The Doorway to Death Read online

  “Strewth, one of those, is he?” Eddie said. “Works by the book. Thanks for the tip, ’Andsome.” He turned back to his desk, obviously full of resolve. Roger and Sloan grinned, and somehow Sloan’s red, fresh face and clear blue eyes restored Roger’s good humour.

  “I’m going to see Cortland, and then get out on the Rose Jensen job,” Roger said. “I’m to forget the others. You’ll probably find them pushed on to your desk, Bill; better have a look through them.” He tapped the other pending reports. “If you’ve any questions, I can answer ’em a bit later.”

  He gathered up the Page Street papers, and went out.

  The talk with Cortland was brief. Roger had two sergeants detailed to help him, and could call on whatever help he thought was necessary.

  First he went to see the dead woman on the morgue slab. The morticians had made her look quite peaceful. He checked the medical report, and found that death had undoubtedly been caused by strangulation.

  “Any indication that she’d had intercourse in the hour or so preceding death?” Roger asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s something. Anything else?”

  “Nothing at all – no finger-nail scrapings, if that’s what you mean, nothing to suggest that she put up a fight.”

  “Right, thanks.”

  “Pleasure.”

  Roger drove to Page Street in his green Wolseley. The roads were fairly empty, and the journey took him less than fifteen minutes. Brown, one of the two sergeants detailed to work with him, was talking to a uniformed policeman and a little elderly woman, near Number 31. Roger didn’t interrupt, but went to the front door, where a constable stood on duty. A few people stood about idly, but there were no newspapermen, nothing to suggest that the case had caught the public fancy.

  Ibbetson, the other detective sergeant, was in the dead woman’s bedroom. This overlooked a narrow back garden, the gardens of nearby houses and of other houses across the road, which were identical with those in Page Street. A woman was beating a carpet hanging over a clothes-line, and in the garden next door a line was filled with baby’s white napkins.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Hallo, Ibbetson,” Roger greeted. “Having any luck?”

  “Nothing new at all, sir,” Ibbetson said, with his faintly north-country accent. He had a north-country look, too, a broad, amiable face and rather heavy jowl and eyelids; an elderly face in a young man. “I haven’t found a scrap of paper with writing on it, any name and address, anything at all. The woman downstairs says that Rose Jensen kept herself to herself pretty much; often they wouldn’t exchange a word for weeks on end. Mutual dislike, I fancy.”

  “I’ll have a word with the downstairs woman – what’s her name?”

  “A Mrs. Kimmeridge. She lives there with her husband, a London Transport bus driver. Pretty reliable, I’d say.”

  “Did she have much to say about the various men who came to see Rose Jensen?”

  “From what I can judge, she heard more than she saw of them,” said Ibbetson. “That’s what annoyed her as much as anything else. Probably a lot of hot air.”

  “Other neighbours?”

  “Only found two who noticed anything much, and they agree that there were more men callers than you’d expect.”

  “Descriptions?”

  “The usual, sir—every sort of man from a chap who looked like a lion-tamer to a little fellow with mousy hair. I’ve come to expect people to be vague, but in this case they seem to take the biscuit!”

  “Any description which seems to cover men who’ve been here several times?” asked Roger.

  “Well, yes,” said Ibbetson, and tapped the notebook which bulged slightly in the pocket of his unpressed suit. “Only two really stand up – elderly chap, rather fat, who seems to have been once or twice before; and a nice-looking young chap – answers the description of the cyclist, too,” Ibbetson declared. “Mrs. K said she saw the cyclist come in but not leave. I should say those two descriptions are pretty sound.”

  “Let me have a look at what you’ve written about ’em,” said Roger, and held out his hand for the notebook. “Thanks. Good – we’ll check with one or two of the neighbours, then go all out for this pair. Who else saw the two men?”

  “As a matter of fact, sir, three people noticed the cyclist, but only Mrs. Kimmeridge seems sure he went in. The elderly chap’s doubtful, but two neighbours say they definitely saw him, and one says he went in. Had to get a bit sharp with some of them before they’d go that far.”

  Roger nodded.

  “I’ve spoken to the Divisional copper who saw the cyclist outside Number 31,” Ibbetson went on. “He didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  “Did he see this fat chap?”

  “No. Very clear description of the cyclist, though. I’ve taken this report down verbatim.”

  “Fine,” said Roger. “Thanks.” He read of a tall, athletic-looking man probably in the late twenties, wearing a brown sports jacket of smooth texture, grey flannel trousers, a pale blue sports shirt, a scarf knotted at the throat, no hat, brown hair cut fairly short, highly-polished brown shoes. The bicycle was an Olympic, light green semi-racer type, probably fairly new. It had red tyres.

  “Chap keeps his eyes open,” Roger remarked. “How much further have you gone?”

  “That’s about the lot, sir. There’s a great deal of embroidery and tapestry work here; she was good with her needle. Neat and tidy, too – packs everything up well.” Ibbetson pointed to some fat cardboard tubes. “All tapestries. I’ll find out more about, that angle.”

  “Good,” Roger said. “Now go along to Elwell Police Station, and ask them to put the description of the cyclist out on the teletype. A cyclist wouldn’t have a very wide radius, so suppose we ask all Divisions within twenty miles to try and trace this chap, putting a special concentration on the Hadworth area. Will you fix that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ibbetson was eager.

  “What’s the woman like downstairs?” Roger asked. “From our point of view, I mean.”

  “Probably ask you to have a cup of tea,” said Ibbetson and grinned.

  “All right. Send a constable up here, will you? We won’t seal the flat yet.”

  “Right,” said Ibbetson.

  Five minutes later, Roger tapped at the front door of the flat below. The two flats in the house shared the same street door, but the one downstairs had a separate front door, close to the foot of the stairs; that was common in many houses of this type. Roger was surprised to find the woman tall, brisk and middle-aged, quite a looker in her way. Her white blouse was nicely filled, her black skirt was rather tight so that it emphasised her flat waist; a good figure for the middle forties. Obviously she had expected visitors and had made up for the occasion.

  “Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?” she asked, staring intently at Roger; she did not seem unduly impressed by his looks. “Perhaps it’s a picture in the papers, but somewhere. Are you coming in?”

  “May I, for five minutes?”

  “I was just going to make a cup of tea,” said Mrs. Kimmeridge; “I usually do about eleven o’clock in the morning.” She led the way to a back room which was pleasantly furnished, probably rather more expensively than most of the houses in Page Street. Everything suggested a house-proud woman to whom cleanliness was probably nearer godliness than godliness itself. “I expect you want to ask all the same questions as the other fellows, really.”

  “I’ll try to think up some new ones,” Roger said.

  Whether they were new or old, she answered freely, confirming everything that Ibbetson had told him, and was quite sure about the young man on the bicycle. He had been there several times.

  She seemed less sure about the fat, elderly man – she had seen him in the street and thought she recognised him as a visitor Rose Jensen had had before, but wasn’t positive he had come in. In any case, that had been much earlier than the time she had seen the cyclist; she was sure of that. She re
frained from criticising Rose Jensen, possibly on the grounds of not speaking ill of the dead.

  “Could you identify this cyclist?” Roger asked.

  “Oh, yes; no doubt about that. I had a good look at him again last night. I never did like it, but there’s a key hanging down inside the street door, and anyone who knows about it can come in. I keep my door locked, I can tell you.”

  “Did you see the cyclist come in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him go out?”

  “No. There was a play on the television, my husband and I always like looking at plays, so we didn’t take any more notice. After all, Miss Jensen’s business was her business, wasn’t it?”

  “A very charitable point of view,” murmured Roger. “Could you be sure of the identity of any of the other people who visited Miss Jensen at any time?”

  “Well, honesty is the best policy, my husband and I always say,” said Mrs. Kimmeridge, “and I couldn’t swear to the others. I might be able to tell you if I’d seen them before, but I don’t spend my time spying on a neighbour’s callers.” She drew herself up, most righteously.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Roger said.

  He left after twenty minutes, and Mrs. Kimmeridge made a point of seeing him to the front door. He had all the known facts clear in his mind when he drove to the local Divisional Headquarters, where a Superintendent named Grey was in charge. Grey had already seen Ibbetson, the teletype call had gone out for the cyclist and the elderly man; everything was in hand.

  “Another thing I did, Handsome; thought it might speed things up a bit—I had a word with the Olympic Cycle people. Wondered how many of their models have red tyres. Only one in ten, it turns out; that should help a bit; and what’s more they didn’t start fitting them as a regular thing until eighteen months ago, so that limits the range.”

  “First class. Thanks.”

  “Always glad to prove that the Yard isn’t the only place where they grow coppers,” said Grey, grinning. He was biggish and elderly, with a good reputation. “Shouldn’t think it’ll be long before you pick up this cyclist. What do you think happened?”

  “You guess.”

  “Being careful, aren’t you? Must be the effect of that new broom I’ve heard about! Well, it looks pretty clear to me.”

  “Tell me.”

  “This Jensen woman has had several beaux on the end of pieces of string,” said Grey. “The old man was probably still welcome to her couch because he’s in the money. The cyclist obviously hasn’t much cash – who’d cycle, if he could afford a car? – and he was young. Last night he saw the old boy had gone, and went in and put his lady love where she couldn’t get up to that game again. Wouldn’t be the first time it happened.”

  “Nor the last,” agreed Roger solemnly.

  “Now what’s on your mind?” demanded Grey. “Trying to see more in it than there is, I shouldn’t wonder. Let me tell you something I’ve learned after forty years in the Force, Handsome.”

  “Most cases have simple answers,” Roger said, still solemnly.

  “You devil!” grinned Grey. “You’ve heard me say that before! Well, so they have; don’t go tying yourself up into knots because you want to hand the new Jay this case on a platter, just to show him how smart you are.”

  Roger’s smile didn’t change, but his mood did.

  He left Grey five minutes later, with that last remark still rankling. Grey of all people had no axe to grind. If he or any of the Divisional men had a notion that he, West, would go all out to impress the new A.G., whose fault was it? He himself must have created the impression.

  Big head?

  Well, this job looked simple, Roger reflected grimly, but no one was going to make him jump to conclusions, after twenty years’ experience of the C.I.D.

  He drove back to the Yard, arranged for two men to stay at the dead woman’s flat, checked other reports, and found three more were in about the cyclist in Page Street last night. There were other reports, one of a taxi, one of two private cars, but none of these had gone to Page Street so far as it was possible to say. Everything pointed to that good-looking cyclist.

  Roger put out a call for a taxi-driver who had taken an elderly man to Page Street.

  Ibbetson came in, just before one o’clock. Roger was alone in the big office then; two telephones started to ring at the same time. He let them ring.

  “How’re you doing, Ibby?”

  “I’ve just had a message from Hadworth Hill tube station,” Ibbetson said. He was young and eager enough to show excitement. “A taxi-driver there says he saw a cyclist answer this description last night. Recognised him too.”

  Roger said sharply: “Can he name him?”

  “No, but he says he catches a train at half-past eight each week-day, and usually gets home about six o’clock,” said Ibbetson. “Two or three of the station staff also recognise the description, and they think the chap had a season ticket to Green Park. That’s if he’s the same one.”

  “We want a man at that station from now until we pick him up,” said Roger. “I’ll lay it on, you keep checking.” In his own excitement, he had almost forgotten how essential it was to get quick and conclusive results in this case; had almost forgotten Colonel Jay.

  They’d have that cyclist before the day was out.

  Half an hour later they had a call from a taxi-driver who had taken a ‘fat, elderly man’ from Hadworth Station to the Rose and Crown in Elwell High Street, which was two streets away from Page Street. The Rose and Crown would be worth a visit soon.

  Chapter Five

  Mistake

  Michael Quist left his office just after five o’clock and walked briskly towards Green Park station, buying each of the London evening newspapers on the way. Usually he bought only the Evening Globe. Usually, too, he hurried to the station and jostled for a place on a train to Piccadilly, changed to the Hadworth line, and was at Hadworth about six. He didn’t hurry tonight, but crossed the road and stepped inside Green Park, and scanned the newspapers. He did not see the little man who watched him.

  Each front page carried the story.

  Each one now said that the police were anxious to interview an elderly man dressed in clerical grey, and a young man aged about twenty-eight, who had been on a cycle near the house in Page Street about nine o’clock last night. The police, each said, believed that they could help them with their inquiries. Even to Quist, who knew very little about police work and procedure, that had an ominous ring; the man who could ‘help’ was often later arrested.

  He did not give much thought to personal danger. He had put in a confidential written report for Gorringe, only yesterday; and once he was questioned by the police he would refer them to his report and the story of his investigation. It was almost certain that Gorringe would contact the police directly he read the report, but he was more likely to send for him, Michael Quist. In any case, Gorringe had been away for a few days, with influenza, and probably had not returned yet. There was time.

  Every hour he could put off taking action, the better. In spite of falling in love with Sybil, he had been driven by conscience to find out all he could, and now felt sure that the defalcations were made at the bank. Charles Henry’s behaviour suggested that he was guilty, but there seemed to be others pushing him; otherwise, why was he so afraid?

  Before long, the police would find out all about this; would it help anyone, Sybil or her father, if they were told now? It certainly wouldn’t help the dead woman.

  Quist looked in the general direction of Westminster and Scotland Yard. He knew the Yard buildings as every Londoner did; they held no especial terrors for him. He could walk there in twenty minutes, and tell his story in another ten.

  What was the best way to help Sybil?

  When the blow fell, she would need all the help she could get, and if he was the man who had betrayed her father, how could she turn to him?

  That was his only concern: how to ease the coming blow for Syb
il.

  A shadow of apprehension fell upon him. Supposing Henry killed himself before being arrested; he’d had the look of a man driven to desperation. And what would the police say when they knew that he, Michael Quist, could have stopped that by telling them what he knew?

  That was letting his imagination run riot. The police weren’t to know how soon he had discovered that the murdered woman and Henry’s companion were one and the same. No harm would come from waiting. He might be able to decide what to do.

  Could he spend much time with Sybil without telling what he knew?

  He went to a telephone kiosk near the Ritz Hotel, and still did not notice the little man who followed him. Sybil’s number was in the London dialling area, and he heard the ringing sound going on and on. His heart began to thump, and it wasn’t simply because he was going to talk to Sybil. There was at least a chance that her father had been questioned and arrested. Sybil’s tone would betray any such disaster, and he would drop everything and rush over to her.

  She herself answered. “Hadworth 3412.”

  Try as he might, Quist couldn’t put a natural eagerness into his voice; couldn’t stop his heart from thumping.

  “Sybil darling?”

  “Micky!”

  “Hallo, my sweet,” he said. “I tried before, but you were out.”

  “Oh, what a shame! Mother and I were shopping.” There was no hint of crisis here.

  “And I’ve been rushed off my feet since; Saxby’s are such slave-drivers.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “I suppose so. How—how are you?”

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  She sounded gay; in fact she sounded delighted to hear him. Nothing suggested that she even suspected trouble, or that his manner puzzled her. She was just Sybil. He felt quite sure now that he was doing the right thing: must be ready at her side, when the blow fell. After the shock was over, perhaps in a few days, he would tell her that he had been watching her father. Gorringe hadn’t yet seen that report, and it might be possible to get it back so that no one need know it had ever been written. At heart, Quist didn’t think it would be so easy, but he felt less burdened, and sure that he could help Sybil when the time came.