Death of a Postman Read online

  “Arthur,” said the girl unexpectedly, “I think you ought to tell him.”

  The lad looked grave; as if he felt a heavy burden of responsibility.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said at last, “it was a fellow named Wilson. I don’t know him very well. He’s one of the temporary workers we take on during the Christmas rush. We always have a few for several weeks before Christmas; the overseas mail starts getting very heavy then, both ways. Wilson was one of the first temporaries, sir. I know, because I help to make up the wages.”

  “Did you get a really good look at him?” asked Roger, and felt a fierce glow of excitement.

  “Oh, yes, under one of the lamps. At first we saw him running; in fact he looked as if he was going under a lorry. Gave my fiancée quite a turn. We didn’t recognise Wilson until he was close to the Embankment, and then—well, we’re pretty sure that it was Wilson, but we couldn’t absolutely swear to it”

  “You’ve done wonders,” Roger said. “Can’t give me his full name and address, can you?”

  “I’m ever so sorry, I can’t,” the lad said, “but it’ll be at the office.”

  Work at the River Way Office was at a very low ebb when Roger arrived. It was a little after one o’clock. Two vans were being unloaded, and the parcels looked lost in the gaping maws of the chutes. The wide, clean looking loading and unloading platforms were almost deserted. All the men on duty wore uniforms, except the driver of a van who wore ordinary clothes with a band round his left arm, marked ER. Roger went upstairs, not taking the lift, and into the huge letter sorting office. That afternoon this had been thick with men handling letters. Now, it was nearly empty. Round the walls were thousands upon thousands of pigeonholes, each clearly marked; and every pigeonhole had its quota of letters. In regular lines running the full length of the room were letter racks, none standing very high; more letters were in these. One corner of the room was occupied by workers, near the main doors. Also near here were hundreds of big sacks fitted inside special stands, so that the mouths of the sacks were held wide open. These were for small parcels, or packets.

  A little grey haired man with ruddy cheeks was in charge.

  “Oh, yes, Inspector, very glad to help in any way I can. Terrible business, terrible. Your men are on the premises, of course. I’m sure I hope that you catch the murderer very soon. Now, what was it you needed? Names and addresses of the temporary workers? I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that; it would be awful to think that we had a murderer working among our regular staff, wouldn’t it?” He would have sounded smug but for his bright little smile. “If you’ll come with me to the office, I’ll get the list.” He meant the Chief Sorter’s office, which was partitioned off in a corner of the room. Carmichael’s desk was scrupulously tidy. “We keep a list of all the temporary workers, and make a note of their hours, and the time sheets go upstairs to the wages office once a week. Just like an ordinary business house, I suppose. Now, let me see, I expect Mr Carmichael keeps it locked away.” The little man jingled keys, opened a safe, pulled open the door and took out the time sheet. He spread this on a desk.

  There was Wilson: Aubrey Peter Wilson, 58 Niger Street, Shepherd’s Bush, W.12. He was the fourth on the list of temporaries, and thirty or forty names had been added since.

  “It’s a lucky thing you didn’t want this tomorrow; we shall take on hundreds more,” said the little man, earnestly.

  “How are they selected?” Roger inquired.

  “Well, we have to be satisfied that they are people of good repute, of course, but they have no responsibility beyond the actual letters and parcels they take out or collect, and they are usually watched—not with any intent, sir, it just happens that they’re usually in twos. Even threes. The method of selection – well, it isn’t easy to get spare time workers in these days of full employment, but of course we get a quota from the Employment Exchange, and the moment the schools and colleges break up for the holiday we get a flood of young men—and girls, of course.”

  “Who signs them on?”

  “Well, in fact the Chief Sorter does. It’s not like selection for the permanent staff, you understand. Have you—ah—have you got everything you need?”

  “May I have one of my men make a copy of this?” asked Roger.

  “Oh, perfectly all right,” breathed the little man. “Perfectly.”

  Roger went down to the stores and maintenance quarters, in the basement; three men from the Yard were working there, checking equipment and tools and questioning the one or two maintenance staff workers then on duty. It was a gloomy place, with several low, arched doorways leading to tunnels, now used as store rooms, which had once led down to the river. There was no report of a missing hammer.

  Roger sent a man to copy out the time sheet, then arranged for a sergeant to meet him at the Shepherd’s Bush station, and headed fast for West London, through the dark streets.

  Fox-Wilkinson, in charge at Shepherd’s Bush HQ by night, was one of the youngest senior Divisional officers, dark haired, keen, spruce, ready to take any short cut that offered. He had no information about an Aubrey Peter Wilson who lived at 58 Niger Street, but could soon call in the constable who did the street’s night beat.

  “Let’s go to him,” said Roger. “You can have my sergeant sent ahead.”

  “I’ll fix it.” Fox-Wilkinson spoke to an inspector, then led the way downstairs. “We’ll go in your car, shall we?” The whole London Force knew Roger’s preference for driving himself. “Keep on the way you’re heading, then third right,” Fox-Wilkinson directed, and added after a pause. “If this chap Wilson knew anything about the postman job, we’d better not take it too easily.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Roger said.

  “Yes, sir, I know a bit about Wilson at Number 58,” the police constable said. He was one of the older, more solid types; five minutes with him told the whole story of why he was still on the beat. “Bit of a boxer, but never done very much—too much talk and not enough training. Easy money, that’s what Wilson’s always after. I’ve kept an eye on him for some time. Does a bit of betting, passes a few slips, I shouldn’t wonder. Nasty piece of work, if you ask me.”

  “Any reason for saying that?” asked Roger.

  “Well—in a way. He had a quarrel with a pal, after a dance at the Hammersmith Palais. Beat him up pretty badly, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it I’d be careful with Wilson, if I was you; he’s pretty tough. Why, I’ve seen him bend an iron bar with his bare hands!”

  “Oh, have you?” Roger said heavily.

  “Got all you want?” asked Fox-Wilkinson.

  “Yes, thanks. As soon as my man arrives, we’ll go to the house. If you’ll see that it’s covered back and front, I don’t think we’ll have much trouble with Wilson.

  Roger waited alone in the car round the corner from Niger Street First to arrive was Sergeant Kilby, in a patrol car; and, had he wanted it, Kilby could have been home in bed. They walked to the corner. The street lights were out and there were no lighted windows, but the stars were shining.

  “Be a bit of all right if we catch the swine as quickly as this,” said Kilby. “This job’s done something to me.” He was always economical with his ‘sirs’. “As a matter of fact, it was that May Harrison who flattened me, the way it upset her, and the way she steadied the two brothers. Young Micky took it hard; the eldest boy, Derek, just seemed numb. Went off soon afterwards, to tell his grandmother, I gather.” Kilby was talking disconnectedly. “Just opened my eyes in a way I hadn’t seen before. Nice family like that, broken wide open. Makes you feel that the dead chap isn’t the one to be sorry for.”

  “I know just what you mean,” said Roger. He heard footsteps, and recognised Fox-Wilkinson. “Everything ready?”

  “Yes,” the local man said. “But you can do me a favour. Let me come up with you. I know it’s your show, but—”

  “Come and welcome,” said Roger.

  They walked quietly a
long the unlit street, and as they drew towards Number 58, Roger shone a torch.

  “Here we are,” said Fox-Wilkinson. “We’re bound to wake Wilson when we’re knocking.”

  “If he cuts and runs for it we’ll have a stronger case,” said Roger, philosophically. He shone the torch on the door, and found a battery type bell set in the middle. He rang twice, and then kept his finger on the push. The jarring sound seemed to echo up and down the street. Men on the other side of the road would be watching the top window, and men at the back would make sure that Wilson didn’t get away. He stopped, then rang again.

  Suddenly there were footsteps inside; heavy thumping, as if on stairs, and steadier, shuffling sounds as someone came along the passage. Whoever it was fumbled with a key, there was a sharp click, then the door opened an inch and a man asked roughly: “What the hell do you want?”

  “It’s all right,” Roger began, “we’re police, and—”

  “I don’t give a damn who you are, waking up decent folk in the middle of the night! What—”

  “Is Wilson in?” There was a pause.

  “So it’s Wilson again,” the man said, in a resigned voice. “It’s the last night he sleeps here; there’s been nothing but trouble since he came. Why, my own daughter isn’t safe from him, he—”

  Roger put his shoulder to the door, and pushed. The man backed hastily away. He was dressed in striped pyjamas and a thick blue overcoat; his long nose was red, and he looked perished with cold.

  ‘Where is he?” asked Roger curtly.

  The bluster died away.

  “Upstairs, the back room, he—but what do you want him for?”

  “Just to ask him a few questions. We won’t keep you up long.”

  Roger hurried to the head of the stairs and a narrow landing. A door stood wide open, and there was a light on in the room beyond. A woman called: “Perce, what is it?”

  Roger turned towards the back rooms. He could make out the shape of a doorway but there was no light on in the room beyond. Wilson might be climbing out of the window, or might be crouching behind the door – possibly holding another weapon.

  There was no sound.

  Fox-Wilkinson was just behind Roger, now; the floor boards creaked. The man with the thin red nose was standing in the doorway of his bedroom. Roger put on the landing light. The door ahead was flimsy, and he could get it down with little trouble. He put his shoulder to it, and thrust with his whole weight.

  The door crashed in.

  There was only dark silence beyond.

  Chapter Seven

  Pattern Of Events

  Roger recovered his balance, half way inside the room. By then the silence had lost its menace; if Wilson had been waiting to attack, he would have shown himself. There was nothing to suggest that he had got out of the window; in the light from the landing, it showed up clearly, and the curtains were drawn.

  Roger thought: ‘So he’s flown,’ and switched on the bedroom light – and stopped moving.

  Wilson hadn’t flown.

  He lay on the bed, fully dressed, and the ugly thing was the gash at his throat; as ugly, the blood which must have drenched the bedclothes, and had now dried to a dark brown; there was hardly a touch of red. Wilson’s knees were drawn up, in an oddly uncanny way; as a live man’s. It looked as if he had been killed while lying on his back with his hands behind his neck and his legs drawn up.

  Fox-Wilkinson said heavily: “Well, what about that?”

  “Now I think we’re beginning to see how big it is,” Roger said slowly. The first effect of the shock was easing off; it wouldn’t take long to go. “Better get Wilberforce over here right away. Your chaps can look after the rest, can’t they?”

  “Glad to.”

  “Here, what’s going on?” demanded the man with the red nose. He put up a show of bravado, and moved forward. “What’s the game, is—”

  “Come with me a minute, will you?” asked Roger, and gripped a bony wrist, making the man go with him into the room. One look at the bed, and the man made a retching sound. “Just tell me this,” said Roger evenly. “Is that Wilson?”

  “Y-y-y-yes” gabbled the landlord. “Let me get out of here, let me get out.”

  It didn’t take long to get things moving. Divisional men took over the routine, a divisional police surgeon was on the spot within fifteen minutes, Wilberforce with his big assistant soon afterwards.

  Roger tackled the man and wife and their daughter. The family name was Evans, and the daughter seemed to be worth three of her parents, an alert, well spoken brunette in her early twenties.

  They’d heard Wilson come in, about half past ten, with someone else – they’d known it was a man because of his footsteps. The men had gone straight to Wilson’s room and switched on the radio; he usually got a foreign station, with dance music. They hadn’t heard anyone leave, but they’d been listening to their own radio.

  The police could not find the weapon.

  The doctor hadn’t much doubt about it being a long knife with a very sharp blade; there had been no hacking, just one sweeping blow.

  The only new find of significance was a brown stain on one of Wilson’s shoes – a shoe which might have made that impression in the mud at Goose Lane. Roger took this with him, and drove back to the Yard. The Laboratory night staff lost no time confirming that the brown stain was blood, and Roger soon found that the shoe matched the cast.

  But there was still no answer to the vital questions. Had Wilson killed Bryant? Or had Wilson known the killer, and been killed because of what he could tell?

  Roger set the Yard and the Divisions to work at high pressure, to trace all of Wilson’s friends, and check and double check his movements. Then he went back to Wilson’s room, arriving as Wilberforce finished his first search.

  “Looked for any prints yourself, Handsome?”

  “Always leave that to the experts.”

  “You’d be a wiser man if you did! Well, take a look at these. And these and these and these.” Wilberforce kept stabbing his finger about the room; at the electric switch, the door handle, the radio, at a cigarette case, at a glass, at a beer bottle. “Wilson’s prints are all over the place, but they weren’t on that hammer shaft.”

  That was a disappointment and reminded Roger of his earlier fears: there would be no short cut.

  “Pity,” he said.

  Wilberforce grinned.

  “Don’t be downhearted! The man who handled that hammer’s been here.” Wilberforce showed him a print on a plain tumbler which smelled of whisky. “See? Been wiped, but he left a dab; too much of a hurry, I suppose. Tented arch and the little scar. Bit of luck we got that; the glass had a smear of fat on it—butter, I’d say—and there was the dab, large as life. Wilson was killed by the man who handled that hammer.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Roger said.

  He left soon afterwards, checked with the Yard, and was home and in bed just after four o’clock.

  He didn’t wake until half past ten next morning, and as soon as his eyes flickered open sensed that it was late. There was the broad daylight of winter brightness, sounds in the street which he was seldom at home to hear; and no sound in the house. He got up, opened the door and called: “Anyone home?” Janet didn’t answer.

  Roger yawned, rasped his chin, put on a dressing gown and went downstairs, calling Janet and getting no response. On the kitchen table was a note: Gone to shops, back about eleven. AC said telephone him as soon as you’re awake. So Chatworth was on the ball. Roger put on a kettle and looked through the newspapers as he waited for it to boil. He was featured in several of them. Bryant’s murder made the front pages in every newspaper – it had exactly the right news value, a Christmas story of Murder in the Post Office. Every newspaper took up the line that it might be connected with the Post Office robberies which had spread over many years.

  The kettle boiled.

  Roger made tea, letting it brew while he telephoned the Yard and asked for Cha
tworth. He reported, briefly, and Chatworth made no comment that mattered; he was not a man who talked for the sake of talking.

  “Put me through to Turnbull’s desk, sir, will you?” Roger asked.

  Turnbull was soon on the line.

  “Find out any tiling more about that hammer?” asked Roger.

  “No, nothing at all,” Turnbull said. “You had all the fun.” Roger let that pass. “Carmichael turned up on the tick of eight, as usual, a stickler for punctuality. Any fresh orders?”

  “No,” said Roger. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  He had two cups of tea, shaved, washed, dressed, and went downstairs as Janet arrived, fully laden. As she hustled about to get him some breakfast, she complained about the shops and the prices, and there was a sharper edge to her voice than usual. One of those mornings! The boys had been difficult to wake up, apparently; she’d been cross with them, and it was so vexing on the day that Scoopy was so happy about his triumph. Roger said: “Oh, lor’,” and went into the front room. There was his Hi, champ! on top of the writing desk just where he had left it last night. He took it up to the boys’ room and left it on Scoopy’s bed, and when he came down, breakfast was ready. Twenty minutes later, he gave Janet a peck of a kiss and left.

  Nothing new had come in at the Yard.

  Except for the one on the glass, the only fingerprints at Wilson’s place were those of the unknown murderer, Wilson, and the Evans family – man, wife, and daughter.

  Roger put in a written report, for Chatworth, and went along to the River Way Post Office.

  As he turned into the big yard, he whistled.

  It was crammed with vehicles, mostly Post Office red, but a few privately owned, nearly all dark colours. It swarmed with people, mostly men and mostly young. The heaps of parcels on the unloading and the loading platforms were mountainous. There was a kind of rhythm about the way everything was done, and yet the chutes were choked, and if the inflow of parcels increased, there wouldn’t be room for them. He had never seen anything quite like it – and there, in the middle of the great piles of parcels, looking like a tiny dictator, was Carmichael.