Hide My Eyes (26 page)

By now it was raining hard in the city way, which to Annabelle’s country ears was extraordinarily noisy, the water drumming on the roofs and gurgling in pipes and gulleys. They could just see the path, white in the gloom, as it ran round beside the kitchen door just below the little passageway which led from the house to the collection. Then it followed the museum buildings, presumably right round to the entrance.

As they came round the arch and huddled under the wall he bent closer to her.

“Was Gerry there?”

“Yes. Waiting for us when we got in. What do you know about him?”

“Not enough. What happened?”

“I don’t know. He was just furious to see me. I thought he was going to kill me.”

Richard grunted. “I don’t think it’s quite as sensational as that.”

“I do.” Annabelle’s practical young voice quivered. “Aunt Polly was petrified about something. Richard, I think we ought to tell the police.”

“No, we won’t do that.” His smile was wry. “I’ve had one little chat with the police about being on enclosed premises tonight. I don’t think we’ll risk another. No, you stand in this doorway and try and keep out of the wet, and I’ll go and see if there’s a back gate to this place.”

He left her standing in the shallow porch of the side door to the museum, the one through which Gerry had come that morning to turn off the ‘Crossing the Bar’ mechanism for her. As she leaned back against it, getting more and more wet, it occurred to her that she did not remember Polly locking this door when they had gone round fastening up together after Superintendent Luke and Mr. Campion had left.

She tried the handle cautiously and was rewarded by a waft of warm camphory air as the door slid open. She remained just inside, waiting for Richard.

He came at last and stepped in gratefully beside her. His face was glistening with water and there was a cape of damp on his shoulders.

“Thank goodness for this,” he said softly. “We’ll have to wait for a bit, I’m afraid. The whole blessed place appears to be surrounded by police. There’s a carload just under the wall in front here and at least two bobbies are hanging about in a sort of alley which leads from this to the other back gardens.”

He could not see her but he felt her shiver in the dark.

“Are they after that man?”

“I expect so. We’d better keep absolutely quiet in here until the hullabaloo is over, and then I promised I’d put you straight on a train.”

“What will they do? Rush the place?”

He did not answer. Polly’s final injunction had returned to him.

“What are you worrying about?” Annabelle was removing her coat. “I should take off yours, if I were you. If we’re not to be caught and questioned, there’s no reason why we should get cold. How just like Aunt Polly. She knew it was going to happen and wanted to keep me out of it, I suppose.”

“That’s the important thing.” Richard seemed to have made up his mind. “We’ll shut this door and lie low. They must know he’s here, mustn’t they?”

“Of course they do.” Annabelle had seated herself on the edge of the centre dais. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be here, would they? Come over and wait. Would you care to sit in an elephant or a giraffe?”

While the two were settling themselves, on the opposite side of the road, in a bed-sitting room in one of the unrestored houses a little lower down the street, Mr. Campion, Superintendent Luke and Detective Sergeant Picot from the Barrow Road Station, in whose Division they were now operating, were listening to Miss Rich. This was Polly’s old neighbour whom she had expected to find when she went down to the door to answer Richard’s ring.

The bed-sitting room was on the ground floor directly beside the entrance and its large window was separated from the pavement by the deep chasm of the basement area. It had just emerged that Miss Rich was in the habit of deriving what light she needed during the night from the street lamp outside.

“I sit here in the dark looking out of the window and listening to the radio.” The educated voice with the deprecating laugh in it came to them out of the shadows. “If you like to draw the curtains I’ll turn on the light, but you’ll see much better what I mean if you’ll pick your way over here and stand behind me.”

She had been a schoolmistress. The tone was unmistakable and they obeyed it, stumbling across the cluttered room to find her, a thin figure in a dark gown lying on a high couch which had been arranged very carefully beside the window.

“There, you see,” she said with some pride. “I can see all the houses on that side of the road, the pillarbox on the corner, and just a little tiny scrap of Edge Street itself. There is Number Seven, that’s the wall by the dining-room window, and that’s where I saw the man get over, as I told the constable.”

“Yes, I see, Ma’am.” Luke was bending down behind the couch to share her angle of vision, and Mr. Campion, whose eyes were unusually good in the dark, was able to save a wavering column of books, boxes, and what he strongly suspected to be dirty plates as he stumbled against them.

“Put everything on the floor,” said Miss Rich over her shoulder. “I have a woman once a week who cleans me right up. Then I start again. Now this young man, who was a stranger to me as I told you, walked up to the house soon after Mrs. Tassie and a girl, who I think is her niece, came in. He spent five minutes in the porch, where of course I couldn’t see him, and then to my astonishment he came hurrying out and actually climbed over the wall. Had I had a telephone I should have used it. But I haven’t. I know nobody I wish to ring up, so I spare myself that expense.”

She paused reflectively.

“I might have shouted, I suppose. However, I didn’t. No one in this house is very helpful. I knew Mrs. Tassie had a man over there to protect her, and a great schoolgirl who would probably have done something if necessary, so I waited a few moments when to my relief a constable came by. I rapped on the window and as you already know he stopped and I went out to the door and spoke to him. Well, I haven’t seen your men go in yet, Superintendent.”

“No, Ma’am—you haven’t.” Luke could be as bland as she was. “It’s the man who was waiting in the house as Mrs. Tassie came in, he is the fellow we are interested in. Do you know what time he arrived?”

“Jeremy Hawker? You’re interested in him, are you? Oh.” Her face was in the shadow but each man could have sworn he saw thin lips folding tightly after the final word.

“Do you know him, Ma’am?”

“I’ve met him.” She considered and presently glanced to where Mr. Campion stood in the shadow. “I don’t want to convey more than I mean,” she began, indicating that while he probably knew what she was talking about the police might not. “I have nothing against the man, and Mrs. Tassie is very fond of him, but if I had not known he was there then I think I should have put a coat over my dressing-gown and gone across in the rain to warn her. I do go in sometimes at night in case she’s lonely, but since he was there I didn’t see why I should bother.”

It was to Mr. Campion’s credit that he did understand.

“Perhaps he takes up a great deal of your friend’s time and thought?” he ventured.

“The woman thinks as much of him as if he were her own.” The pleasant voice invited them to marvel. “And as far as I can see he’s very seldom there and only gives her a lot of worry. I grant you he has a pleasant way with him and is a little more sophisticated than she thinks he is, silly idiot … She’s the salt of the earth. No one is too much trouble for her. No intellect, but a long-suffering heart …” Miss Rich broke off, leaving the sentence in the air. “Anyhow,” she said suddenly, “she’s the only person I’ve ever met who could put up with
me
! She’s very fond of me. She buys and lends me the most horrible magazine every week. I pretend to read it to please her.”

Luke cleared his throat. “At what time did Hawker arrive at Number Seven, Ma’am? Did you happen to notice?”

“I did. I was listening to the symphony concert. It must have been about half-past ten. He came up the road on foot, which is unusual. As a rule he has a large smelly car which he leaves about in front of other people’s houses. He walked straight into the porch and did not come out again so he has a key. I often suspected it. He was moving round the rooms after that until they came in.”

“How …? Oh, you saw the lights go on and off, I suppose.”

“Of course. He went everywhere except the spare bedroom. He spent quite a time in the office. The telephone is
in
there. And he was also in the kitchen for a time. That’s round the back …”

Luke interrupted her. “Round the back,” he echoed pointedly.

She laughed. She seemed delighted. “Bend down again and look,” she said. “Can you see that lump like the back of a goose standing up against the sky? Over the studio where Polly Tassie keeps her husband’s collection of monstrosities. You can? Well, when the kitchen light goes on in Number Seven it shines on that tree. It shows up far better in the summer than in the winter, but I can usually see it. I’m not often wrong. It was on for three or four minutes just before you came. Someone was heating a nightcap, perhaps. It’s rather warm for a hot bottle. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Er … no, Ma’am.” The Superintendent sounded both respectful and distant. “That’ll do very nicely for the time being. Shall we find you in this room if we should need you again?”

“Oh yes, I shall be here, awake. I don’t sleep very much.” She sounded as if she were sorry for herself and found the emotion contemptuous. “Walk past the window and beckon and I’ll come to the door. Don’t ring. You’ll wake the house and no one will thank you. I shall sit here and watch what you do. Goodnight to you,” she continued, looking at Campion again. “If Mrs. Tassie should need anybody beside her niece, her as-good-as-adopted son, her burglar
and
the police force, perhaps you would let me know. I could go over, I suppose. Not that I should be of the slightest use.”

“Now that’s a type of woman I can’t stand,” said Luke as the three men walked away through the rain together towards the peeling stucco porch of an empty house about thirty yards down the street. “I can just see myself being comforted by her. ‘Don’t think of your trouble, think of
me
, morning noon and night’. ”

“Just a nut,” said Sergeant Picot, speaking for the first time during the incident. “They’re not scarce. She produced what was wanted though, didn’t she? There the suspect is,
all
ready to pack up and take home. Shall I walk up to the front door nice and fatherly? We couldn’t lose ’im. We’ve got the whole place surrounded.”

“Sorry, George. We’re to take no risk. Those are orders.” Luke shook himself to scatter the drops from his coat and perched on the parapet which spanned the sides of the square portico guarding the drop to the area beneath. “We wait and pick him up as he comes out in the decent and orderly manner best calculated to take the so-and-so by surprise.”

Picot sniffed and nodded.

“Because he’s suspected of being the man in the Church Row shooting, I suppose, sir? Is there any suggestion that he’s up to mischief here now?”

Luke moved uneasily. “The idea is that he thinks he’s safe here,” he said. “While he keeps that conviction it’s not very likely he’s going to do any harm to the two women we know are with him.”

Picot looked towards the silent house and back again.

“I thought it was said he had prepared an alibi for this trip,” he muttered. “What does he want with an alibi if he’s up to no harm? I don’t feel comfortable about this. What’s he doing in there?”

Luke leant back against the tall door column so that his face was in shadow.

“I think he’s parking something he doesn’t want to keep on him. The gun, even. It would be in line with his method. This is the place he regards as his bolt hole. He keeps the best side of his character here, perhaps.”

“What about the old lady? Is she in it with him?”

“’Course she is.” Luke sounded weary. “I don’t suppose she knows it yet. She’s just fond of him. I’ve seen her sort so often I could tell you exactly what’s coming to her. If you want to be certain that that chap’s crimes are going to be paid for to the final farthing in terms of human agony, you can start celebrating now.”

Picot said nothing for a minute and then he laughed briefly.

“It’s funny how people do seem to pay up for one
another
,” he remarked. “I wonder if one could compute it scientifically, if it would work out square. Those old women can never lie intelligently, can they? They fluff it and every word they speak puts the bloke in it deeper and deeper. That must add to the damage.” His anxiety returned. “When you say parking evidence, you don’t think he could be in there destroying it, do you, sir?”

Luke stretched himself. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. I hope not. We must not have any more killings tonight. My worry is that ruddy boy Waterfield. If he hadn’t gone in I’d be perfectly easy. He was in the porch five minutes according to Miss Rich. What was he doing there?”

Mr. Campion coughed. “To my eternal shame, I did not wait to see,” he said frankly. “I’d just been to the hospital and picked up a description of him from the constable who had seen him with the girl in the morning. It was obviously Waterfield and I was drifting back to you with the information when suddenly I saw the fellow striding down Edge Street. I followed him and saw him turn into Number Seven. I had no way of telling that Hawker was there, of course, and I had no reason to suppose that Waterfield would stay very long. I had no authority myself, so I doubled back to the nearest ’phone box and called Tailor Street.”

“Ah,” said Luke, “did he knock and get no answer, or did someone come to the door and send him away? Miss Rich couldn’t tell me. Yet something decided him to climb the wall.”

“I don’t see how anyone can tell what’s happening without taking a dekko,” said Picot. “I tell you what, sir. Let me nip round to the street behind this one and get into the garden. I can probably see something through the windows, if it’s only where the lights are in the house.”

“All right.” Luke gave way unwillingly. “If you can find the boy in the grounds bring him out, if you can do it quietly. But frighten Hawker and we’ve had it.”