Philip MacDonald – Murder Gone Mad (страница 9)

Grayling was the first to reach the theatre. He pushed open the heavy swing door which still vibrated with Heatherstone’s entry. In the vestibule he found the beginnings of a white-faced and gaping crowd. From this he singled out a face—a face whiter even than those which surrounded it, but a face beneath the cap of green lace worn as part of their uniform by the women who serve in the theatre. A man of sixty-five, but a man, Grayling, who knew both what he wanted and how to get it. He cut the girl out from the swelling crowd—they were pouring now in gusty lumps from the exits—as a skilled sheep dog a desired ewe.

‘Where?’ barked Grayling. ‘What is it?’

The girl gasped something, pointing. He dropped her arm. He jumped for the arch upon his right which framed the stairs leading up to the Royal Circle and Balcony. Despite his years and weight, he went up the stairs three steps at a time and came, after thirty of them, to the first floor vestibule where was the Tea Lounge and the chocolate counter and main door to the Royal Circle. That door was closed and before it there stood white-faced but determined, the short and ungainly bulk of Rippon, the theatre’s manager. The tall, broad, heavy-coated figure of Heatherstone was leaning, his hands flat upon the front of the chocolate counter, peering over it. At the sound of Grayling’s footsteps he looked up, twisting over his right shoulder a face whose tight clenched mouth, out-thrust jaw and fierce pallor brought the newcomer to his side quicker than would have any words.

‘Look!’ said Heatherstone.

Grayling stood beside him, and now himself peered over the counter and down.

In the uncarpeted semi-circle of floor between the blank back of the counter and the shelves, gaudy with sweatmeat boxes, there lay, like a crumpled life-size doll, the body of a young woman. Her face was pressed to the floor. Her arms were doubled beneath her. Her legs were ungainly asprawl in a position impossible, it seemed, for a living person …

And upon her back, between slight shoulders and waist, there lay like a square yellow lake, a piece of paper.

And out from the paper, staring up at Grayling’s eyes, printed in black ink, were four words:

WITH THE BUTCHER’S COMPLIMENTS.

CHAPTER IV

I

SUPERINTENDENT ARNOLD PIKE of the Criminal Investigation Department was talking with his immediate chief. Pike was saying:

‘Very well, sir, but you realise that I shall have to drop the Brandon business?’

Lucas shrugged. ‘Of course you will. But Broxburn can take that on. Anybody could do that, Pike, but this Holmdale job isn’t anybody’s meat.’

‘If you asked my opinion, sir,’ Pike said, with a wry smile, ‘I’d tell you that the Holmdale job isn’t really doable!’

‘Oh, rubbish!’ said Lucas. ‘Take two men and get off there by car as quick as you like. Get down there by lunch time. Who do you want with you?’

Pike considered a moment. He looked among the pages of a small notebook pulled from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Blaine,’ he said, ‘and Curtis. They’re not on anything special at the moment, sir.’

Lucas nodded. ‘Right! Take them and for God’s sake catch this lunatic or whatever it is before we get any more questions in the House. If only these County Police would ask us in at once instead of waiting until they’ve made a mess of everything, life might be easier.’

Pike nodded. ‘By jing, sir,’ he said, ‘I echo that wish!’ He turned towards the door.

Lucas recalled him. ‘Oh, Pike. You’d better stay down there, I think. And the men.’

Pike nodded. ‘It’s the only way, sir, to get at the thing properly.’ Once more he started for the door. Once more he was halted, but this time by himself. With his fingers on the door knob he turned. ‘By the way, sir,’ he said, ‘heard anything of Colonel Gethryn? How he is, I mean, sir?’

Lucas grinned and shook his head. ‘No. Beyond the fact that he’s going to be in bed for another three weeks with that thigh, nothing.’ He smiled at Pike with some slyness. ‘Why? Want help already?’ Pike laughed. ‘I’m not proud, sir, you know. I was just wondering whether, if he wasn’t doing anything, he might like to come down.’

‘Well, he can’t go down,’ said Lucas and laughed again. ‘And anyhow it’s not his line and you know it. This isn’t a job for a man so much as a job for an organisation. When you can’t find a motive, in fact when there isn’t a motive, you’re dealing with some form or other of lust-killing and to pick a lust-killer—who may be, on the surface, a most ordinary, respectable citizen—out of a crowd of six thousand citizens, isn’t a job which can be done by deduction. It’s got to be done by massed police work, cleverly directed … You get along, Pike, and don’t forget to show the world how the Düsseldorf business ought to have been handled.’

II

Three rooms in the Holmdale Company’s Offices had been placed at the disposal of the police. In the largest of these, at three o’clock in the afternoon of his first day there, Pike sat in talk with the Chief Constable of the County and County Inspectors Davis and Farrow. There was, to begin with, constraint. The Chief Constable had overruled his subordinates and asked the aid of Scotland Yard. But his subordinates were not, as perhaps was natural, pleased with the decision. They were, officially, ready both to help and to take their orders from Scotland Yard. Unofficially, they were anxious to show that left alone, as in their own opinions they ought to have been, they could probably have done the job more quickly, more neatly and with greater efficiency.

The Chief Constable, burly, red-faced and even at this time genial, sat at the head of the table. Upon his left, side by side, each as stiffly erect as his fellow, both in plain clothes, sat Inspectors Davis and Farrow. Davis was tall and lean, with a Sergeant-Major’s blue eye and waxed moustache. His face was hard and wooden and always, if he had any feelings, a mask for those feelings. Farrow was tall and thick, with the shoulders and round head of a pugilist. His face, unlike Davis’s, was a battleground for his inner emotions. At the moment he frankly scowled. His hot, reddish-brown eye regarded the trimly lounging figure of Superintendent Pike, who faced him across the table, with belligerent disfavour.

Pike had been in similar situations not once but a hundred times. He had his own methods. He was not truculent. He was not oleaginous. He was very pleasant. His brown, lantern-shaped face smiled unpartially at the other three. Not a permanent smile, but a smile, when answered, both friendly and, at the same time, individual.

They were talking of what had happened and of what might happen, and of what steps should be taken to prevent such happenings. They dealt, with Davis as spokesman, with the Colby murder and came to the conclusion that everything up to this stage which could have been done had been done. They dealt, then, with the truculent Farrow as spokesman, with the murder of Pamela Richards, and came to the same conclusion. They dealt, now with the Chief Constable as main spokesman, and both Inspectors as chorus, with the murder of Amy Adams, the waitress at the Holmdale Theatre chocolate counter. And here Pike found more to say after the others had finished.

‘This girl Adams …’ said Pike. ‘There’s one or two points about her case. You’re sure to have noticed, gentlemen, that this case is different from the other two at almost every point. First, while the others are killed by a wound in the stomach, which is ripped up—all untidy as you might say—Amy Adams is killed by a single thrust through the stomach which isn’t anything but tidy. Second, third and fourth, while Lionel Colby and Pamela Richards are killed at night and in the dark and in the open, this Adams girl is killed in the evening, and in a well-lighted public place and under a roof. Fifth, that while the first two had no … well, trademark of the murderer’s on ’em when they were found, Amy Adams did. Sixth, that while Lionel Colby and Pamela Richards had parents at least in comfortable enough circumstances, the Adamses are really poor folk living in a small cottage with the father actually out of work and on the dole.’

Pike sat back in his chair and looked, with his brown, bright eyes, at the Chief Constable.

The Chief Constable pondered, stabbing at the blotting-pad before him with a tortured pen nib. He raised his eyes at last to look at his two henchmen. ‘Thought of that?’ he said.

Davis nodded. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said, ‘we’ve seen all that.’ His voice was, as usual, a flat monotone, but there was in it also a rasping of bitter and elephantine irony. ‘We couldn’t help ourselves but see all that. It was us, you see, who did all the work and found out these facts.’

‘What I asked,’ said the Chief Constable mildly, ‘was whether you’d thought about it?’ He looked now at Farrow.

Farrow could not, as had the more controlled Davis, keep his eyes off Pike as he answered.

‘Thought about it!’ Farrow exploded. ‘Thought about it!’—And then, with sudden realisation of his company—‘Beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure. But if we haven’t been thinking, and thinking hard, about the whole bl——about the whole business for these past seventy-two hours and more, I’d like to know what we have been doing.’