The Best of British Crime omnibus (68 page)

Harry turned to Liz. ‘Go and tell them I'm in here, Liz, will you?'

Liz went running towards the street while Douglas Croft gathered up the samples he had been discussing with Harry. He was in a hurry to make himself scarce. Nat Fletcher had caught him before he left home that morning and subjected him to a series of quick-fire questions. He'd wound up feeling that he had been tied in knots.

‘May I sit down?' was Yardley's first remark as he came into the small office. ‘My feet are killing me this morning. You always hear these corny jokes about policemen and their feet, but, by God, they're true!'

He sat down in the metal-framed office chair Harry pulled forward. Nat remained standing, leaning one elbow on the top of a filing-cabinet.

Yardley went straight to the point. ‘I saw Mr. Rogers last night – the nephew.'

‘Yes. I know.'

‘Then you know about his aunt calling in yesterday afternoon and what she said to him?'

‘Yes.' Harry felt that the blood was draining from his face. He knew his voice was strained. ‘It's not true, sir.'

Yardley looked at him with his head on one side and then shot a look at Nat. Nat took the cue to come in on the questioning.

‘You mean, you don't believe Rogers? You don't believe his aunt did call and tell him—'

‘Yes, I think she did tell him that she was coming here but she was not telling the truth.'

Yardley asked: ‘Why would she tell a lie about a thing like that?'

‘I don't know, sir. I wish I did. But she did lie and we've got proof of it.'

‘What sort of proof, Harry?' The question came from Nat.

‘She telephoned the pub, and left a message for me. Why should she do that if we'd arranged to meet here in the first place?'

‘
Someone
telephoned the pub,' Yardley corrected him. ‘We don't know for certain it was Mrs. Rogers.'

The telephone on the desk at which Harry was sitting started to ring.

‘The barman didn't know her,' Nat agreed. ‘It was just a voice on the phone, so far as he was concerned.'

‘Yes, I know, Nat, but if you're going to doubt every—' Harry broke off in annoyance. It was impossible to talk against the insistence of the bell, which had been set so that it was audible at the front of the shop. He picked up the receiver.

‘Hallo? … Yes, speaking … Yes, he's here. He's just arrived.'

He handed the instrument to Nat. ‘It's your office.'

To his surprise Nat did not take the phone.

‘Is there anywhere else I can take the call?'

‘Yes, if you go up those stairs and through the box-room you'll find yourself in the living-room. I can switch the call through to you there.'

He waited till Nat had clattered up the fire-escape, crossed the room above and picked up the phone. Then he put his own instrument down. The fact that Nat had not wanted to take the call in his presence emphasised brutally the rift which had opened up between him and the two police officers. He was not a colleague now; he was a suspect in a double murder case.

He turned back to Yardley, waiting for the questions he knew would come. He must keep his head, stick to his story. In the end something would happen which would show that he was not lying.

‘Dawson, I think if I remember rightly you told me that Mrs. Rogers was
working
at the Royal Plaza.'

‘Yes. That's what I said.'

Yardley shook his head, as if he was genuinely sorry to demolish yet another of Harry's allegations. ‘She was staying there, as a guest. She had a room on the tenth floor. She'd booked it for five weeks. It was costing her twelve pounds a day – without meals.'

‘But how on earth could Mrs. Rogers afford to pay that sort of money?'

‘I don't know.'

It took Harry a moment to readjust to this extraordinary revelation. ‘Does her nephew know about this?'

‘He does now. Nat told him this morning.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He was puzzled. Very puzzled. Like you he was under the impression his aunt was working at the hotel.'

‘I don't understand this,' Harry said with feeling. I'm damned if I do.'

‘Neither do I. But then there's lots of things I don't understand.' Yardley stood up, looming over Harry, his bulk seeming to fill the little office. But when he spoke his voice was quiet. ‘I wish to God you'd put me in the picture, Dawson.'

‘Me?' The accusation implied in the remark shook Harry so much that he answered like a small boy caught in the act by his school teacher.

‘Yes, you.' Yardley's frown had deepened. ‘In my opinion you're holding out on me. You haven't told me the truth. You've made false statements about almost everything.'

‘I told you the truth about the Conways, and what happened? You didn't believe me.'

‘How could I believe you when the Conways both denied the story and your cheque was found on Newton? And all that damn nonsense about Arnold Conway and a wheelchair. When I spoke to Inspector Emerson about it he laughed himself silly.'

‘Nevertheless, it was the truth. And I'll tell you something else about the Conways. Something you won't believe.'

‘Go on,' Yardley urged him. But Harry still hesitated. It went against the grain to reveal something that would tarnish the image of Tom Dawson.

He could see through to the front of the shop where the attractive outline of Liz Mason's athletic body was silhouetted against the light from the street beyond. That made him think about Judy Black. Two nights and a day had passed since he had seen her and there was still no clue as to where she might be hiding. He had spent the whole of the previous afternoon quartering the Soho area, hoping he might have the luck to catch a glimpse of her.

Yardley was still looking down at him, waiting for him to finish his statement.

‘She was having an affair with my father,' he said quietly.

‘Mrs. Conway, you mean?'

‘Yes.'

‘Who told you this?'

Harry nodded towards the shop where the fair-headed Douglas in his dashing sports jacket was chatting up a customer. ‘Doug. Douglas Croft. He went down to Worthing one weekend. Sybil Conway and my father were staying at the same hotel.'

Yardley gave a low whistle, whether of envy or disapproval it was hard to say.

‘Why didn't you mention this before?'

‘He only told me about it this morning, shortly before you arrived.'

‘Is he sure about it?'

‘Yes. There's no doubt about it. At first my father pretended not to recognise Douglas but then he came clean. He told Doug that Mrs. Conway was married to a permanent invalid who could only get about in a wheelchair, and so there never could be any question of a divorce. He asked Douglas to say nothing about it.'

‘How did Croft know her name was Conway? I'm surprised at your father mentioning her name.'

‘He didn't. But she phoned Douglas the other day about a pearl necklace my father was supposed to be having repaired for her. She didn't know what had happened to it and she thought perhaps the receipt was in the office and Douglas could get it for her. She wanted him to send it to her at some hotel in Aldeburgh.'

‘Was it in the office?'

‘No. It wasn't.'

‘And you think Mrs. Rogers knew about this – your father and Mrs. Conway?'

‘Yes,' Harry said unhappily. ‘I do.'

Yardley stared out thoughtfully into the shop, where Douglas was extolling the virtues of a new brand of squash racquet to a dubious young man.

The feet of Nat Fletcher clattered on the spiral staircase. Yardley looked at him enquiringly, wondering whether the message was something that could be mentioned in the presence of Dawson.

‘There's been a message for you from Hampstead, sir. From Inspector Emerson.'

‘Dick Emerson? What does he want?'

‘Well, I got the message second-hand, but I gather he wants to talk to you fairly urgently.' Nat glanced towards Harry. ‘Something about a wheelchair.'

Yardley had no difficulty in recognising the Bentley which was pulling out of the forecourt of Hampstead Police Station as he drove in. Conway was driving and his wife was beside him. They looked tired and bad-tempered and far too involved in some personal squabble to notice the inconspicuous CID car.

Emerson was an old friend of Yardley's. They spent some time on reminiscences before the Inspector got down to the business in hand.

‘The Conway residence was burgled somewhere around midnight last night. Fortunately one of our patrols noticed something so we were on to it pretty quickly. The place had been absolutely ransacked, but we couldn't tell whether anything was missing till the Conways came back. They were pretty furious at being hauled out of their beds in Aldeburgh at one a.m. They got back here about four.'

Yardley sipped at the cup of tea which one of Emerson's girl clerks had brought.

‘Now, Hal, this is the curious part and this is why I sent for you. When I first went over to the house I saw something in one of, the bedrooms which – in view of our recent conversation – immediately aroused my interest. I don't have to tell you what it was.'

‘A wheelchair,' Yardley said, like someone offering an answer to a child's crossword puzzle.

‘Right. The chair was in a cupboard, a sort of built-in wardrobe, the door of which had been forced open.'

Emerson, an inveterate pipe smoker, took up his pipe and began to fill it from the pouch that lay on his desk.

‘When the Conways got back, I asked them to take a good look round the house so that we could list the items stolen. They said that as far as they could tell nothing had been taken. It seemed incredible, so I asked Conway to make a tour of the house with me. I made a point of investigating the cupboard with him. The chair wasn't there. It had gone.'

‘Just like that?'

‘Yes. It had disappeared. Obviously someone had taken it away,
after
I had seen it.'

‘Did you make any comment?'

‘No. I drew Conway's attention to the forced lock and asked him to make sure that nothing had been taken. He said: “No, Inspector, everything's just the same. Nothing's been taken.” Those were his exact words.'

Yardley breathed a long sigh of relief. For some reason the chair he was sitting in had become more comfortable. ‘Thank you, Dick. By the way, I saw the Conways driving away just as I arrived. They didn't seem to be in the best of moods.'

Emerson put down the match with which he had lit his pipe. Coils of blue-grey smoke swirled up through the sunlight shafting from the window.

‘Yes. That brings me to the next thing. There's a new, development. The Conways came in to see me about half an hour ago. Mrs. Conway said she had now discovered that a pearl necklace had been stolen. She gave me the description of it. I must admit it seemed a little odd that an intruder should break into a house full of valuable objects and just pinch a pearl necklace.'

‘Did she say how much the necklace was worth?'

‘Yes, about five hundred pounds.' Emerson placed his box of matches over the bowl of his pipe to make it draw better. ‘But it's that business about the wheelchair that puzzles me.'

‘You're not the only one, Dick.'

At about the same time as Yardley drove in to the police station at Hampstead, Harry was opening the door of Sidney Heaton's pet shop. Heaton was serving a customer but he gave Harry a friendly nod.

When his customer had departed, laden with an assortment of pet foods, Heaton walked down the shop to where Harry was standing.

‘Good morning, Mr. Dawson. I was expecting you. I thought you'd be dropping in on me some time this morning.'

‘I take it you've already seen a colleague of mine?'

‘Yes. Superintendent Yardley, I think he said his name was. He called very early, before I was open, in fact. He wanted to know if I'd seen you last night. What's it all about, Mr. Dawson? He was frightfully evasive.'

The cage which had contained the marmoset monkey was empty now. Somebody must have bought it. Harry hoped the little animal had gone to a good home.

He said: ‘Mrs. Rogers, my housekeeper – or rather my ex-housekeeper – was found murdered last night.'

Sidney Heaton's hand went to his mouth. Harry had not intended to shock him so profoundly with the brutal announcement.

‘Murdered?' Heaton had difficulty in finding his voice. ‘Good God! Where? Where did it happen?'

‘In my flat …' Harry began. He was watching Heaton's reactions with detached interest.

‘But what an appalling thing! Have you any idea who …'

‘Mr. Heaton, forgive me,' Harry cut in. ‘I'm in rather a hurry this morning, and I've one or two questions I'd like to ask you.'

‘By all means.' Heaton tried to get a grip on himself. He looked up at Harry with an obedient expression. ‘Anything I can do to help you, Mr. Dawson.'

‘Then, would you mind telling me who that girl was, the girl I saw you with last night? I think you introduced her as Linda Wade.'

‘Oh, dear.' Heaton dropped his eyes. His cheeks reddened with embarrassment but a slightly roguish expression had crept into his eyes. ‘I wish you hadn't asked that question.'

‘Is she a friend of yours?'

‘Good gracious no! I assure you most of my friends are … I really don't know anything about her.'

Harry put on his most formal expression. ‘Mr. Heaton, I'm investigating a murder case. I want you to tell me all you know about Linda Wade.'

For a moment Heaton looked obstinate, then he gave way and led Harry into the room at the back of the shop which was half parlour and half office. He pulled forward a seat for Harry, but sat himself on the edge of a table from which he could see through to the shop door.

‘I first saw her at the Plough about three months ago. She was often hanging about there, trying to pick up some man who would buy her drinks or a meal. Then about a month ago she came in here to buy a cat and since then she's been in several times. She's actually a very good customer. Oddly enough she seems to have money to burn – at the moment, anyway.'