The Doors Open (13 page)

“Look here–” said Mr Gould.

“However,” went on the voice cheerfully, “This is all rather hypothetical, isn’t it? I mean to say, if the police are never told about this safe deposit, then none of the rest need happen. You follow me? Yes, I’m certain you do.”

It must not be imagined that Inspector Roberts had forgotten to tell Chief Inspector Hazlerigg all about Paddy Yeatman-Carter’s unexpected arrival at Upper Dene. He had spoken of it at some length. And Hazlerigg had been very interested indeed. But he was a man who did first things first. And he was quite certain in his own mind that Paddy, whatever his sins, had had nothing directly to do with the decease of Dr Potts.

The reason for this certainty was simply that, since the accident in the Underground Railway station, he had had Paddy and Nap watched. Not continuously, the circumstances hardly warranted that. But a discreet eye had been kept on their comings and goings. And he therefore knew that on Thursday night, the night of Doctor Potts’ last day on earth, Nap had been with Nurse Goodbody, first at a Symphony Concert and afterwards till a late hour at a night club (the former to please his fiancée, the latter to please himself), whilst Paddy had played some energetic squash at Bumpers, had drunk a lot of beer, returned to the Inner Temple, waited up for Nap till one o’clock; had then got tired of waiting and had gone to bed.

“I suppose, if he had a car hidden somewhere, he
could
just have done it,” said Roberts doubtfully. “How long to get to Seaford at night – three hours, or three and a half…?”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “But aren’t you forgetting that he caught the 8.50 from Victoria for Seaford on Friday morning? No. He had no hand in this. I’m not saying that his presence at Seaford isn’t significant. Unless I’m much mistaken he’s going to prove very significant indeed. Do you know, I think the time has come for the putting of a few cards on to the table.”

It was becoming increasingly apparent to Hazlerigg that something was going on behind his back and that in the case of the Crown versus Luciano, Brandison, and others, at least two parties were working on parallel lines. One was a professional party, the police, about their business of maintaining the King’s peace. The other was an amateur, an irregular and an altogether regrettable party, apparently consisting of a Mr Yeatman-Carter, a Mr Rumbold, and – somewhere in the background – that unpredictable peer, Lord Cedarbrook.

Major McCann was fortuitously connected with it, too. And Major McCann was a man for whom the Chief Inspector had a certain regard.

“There’s trouble enough in the natural way,” he quoted from his favourite poet, “when it comes to burying human clay. But when you reach a point in a murder investigation where you can’t move without stubbing your toes over a pack of amateur helpers – well, it’s time to do something about it.”

Accordingly he wrote three notes, one to Paddy, one to Nap, and one to Lord Cedarbrook, inviting them to meet him on the following day at eleven in the morning.

Sergeant Crabbe, who carried the notes, found Nap and Paddy without difficulty. At Lord Cedarbrook’s residence in Goshawk Road, however, he received a rebuff.

Lord Cedarbrook had disappeared.

Cluttersley, with a back of granite and a face of doom, informed him that His Lordship was not at home, had not been at home for several days and was unlikely to be at home for a considerable period. He could not say how long. When His Lordship departed, about a week previously, he had indicated that he might be away for a month or more. No, he had left no forwarding address.

2

Hazlerigg opened without preamble.

“It’s one of our jobs,” he said, “to keep an eye on people like Luciano Capelli. Don’t imagine, please, that he’s an undesirable alien. If he was that, we could get him deported with very little further trouble. He’s undesirable as a cold in August, but unfortunately he’s a British citizen – by naturalization. He lives and works and does his little bit to help the country of his adoption in the Soho area, and consequently his immediate governor is Inspector Roberts, whom you’ve both met. I am concerned with him indirectly, because I hold a general watching brief over the food and drink rackets.

“Luciano is proprietor of the Mogador. He owns it and runs it, and turns a respectable, if grimy, penny by doing so. I mean, it’s one of the better known Soho restaurants and a very large number of extremely respectable people use it every night, and neither know nor care that its proprietor is a gangster. There’s nothing surprising in that, of course. A lot of middle-class Chicago families used to stay at the Lexington when the fourth floor was the headquarters of Al Capone. One of the happy results, from his point of view, is that Luciano is able to keep all his boys together under one roof – and there’s no difficulty about their rations and so on.”

“Administrative difficulties of a gang leader,” said Nap. “What a fascinating thought. It never struck me before that housewives and gangsters might have problems in common.”

“This is just to put you both in the picture,” went on Hazlerigg. “You’ve got to understand that we should have been looking after Luciano anyway. It was when he started getting mixed up with that cashier fellow – Brandison, and his insurance company, that it ceased to be a routine job and began to have the smell of a case. And that’s where you people started to feature with what I might call almost monotonous regularity. First there was the assistant cashier who fell into the Thames–”

“Primed,” agreed Paddy, “with drinks purchased by me.”

“Then there was the rough-house which didn’t quite come off, at the Mogador, on the night of Brandison’s visit. You were involved in that–” Hazlerigg turned to Nap.

“I certainly was,” said Nap. “If it hadn’t been for some extraordinarily smart work by Major McCann I should probably now be adorning your Black Museum, catalogued as the corpse of an incautious diner in Soho.”

“I don’t think they meant to kill you,” said Hazlerigg. “But that’s a point I’m coming to in a moment. Next there was the affair of the Underground station–”

“Featuring Yeatman-Carter, in his well-known knockabout act.”

“Quite so,” agreed Hazlerigg, “And lastly there’s the death of Doctor Potts. The body was hardly cold before one of you – it was you, I think, Mr Carter – was on the spot. I may as well tell you straight away that I don’t think either of you had anything to do with that – not directly.”

“Well, thank goodness you don’t,” said Nap. “Because as a matter of fact we didn’t.”

“But that’s not to say that you didn’t have an indirect connection with it. Otherwise, to put it at its lowest, how did you manage to get on the scene so quickly?”

Paddy looked at Nap and Nap looked at Paddy and said, “Clean breast, I think.”

So they told Hazlerigg everything. It took quite a long time.

When it was all over the Chief Inspector said, “Yes. I should like to meet Lord Cedarbrook. I’ve heard of him, of course. But never having been attached to our Special Branch I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him officially.”

Both his hearers looked surprised, and Hazlerigg said, “Didn’t you know he worked for MI5 during the war?”

“I knew that he was an expert on Russia,” said Nap. “I didn’t know that he worked for the Department.”

“Where is he now?”

“Honestly I don’t know,” said Nap. “He went off at the beginning of the week. He didn’t say anything to either of us. Cluttersley may know where he is, but he won’t say. He’s a confounded graven image.”

“Well, I’d certainly like a word with him when he does show up–” The Chief Inspector was silent for a moment and then he added, “Have you ever done any surveying?”

“In a rough sort of way, when we were training in France – ” said Nap.

“Orienting the map, and that sort of nonsense,” suggested Paddy.

“That’s the idea. I’m not an expert on it myself, but you remember the principle of locating an unknown point on the map. It was a particularly useful method when it was a point you couldn’t actually get to – in front of your own front line for instance–”

“Yes,” said Nap. “I think so. By intersection of rays.”

“Quite so. You took a bearing from some spot you could locate – the spot you were standing on, for instance. Then you moved to another spot as far to a flank as possible and took a second bearing. Where those two lines crossed on the map gave you some idea of the rough location of the place. There was a considerable margin of error of course.”

“As far as I can remember,” said Nap, “if you could, you checked up with a third bearing from a third point.”

“Exactly,” said Hazlerigg. “You take the words out of my mouth.”

“You’re thinking of Legate, I take it.”

“I’m thinking of Legate. He’s up to something or other. We haven’t much to go on, you know. Even with what you’ve given us we haven’t got within a mile of the point where we could make a charge against him. But one or two things are beginning to emerge. He’s got a lot of ready money behind him. And he’s prepared to use it. His particular instruments are Luciano and company. He may have others, of course. If we knew
what
he was trying to do, we might try to stop it. If we even knew how he was setting about it, that’d be a help.”

“You say that, so far, our story has given you two lines on him,” said Nap. “That, I take it, is what you mean by two intersecting rays.”

“Two pointers, yes. The first, of course, was Mr Britten. Rather an intriguing figure, don’t you think? A junior cashier at the Stalagmite Insurance Corporation, who got the sack for making a mistake over some insurance policies. And threw himself into the river. Now is that the truth? Or is there more to it than that?”

“Then Doctor Potts–?”

“Yes. Doctor Potts. A voice out of the past. If Mr Britten was the guilty present, then I have a feeling that Doctor Potts must have been the guilty past. He knew something about Legate or Legate thought he knew something. Either way it proved equally fatal. But there’s a much more interesting thing about Doctor Potts and I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice.”

Both Paddy and Nap tried to look intelligent but it was obvious that neither of them knew what was coming.

“Time,” said Hazlerigg. “Seconds, minutes, hours and days. The time factor. Put yourself in the shoes of the other side and think for a moment. At the end of last week you three – by a piece of intensive work and research – for which, by the way, accept my heartiest professional congratulations – discovered the existence of Doctor Potts. Up to that moment there was no reason to suppose that anyone necessarily shared your secret. The various press-cutting agencies you employed couldn’t know yourselves. Very well. On the Monday you enlisted the help of a member of Alberts’ Detective Agency – a very respectable firm, very well known to us – we’ve nothing against them at all. You are attended by a Mr Gould. On Thursday night of that same week a fairly elaborate plan is put into action. I’ll tell you more about it in a minute – but you can take it from me that it’s definitely not the sort of thing that could have been worked out in twenty-four hours. You see what I mean? There are two possibilities – either your Mr Gould was thunderingly indiscreet and the other side got wind of his enquiries – and stepped in first. Or – and it’s a possibility that’s got to be faced – Mr Gould gave you away.”

“Have you met Gould before?” asked Nap.

“I’ve heard of him,” said Hazlerigg. “We meet these fellows in court sometimes as professional witnesses. He’s got the reputation of being clever, but slippery.”

“Do you think the thing is definite enough for you to ask him some questions?”

“Definite or not, I intend to do so,” said Hazlerigg. “We can’t afford to miss any chances when dealing with this crowd. They’re hot stuff. That show on Thursday night was streamlined.”

“I suppose,” said Paddy cautiously, “I suppose it’s just possible that Doctor Potts
did
commit suicide. His housekeeper said he’d been a bit off-colour, you know. His practice wasn’t a very paying one. I was asking about it afterwards. He had a few good patients – old ladies he was looking after – but it can’t have brought in very much money.”

“He
might
have committed suicide,” said Hazlerigg. “And so
might
Mr Britten. Both things are equally possible. But do you really believe either of them?”

“That’s all very well,” said Nap, “but the two cases aren’t on the same footing. Britten was drunk and it was a dark night. If Luciano’s boys were following him, I agree, they could have pushed him off the towing-path into the river and no trouble. But Potts was sober and in his own house. If they broke in and forced him into the car and held him down, surely they must have left some signs–”

“They left no signs at all–”

“Well, then–”

“I’ll tell you what I
think
happened,” said Hazlerigg, “because it’ll show you the sort of people you’re up against. But you must understand that everything I say is pure surmise. I think it happened this way because this is the only way it can have happened. I think that these people knew quite a lot about Doctor Potts and his habits and his practice and his household. I think they must have studied him for some time as a possible subject. But it was only when you three got on to him – got to know of his existence – that he had to be put away.”

“You mean that we killed him,” said Nap.

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “I mean just that. Unwittingly, of course. I’m sorry – but you asked for the truth. If it’s any consolation to you, I was equally responsible for his death. I knew enough by late on Thursday afternoon to have moved and I delayed till Friday morning. Now let’s stop blaming ourselves and try to see what happened.

“Two of Luciano’s men drove down to Seaford on Thursday night. They parked the car off the Hindover Road. They went on foot up the lane, and into the garden, keeping to the stone path, and they forced the slip lock of the garage door, and one of them went in – Conlan, I think. The main garage doors were bolted on the inside, but there was the usual little entrance door cut into the big one, as you probably saw, and this was the one they opened. As soon as Conlan was inside the garage, with the doors shut, he switched on the doctor’s car and started the engine. Yes – I know what you’re going to say. But it’s all right. I think he had a mask. Not a gas mask – of course, that wouldn’t have been any use to him at all against carbon monoxide – but an oxygen container mask – the sort they issued to the Tunnelling Companies in the Royal Engineers. That was the mob Conlan was in during the war.