Man on a Rope (14 page)

“Exactly where was he last night? Tell me everything you can.”

Barry explained how he had asked for a match and used its flame to get a look at Thaxter. He said he was not suspicious but just wondered why the man should be standing there; he had the impression that he might have been hiding behind the tree.

“Well,” Kerby said on a note of regret, “it seems obvious that he did just that. But—you say his clothes weren't wet?”

“Not very. Just a few drops.”

“And how did you know who he was?”

“I didn't,” Barry said, “until I saw him come down the steps at Police Headquarters this morning. I remembered his face, or thought I did. I asked Eddie Glynn who he was. Didn't you talk to him?”

“Certainly. Lambert had sent him to prison. We thought of Thaxter right off and he gave his statement this morning. There was some question about his alibi, but if we'd had any idea that he was actually—”

He let the sentence dangle and what he had in mind was left unsaid as he digressed: “Wait in the sedan, will you? I'll be through here shortly…. Now then, Doctor;” he said, turning his back but adding nothing more until Barry had moved away.

There was no one in the sedan when he climbed in the front seat, so he slouched down, feeling the clammy touch of his shirt on his shoulders, his gaze remote and troubled as he watched two men walk back from the ambulance and lift the still covered body to the stretcher. When the rear doors had closed on it the ambulance backed and turned and roared past, its motor accelerating.

Presently the doctor climbed into his own small car and drove off, and that left Kerby and Cantrell and some uniformed constables searching the surrounding area with flashlights while the line of all but unseen spectators retreated before them. Two other men in plainclothes were apparently questioning the owner of a car parked farther along. Kerby seemed to be giving some instructions to Cantrell, for in the end the Inspector saluted and Kerby turned on his heel and strode back to the sedan.

He said no more as he drove to Headquarters and parked the sedan beneath the building which housed his office. He issued no invitation as he stepped from the car, but when he saw Barry do likewise he led the way up the stairs and into the office. He told Barry to sit down, and put his cap and stick in the empty letter tray and pushed the button on the edge of the desk. When the orderly appeared he said:

“Do we have a stenographer on duty now, Meegan?”

“No, sir.”

“Arrange to get one here as soon as possible.” He sat down when the door closed and took a straight-stemmed pipe and a round tin of tobacco from his desk. “Sorry I can't offer you a cigarette,” he said as he began to rub a bit of tobacco in his palm.

Barry said he had his own and lit one. He watched Kerby light the pipe with care and lean back in his chair, his manner relaxed and at ease and his voice pleasantly conversational.

“It may take some time to get the stenographer,” he said. “We're always a little shorthanded here. We'll need your statement, but while we're waiting we might go over your story.”

“Would you mind telling me what happened to Thaxter?”

“Oh, I thought you knew. Shot. Same as Lambert but this time at quite close range. Not contact, according to the doctor, but close. Inches.”

“Did you find a gun?”

“No.”

“Did you ever find the one that killed Lambert?”

“Not yet. Albert says Lambert kept an automatic in his desk, but we've not been able to come up with it.” He gestured with the pipe. “We've no ballistics department here, but we know Lambert was killed with a small-caliber gun. The doctor says the slugs that killed Thaxter tonight came from a larger pistol. We may know more about that after the p.m.”

“Do you know when Thaxter was killed?”

“Not exactly. We found a chap who heard the shots, but he couldn't tell us when. Seems he was visiting a friend who is a watchman at one of Hammonds' sheds. Heard the shots and a car start up, but didn't actually see it. Thought no more about it until a few minutes later when someone started blowing a horn.”

He paused to make a series of small tidy puffs to keep his tobacco burning and said: “This fellow in the car was just. passing by and saw the body on the edge of the road. Blew his horn to attract attention. When the first chap finally came, the one in the car told him to wait while he went to find a telephone and call us. He remembers that it was twenty-five past nine at the time.”

“Then Thaxter could have been shot at five after or ten after,” Barry said, thinking of where he had been at that time.

“Or twenty after,” Kerby said. “Hard to say. Time isn't too important to these people. Not always accurate with their guesses…. Now when did you say you arrived at the Murray Hotel?”

The digression was so simply done that Barry nearly forgot where he was. For Kerby was a very personable fellow and, off duty, probably a very charming companion. This was the first time Barry had seen him relaxed and he had to remind himself that Kerby was
on
duty and still a policeman investigating a murder.

“I didn't say,” he said. “I'm not even sure when I did get there.”

“Did the clerk see you?”

“There wasn't any clerk. I looked at my watch just once,” he said, and then explained how he had seen the key on the rack and gone into the bar for a drink. “It was twenty-five after nine when I left. There still was no clerk behind the desk, but that time the key was gone. That's why I went up.”

Kerby was still slouched in his chair, his weight supported on shoulder blades and buttocks. He tapped the pipe stem lightly between his teeth and resumed his puffing.

“The barman can verify that, I suppose. He might know how long you were there.”

“Not if he can't judge time better than your other witness.”

Kerby's brows climbed and his mustache flattened in a smile. “You could be right. And what's your estimate?”

“Of how long I was in the bar? Ten minutes. Maybe more.”

“Then what you're saying is that someone else went up to Thaxter's room while you were there.”

And suddenly Barry knew that this was true. He should have thought of this before, but he hadn't, though at the time he did not know that Thaxter had been murdered.

“I hadn't thought about it that way,” he said and was both impressed and disturbed by the deduction.

“You have no idea who it might have been?”

“No.”

“We know Thaxter left at nine, or thereabouts. By the time you left the bar he was already dead by some minutes.” He hesitated again, still pleasant, except for the unremitting steadiness of his narrowed gaze. “But let's get back to this afternoon,” he said. “You took the trouble to find out where Thaxter was staying—I assume you know something about his background and the trouble with Lambert?—and you called on him. Why?”

Barry put out his cigarette and pulled in his legs. He propped his elbows on the chair arms and met the Superintendent's gaze.

“I wanted to find out how much he had seen last night,” he said. “I wanted to know how long he'd been hiding behind that tree.”

“And did you? Find out, I mean?”

“No. His clothes weren't wet, but he could have stepped under Lambert's veranda during the shower.”

“Was it actually any of your business?”

Barry felt the new warmth creeping into his cheeks. He wished Kerby would stop being so damned pleasant, and his reaction was one of annoyance. It did not occur to him then that Kerby was only partly to blame for this reaction; he did not stop to think that he did not dare tell the whole truth and that part of his annoyance derived from a guilty conscience and nerves that were under constant pressure to say the right thing and never too much. By nature he was a forthright man who had a healthy respect for truth, insofar as it concerned him. Now, for once in his life he had to act the liar. He resented the necessity for this; he was aware of his lack of practice and he was also somewhat skeptical of his ability to fool Kerby for very long. The combined pressure made his voice blunt and impatient as he replied.

“Why the hell not?” he said. “He could give me an alibi, couldn't he?” He grunted softly and leaned forward. “Let me ask you this: am I under suspicion of murder or not?”

“I'm afraid you are.”

“Okay, then. I told you what time I went to Lambert's last night and found his body. Maybe you believe me and maybe you don't…. Thaxter could prove it. He saw me go in.”

“And you went to him to ask for his corroboration?”

Again Barry hesitated while this lie of his stared him in the face and he tried to pick his way around it.

“Certainly. I offered to give him a few dollars for his help and—”

“I'm not sure that was wise.”

“You haven't got the police breathing down your neck either.”

“Quite true.”

“I told him I'd rather he came to you himself, but he didn't like the idea much. He'd already told you he had an alibi and he probably figured he'd only make it worse for himself by admitting he was at the house somewhere near the time of the murder. After all, he had a motive too, didn't he?”

“He did indeed…. So how did you leave it?”

“I told him I'd give him until tonight. If I didn't hear from him I'd come to you direct. It was just luck that the hotel clerk didn't know I was having dinner when his call came. I don't know what he was going to tell me. I wish I did.”

“So do I.”

Kerby sighed softly and examined his pipe. When he found it was out he tapped the dottle into his palm and tipped it over the wastebasket. He blew through the stem twice and put the pipe back in the drawer. He glanced at his strap watch and let his weight swing upright in his chair.

“What you have told me holds up reasonably well,” he said, still pleasant. “Unfortunately, in a murder case one never knows what to believe until we have the guilty person in hand. In court a man is judged innocent until proved guilty. With me each suspect is a possible murderer until he is eliminated as a suspect. If you had killed Lambert—you understand this is only an assumption—you would not be likely to tell the truth. For that reason each statement—yours and everyone else's—is accepted with reservations until it can be checked.

“You are a suspect because you found the body, possibly when you said you did and possibly not. You had at least two motives. You had threatened Lambert earlier and admit he cheated you. In addition you knew there was a hundred thousand in diamonds in that desk safe.”

“That's right,” Barry said. “All I needed was the combination.”

“All you needed,” Kerby said dryly, “was a gun. At gun point Lambert would have opened the safe for you. But because you knew you could not possibly hope to avoid almost immediate capture, you shot him twice.”

Barry lit another cigarette and leaned back again, determined to be just as casual as Kerby. “This was during the shower.”

“You left the instant it was over, got rid of the diamonds—”

“How?”

“—and returned as soon as you conveniently could to discover the body. That's when you saw Thaxter. And let's face it, Dawson: Thaxter was killed because of what he knew. In the light of what happened tonight there is no explanation.”

This, Barry knew, was true, and he sat waiting while Kerby continued his assumption to its logical conclusion.

“You saw Thaxter this afternoon,” he said, “and realized you had to silence him one way or the other. He wanted money and you had to promise it. But because you couldn't get enough to satisfy him you made an appointment for tonight and picked him up in a car somewhere near the hotel on the pretext of paying him or talking it over…. I don't think Thaxter walked to the spot where he was found,” he said.

“I think someone drove him there, drew a gun, forced him from the car, and shot him. It could easily have been done in time for you to get back to the hotel bar by fifteen or twenty minutes after nine.”

The theory was sound and Barry knew it, and the fact that he was innocent served to increase his uneasiness. He tried not to show it. In a voice that he hoped would give the impression that the whole thing was preposterous, he said:

“I'd need a car, and a gun…. You could check and see if I hired a car.”

“We'll do that,” Kerby said. “Of that you can be sure…. Come,” he said as someone knocked at the door. “Oh, here we are,” he said when he saw the officer with a stenographer's notebook in his hand, and once again his voice was businesslike as he added that it was his duty to caution Barry that he was under no compulsion to say anything for the record; that what he did say could be used against him.

The statement did not take long and when it was finished Kerby said Barry could go along with the stenographer and sign it when it was typed; after that he would be free to leave. It was when he followed the stenographer into the hall that he saw how busy Kerby's men had been.

McBride, Ian Lambert, and Chris Holt were waiting on the' bench. Later, when Barry came out of the stenographer's room, Lambert and Holt were still there and McBride's place had been taken by Muriel Ransom. When he went down the stairs and started across the quadrangle, a car drove up and he turned to see Louis Amanti get out and start up the stairs.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

B
ECAUSE HE WAS NORMALLY A SOUND SLEEPER
, it Came as a surprise to Barry Dawson to discover that he was awake in the middle of the night. He had not yet opened his eyes and in those first seconds had no intention of doing so. It was only his mind that was awake and he knew it was still dark and he thought that if he kept his eyes closed sleep would come quickly.

He had heard no sound that he could remember. He could tell that the room was slightly cooler now, which meant that the tide had turned and was bringing with it the cooling ocean breeze. This and the stillness of a night no longer tortured by the barking of prowling dogs—he had often wondered how they decided it was time to quit and crawl back to their homes—told him that it was long past midnight, and now, as his mind went back, he remembered coming in and getting a quick drink before the bar closed. He had been in bed by twelve—