The Twenty-Third Man (19 page)

‘I decided to try for a taxi, but there was no taxi-rank along there and I did not see a roving cab. Then I thought I had been a heel to leave Lockerby scrapping with the bunch of Teddies, and I ought to go back. I went back and the street was quite deserted and the pub was shut, as I said. There was no sign of Lockerby and I felt he was bound to have got the worst of it, one against a mob. I thought he might have concussion and be wandering about, not knowing what he was doing, or he might have been kicked unconscious.

‘The lights in the little pub were still burning, so I could see he was not in the gutter or on the pavement. Then I thought of the passage, and there he was. I did not know straight away that he was dead, but he was so cold I thought he must be. I did not spot the knife in his back. The rest you know.’

Dame Beatrice screwed the top on her fountain-pen. Gavin looked up from his work.

‘Any luck?’

‘No luck. One question and one cynical remark.’

‘Shoot.’

‘What caused Telham to “think of the passage”, do you suppose?’

‘He may have required to use the convenience, you know. Or he may have thought that Lockerby, feeling bad, had staggered into it after the gang had finished with him. It wouldn’t be at all an unlikely thing.’

‘Quite. It was very convenient for Telham that he “did not spot the knife”, I thought. It saved him from fingering
it
and leaving prints which would have to be explained.’

‘I say! You
have
got it all worked out, haven’t you? But, even if you’re right, we shall never get him now. There simply isn’t any more evidence anywhere. Of course, the case isn’t closed. You can take it that we’ve still got an ear to the ground. I can tell you more. The police are still rounding up Teddies and making searching inquiries into alibis. They’ll leave no stone unturned, as the saying is. But what makes you so certain it was Telham?’

‘Oh, but I am not certain. I am not certain at all. The only thing is that it would have been so easy for him to have done it. And, you know, just as, in John Gay’s time, all evil deeds were laid upon the gin, so, nowadays, it seems to me, the same is true about the street gangs.’

‘What do you propose to do now? Is there any other way in which I can help you?’

‘Not unless there is a guilty connexion among Lockerby, Telham, and Emden.’

‘You think Telham killed Emden, too?’

‘Only if he or Emden killed Lockerby.’

‘Aha! You have an alternative theory!’

‘A remarkably sketchy one, I fear, but, all the same, I should like to test it. You see, the medical evidence is surprising if Lockerby really was killed by a gang. Almost all the bruises appear to have been inflicted after death. Now, in my experience, the average Teddy boy makes himself very scarce indeed when there has been real trouble. The gang would know at once that Lockerby had been stabbed. The killer would say so, and they would all be off in no time. They would not remain and kick the body.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re abysmal young brutes, some of them.’

‘Yes, when it is safe to be brutal. It was not a street gangster who killed Lockerby, Robert. The body had been dragged, too, remember. I have a very strong feeling that a gang would have left it lying where it dropped.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. There’s the human instinct to hide the traces of wrong-doing, isn’t there? It’s inborn. All children have it.’

‘Quite. But it’s not a herd instinct, it’s a personal one.’

‘You are building up the case in the same way as the police built it up, but, as Telham couldn’t be shaken – What did his sister have to say?’

Dame Beatrice selected another document.

‘My husband and my brother often went out together to get a drink. They were very good friends. When they did not get back I was anxious, but there was nothing I could do, as they had not said where they were going. I went to bed at just after midnight. When I next saw my brother it was in company with a police officer who broke the news to me of my husband’s death and told me there would be an inquest.’

‘I quite understand why she had to make a statement to the police,’ said Gavin. ‘They were firmly convinced that Telham was guilty. Her talk about the two men being good friends, and so forth, was just a bit of whitewash, most likely. All the same, I don’t see what else she could have said. Besides, not many women would be parties to the bumping off of their husbands by their brothers.’

‘It may have been an extremely unhappy marriage. From my knowledge of her, Caroline is both sensitive and neurotic.’

‘Yes. The police wondered whether, in fact, she was an accessory, you know. I should think there has hardly been a case of murder with so little evidence available. Our chaps could get nothing out of the people at the pub and they couldn’t even trace the origin of the knife. The makers turn out hundreds every year, and send them all over the place. Inquiries were of the usual exhaustive pattern, but all the evidence was negative or abortive.’

‘Including Telham’s refusal to attempt a description of any of the gang who were supposed to have attacked the two of them. How much was he himself knocked about, I wonder?’

‘It isn’t difficult to inflict a few bruises on yourself and even a tentative razor slash or so. You know, you’re an insinuating monster. You’ve almost convinced me that Telham did do it. And I know Anson, who was in charge of the case, thought he had. Why don’t you have a word with Anson? I’ll find out what he’s doing and send him round when he’s got a spot of time. I’ll call you up and warn you when he’s coming.’

Detective-Inspector Anson was an expert on Boxer dogs. He brought one with him and in a quarter of an hour had convinced Dame Beatrice that if Boxers instead of humans had inherited the earth, heaven would be present laughter and hell a complete misconception.

‘As to Telham,’ he said suddenly, flattening out and restoring the creases in his dog’s face, ‘he’s guilty all right, but we’ll never prove it. Did you ever read the ballad called
The Cruel Brother
?’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Dame Beatrice admitted. ‘But
he
killed his sister, not her husband.’

‘A distinction, not a difference. Telham can’t do without his sister, you see.’

‘What makes you think that Telham killed Ian Lockerby?’

‘Common sense. It was done in the pub convenience, of course. Plenty of water available to wash away bloodstains. Everything. Oh, he did it all right. I only wish I could pin it on him.’

‘You know,’ said Dame Beatrice suddenly, ‘I don’t believe a word of it. And I’ve thought as you have – until now. But now I know it is wrong. We have to look elsewhere for our murderer.’

‘I wish you could convince me, ma’am. If we had another line to go on, we might be able to do something. It gets under my skin to have a case rest like this. One thing I’m certain about. This was no street-gang murder. Much too tidy.’

‘I agree completely. This murder was very carefully planned; so carefully, in fact, that there must be some
indication,
somewhere, of the identity of the planner. Meanwhile, my place seems to be on Hombres Muertos, not here.’

‘Oh, yes, your island, ma’am, Very beautiful, I understand.’

‘Very beautiful and, strange to say, since beautiful islands have, on the whole, a sinister reputation, very innocent and pleasant.’

‘The cave of dead kings, ma’am?’

‘There’s sun and moon, brother; there is also respect for dead kings, except that I do not think the murderer of Emden showed any respect for the dead kings, and it may well be that they will give some token of their resentment.’

‘I say, is the old girl barmy?’ asked Detective-Inspector Anson when next he encountered Gavin. Gavin grinned.

‘What did she soak you with, dearie?’

‘Dead kings.’

‘How many of them?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Twenty-four,’ said Gavin, tapping him solemnly on the chest. ‘Twenty-four, my good fellow. And there should have been only twenty-three. Remember?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I asked you was whether the old lady’s screwy.’

‘Don’t you believe it, sonny. What else did she say?’

‘Said that until my visit she’d been convinced Telham did it, but that now she doesn’t think so, and that her place is on Hombres Muertos, a beautiful, innocent island.
Is
it beautiful and innocent?’

‘According to her, apart from Emden’s murder, it shelters a dope-runner and a white-slave trader, if that’s anything to judge it by.’

Anson went away, solemnly shaking his head. Dame Beatrice went to the house where the Lockerbys and Telham had been living. A strictly unofficial visit to people she had never met needed a credible explanation, so she packed her black bag with the accessories carried by general practitioners, called up a private-hire car as
likely
to be more reassuring to her pretended patient than a taxi or her own car would have been, and, with her usual brisk self-assurance, went to the address she had found in the police files and rang the bell.

The house was an old one in the Maida Vale district and had been converted into flats. There was no porter. The front door, at the top of a flight of well-worn but newly scrubbed steps, was opened by an equally well-worn but slatternly daily help.

‘Yes?’

‘I am the doctor. May I come in?’

‘Doctor?’

‘Yes. Where is my patient?’

‘’Ow do
I
know? I only works for Mr Bellini, and ’e ain’t in, so it can’t be ’im. There’s old Mrs Barstow, on the second floor, but she ’as Doctor Stopps.’

‘Barstow is the name. Kindly show me the way.’

‘You can’t miss it. Up them stairs, second floor, door marked with a four.’

Dame Beatrice ascended. An old lady and an invalid, provided she possessed all her senses, was more than she had dared hope for. She gained the landing and tapped at the door marked with a figure four. It was opened a crack, and a suspicious old face, much wrinkled and not over-clean, appeared and studied her.

‘Yes?’ it said. Fortunately the note was merely interrogative and not in the least belligerent or nervous. There appeared to be a reason for this disarming attitude, for the door opened wider to display a magnificent Boxer dog. ‘Eat you as soon as look at you,’ said its owner, with a chuckle, ‘so you may as well come in. The draughts on this landing you’d never believe, unless you’d lived here twenty years, as I have.’

‘You stayed here during the war?’ Dame Beatrice clucked hopefully at the Boxer and entered a large, high-ceilinged room which was furnished, in its various corners, as a bedroom, a sitting-room, a kitchen, and a bathroom, a screen round the latter proving not quite large enough
to
hide a portable zinc tub and a clothes-horse holding a towel. A pile of newspapers and a horse-blanket near the foot of the bed indicated the sleeping-quarters of the dog.

‘
Couchant
, Hector,’ said Mrs Barstow, prodding the dog with a slippered foot. ‘Yes, of course I stayed here during the war. Where else was there for me to go? And now, what’s your business? I take it you’re Doctor Stopps’ locum. Where’s
he
gone gallivanting off to? I suppose he thinks that because it isn’t autumn yet, my rheumatism doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m afraid I know nothing either of Doctor Stopps or your rheumatism. I am interested in a patient named Lockerby.’

‘Well, you needn’t be. He got murdered months ago.’

‘No, no.
Mrs
Lockerby. A nerve-subject. Depression. Sleeplessness. A tendency to hysteria.’

‘You won’t find her here. She’s another gallivanting flibber-tee-gibbit. Really, you’d have thought even an unfaithful wife would have nicer feeling than to go running off to the Riviera with her husband’s murderer. Oh, don’t tell
me
! Brother, indeed! That Telham creature is no more her brother than I am! The dirty pair fixed it all up together, and
I’ve
never been certain which of them stuck the knife in his back, because
she
was out that night, too. Now, what’s your business with her?’

‘I am a mental specialist.’

‘Oh, and I should think she needs one, too, the artful, scheming hussy! You’re not a police doctor, are you? I thought they always had men.’

‘Probably they do. Well, when is Mrs Lockerby expected back? It is most vexing not to find her here. I have received definite evidence of the state of her mind.’

‘Downright wicked, that’s the state of her mind, and I don’t care who knows I’ve said it. She deliberately made that poor man drunk so that she and that Telham (as he called himself) could carry on together. It was absolutely shocking!’

‘How did you know about all this?’

‘Looking over banisters and listening at keyholes, of course. What else have I got to do with my time, except feed Hector and take him out? That’s how I got to know Mr Lockerby. Many’s the time, when the drink’s been too much for him, I’ve told him to take Hector out for a run. They always brought each other back safely. No men ever go wrong when my dog has them on a lead. Once, when the poor man was feeling very low, he said to me, “Mrs Barstow, I’m going to drink all the money away. I’m not leaving anything to Caroline. She doesn’t deserve it.” And she certainly didn’t, you know. But they murdered the poor man, between them, before it all went. I know their artfulness, and so I told the police.’

‘The police came to see you?’

‘Several times. They pretended to make notes, but I was never asked to sign anything. They didn’t believe me, you see,
but I knew
!’

‘It seems strange that they didn’t believe you. Could you render chapter and verse?’

‘Didn’t see how to. I wasn’t there when the deed was done, and they wouldn’t believe that Telham wasn’t her brother.’

‘I expect they looked it all up, you know, and found that you were misinformed, and that Mr Telham
is
her brother. The police are very thorough.’

‘Maybe they are, but I know what I know, all the same. Well, that rampole isn’t here and nobody knows when she’ll be back, so you’ve had your journey for nothing. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make Hector and myself a dish of cocoa.’