Battle for Inspector West (3 page)

 

The scream had hardly died away before another shattered the quiet. A man cried: ‘
What's up?
',
a girl gasped: ‘
That's Anne!
'
There was rustling among the shrubs, then heavy footsteps as of a man running. Another scream started, but broke off, and ended in a gurgling cry. The girl said: ‘
Tom, don't leave me!
'

Grant gripped Christine's arm.

‘Let's hurry.'

He half-ran, half-walked with her along the path, twisting and turning a dozen times. Abruptly they came upon another couple, some twenty yards away. Grant called out: ‘What's on?'

The couple turned.

‘Who's that?' the man demanded in a shaky voice.

‘Grant, from the hotel. Have you found her?'

‘No,' the young man said, and added in a quieter voice to his companion: ‘It's all right, darling. Anne probably saw a fox or something. Anne!' He called her name more loudly. ‘Derek! Are you there?'

There was no answer.

‘They were ahead of us,' he said, and looked at Grant, apparently relieved when he recognised him. ‘Anne's a bit excitable, it might not be anything much.'

‘Then why don't they answer?' demanded his companion.

Grant, taller than any of the others, could make out the path clearly as it twisted and turned. A movement farther away caught his eye, and he looked towards it. Some way off a man was hurrying downhill towards the meadows and the road in the valley. He was alone except for something which loped by his side, a huge creature which showed up clearly.

‘That—that's not Derek,' muttered the young man.

‘Tom, I'm scared,' said the girl, in a shivery voice.

The man named Tom looked at Christine.

‘Would you and my fiancée like to go back to the hotel? Then Mr Grant and I could—'

‘I'd much rather stay here,' said Christine quickly.

‘Oh, I'll stay,' said the girl.

Grant asked: ‘Would the others stick to the path?'

‘Oh, I think so,' said Tom. ‘No point in going off it. We'll lead the way.' He turned and strode along the path, Grant kept by his side, the two girls were close behind. The man and the dog were no longer in sight, but another sound broke the quiet—the stutter of a car engine. Soon headlamps gave a diffused light; the car was travelling away from Uplands and the main road.

None of the party spoke.

A new sound came: a moan. The girl with Christine gasped. Tom glanced at Grant, who pushed on ahead as the moan was repeated. He turned a corner in the path and saw a girl lying near the bushes at one side. She wore a light-coloured dress which was caught up round her knees, and was turning her head from side to side as if in agony. Beyond her, her companion lay quite still.

Grant called: ‘Christine, stay where you are a minute.'

Tom went to the girl on the ground, and dropped on one knee beside her, saying: ‘It's all right, Anne, it's all right,' while Grant bent over the man.

A glance was enough to show that he was dead; his throat was terribly lacerated, and blood spattered his shirt-front and his coat.

 

Within half an hour of the discovery of the young man's body, a car-load of police had arrived from Shaftesbury, with an inspector, a detective-sergeant and three uniformed policemen. Others had arrived since, as well as a doctor.

The story was now known to everyone.

Anne and her Derek had been walking, close together, when the dog had leapt at them out of the bushes. There had been no warning; just silence, then the leaping figure, which had buried its fangs deep into Derek's throat.

To Christine, everything which had followed held the quality of a nightmare. Grant had said very little, except to the grey-haired manager whom she hadn't seen before, and to the police. The inspector, named Fratton, appeared to have been satisfied with all that had been done since the attack. The hotel residents sat about the big lounge, ill-at-ease.

Christine was in an armchair near the window in the bedroom, with the blinds drawn. Grant stood by the dressing-table, a glass of whisky in his hand.

Christine said flatly: ‘He was deliberately murdered, Mike.'

‘No doubt about that.'

‘He was mistaken for you.'

‘It could be,' Grant conceded. He tossed his drink down, and lit a cigarette.

Would
nothing
make him confide in her?

‘Have you told the police that?'

‘Not yet.'

‘You will, won't you?'

Christine spoke tensely, because it was no longer possible even to hope that whoever hated Michael so much would be satisfied with spoiling their honeymoon.

They meant to kill him, and if she was right, an innocent youth had died in mistake for him. And he had talked to her in short, almost brusque sentences, reminding her how little she knew of his past, how little she knew about him.

He pulled up the dressing-stool, placed it in front of her, squatted down, and took her hands.

‘Chris, my darling,' he said very quietly, ‘I should have told you of this, and postponed our wedding. I couldn't bring myself to, and in a way I'm glad. If anything should happen to me now, you'll be all right for the rest of your life.'

She closed her eyes, because that hurt so much.

His grip on her- fingers tightened.

‘But I'm going to have a stab at living,' he went on, with a grim note of raillery. ‘That boy's death will be on my conscience for a long, long time.'

‘Don't torment yourself with that, Mike! But don't make it worse by keeping it from the police.'

‘I'll tell the police,' Grant promised, ‘but an hour or two's delay won't make any difference. I—'

Then his voice seemed to fade, for Christine saw the handle of the door turn. The expression on her face made Grant swing round, to see the door opening slowly. He leapt towards it, and Christine held her breath.

Then Prendergast appeared, looking very tired, his face a paler pink. He cried out when he saw Grant, and backed away.

‘My dear sir!'

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' Grant towered over him.

‘I—I just
had
to come and have a word with you, I really did.'

‘Why didn't you knock?'

‘I thought you were in the lounge. I was going to wait here,' said Prendergast, unconvincingly. ‘I can't bear those other people tonight, they're so devastatingly
earnest.
You are a man of understanding, of intelligence. I could tell that when we met this evening, and I was going to wait for you. Really I was. If—if I startled your wife, I do apologize, but I had to come. After what I was saying earlier about violence, fancy
this
happening.'

‘It's remarkable, isn't it?' Grant wasn't mollified, but Prendergast had a skin like a hide.

‘Remarkable is hardly the word,' he said. Uninvited, he sat on an upright chair near the wall, and mopped his forehead. Then his gaze fell on the whisky bottle and the syphon on the dressing-table.

Grant turned to the whisky and said: ‘Care for a drink?'

‘Oh, I would!'

Grant poured out, splashed in soda, and took it across. Prendergast drank deeply.

‘Thank you—thank you, indeed, Mr Grant. You're very kind. I feel as if my whole world has collapsed. I thought that here we had found a real haven of peace, that we could forget violence and crime, and yet—such a terrible thing. That poor, young man, struck down in all the splendour of his youth and vigour. Imagine it, Mrs Grant—imagine it if you lost
your
husband in such a way. Imagine the terrors of the nights. Imagine how every time you moved out of the friendly lights of home and the shadows closed about you, you would picture that brute leaping towards you, its ugly great mouth open, its hot breath on your face.'

‘You've quite an imagination. Not everyone appreciates it,' Grant said curtly.

‘It is always the same with those who have the artistic temperament,' sighed Prendergast. ‘One
feels
the pain of others. Take Mrs Grant now. I need only look at her to know that she feels much as I do. Somewhere among her antecedents there must have been an artist, a man of great understanding, great gifts, who passed them on to her—'

Christine jumped to her feet.

‘Mike!' she breathed. ‘Stop him!' Her face had lost every vestige of colour. ‘Please stop him!'

Prendergast stood up, as if startled, blinked from her to Grant, put his glass on the chair and stepped forward.

‘My dear young lady, if I have caused you any distress, I am terribly sorry. I am indeed.'

‘You draw your pictures too vividly,' Grant said coldly. ‘Have the police questioned you yet?'

‘
Police?
Questioned
me
?'
The pink, plump man looked dumbfounded. ‘Why should they?'

‘They're bound to question everyone who was outside immediately after dinner.'

‘
I
didn't stir!'

‘Then I must have seen your ghost,' said Grant.

Prendergast stood staring, his colour deepening from pink to red; and now he looked as if he was afraid.

‘I haven't been outside the hotel since before dinner!' he cried. ‘I've been here all the time.'

‘I saw you outside,' Grant said sharply. ‘Perhaps you were carried away by some artistic vision, and—'

‘It's a damnable lie!'

‘Now don't be absurd. I saw you.'

‘It's a lie!' screeched Prendergast. ‘I didn't step outside the door!'

He jumped forward, as if to emphasise his protest with a blow. It was absurd, for Grant was so much bigger, but he had made the man lose his head.

Christine realised that he had revealed how much the little artist was living on his nerves, and she sensed the significance of this without really understanding it.

The tension was broken by a tap at the door, and Grant went to see who it was. The tall, comfortable figure of Inspector Fratton stood outside.

Prendergast was so carried away by his rage that he still stood glowering, his feet planted wide apart, his hands clenched and raised.

‘
I
didn't
go outside,
I tell you. Understand that? If you say I did, I'll tell—'

‘I'm afraid Mr Prendergast is getting rather excited,' Grant said. ‘Come in, Inspector.'

Fratton smiled, as if excitement was one of the emotions which would never affect him. He looked genial, and smiled with a natural affability. Perhaps the expression in his brown eyes as he looked at Grant did something to belie his smile, but his voice was friendly, rich and deliberate with its broad Dorset vowels.

‘Excited, is he?' he echoed. ‘What about, Mr Prendergast?'

Prendergast didn't answer, but tried to regain his poise.

‘He's forgotten that he went outside after dinner,' said Grant dryly. ‘I suppose he doesn't want to be in the limelight; artists are such shy, retiring people, but I think you should know everything.'

Fratton actually chuckled.

‘That would be a tall order, now, wouldn't it?' he remarked. ‘I'd like to know as much as I can, but—'

‘It's disgraceful!' snapped Prendergast. ‘You are here to investigate a most dreadful crime, and—you laugh.
Laugh!
It is hardly surprising that crime flourishes; the incompetence of the police throughout this land is a crying shame, a scandal, a mockery.'

‘Can't live as if I was at a funeral all the time,' Fratton remarked. ‘Did you know the dead man, Mr Prendergast?'

‘I did not.'

‘You'd only met him here,' remarked Fratton.

‘Yes.'

‘Very humanitarian of you to be so distressed,' said Fratton. ‘Did you notice this dog when you were outside?'

‘I did not leave the hotel!'

‘Oh, of course.' Fratton frowned, and deep grooves appeared on his forehead. ‘Possibly you were mistaken, Mr Grant.'

Christine liked the casual way that Michael said: ‘I've no reason for saying that Prendergast was in the grounds if I didn't see him, but that's for you to decide. Is there anything I can do for you, Inspector?'

‘There are one or two questions I'd like to ask you, sir. No need for you to stay,' Fratton added to Prendergast, ‘but I'd like a word with you a little later, if you don't mind.'

Prendergast opened his mouth, as if about to protest, closed it again and went out.

‘You seem to have upset him,' Fratton remarked. ‘Was it only your saying you saw him in the grounds?'

‘Yes.'

‘I see. Thank you.' Fratton's expression became positively cherubic. ‘You'll both forgive me if I say how sorry I am that this has happened tonight, of all nights.'

Christine dropped into a chair.

‘Do all the residents know we're honeymooners? ‘Grant asked.

‘Couldn't say, sir, I'm sure. A lot of information comes my way, of course, and you aren't exactly unknown, Mr Grant.

I'd like to say how glad I am to have this opportunity of meeting you.'

‘Thanks,' said Grant dryly. ‘Now, how can I help?'

Fratton was bland.

‘I thought you'd like to know that we've had a report of a car which passed along this road about nine o'clock, a green Mercedes. There was an Alsatian dog in the back, next to a passenger.'

‘Quick work,' said Grant, and Christine watched his strong face and prayed that he would tell Fratton everything now that the opening was made.

‘There's a strong feeling among the guests that the dog broke away from his master, and is a mankiller,' Fratton went on. ‘Just one of those tragic accidents, like a hit and run on the road. I'm not altogether satisfied that accident is the word, though.'