Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (19 page)

“Then you think Bender is in a spot?”

“I do.”

“But surely you've just sent him home. He might be murdered as soon as he gets there!” I exclaimed.

“You don't credit me for much sense, Jimmy,” Shelley said with a smile. “Why, it may even be that Bender may, without being conscious of it, lead us to the murderer.”

“And what are you doing about it?” I asked.

“Putting a plain-clothes man on his tail,” Shelley said. “From now on Aloysius Bender will be watched night and day. And I think that before many days are over we shall have the murderer.”

Chapter XXI

In Which I Take Part in
a New Council of War

Up to now I had almost forgotten my promise to Tim Foster and Maya Johnson. Those two young people were going through a sticky time, I knew. I knew, also, that I should have to do something to ease their uneasy minds. After all, they had thought that they were in some degree under suspicion—as, indeed, in a measure, they were. And I had promised to do what I could to help them in their difficulty. And I had done nothing as yet to keep that promise.

I made my way to the garage, therefore. Tim Foster was standing in the doorway when I got there.

“Any news?” he asked eagerly as I approached.

“A certain amount,” I replied. “Nothing very important, but I thought that I should like to have a chat with Miss Johnson and yourself. Is there a peaceful little café anywhere near here, where we could have a chat over a cup of coffee, do you think?”

“Just down the road there's a place where we often go,” he said. “Shall I give Maya a ring and ask her to come along?”

“Do,” I said.

He went inside and did the necessary work on the telephone. He was with me within a few moments.

“She'll be here in five minutes,” he announced at length, “so we'll make our way down.”

The café was a peaceful little place, as I had asked. In fact, it was so quiet that I wondered how the proprietors managed to make a living out of it. There wasn't a soul in the place when Tim and I entered. We made our way to the corner, where a small table was tucked away under a discreetly-shaded lamp. We ordered coffees and awaited Maya Johnson's arrival.

When she came I was struck as before by her appearance. Her beauty was as breath-taking as ever. I'm no good at describing clothes, but she was dressed in a pink-and-white frock of some silky material that suited her complexion admirably. I could scarcely resist a gasp of amazement at the way in which she swept into the room. Unlike most beautiful women she did not seem to be in any way conscious of her beauty. She made her way to our table, sat down, and asked the waitress, with an unconscious arrogance, for a coffee.

“Well?” she said quietly to me when the coffee had been delivered.

“I thought that I should report to you and Tim what I've found out so far,” I explained.

“And what is that?” she asked with considerable eagerness. I could see that she was anxious to know what was being done. Her love for Tim Foster was so transparently obvious that it almost made me smile, and feel paternal. Such is the feeling of the man of forty when faced with young love—for I supposed that they couldn't be more than about twenty-five years of age, either of them.

“Well, the police are suspicious of Tim, but have no really concrete evidence against him,” I said.

“Of course not,” Maya Johnson said, with an indignant toss of the head. “Who could have concrete evidence against a man who is innocent?”

“Well, such things have happened,” I said. “There was Oscar Slater. There was a man called Wallace in Liverpool about twenty years ago. He was actually found guilty of murder, though the verdict was reversed by the Court of Appeal. But the police don't often make mistakes of that sort. As a rule they don't arrest anyone unless they're pretty sure, or unless the case looks more or less cast-iron.”

“But why are they suspicious?” Tim asked. “I don't think that I've done anything which is likely to arouse their suspicions.”

“You forget Mrs. Skilbeck,” I reminded him. “It seems that she had told the police a pretty convincing tale about you, and about the things she alleges Tilsley told her about you. She may be in a queer spot herself, or it may be that she has made up her mind that you did it. Then she would have told the police anything that she could think about which would be likely to put you in the queer.”

“Surely no one would do anything so dreadful,” exclaimed Maya Johnson.

“Don't forget that Mrs. Skilbeck was engaged to Tilsley,” I said. “Put yourself in her place for a moment. Suppose that it was Tim, here, who had been murdered, and that you had suspicions of someone. Wouldn't you do anything you could to get that person under arrest?”

“Ye—es,” she said, rather unwillingly. “I suppose that I should.”

“And if you were sure that you knew the murderer, but were afraid that he might escape through lack of evidence,” I went on, “wouldn't you even condescend to manufacturing a spot of evidence, if you thought that it might tip the scales?”

“That's possible,” she admitted. I thought that Maya Johnson was one of the most honest people I had ever met. She had no capacity for self-deception, but forced herself to admit anything which was genuinely part of her feelings.

She looked at me now with wide-open eyes. “You have done a lot for us,” she said.

“Only as part of my job,” I said.

“Well,” she went on, “I wonder if I could persuade you to do something more for us?”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Would you go to Mrs. Skilbeck again—you told us, I remember, that you had interviewed her once, a day or two back—and see if you can find out what it is that she has against Tim?”

I looked a trifle alarmed. After all, Mrs. Skilbeck had seen me with these young people, and, after that, it was a pretty tough assignment to expect me to get anything more in the way of information out of her. Yet the fact remained that she might know something that I had not yet found out. And, as I had thought when talking to Shelley, background knowledge of the case was something which I wanted, and which I could not get in too great a quantity. Besides, there was nothing which Maya Johnson asked me that I could refuse. That unearthly beauty simply made me helpless.

At the same time, however, I felt more than a little perturbed at what she was asking me to do. I thought that Mrs. Skilbeck would now take a pretty poor view of me, considering, probably, that I was a mere stooge of Tim Foster and Maya Johnson. And, indeed, she had every right to think that, since in effect I was acting on their behalf. Still, to the Charrington Hotel I certainly had to go.

I swallowed my coffee at a gulp, laid a shilling on the table in payment, and made my way to the door. In the street I blinked at the sudden sunshine, lit a cigarette, and made my way towards the Charrington. To any observer I must have appeared a very ordinary man on a holiday in Kent. If the passers-by had only known the thoughts that were coursing through my head they would have been astonished. I was, in fact, wondering if the true explanation of Mrs. Skilbeck's interest in Tim Foster arose out of the fact that she knew the true murderer and was shielding him by attacking Tim. That was a possible explanation, and if it were true, it meant that I was thrusting my head into a hornets' nest or a lion's mouth (choose your own metaphor).

Still, it was now much too late in the day to draw back. I had promised Tim and Maya that I would have another go at Mrs. Skilbeck, and have another go at Mrs. Skilbeck I must. The Charrington was not far away—nowhere in Broadgate is far away from anywhere else. I reached the door of the hotel in a matter of ten minutes or so, tossed away the remnants of my cigarette, and made my way into the vestibule. The place had not altered at all from the occasion of my previous visit. Its dimness remained, and Mrs. Skilbeck still sat behind the little reception kiosk.

“Good morning, Mrs. Skilbeck,” I said as cheerfully as I could.

“Good morning,” she replied, greeting me with a stony glare that did not suggest my mission of enquiry was likely to be very successful.

“You remember me, don't you?” I asked.

“I remember you,” she agreed with what was almost a sneer. “I'm not likely to forget you, the man who posed as anxious to solve the mystery of John's death and then became friendly with John's murderer!”

This was the sort of attack that I had anticipated, and I thought that I knew the best way to deal with it.

“You're not quite fair, Mrs. Skilbeck,” I said. “The matter is not as simple as you appear to think.”

“It is perfectly simple,” she asserted flatly. I quailed a little. This was not going to be so easy to deal with as I had originally hoped it might be. The woman was obviously very much embittered. She had a kind of savage intensity which was almost frightening.

“Do you think that you could grant me a few minutes somewhere not quite so public as this?” I asked indicating the hotel vestibule.

“I don't see why I should,” she said. I felt a little impatient. This really was getting much more difficult than I had anticipated. But I had promised Tim and Maya to do my best, and I knew that I should have to go through with it, however unpromising it might appear.

“It is merely that we have a good deal to talk about,” I explained. “You have misjudged me, Mrs. Skilbeck. I have to tell you that I am still as eager as ever to solve the mystery of John Tilsley's death. It is merely that I think you are mistaken when you consider that Timothy Foster was responsible for it. But I think that we should talk it over.”

“All right,” she said. “Come this way, please.” Her dead white face was expressionless, and she led the way to an inner sanctum which was presumably her private room. It lay off the vestibule, on its inner side.

When we had come into this room—a cosy little room with a window overlooking the hotel garden, which lay at the back of the building—she waved me into an armchair, sat herself on a high chair facing me, and folded her hands on her lap. Her face was still as expressionless as ever.

“Now, what did you want to say, Mr. London?” she asked quietly.

“I wanted to tell you, first of all, that you have completely misjudged my attitude in this case,” I said. “I'm not trying to clear the guilty person.”

She jumped in at this remark. “Then why did you hobnob with him?” she asked.

“I meant that I don't accept your suggestion that Timothy Foster is guilty of the crime,” I said.

“I am sure that he is.” Her mouth shut almost with a snap, as if she thought that this was the last word to be said on this matter.

“Can you give me some indication of why you think that?” I asked. Somehow, I told myself, I had to get on better terms with this woman. And the only way in which I could do it was to get her talking about it, to allow her to have her head, and see if what she said was good sense. After all, she must have some reason for her emphatic belief that Tim was guilty. For I was prepared to back my belief that he was not guilty.

“I knew John Tilsley better than anyone else,” she announced. “And I know that he was in mortal fear of Foster. He often said so to me.”

“Did he give any reason for his fear of Timothy Foster?” I asked.

“Yes.” The monosyllable came like a shot from a gun.

“And what was his reason?”

“He used to say that he had done a smart deal which Foster had resented. He said that Foster had always disliked him, and that now he had got the better of Foster in a business deal that dislike had got a lot deeper. In fact, he said that it had turned to hate. He often said to me that he was sure Foster would try to kill him one of these days. And that is why I say that now I am perfectly sure that Foster is the murderer.”

This was, of course, more or less the story that Shelley had told me. I wondered how much truth there was in it. The malice in Mrs. Skilbeck's tone was obvious; but I didn't know how much of that might be derived from her mistrust of Tim, and how much might be due to her genuine belief that what she thought of Tim was the simple truth. She had clearly been very fond of John Tilsley, and if she really thought that Timothy Foster had been responsible for Tilsley's death she would naturally want to see him brought to justice.

I had often prided myself on my insight into human nature, but I couldn't for the life of me decide whether this woman was lying out of pure desire to be avenged on the man whom she thought responsible for the death of the man she loved, or whether she was telling what she sincerely believed to be the truth. I was, in fact, getting thoroughly involved. It seemed to me that whatever I did I was now deeper and deeper in the mire. Every brainwave that I had seemed to lead nowhere. I was just having arguments and discussions with the people in the case, and seeing those arguments and discussions peter out into nothing.

I wondered what Shelley was doing, and whether his investigations had got him any further forward than mine had got me. The way in which this case was working out was, indeed, curiously different from what one had anticipated. The detective stories which I had read never presented this aspect; nor did those books on criminology which had come my way. But I thought that such volumes portrayed the case at the finish. I was in the middle of this one. Perhaps in a few days' time this case might look more complete; perhaps all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle would fall neatly into position. For the moment I thought that there could be little doubt that I was bogged in the mud of surmise.

Still, I had to deal with Mrs. Skilbeck somehow, so I tried to get some more information about this supposed hatred of Tilsley which Tim Foster was alleged to have felt. Surely, I told myself, there was something that I could do to elucidate the thing.

“What was the business deal in which Tilsley was supposed to have got the better of Foster?” I asked.

She shook her head helplessly. “I don't know,” she said. “As I told you when you were here before, I knew nothing of the details of Mr. Tilsley's business. All that I know is that he got the better of Foster somehow, and Foster resented it—resented it to such a degree that he threatened John Tilsley's life.”

“Threatened his life?” I asked. This was the first time that threats had been mentioned.

“Yes; he said that Foster said he would see that Tilsley would regret having done him down.”

“That's not exactly a threat on his life,” I pointed out.