Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (17 page)

I seized on this. “Small parts?” I said. “Never things like a cylinder head or a radiator?”

“I think that he did let me have a radiator once,” Tim said. “But as a rule it was the small stuff. And that was what made me think that they might be stolen. I thought, you see, that he might have a ring of men working in the factories of the various motor manufacturers, with a scheme whereby they could pinch small parts and bring them to him. After all, you could carry home a few small parts in your pocket, and, unless suspicion had been aroused, you would not be likely to be found out. But it wouldn't be at all easy to carry home a radiator or a cylinder head.”

“Agreed,” I said. I felt that this was getting somewhere, though just where it was not at all easy to decide. It was, at any rate, a slice of new information, different from what I had previously heard.

“I suppose that this couldn't have been a sort of decoy for something else,” I suggested.

“What do you mean?” asked Maya Johnson.

“I mean that these spare parts couldn't have had something else hidden in them—some sort of contraband in which the man was dealing.”

“Contraband? You mean some sort of smuggling?” Maya said.

“Yes.”

Tim Foster thought this over. “I suppose it's possible,” he said slowly. “Though I don't quite know what sort of goods could be smuggled in that way.”

Maya Johnson sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing with the excitement of what she obviously thought to be a pure brain-wave.

“I know!”

“What do you know?” asked Tim.

“I know what might have been hidden inside those spare parts!”

“What?” I asked.

“Drugs.”

This, I saw, was a brilliant suggestion. “That is a definite possibility,” I admitted.

“Cocaine, hashish, and so on,” she said. “Don't you see, Tim? He was using you to distribute the stuff. No doubt he would tell his clients that they could get the stuff from you by saying that they wanted a new cotter-pin or whatever it was. And the thing would be made hollow, the inside filled with the drug. And the payment would be made partly to you and partly to him—no doubt in advance of delivery.”

I looked at the girl with admiration. This was an astonishingly brilliant idea. And it was, as I have said, quite a possible explanation of what had been going on.

“You said, didn't you, Tim, when I was talking to you yesterday, that the customers who got served were often complete strangers to you?”

“Yes.”

“And that often things that you wanted for your regular customers were not available?”

“That's right.”

I turned to Maya Johnson. “It seems possible that you've hit on the right explanation,” I said. “I shall certainly pass this on to Inspector Shelley. It may be the very sort of thing that will lead him somewhere.”

“And it might help to clear Tim from suspicion?”

“It certainly would if it proved to be true,” I said. “No one, I think, would be likely to accuse Tim of having anything to do with a drug racket.”

She heaved a great sigh of relief.

“We're not out of the wood yet, you know,” I warned her. “This, after all, is only a sort of inspired guess—nothing more.”

“Still, you agree that it is a possible explanation of what has been going on?”

“Yes,” I said, and then another idea occurred to me. “It marries up, too, with what I have learned about Margerison,” I said.

“In what way?”

“Margerison knew Tilsley as a dealer in gold and platinum,” I said.

My companions looked puzzled, so I went on to explain what I meant.

“Gold and platinum are two very expensive materials,” I said. “Anyone who buys some will be paying a lot of money for it. And the lumps of gold and platinum might be hollow. That, again, might mean that drugs were hidden somewhere.”

So altogether I was more than satisfied with the outcome of my talk with Maya Johnson and Tim Foster. We had succeeded in getting somewhere. As I said, it might be no more than an inspired guess, but I felt sure that Shelley would greet it with pleasure.

Chapter XIX

In Which I Put a Theory Before Scotland Yard

When my session with Tim Foster and Maya Johnson was over, I realised that it was too late to do anything with Shelley that night. I knew, of course, that the man from Scotland Yard was wont to keep all hours when he was busy on a case. The normal man's requirement of sleep did not seem to be in any way a necessity of his in such circumstances. But at the same time I thought it would be unfair to expect him to listen to a new theory at ten-thirty at night. Indeed I had no desire to interfere with his beauty sleep—or with my own.

I had had two difficult and trying days, and I knew that I needed sleep. But at the same time, when I had got back to my lodgings and gone to bed, sleep seemed to elude me for a long time. It was difficult to compose my mind for it; I found my thoughts going round and round in circles, thinking all about our arguments of the evening. Was it, I asked myself, indeed possible that Tilsley had been a drug-trafficker, disguising his business under the pretence that he was a dealer in car spares or precious metals, or something similarly harmless?

I was unable to find any flaw in the argument; but at the same time I thought that it would be very difficult to prove the truth of the allegation. Yet I knew that Scotland Yard had their methods. No doubt that they had a group of men whose job would be to deal with the traffic in dangerous drugs. They would deal with all those suspected of having any connexion with this horrid trade, and it might well be that they would have some knowledge of Tilsley's connexion with drugs, if such connexion really existed.

I could not sleep for a long time. These things were swimming around my brain. I found that I was repeating all the familiar arguments again and again, not getting any further forward but at the same time losing sleep which I knew would be of vital importance to me if I had to do any lengthy job of investigation in the near future—something which might well prove to be true in the next few days.

At last I did fall asleep, though it must have been about two o'clock in the morning. And then my sleep was disturbed by the most unpleasant of dreams, in which all those who were concerned in the case were stupidly muddled up. It was with considerable relief, in fact, that I woke up in the morning to find the bright sunshine streaming into my room. I glanced at my watch. It was half-past seven.

I heaved a sigh of relief. There would not, I told myself, be much competition for the bathroom at that hour of the morning. A tepid bath would be as refreshing as anything could well be, I thought. So I bathed, shaved, and dressed. Then I wandered downstairs. There was no one about—it was only just after eight o'clock. So, for the third morning in succession I went out for a stroll along the promenade. I felt a bit nervous, since for the last two mornings I had found a dead body in the Broadgate lift. I was scared that there might be a third murder.

Yet I was not going to give in to any feeling of nervousness. I was resolved to face up to whatever might happen. So I went along and sat on the seat nearby the lift. If there was anything to be seen I was resolved to see it, even though it might be a sight just as shocking as those which had met my eyes on the previous mornings.

Nothing of the kind happened. It looked as if the trouble was over for the time being. I didn't see Bender. That red-headed, limping figure did not put in an appearance. I wandered over to the little path leading to the lift. The padlock on the lift-doors had clearly not been tampered with, and the notice stating that the lift was out of order was still in position. I knew that the police had decided that the lift should be kept locked, until further notice. But I was in a way astonished that Bender had not turned up. I had expected that he would do so, if only in the hope that the police ban on the use of the lift might be raised.

He had told me, in fact, that he was paid a small wage, plus a fairly considerable commission on his takings. So it was a good thing for him to have the lift working for the longest possible hours.

Still, the fact remained that he was not there. So I wandered back to my lodging at nine o'clock, and ate a thoughtful breakfast. This over, I made my way to the Police Station. It was now half-past nine, and I knew that I would find Shelley in possession. Indeed, he seemed to have been at work for hours. As on previous occasions, he was surrounded by papers. I presumed that the reports on the various names in Tilsley's notebooks were now coming in.

“Busy?” I asked.

“Never too busy to see you, Jimmy,” he smiled. “After all, I don't suppose that you've come here merely to pick my brains, for you've been able to give me some useful leads up to now, and it may well be that you've got something useful again. What do you say?”

“Well, first of all I would like to pick your brains, as you put it,” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, I have an idea which I think is suggestive,” I said; “but I shall be able to see better if it's likely to be any good if I know a little more about what Tilsley was doing.”

“I've got some of the reports on the people in his notebooks, of course,” said Shelley a little reluctantly. “They're not altogether as satisfactory as I should wish.”

“In what way?” I asked. This was not quite the answer from Shelley that I had anticipated.

“Well, I thought that there would be some common factor between them, which would enable us to get some idea of just what the man was doing. But there seems to be little in common between his various business acquaintances.”

“What do you mean?”

Shelley picked up a bunch of papers from the table, apparently more or less at random, and said: “Well, the materials in which he was apparently dealing seemed to vary. Here's a man who used to buy radio valves and other small parts. The chap was a radio dealer in Chiswick. And here's a chemist, who bought all sorts of patent medicines from him. And here's a man with a music shop in Hammersmith. He used to buy rare and out-of-print gramophone records from Tilsley. As you probably know, Margerison was a dealer in precious metals, and Tilsley used to supply him with gold and platinum, while your friend Tim Foster had a garage, and used to buy spare parts for cars. The different sorts of goods in which Tilsley dealt were so striking that I can't conceive that any one man could possibly be sufficiently expert to deal in them all. The whole thing puzzles me considerably, I don't mind admitting.”

“Have you thought of the possibility that these deals might be a disguise, hiding something else?” I asked.

Shelley looked at me with a glint of surprise in his eyes. “What do you mean, Jimmy?” he asked.

“Well, you've got so obsessed with the idea that there was some black market racket behind this that I think you've overlooked any other possibilities,” I said. “You found no evidence of the black-market petrol business that you originally thought lay behind it?”

“Very little,” he admitted. “Though several garages were involved in whatever is going on.”

I now played my trump card, almost with an air of triumph. “Do you think that the answer might be drugs?” I asked.

“Drugs?”

“Yes—cocaine, hashish, and what have you,” I explained. “After all, it does seem possible. These other things might be mere disguises for dealing in drugs. And the garage proprietors, radio and music shops, and so on might be totally innocent of any connexion with the case—they might be innocent agents, distributing drugs without any knowledge of what they were selling.”

Shelley slapped his knee with his hand. “By Jove, Jimmy!” he exclaimed, “I believe that you've got hold of something there. It might be an explanation of what has happened. All the things, except possibly the car spares, were comparatively small things; they might easily be vehicles for the passing about of drugs.”

I was pleased. I had not thought that Shelley would greet this suggestion with so much enthusiasm. It was clear that it had struck him as a worth-while idea.

“No indication in your reports that such a drug-ring might be in existence?” I enquired.

“I don't think so,” he replied. “But then one would not expect anything of the sort. After all, if one is dealing in, say, cocaine, one would not expect to have to advertise the connexion. But I will certainly get our drug squad working on this, checking up on all the names in the list and seeing if any of them have at any time been suspected of having anything to do with drug traffic in this country.”

“How long do you think it will take before you can get a pretty comprehensive report on things from that angle?” I asked.

“Not more than a few days,” said Shelley. “Of course, one can't make any sort of firm promise; it all depends on whether these gentry have covered their tracks effectively. If they have, it may take a long time to dig the facts out. On the other hand, if they've been a bit over-confident, and have taken things too much for granted, it may be fairly easy to get the information we are after.”

“But you do think that it is a possible explanation of what has been going on?” I asked.

“I do indeed.”

“Well, it came from Miss Johnson and Mr. Foster,” I said, and went on to explain what had been said at our discussion on the previous night. Shelley listened, without comment, to what I had to say. And at the end he nodded solemnly. Naturally, I had omitted from my statement the fact that Miss Johnson was worried because she thought that Tim Foster might be coming under suspicion.

“What do you think of that couple, Jimmy?” Shelley asked.

“Miss Johnson and Mr. Foster, you mean?” I said.

“Yes.”

“I think they're very pleasant people,” I said.

“But you don't think that they know anything about the murders?” he persisted.

Here it was coming, I told myself. Now I should know if there was any truth in my idea that Tim Foster was to some extent under suspicion.

“I don't think that either of them knows a thing about it,” I said.

“You know that accusations have been bandied about?” Shelley asked.

“I know that Mrs. Skilbeck thinks that Foster had something to do with it,” I said.

Shelley grinned. “So you know where the information came from?” he said.

“Well,” I replied, “I didn't quite give you all the story about last night. You see, Mrs. Skilbeck came on the scene once, and very nearly caused some trouble.” And I went on to tell of the pale lady's intervention.

Shelley looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he said, “when she left you, she came right around here and spilled her story. There was some pretty nasty stuff in it, too, you know.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Well, you know she was engaged to John Tilsley,” he said. “She is, in fact, almost the only person we know as yet who had any connexion with Tilsley, apart from his business. And she was able to tell us a lot about his personal life—things which correspond with what we have known from other sources. And she swears that he was in mortal fear of Tim Foster—says that he told her many times that Foster was out after his blood, and that one of these days Foster would attack him. Of course, we have no evidence on this point apart from her word; and we shouldn't take action on that alone. But I tell you, Jimmy, if we get hold of any concrete evidence to support what she has said, things will look a bit sticky for your friend Foster.”

I was grateful for this hint, and I said as much. Then I asked: “But what does she give as a reason why Foster should be out after Tilsley's blood? After all Foster doesn't strike me as being a particularly bloodthirsty type. And a man doesn't usually threaten another unless he's got pretty good grounds for it.”

Shelley looked mighty serious at this. “She says that Foster accused Tilsley of cheating him over these deals in spares—said that Tilsley had sold him some useless stuff, for which he had to pay high prices. Oh, Jimmy, there's no doubt that her story hangs together all right. I think that, since Foster is a friend of yours, you should know what is going on. At the moment he's safe enough, but, as I said, if any new evidence crops up, he might be in quite a spot.”

I thought it decent of Shelley to give me this word of warning. While I was still thanking him for this, however, the telephone rang. With a muttered apology to me, he picked up the receiver.

“Shelley here,” he said. Then: “What?” came in a really startled tone.

“Where is he? On the promenade, near the bandstand? On one of the seats behind the bushes? All right. Ring the doctor, tell him to come around. I'll be there without delay. Try to keep a crowd from assembling if you can. It's in a pretty quiet spot, is it? Good.”

He slammed the receiver down. “Surprising news, Jimmy,” he said quietly.

“What is it?”

“It's our friend Bender.”

My heart sank. “Murdered?” I asked.

Shelley shook his head. “No,” he said. “Our friend the enemy has made a mistake this time, Jimmy. Bender isn't dead. He is lying unconscious on one of the seats by the bandstand—you know, those paths that run behind the bandstand, with bushes in front.”

“I know,” I said.

“Well, then, off we go!”

And off we went.