large and imposing, and stood in half an acre of ground. It was a tall house, typical of old Paris; the high windows were open, the wooden shutters fastened back against the wall.

  Mr. Doom reached the end of the Rue de Mallet and turned into the Madeleine Boulevard. Twice he raised his hat to acquaintances, with a flamboyant flourish.

  Turning into a small café at the end of the Boulevard, he took a seat that was edged by a gangway. People hurried to and fro, but no one joined him. If he saw the tall, languid man who sauntered past and took a seat at a table two removed from his, he gave no sign.

  Wally Davidson, to whom French cafés were anathema, ordered a Pilsener.

  It was the third day since his arrival in Paris, and he was getting tired of Octavius Doom. Each morning the little bald-headed man had made his early walk to the café, where he had waited until half-past twelve. He had then returned to 18, Rue de Mallet, and remained indoors until half-past eight, when he had again visited the café, drunk a glass of champagne, and then taken a cab to a small Montmartre night-club known as the Chez Diable.

  Davidson would not have worried so much had the Chez Diable lived up to its name, but, in his opinion, it left a great deal to be desired. There was plenty of nakedness unadorned, but none of the qualities which might save this particular type of entertainment from blatant vulgarity. Davidson disliked the grotesque effect of the horns bound to the heads of the strip-tease girls, and the mask-like appearance of their faces—but his especial bête noir was a comedian who sang in broken English interspersed with French slang, whose neck he would gladly have broken. This gentleman, who was invariably dressed in woman’s clothes, was known as La Comique.

  While Davidson was heartily damning Doom and his choice of amusement, Trale was getting all the information he could from the servants at 18, Rue de Mallet. Doom was, so they told him, still mourning his French wife, who had died some years before. Madame had been very fond of a particular café and had insisted on visiting it every morning and evening. From there she had gone on to a night-club known as the Chez Diable. Monsieur had gone with her on each occasion, and their visits had become almost a ritual—a ritual which, even though his wife was now dead, he still faithfully observed. He was, so the servants told Trale, a sad, and in some ways comical, little man, with a bad temper. But he paid them well; and he was not curious about the quantity of cognac that disappeared from his cellar.

  That again, thought Davidson, to whom Trale had relayed his information, was a crime. No man deserved good brandy if he could not look after it with reverence.

  On this third morning of his vigil, Davidson prepared for a wearisome wait. He was smoking his second cigarette when a woman approached the gangway where Doom was sitting, and Doom stood up, lifting his hat with his usual flourish. The woman was past her first youth, but had a well-preserved beauty and a good figure. She sat at Doom’s table, shared his wine; and they both talked animatedly.

  The woman stayed for perhaps half-an-hour, and during that time her face was engraved in Davidson’s mind. It was a face with the olive skin of Southern France; the eyes were dark, wide-set and expressive. The mouth was generous, and her teeth flashed, white and gleaming, as she talked.

  Davidson heard snatches of
their conversation, but could understand nothing more than conventional inquiries about the health of Monsieur and Madame, their families, their fortunes, their homes and their gardens. And then, as abruptly as she had come, the woman stood up and left.

  Davidson, sipping his drink, eyed Doom in astonishment.

  For the little man was trembling, and his hand shook so violently that his glass clinked against his teeth. In his left hand he was holding some small object, and when he stood up Davidson saw that it was a plain silver ring, as large as a five-shilling piece. It glinted in the sun as Doom looked at it, then slipped it inside his waistcoat pocket.

  This morning, he left the café half-an-hour before his usual time.

  ‘A ring,’ murmured Davidson to himself, ‘now I wonder what that can be.’ After a short wait he followed Doom out of the café.

  The little man walked back to his house in the Rue de Mallet, but this time he came out again within ten minutes, and hailed a cab.

  Davidson did the same.

  The two cabs wove their way through the maze of Paris streets and traffic and finally reached the Versailles road. On the outskirts of Sèvres, where the cobbles had threatened to knock both cars to pieces, Doom’s cab turned right. Behind Davidson’s cab came a Talbot, gleaming and ostentatious. Its driver hooted. Davidson tapped for his cabby to stop, pushed a hundred franc note into the man’s hand, and as the Talbot slowed down, jumped nimbly into the vacant seat next to the driver. At the wheel of the car was Dodo Trale.

  ‘How’re things?’ asked Trale swinging right in the wake of their quarry.

  ‘Moving at last, thank God! What’s brought you here?’

  ‘Doom arrived home badly worried, and then rushed out again, carrying a gun. I happened to be in the kitchen at the time, that’s how I found out about it straight away. I saw you chasing after him, and thought I’d better come along as well, in case you needed reinforcements.’

  ‘In the kitchen!’ repeated Davidson. ‘What on earth...?’

  ‘With the maid,’ said Trale smugly. ‘Pretty little thing...’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about maids,’ said Davidson shortly. ‘Not that I’m not grateful, old boy,’ he added. ‘You turned up just in the nick of time. But I’m puzzled about our friend. He met a woman in the café, and left in a hurry, looking scared to death. Carrying something which may be of interest to Craigie.’

  ‘Being?’

  ‘A ring.’

  ‘Well, well, well, well,’ said Trale.

  Suddenly there was a screeching of brakes ahead, and Doom’s cab drew up outside some iron gates leading to a house standing some fifty yards back from the road.

  Outside the front door of the house was a large Renault.

  Trale drove past the taxi and round a bend in the road before pulling up. Davidson leaped out, and hurried back towards the gateway. Most of the way the hedge surrounding the house was thick, and he could see nothing, but he reached a gap in time to see the Renault moving slowly towards the gates. A moment later the cab moved off, empty of passengers, and Davidson caught a glimpse of Octavius Doom, approaching the house on foot.

  ‘Odd,’ thought Davidson, and paused.

  Had he acted a split-second sooner he might have saved a man’s life, but he had not the slightest idea of what was going to happen. As he reached the gateway, he saw Doom pluck something from his pocket. It glinted in the sun, and Davidson knew he was looking at the ring which the woman had given him. And then the driver of the Renault pulled up a few yards away from Doom, and opened the car door.

  It was not until that moment that Davidson saw the gun in Doom’s other hand. As he reached for his own gun, Doom fired. The Renault’s driver had been half-out of the car; now he slumped sideways.

  Davidson took careful aim, his bullet grazing the the knuckes of Doom’s right hand. The little man turned round with a screech, more frightened than hurt, and his gun clattered to the ground.

  Trale suddenly appeared at Davidson’s elbow, and the two men bounded up the drive.

  ‘Look after him,’ rapped Davidson, with a jerk of his thumb towards Doom, and he dashed to the Renault. The driver was leaning against the door, and Davidson lifted him gently on to the grass verge. He eased the man’s collar and tie—then noticed that the man had a squint.

  ‘Easy,’ he said in French. ‘You’ll be all right.’

  But he knew differently, and so did the wounded man. The pale lips opened, and a few words in English came out, jerky, hardly audible.

  ‘Tell—Miss Woodward—Clement...’

  And then his head dropped back, and he lay still.

  6

  The Ring

  Three yards behind Davidson, Trale had Octavius Doom’s right arm behind him in a half-Nelson.

  ‘No go?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘No, poor devil. But he said something that might be useful. Notice anything peculiar?’

  ‘A lot. No curiosity about here.’

  ‘Exactly. They must have heard the shooting in the house,’ said Davidson. ‘Knock that fellow out, we might have to get busy.’

  Doom opened his lips to speak, but Trale hit him just above the nape of the neck; instant knock-out was a speciality of Craigie’s men. He and Davidson carried him into a shrubbery on one side of the drive, then turned and walked towards the front door.

  The face of the house was dirty, and the paint on the brickwork peeling. On one wall of the ramshackle porch was an iron bell-pull, rusty and dusty. The sonorous clanging that rang through the house would have awakened a Rip Van Winkle.

  As the last echoes died away, the trilling of the birds seemed to emphasise the quietness; and so did the hum of an aeroplane engine, high above them. Trale rang the bell a second time, but once again the house remained silent.

  ‘Window or door?’ asked Trale.

  ‘Door,’ said Davidson. He bent his elbow and cracked it through the pane of frosted glass in the shabby oak panel, then slipped his hand inside and reached for the latch.

  The door opened without trouble, and as it did so a musty odour from the dank-looking hallway reached their nostrils. As the door opened wider the odour became worse.

  It was like a sepulchre. The wallpaper, or what remained of it, had once been dark brown. The furniture was old-fashioned and heavy, examples of the worst nineteenth-century French work. Leading from the lounge hall in which they found themselves, they could see five doors and a dark, narrow stairway.

  ‘Nice place to be buried,’ muttered Trale. ‘Uncanny—not to say unhygienic.’

  ‘Not cheerful,’ admitted Davidson. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here. Up or downstairs first?’

  ‘Up,’ said Trale.

  Fifteen minutes later they had been in every one of the seventeen rooms in that once inhabited country mansion. Each room was lofty, dark and evil-smelling with decay.

  All the furniture had been gnawed by rats, all the upholstery was half-rotted away.

  ‘We’re dreaming,’ remarked Trale, when they had finished investigating the old-fashioned kitchen, in the oven-grate of which age-old cinders had powdered to fine dust.

  ‘Nasty dream,’ murmured Davidson. ‘Interesting story here, I fancy. This place was left in a hurry.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Servants...’

  ‘Old-time servants would never have left beds unmade and dead fires in the grates,’ said Davidson. ‘Especially in France. But that’s only one of the things I want explained. There’s lots more I want to know. Who cut the grass, for instance.’

  ‘A point,’ admitted Trale. ‘That suggests there was someone living in the place recently.’

  ‘Not necessarily. But it might mean that someone was going to live here, and the work in the garden heralded their coming. No one in their senses would have come along and cut the grass for fun. He lit a cigarette. ‘I wonder if there are any cellars?’

  ‘Through there, I expect.’ Trale pointed to a door at the far end of the kitchen, and the two
men crossed towards it. Trale pushed back two heavy bolts, the door creaked open, and he and Davidson found themselves standing at the top of a flight of stone steps.

  Trale slipped a pencil torch from his pocket, and flashed it into the well of darkness. Slowly he directed the narrow beam over the walls, pinpointing the tangled swathes of cobwebs.

  ‘Well, nobody’s been down here for some time, that’s for sure. I ... Wait a minute!’ He gave a low whistle.

  Davidson peered over his shoulder, and for a few moments neither man spoke.

  Clearly outlined in the thick dust which covered the steps were the prints of a man’s foot.

  ‘That poor devil outside, I wonder?’ Trale suggested at last.

  ‘Clement? Maybe,’ admitted Davidson. ‘Oh well, we’d better investigate.’

  Slowly, carefully, they descended the stone steps, and found themselves in a narrow passage. And then, for a second time, Trale whistled.

  ‘So-ho,’ he said, ‘modern conveniences.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Davidson, but as he spoke his upraised hand touched the glass of an electric light bulb, hanging down from the ceiling.

  As Trale found the switch and clicked it down, a bright, glaring light illuminated the cellar, making both men blink. They were facing a door, standing ajar and immediately in front of them. Davidson stepped forward, pushed the door wider open, and, searching for another switch, found one and pressed this down also.

  This time the light was diffused, from a shaded pearl lamp.

  The room, some thirty feet square, into which they walked was furnished with both comfort and elegance. In the middle was a large antique dining-table, with a dozen chairs, the polished wood gleaming beneath the light. At one end were several easy chairs, and a long, low divan, heaped with cushions; at the other, a large bookcase and cocktail cabinet. The floor was covered with a thick, deeply piled carpet, over which were scattered innumerable Persian rugs. On one of these rugs lay a powder-compact—obviously dropped, thought Davidson, as its owner had risen—hurriedly, perhaps—from a chair.

  Here the air was no longer dank and musty, but bore faint but unmistakable traces of Turkish cigarettes and a woman’s expensive scent—reminding Davidson vividly of the woman he had seen speaking to Doom in the Boulevard café.