The Hunter and the Trapped (16 page)

“I think we ought to tell your father about this,” he said. “I'm prepared to back your statement about the cheque. If I'm ever asked, which doesn't seem likely. But, don't you see, the cops are almost certain to ask your father to confirm when he sent you your allowance and so on. We don't want him letting off about Simon. I don't say he's very likely to. But he took it extremely hard, didn't he?” She nodded, sadly.

“I think I'll have a word with him before I go back. Will he be at his club this evening?”

“I expect so.”

Before he left her Penelope said, “That evening finished it, John. I simply don't care any longer.”

They were standing at the door of Caroline's flat. He said nothing, but taking her in his arms gave her a long and satisfying kiss. Then he was gone, leaving her with a warm sense of comfort and security she had not felt for many months.

Hubert showed a certain amount of embarrassment as he greeted John. But when he understood that his business had less to do with Penelope than with Simon Fawcett he showed more readiness to listen.

“Isn't this rather a public place for what you have to say?” he asked. “I can't guarantee, even if we manage to find a secluded corner or an empty room that we shan't be disturbed.”

“Well, perhaps. I've my car outside.”

“Then I suggest we adjourn to my house,” Hubert said, feeling relieved. “Have you dined?”

“Yes,” John answered, with a gleam of malice provoked by the other's stiff attitude and speech. “Penny gave me an excellent meal, thank you.”

Hubert made no answer but when he was in his own house he ordered Mrs. Byrne to make coffee and himself got out brandy and glasses, pouring a smallish tot for John and a rather larger one for himself.

“You're driving back tonight, I take it,” he said, to explain his stinginess.

John laughed and agreed that he had every intention of keeping sober. They talked about his present work at H. M.S.
Excellent
until the coffee arrived and Mrs. Byrne left them.

“Now, tell me what you have to say about Fawcett,” Hubert prompted him.

John did so, altering the circumstances slightly to make it appear that he had gone to warn Simon of the danger to his position at the college if his affair with Penelope became known there, which was only too likely when the next term began. He did not say that he had warned him about the barrister himself.

“He made light of what I said and I understood from him that it was over. Penny confirms that.”

Her father was silent for a long time.

“I can only be thankful,” he said, “But I don't pretend to understand the existing code of morals, or lack of it. However, you didn't come here to listen to my grouse against the modern world. Go on with your story.”

John skated over the matter of the cheque, giving briefly Penelope's version of it and hurried on to his quarrel with Simon, giving no precise cause for that. But he went into precise detail of the latter's attack on him. “It wasn't only the way he suddenly whipped up the knife and came for me. It was more afterwards. I got the knife away and hit him, fairly hard, but he ducked and took it on the side of his head. Nearly broke my knuckles. He went down and stayed down. That was what foxed me. His pulse was all right. His colour was all right. And his breathing. He had his eyes shut. I'm certain he was not unconscious. I was so certain I just went away.”

“Behaving like the coward he is,” said Hubert, with contempt.

“No. He isn't a coward. I'll swear he isn't. I don't know what it was. All I know is he lost his temper completely in a matter of seconds. If that cheque found on the cleaner indicates any sort of dirty work on her part …”

“You mean blackmail?” said Hubert, for the first time looking really worried.

“Of course.”

“You think Fawcett may have killed her?”

“I want to keep Penny out of it, whatever happens.” John said, firmly. “So in case the police come to you, will you stick to Penny's story of why she gave him a cheque for thirty pounds.”

“Yes, I will. But I don't undertake to keep to myself your story of his violence if they ask me what I know of him.”

“As long as you don't give them my name. I refuse to be pulled into this thing.”

“It wouldn't be evidence unless you corroborated it.”

“Then it wouldn't be evidence. What I've just told you was in confidence. To make sure you see how important it is to keep Penny out of it.”

“Very well. In any case they may not want to see me at all. I shall not make the first move. I can promise you that.”

Two days later Chief-inspector Mont paid another visit to Mr. Nelson. As before, he found him at home, but this time he was clearly not expecting another interview with the police. He stood in his doorway, surprised and hesitating, until Mont asked if he might have a few words with him. Then, reluctantly, he made way for the other to pass in.

“I'm sorry to bother you again,” said Mont, insincerely, “but certain information has come in that makes it imperative.”

“Such as?”

Mr. Nelson had stiffened, but he spoke as quietly as ever.

“I won't beat about the bush,” Mont told him. “You were dismissed from the Health Service seven years ago for obtaining narcotic drugs for your own use, by falsely representing them to be prescribed for certain of your patients. You were subsequently struck off the medical register for this. You are at the present time a registered addict under your own name, which is …”

“Need you go on?” Nelson asked, wearily. “All that is a very long time ago.”

“I'm afraid I must. You work at present as a representative of a firm of manufacturing chemists producing chiefly sedative and narcotic drugs. You have been obtaining supplies of these drugs for your personal use by forging the signatures of doctors purporting to receive samples from you.”

“Have you asked every doctor I've visited whether he's taken a sample? Can they possibly remember? All the firms bombard the doctors now-a-days. They sign for a sample to get rid of you. Put it straight in the fire, I wouldn't wonder.”

“These were not put in the fire. They were in a drawer in Mrs. Morris's bedroom.”

Nelson gave a sharp, despairing cry and flung himself down on a chair with both hands to his face.

“I must ask you what was the nature of this traffic with Mrs. Morris,” Mont said, sternly.

Nelson raised a white, haggard face.

“It began when one of the doctors pushed the sample back to me after he'd signed for it. Said he'd changed his mind about trying it. Couldn't be bothered. But I had his name on the slip in my book. I used the stuff for myself. It gave me ideas.”

Mont nodded. The poor sap got supplies from his own doctor but always with the hope that they could be cut down by degrees to the point of elimination. What a hope! The man was a typical case. You only had to look at his room, his clothes, his untidy, dirty appearance, to confirm it.

“I still don't see where Mrs. Morris comes in.”

Nelson sighed wearily.

“She found some of the samples. I suppose she made a point of running through all our things in these flats.”

“I shouldn't wonder.” Mont thought of Mrs. Hyde. An indiscreet letter, probably, in that case. Nelson with his drug-induced carelessness, would be easy meat for the blackmailer.

“She knew what my job is. She knew I didn't make over much at it. She suggested we might work together. She'd market the stuff if I could bring it in.”

“And you fell for that!”

“Imbecile, I know. I found that out before long.”

“Go on.”

“She never sold the stuff. Or so she told me. But she threatened to tell my firm what I had done.”

“She'd be too scared to get into that racket,” Mont said, “even if she had the contacts. Which I doubt. It wasn't her line at all. Little family matters were what paid off with her. So she blackmailed you?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“I've never kept count. Every month or so. It crippled me.”

“Why did you never report her?”

“And let it all come out and lose the only job I'm ever likely to get?”

The bitter despair in his voice touched even Mont's hardened soul. After all, the chap had begun life as a doctor.

“How much did you give her that Saturday she was murdered?”

“Ten quid. She wanted twenty. I told her that was all she'd get – ever. I meant it at the time.”

“Did you strangle her? Did you take her handbag and post it through the letter-box of an empty house after you'd recovered your money? Is that how you really stopped the blackmail?”

“No!” Nelson was on his feet, panting and terrified. “No, no, no!”

“O.K. If you didn't kill her there's no need to get so excited, is there? Don't leave here, will you, Mr. Nelson? I mean, go out to your job as usual, but don't leave your domicile for any other. I may want you to help me again.”

When he had gone Nelson stumbled to the telephone and rang a number that was not his own doctor's. He had to have a shot, and quickly.

At the Yard Sergeant Clay had an encouraging report for the Chief-inspector. Morris had been seen in Great Yarmouth.

“Yarmouth!” Mont exclaimed. “What in hell does he think he's doing there?”

“It's where Charlie Pike went to work in a pub after he left the nick in April. Charlie was one of his old-time buddies.”

“So he was. Yarmouth, is it? You've been working, young Fred.”

“You told me to find him, sir. After I'd done with that drug enquiry among the doctors. Cor, that was fierce. Like trying to open a rusty lock.”

“They train them to keep their mouths shut. Never mind, it paid off. Mrs. Morris had ten quid in her bag over and above her four quid wages. Blackmail. Nelson.”

“You don't say.”

“Now, about Morris. Is he doing a job or what?”

“I don't know. He was seen on the pier there. May have left again. That's all I've got so far.”

Mont went into action and was lucky. Mr. Morris, blustering but frightened was arrested as he was embarking in a trawler about to set off for a fortnight's deep-sea fishing. He had signed on as a deck hand, to replace a member of the regular crew who had fallen ill at the very last minute before sailing. Morris had always been a man to seize his opportunities, Mont explained to the local superintendent, when he went down to Yarmouth to question the captive.

“Has he ever been a seaman?” the superintendent asked. “If not the skipper'll be in trouble with the union.”

“Not now we've nicked him. The captain of the trawler wouldn't have known until they were at sea. He'd spin all the right stuff when they took him on.”

“But he wouldn't have any papers.”

“I thought this was a quayside emergency?”

“You're right. They were nearly missing their tide.”

“There you are, then.”

Morris had never seen Mont before, but he needed very little prompting to realise the seriousness of his position and the need for frankness.

“We know you handled that bag,” Mont told him. “We know it was empty and that there'd been at least fourteen quid in it. So you took that, didn't you?”

“She give it me. I swear to God she give it me. I'd not bin out two days …”

“You went home first and there was a row because she didn't want you in the house. Right?”

“There's some'll give anything to please you cops.”

“There was a row, wasn't there? Look, we needn't waste time over this. You went off to Bermondsey and told your friends there all about it.”

“All right, guv. There was words. She 'ad a nasty tongue right from the start.”

“She didn't give you what you wanted – cash. So you waylaid her outside the flats the next morning and took her into the yard where you strangled her and stole her handbag.”

Morris started up out of his chair with a great bellow of rage.

“I never!” he shouted. “You can't prove it! You'll never prove it! I don't deny I let ' er 'ave it now and then, but do ' er that way!”

He collapsed on his chair with a sick look on his face.

“I never!” he repeated hoarsely. “Go on, prove it! You can't!”

“But you took the bag and the money,” persisted Mont.

“What if I did? She stood there as I left cursing and swearing – you should've ' eard ' er – the language! No wonder the kids got ideas.”

Mont nodded. The man had not been shocked or frightened when he was accused of murder. He had simply been angry. This did not prove his innocence but it certainly did not confirm his guilt.

“You got nothing on me,” Morris continued. “My wife's earnings are due to me, aren't they?”

“No.”

“I've every right to my split. She was instrumental in shopping me on that last job. She owed me a packet for that if nothing else.”

“I see. Perhaps you'd like to explain in more detail exactly what she did to get you shopped?”

“And perhaps I wouldn't.”

Morris shut his mouth firmly and sat glowering at his questioner. Mont said, patiently, “You tell me your wife was shouting bad language at you. Did no one in the flats or in the street hear you? Did no one look into the yard to see what was going on? Did no one in the flats look out of a window?”

“You'd better ask them,” Morris answered. “I wasn't in a mood to notice.”

And the caretaker was away, Mont remembered, which was probably why Mrs. Morris had taken her husband into the yard, knowing their inevitable quarrel would not be overheard.

“Why did you go with her into the yard? In order to rob her? Did you expect a fight?”

“Me go with … You got that one wrong, guv. It was she was there when I went in.”