Flowers For the Judge (28 page)

‘That murder! I never heard such utter nonsense in all my born days. It was an accident. Mr John told me so himself.’

‘Were you here on the night it happened?’ Mr Campion ventured.

The woman turned round and looked at him.

‘Well, of all the questions!’ she explained. ‘Of course I was. What are you trying to insinuate? That I was turning on the gas in the office? No. I was in this flat the whole time. At four o’clock I began to lay out Mr John’s clothes and when he came in at five-thirty I went to my room and sat with the door open, so that I could hear when he called me.’

‘And did he call you?’

Mr Campion’s face expressed polite interest.

‘Of course he did,’ she said impatiently. ‘If Mr John could dress by himself I should think he was ill. He called me to turn on the bath and when it was ready I told him so and went back to my room.’

Campion was silent for some time and his eyes were thoughtful. He was forming the next question carefully when she answered it unbidden.

‘The murder wasn’t the only accident that happened that night,’ she observed in the tone of one mentioning a genuine trouble in the midst of a discussion on imaginary ills. ‘When I knocked on Mr John’s bedroom door to tell him the bath was ready he didn’t hear me and all the time I thought he was having his bath he was in here. He sat down for a moment and must have dozed off. Anyway, he didn’t hear me and at a quarter to seven I heard him come out of the bathroom in a fine rage. He had been to see if the bath was ready and had found it lukewarm. I had to hot it up for him. In the end he didn’t go into that bath until seven o’clock and of course he wouldn’t hurry himself – never would, not if the house was afire. And finally he went off to his dinner at a quarter to eight, dressed nicely but not shaved. He hadn’t, I know, because I looked at his brush and it was dry. That shows you how accidents happen.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Campion with a solemnity quite out of keeping with the circumstances. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it does do.’

‘Well then,’ said Mrs Peel and began to clear away with a great clatter.

Mr Campion rose to his feet.

‘Where is the bathroom?’ he inquired.

The woman stared at him, her brows raised into acute angles on her wrinkled forehead and a flush spreading upward over her face.

‘I never did!’ she said at last. ‘Really! Oh, all right … the second door across the passage. There is a clean towel there.’

A few minutes later when Ritchie entered the old-fashioned bathroom with the big copper geyser and the enormous antiquated bath he found Mr Campion leaning out of the window. The younger man drew in his head and straightened his back. Ritchie took his place.

A fire escape sprawled its ungainly way up the back of the elegant old house and one green-painted iron landing stage abutted on to the wall less than two feet below the sill over which he leant. He looked at it for a moment and then
stepped
back and he and Mr Campion eyed each other. Ritchie was first to speak.

‘Talk,’ he said urgently. ‘Downstairs.’

Mrs Peel made it clear that she was glad to see the end of them, if indeed, as she very much doubted, it was the end. She also mentioned that something for nothing was a very common quarry in her experience, but that since Mr Ritchie was a relation she did not see that she was entitled to begrudge the cocoa. She also wished them a very good afternoon.

Ritchie led Campion downstairs to the ground floor and let himself into Mike’s domain.

‘Mike gave it to me,’ he explained, observing Campion’s eyes on the latchkey. ‘Had to fetch him some clothes when they took him to that place. He won’t mind us here. Good fellow, Mike. Grey hair, poor chap.’

He waved his friend towards a dusty arm-chair in the sitting-room which they both knew well and perched himself opposite on the edge of the table, where he sat with his long arms swinging and his shaggy head held up alertly.

‘Know now?’ he asked anxiously and for the last time the younger man surprised the dog-like, inquiring expression in his face. ‘Clear?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Mr Campion and sighed.

‘
Gallivant
only a copy?’

Although he put the words as a question Ritchie seemed to have very little doubt as to the answer and Campion wondered afresh at his extraordinary mixture of shrewdness and simplicity. Aloud he said:

‘They think the stuff itself may be genuine, but it’s not the original manuscript. It’s probably a copy made some time in the last half of the last century.’

‘Uncle Jacoby,’ observed Ritchie blandly. ‘All prudish Victorians secretly dirty. Probably had it made for private reading. Like him, rather. Funny old man. What happened to Paul?’

Mr Campion leaned back in his chair. He looked very tired but his eyes were bright and intelligent.

‘Paul was too energetic,’ he said slowly, and added apologetically, ‘you’ll have to forgive me if I take my time, but I’ve learnt the story the wrong way round.’

‘Tell it that way. Begin at the end.’

‘I don’t know the end,’ said Mr Campion. ‘That’s the trouble.’

Ritchie sat silent and expectant and presently Campion went on.

‘Paul made himself a nuisance in the firm for four years, ever since he returned from America,’ he said. ‘In that time he seems to have got on the nerves of most people in publishing generally. Then he was bitten by the idea of exhibiting the
Gallivant
and, of course, there were excellent reasons why the manuscript should not be shown in a place where interfering people might ask awkward questions about the age of the paper and the quality of the ink, not to mention the authenticity of the handwriting. So he was stopped, but, being an inquiring and obstinate beggar, it dawned upon him that there was probably something fishy about the precious manuscript and he decided to examine it. He got the bank to give it up, but again he was stopped from looking at it and the manuscript was put in the safe. Whether that was done with malice aforethought I don’t know, but I rather think so, for the safe key was left in his way long enough for him to take an impression of it and from that time on a pretty close watch was kept on Paul’s activities and the watcher was paid small sums for her trouble.’

He paused and Ritchie nodded comprehendingly.

‘The day came,’ continued Mr Campion, ‘when the watcher reported that a letter had arrived which had made Paul dash off in excitement. It was a letter from Wardie Samson, for which he and his observers had waited. It was a signal for action.

‘This is what happened to Paul. He came back to Twenty-three just after six o’clock, when he knew the place would be closed, let himself in and went up to Curley’s desk, where he got the key of the strong-room. He then went down to the basement. His new key fitted the safe, but the
arrangement
of turns and half turns got him bothered because he was nervous and in a high state of excitement. He had just got the safe door open when he was disturbed by footsteps in the yard outside. I imagine that a characteristic cough warned him, quite intentionally, that the newcomer was the one particular person he did not wish to find him there and I think he behaved quite normally and in the way the murderer foresaw he would behave, and not like that hysterical maniac Peter Rigget, who lost his head and went berserk.’

Ritchie looked interested but so completely in the dark that Campion wondered if he could possibly be following this complicated reconstruction.

‘Paul locked himself in and turned out the light,’ Campion continued. ‘He knew, or thought he knew, that he had the only key of the strong-room, so that he was safe from the intruder, and as long as no chink of light showed anywhere there was no reason at all why anyone should suspect the place was occupied.

‘In the dark he crept away from the door and waited for the other man to go. But the newcomer remained. He went into the garage and started the car and Paul, not sure if the back door was standing open, dared not slip out, even if he wanted to. Personally I think he decided to wait until the other man had gone. Probably he imagined that Mike was with him. Anyway, whatever he thought, it did not occur to him that carbon monoxide fumes were pouring into the unventilated room through the rubber pipe pushed through the grating in the opposite wall.

‘He noticed the smell of exhaust, of course, but since he could hear the car and probably guessed there was an air brick leading into the garage somewhere he thought nothing of it.

‘Within five minutes he was drowsy and sat down, I think by the safe. Five minutes later he was unconscious, and after the best part of an hour, when the murderer returned and switched off the engine, he was dead.’

‘Murderer returned?’

Mr Campion looked up.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In the interim he went back to his home by the way he had come, found his bath was cold, blew up his housekeeper, had the bath heated again and bathed. When he had finished he put on his underclothes and trousers, probably under a dressing-gown, and went out once more through the bathroom window, down the fire escape, through the door in the garden wall, switched off the car, threw the rubber tubing in at the basement door as he returned, then finished his dressing and went out to dinner, unfortunately not having had time to shave.

‘I’m open to bet that he wore gloves not because of finger-prints, but so that he should not dirty or burn his hands.’

There was a long silence. Ritchie was rocking himself slowly backwards and forwards.

‘Not dozing in dining-room, watching street for Paul to go into Twenty-three,’ he said at last. ‘Wouldn’t have been seen on fire escape from street at other end of yard. Foggy all that week. Risky, Campion.’

‘Risky!’ Mr Campion caught his breath. ‘It was so risky that no one who did not imagine himself a species of god about the place would have thought of it, much less attempted it. Mike might have come home earlier, although, of course, he was supposed to be at the cocktail party. But anyone might have gone into the garage to see why the car was running. Hang it! Even a policeman might have inquired … Besides, Paul might not have stayed there. He might have come out at the very beginning and asked him what the hell he thought he was up to.’

‘Wouldn’t have mattered,’ Ritchie observed. ‘He’d have won. He’d have told Paul to mind his own business and go away. Paul would have gone. Strong personality … strict, you know… authoritative.’

Mr Campion remained thoughtful.

‘On Sunday he must have been getting restive when he sent Mike down to the strong-room,’ he said quietly. ‘He sent him to get a folder, expecting him to find the door locked and the key missing and so start the excitement
which
would lead to the finding of the body. It would have been a weak move if Mike had found Paul. As it turned out, of course, it complicated the issue tremendously. Mike didn’t see the corpse and came back as though nothing had happened. That must have jolted our man considerably. So afterwards, probably late at night, he went down there himself, dragged the body into a prominent position, and, after placing the hat by its side, left it for Miss Marchant to find in the morning. He couldn’t very well leave the door locked on the inside, so he put the key back in Miss Curley’s desk.

‘It’s a mad sort of crime, so mad that it came off. It was the man’s mental make-up which made it possible. All murderers are a little crazy. The people who get away with incredible things are those who never look round the subject, but just go straight ahead and make for their objective with blinkers on. It’s like the drunk who walks across the parapet. He only knows he wants to get to a window next door, sees a straight path and takes it, oblivious of the ten-storey drop on either side of him.’

‘John …’ said Ritchie. ‘Obvious really.’

‘Obvious?’ inquired Mr Campion, his professional pride stirring in its latent bed.

‘From the beginning,’ said Ritchie placidly. ‘John said he knew it was an accident. John’s not a fool. Got a logical mind. Reasonable, except where personal infallibility is concerned. If he knew it was an accident he must have arranged it himself: everyone else thought it was a murder. Queer chap … law of his own. Terrible for Mike.’

‘Not too good for Paul,’ murmured Mr Campion dryly. ‘But that’s not the question at the moment. The trouble is I can’t prove this story. It depends too much on your friend Mrs Peel, and even if she could be persuaded to tell the same yarn in the witness box what should we have then? A case against John just about as strong as the one they’ve already got against Mike. The police wouldn’t consider it. Why should they?’

Ritchie sat silent for a long time. Finally he looked at the younger man, his mild blue eyes dark and pained.

‘Terrible for Mike,’ he repeated. ‘Caught, imprisoned, killed.’

‘No,’ said Campion hastily. ‘He’ll be acquitted. I’m sure of it. If I wasn’t I’d be at the Yard now doing anything I could, making a fool of myself probably. I’m banking on an acquittal. Anyway, there’ll be the appeal. That’s not the point. Unfortunately, in an imperfect world acquittal does not mean that a man is proved innocent to the satisfaction of the people with whom he has got to live.’

‘What shall we do?’

Ritchie invited a command and Mr Campion made up his mind. He rose and walked over to Mike’s desk.

‘I think we’ll leave a note,’ he said.

Taking an envelope from a pigeon-hole, he addressed it to John, adding briefly: ‘With Mr Campion’s compliments.’

Inside he placed the folded page from the copy of the
Gallivant
and the key of the safe which he had received from Mr Rigget. Together he and Ritchie carried the missive upstairs and left it with Mrs. Peel.

THEIR VISIT TO
John’s flat and subsequent conversation had taken much longer than either Ritchie or Mr Campion had dreamed, and when they met Gina and Miss Curley on the doorstep of Twenty-one they were astounded to learn that the court had adjourned for the day.

Miss Curley was grimly capable, keeping her head with a conscious effort. Gina was silent and, had it not been for a glazed expression in her eyes, might have appeared sullen. Her chestnut hair warmed the whiteness of her skin and her mouth was resolute.