Philip MacDonald – Murder Gone Mad (страница 8)

Bereaved Family

The Clarion learns with deep regret that Mrs Richards, Miss Pamela Richard’s mother, is critically ill owing to the terrible shock imposed by her daughter’s untimely end. Mr Richards also was prostrate with shock. It is truly terrible to think how these tragedies affect, not only their victims, but also those whose loved and adored ones have been so suddenly, and as it were, by some all powerful demon, snatched from them in such a diabolic and undetectable way.

Mr Percy Godly, a little whiter than usual about his jowls which were so like gills, crunched the single sheet Clarion special into a hard ball; threw it viciously into the gutter; raised himself from his leaning posture and walked, a thought unsteadily, away. He passed in his walk the whole long green-painted front of The Market, Holmdale’s one shop, and, at this time every morning, Holmdale’s social centre.

A man stepped into Mr Godly’s path; a man who said:

‘Hullo, Godly. I say, Godly old man, I am damn sorry. Dreadful business!’

Mr Godly apparently did not hear this man. He side-stepped and walked on, his eyes fixed in a wide and clear stare. Mr Godly faced, at the far end of The Market, a group of young matrons who stood with neat and busily wagging heads, and talked together at the top of their voices, the subject for once being, in every case, the same. From this group the youngest matron detached herself and rushed towards Mr Godly with hand outstretched as if to clutch him by the arm. But, still staring with that glazed look before him, he twitched the arm away before the hand could descend upon it, and walked steadily on.

The young matron stared after him. ‘Well!’ she said, and went back to her group. The heads of the group had turned to follow Mr Godly’s progress until at the corner by Holmdale’s Inn, The Wooden Shack, he disappeared from sight.

‘Poor Percy!’ said the youngest matron. ‘I don’t care what you say! I think that when Pam broke off the engagement it hit him very hard.’

‘Poor Percy!’ said the second youngest matron indignantly. ‘Poor Percy, indeed! Poor Pamela, I say! Poor darling Pam!’

‘I say!’ said another, with something in her voice which brought all heads round to her and stilled the chattering mouths. ‘I say! Have any of you thought about this? I’ve only just realised that I haven’t. First that boy—that was awful—and then Pamela. They’re dead! Do you understand? They’ve been killed! They’ve … they’ve … There’s some inhuman thing going about that … that …’ She stopped. She caught her breath. Her eyes were wide. White teeth caught at her lower lip. She suddenly burst into a peal of sound bearing some resemblance to laughter, but having in it no mirth.

The youngest matron put her fingers to her ears. ‘Oh, don’t!’ she said.

The red brassarded boy came running up to the group. Twenty yards from them he began to chant. ‘Special! Special! Extra! Clarion Special! All about the Butcher!’

‘How dreadful!’ The eldest matron fumbled in her purse. ‘Here, boy. Give me one. How much?’

‘Tuppence,’ said the boy.

He had, it appeared, six copies left. The youngest matron was left without one. The previous record circulation of the Clarion for one week, had today with this special and unprecedented daily edition, not only doubled, but trebled itself. Holmdale was excited and more excited. But Holmdale was beginning to wonder whether excitement was so desirable as forty-eight hours ago it had seemed.

III

The Holmdale Theatre is in the Broad Walk. Facing it across the white, wide roadway and the railed-off stretch of turf and rose trees, is the red brick building which houses the offices of The Holmdale Company Limited.

At nine o’clock upon Monday, the 26th November—the evening of the day upon which Pamela Richard’s body was discovered—there was held, in the Board Room in these offices, a special meeting of Directors and others convened by Sir Montague Flushing himself.

Round the long table in the Board Room sat nineteen persons: Sir Montague, the five Directors of the main Holmdale Company, and the eight Directors of the associated and subordinate companies. There were also present Major Robert Wemyss John, who was honorary yet active Captain of Holmdale’s surprisingly efficient fire brigade; the Hon. Ronald Heatherstone, who was Private Secretary to Lord Bayford, upon whose property half of Holmdale was built; Colonel Grayling, head of the Holmdale Branch of the County Special Voluntary Constabulary; Miss Finch to represent the Press, and Arthur Steele, Sir Montague’s Private Secretary, to take notes of the proceedings.

The meeting had begun at seven-thirty. Now, an hour and a half later, it was drawing to its close. Sir Montague was speaking, and speaking, for once, without that pomposity which until today all those gathered about the table had thought part of the real man. He was saying:

‘… I take it then, gentlemen, that we are fully in agreement that as from tomorrow, unless by tomorrow night the Police have laid their hands upon this … this fiend, we’ll take the steps we’ve been discussing … If you have got them down, Steele? … Thank you … I think I’ll read over these points, just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding. First, Colonel Grayling, if he gets permission from the authorities, will have every road patrolled by one or more special constables, in addition to the regular constables who will be so employed. Second, Captain John will provide additional patrolling help out of his volunteers. Third, you, Mr Heatherstone, will obtain, if possible, Lord Bayford’s permission to use some of his outdoor staff, such as gamekeepers, for patrolling the entrances to and exits from the city, so that all incomers and outgoers after dark may be interrogated. Fourth, Miss Finch will issue another special edition of the Holmdale Clarion tomorrow, in which it will be clearly stated that the Holmdale Company are prepared to pay a reward of £500 for information leading to the capture of the … the … murderer. Are we all agreed upon that, gentlemen?’

Sir Montague seemed somehow less portly than usual and certainly less sure of himself and his own greatness as he looked round the table. There was something not without pathos in the anxiously out-thrust face; something almost pitiful in the man’s pallor and uncertainty; something certainly admirable in his earnestness. There were murmurs of assent.

‘You needn’t worry about my end,’ said young Heatherstone heartily. ‘Bayford’ll lend you all his men. If he doesn’t, I’ll send ’em along without asking him.’

‘I’ll get a rush edition out before noon, if I can, Sir Montague,’ said Miss Finch, and rose and fumbled beneath her chair for the perpetual umbrella.

‘I’ll get permission for the Specials all right and enroll a devil of a lot more.’ This in a growl from Grayling.

‘Thank you. Thank you,’ said Flushing. ‘Well, gentlemen, I’m sorry to have kept you so long.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I see it’s already well past a normal dinner time …’

There was a general shuffling as chairs scraped back over the thick carpet and a sudden muddled hum of many small conversations as men struggled into their coats.

Steele threw open the double doors leading from the Board Room to the hallway. Thirty-eight feet clattered along the hall and so to the main doors and the flight of steps leading down to the pavement. The porter, expectant of tips, flung open the doors. The first rank shivered a little as the cold air struck their faces. The night was dark, but stars blazed in a black and moonless sky. The frost had held and there was a chill wind from somewhere in the north-east. Light, broken into a hundred little shafts by the bodies of the small crowd, flooded out from the hall and stabbed fingers at the darkness. Twenty-five yards away, straight opposite, the red and yellow signs across the face of the theatre winked cheerfully and a yellow rectangle of light poured through the glass doors of the portico.

Young Heatherstone tightened his muffler and turned up the collar of his ulster. He said to Grayling beside him:

‘Looks pretty cheerful, what? Hardly as if there was a … Jumping Gabriel, what’s up!’ The sudden change in his tone from one of idle pleasantness to one of urgent and vehement wonder brought a dozen eyes to peer in the direction of his pointing arm. From out of the theatre’s portico there had rushed suddenly a man in the theatre’s green and gold and scarlet uniform; a man hatless and to judge by his manner distraught; a man who, arrived upon the pavement, looked with quick turnings of his whole body to his right and to his left, and then, standing half crouched, put to his lips a whistle whose shriek throbbed across the cold, dark air.

‘What the devil!’ said Heatherstone, and was gone, crossing the roadway in four strides. He took the railings to the grass in a leap and arrived by the side of the man who whistled before any of his companions had moved a foot. The first few of them to cross the road and the grass saw him, after urgent and gesticulating talk with the commissionaire, disappear at a run into the portico. The commissionaire, turning suddenly, made off to his right at a long, loping run.