Trouble Brewing (6 page)

‘A pub?' suggested Bill, looking around the rapidly filling bar of The Heroes.

‘Perhaps. I can't help thinking that, as Helston was in evening dress, that makes a pub a little unlikely at that early hour of the evening. Not impossible, but it wouldn't be my first choice. A hotel bar seems a better bet.'

‘They could have simply bumped into each other on the street,' suggested Bill.

‘So they could, but unless one of them resorted to violence right away, they'd still have to go somewhere. I wish we could have got onto this sooner. The chance of anyone remembering two men having a drink nearly four months ago is pretty slight. Did Helston run a car?'

‘Yes,' said Bill. ‘It's still in the garage. Helston last used it before Christmas.'

‘So we can wash that out.' Jack drummed his fingers on the table. ‘We've assumed they've met, presumably in some public place, and one of them either impulsively or with malice aforethought, decides to make away with the other. Not in a hotel bar. They're nasty, crowded places to do a murder in and people have a tiresome habit of noticing that sort of thing. So they leave the hotel—'

‘Or pub.'

‘Or pub – and go where? And how? If Helston had his car, that could have been anywhere, but they're limited to feet, the tube, buses or taxis.'

‘I don't know about a taxi,' said Bill. ‘There was a real hue-and-cry about Helston. I can't help thinking that any taxi driver who'd had Helston as a fare that night would have come forward.'

‘The tube or a bus? Not completely out of court, but not my first choice. It's awkward lugging a corpse around on the tube and I honestly don't think bundling a dead body onto the luggage rack of a Number Eleven bus is on the cards. It'd take up so much space for one thing and the conductor would probably want to charge for excess baggage.'

‘What if the victim wasn't dead?' suggested Bill, then stopped as he saw Jack's smile. ‘What are you grinning at me like that for?'

‘I thought that as proposals go, it'd be a lulu. Come with me to some lonely dockside wharf, some unfrequented alleyway or, possibly, Epping Forest or Wimbledon Common. Because, don't you see, if our murderer is going to make his victim walk to his own grave, where he can hide the body so it defies detection, then you're asking the victim to be awfully trusting about the whole process. Unnaturally so, you might say.'

‘But . . .' Bill stared long and hard at his half-empty glass. ‘
Either
the murderer finds a way of carrying the dead man to where he's going to leave him,
or
the victim gets to the spot under his own steam where he gets knocked on the head. He could have been invited to come and see a friend. There could easily have been some ruse like that.'

‘A friend,' repeated Jack thoughtfully. ‘I'd like to know if Valdez really did have a friend, you know. And I'd love to know if Valdez and Helston really did quarrel at the meeting. We've only got Frederick Hunt's word for it that they did.'

Bill laughed. ‘Why on earth should he lie about it? Frederick Hunt can't have bumped either of them off. He was at a Mansion House dinner that evening with dozens of witnesses. Besides, it's not very likely, is it?'

Jack conjured up a mental picture of the paunchy, self-satisfied, fluffy-haired figure and shook his head. ‘No, it isn't.' He picked up his glass and finished his beer with a sigh. ‘We need evidence, Bill. So far, all we've got to go on is two missing men. It's not enough.'

Jack didn't know why he had come to the Montague Court hotel. He could tell nothing about Valdez from gazing at the outside of the hotel and Bill had investigated the inside thoroughly.

Bill was very confident that any taxi driver would have come forward. Maybe Valdez had hired a car; maybe they had simply walked. But where to? Where, in this whole teeming city, could a body vanish? There were plenty of places where a man could be murdered but very few where he could remain undiscovered.

Without any clear purpose in mind he set out from the Montague Court Hotel and wandered aimlessly through the maze of streets, coming eventually to Russell Square and Montague Place.

He had no idea there were so many hotels in this part of London. He walked to the corner and turned into Gower Street. Bloomsbury was behind him, Tottenham Court Road, with its crowds and traffic, lay separated by a cluster of interlocking streets. On the right was University College, where the academic life of London went its ordered way. On the left was row after row of stone-fronted, railed-off houses. Some obviously belonged to whole families. Others had been split up into flats. He was in boarding-house London, where no man knew his neighbour.

Isolated cards advertising vacancies caught his eye. He walked on. It was rare to see an entire house for let.

One house stood apart from its fellows. Still dingy white under a shroud of soot, it looked particularly dilapidated. The area railings needed cleaning and a lick of paint wouldn't come amiss. There were weeds between the cracks of the steps leading down to the kitchens and cobwebs and dust grimed the windows. Empty, obviously, and for some considerable time; but it wasn't for sale or to let. It seemed simply forgotten. Why? Why, in the midst of a housing shortage, with houses and flats being desperately sought after, with premium payments on top of the rent being demanded and paid, would anyone let a whole valuable house stand untenanted and unused?

He walked along the street, turned the corner, and found the backs. High walls with gates. Lines of washing beyond. A smell of cooked cabbage – why was it always cabbage? – and, like bookends, two high and haughty cats sitting on opposing ends of stone-topped walls.

He counted down the number of gates to the empty house, but it wasn't necessary. It stood out in unpainted neglect. He put his hand on the latch finding, as he expected, that it was bolted. The backs were deserted. An overpowering desire swept over him to see inside. Catching hold of the top of the gate, he put his foot on the handle, pulled himself over and dropped to the yard below. Cracked, green-slimed flags and emptiness met his eyes. With a quick glance round, he cautiously approached the house.

A ground-floor window was open, with darkness beyond. A bluebottle settled on the window before indolently crawling over the sill. His senses tingled. There was a faint and foul smell. Drains? It wasn't drains.

There's nothing here, he told himself. Not here. Not with the roar of the Tottenham Court Road traffic at his back. Not in the very heart of London. It couldn't be here.

With shrinking reluctance, he walked to the window and looked into the room. There was nothing in the room but the oddest, moving, black shadow in the middle of the floor. And then he realized there was no light to cast a shadow; and the pool of darkness was composed of innumerable, languid flies.

F
rederick Roude, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., stood in the open doorway. Wiping his hands on a cloth that smelt of disinfectant, he nodded to the sergeant before standing aside to admit Jack and Bill. The capricious May sunshine illuminated a hall, which showed elegant lines and fine proportions under a thick layer of grime. A fat bluebottle crawled into the patch of light.

The doctor followed Jack's fascinated gaze. ‘Bloody flies,' he said tersely. He jerked his thumb towards the room at the end of the hall. ‘Well, he's in there, but it's not a pleasant sight. He's been dead for fifteen to sixteen weeks at a guess but I'll know more when we get him to the mortuary. The van's waiting to take him away as soon as you've finished. The cause of death appears to be stabbing, but I'll have to confirm that later. What's that? Any means of identification?' He frowned. ‘Not on the body itself. The features have all given way, as you would expect after this length of time, which means his face isn't identifiable and there aren't any fingerprints. He was stripped naked, for some reason, but there's some of his things on the mantelpiece. I haven't touched those, of course. If you've got anyone in mind, I suppose we can compare their dental records, if any. That's the only way you can say for certain who he was now. I'll leave you to it, gentlemen.'

With a certain unwillingness, Jack walked past the two policemen on duty in the hall and pushed open the door of the room. An angry buzzing met his ears. There was a stomach-churning smell composed partly of dust, damp and disinfectant but chiefly, and sickeningly, of decay. It's only a dead man, he told himself firmly. You've seen plenty of those in the war. France. Think of France. But this wasn't France and it wasn't a battlefield. It was a terraced house on Gower Street, and from outside came all the humdrum noises of everyday life. The room had a high ceiling, bare boards and a fake Adam fireplace. Soot streaked the sill of the open sash window. All these were irrelevant details to avoid gazing at the thing on the floor.
You've seen this before
his mind insisted and in sudden anger at his own hesitation, he forced himself to take a steady look. Beside him, Bill made a noise as if he were choking.

An odd shape sticking out of the ribs caught his eye and, walking across to the body, he crouched down beside it. ‘I say, Bill, look at this. It's a knife. Silver at a guess, but it's too badly tarnished to be sure.' He peered at it closely. ‘We'd better not try and move it. It looks too well glued in to me.' He glanced round. ‘Bill? Are you all right?'

‘I will be in a minute,' said Bill, tightly. ‘Yes, I can see the knife. Let's get it – him – taken away, shall we?'

‘Wait a minute.' Jack looked closely at the dead man's hand. ‘He's wearing a ring. Third finger, right hand. It's a bit obscured by . . . well, it's a bit obscured, but it looks like gold to me with . . . yes, I'd say that was a diamond.' He rocked back on his heels. ‘Now why should someone take the bloke's clothes, yet leave a valuable ring?' He glanced up at the mantelpiece where a little heap of possessions lay. ‘Or, for that matter, all his bits and pieces?'

‘God knows,' said Bill. ‘I can't think straight with that thing there.' He called to the men outside.

After the body had been removed, Jack walked slowly round the room, coming to a halt by the mantelpiece. Stacked in a neat pile were a silver card case, a leather wallet and a gold cigarette case. Sitting on top of them lay a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and a fob watch, its chain curled neatly round in a circle. Everything was thickly coated with dust.

‘Don't touch those,' called Bill. ‘I want to get them checked for fingerprints first.'

‘Give me some credit, old thing.' He walked to the window, avoiding the tracks on the floor.

‘This is the usual futile lock. A babe in arms could get in here.' He stooped down and peered along the dirty floorboards. ‘Come and have a squint at these footprints. What d'you think?'

Bill joined him. ‘They're a bit smudged. I suppose that's only to be expected with the window open like that. Hmm. One man, size nine shoe at a guess, with smooth soles.'

‘Not bare feet,' volunteered Jack.

‘No.' Bill inched forward slightly. ‘There's more tracks by the fireplace. Different shoes. There's a small depression in the heel as if he had a patch there.'

‘Yes.' Jack straightened up. ‘Look along the top of the mantelpiece. The dust has been disturbed and settled again but there's a shape underneath.'

‘It's a sort of curved rectangle,' said Bill. ‘I know! It's a hip flask.'

‘Bingo,' said Jack. ‘Well done. I bet you're right.' Stooping down, he pointed his finger at the marks in front of the hearth. ‘Smooth-soles and patches stood by the fireplace. What sort of lock is on the front door?'

‘It's a Yale, sir,' contributed one of the policemen. ‘We had to break it to get in.'

‘Thanks,' said Jack briefly. ‘That must have made it easier for him . . . How about this for an idea? Smooth-soles breaks in through the window but he opens the door to patches. The implication is that patches is the victim because he entered by the more conventional route, but that's not certain. They either have a drink together or, what's at least as likely, smooth-soles does the deed and has a drink afterwards.'

‘More likely, I'd say,' put in Bill. ‘So smooth-soles stabs his victim . . .' He walked slowly around the room. ‘There's no trace of bare feet anywhere, so the clothes must have been removed after death. For some reason he can't have wanted him to be identified. But in that case, why leave all his belongings? I wonder if there was any damage to the chap's face? It's impossible to tell at this stage, but the post-mortem will show that. After the murder, smooth-soles can simply walk out of the front door, leaving his victim behind. He must have had a case or a bag of some description.'

‘A small overnight case?' asked Jack with a lift of his eyebrow.

‘By God, yes!' said Bill excitedly. His face fell. ‘It looks as if we've found Mark Helston, poor devil. We'll have to check it, of course, but I can't say I'm looking forward to breaking the news.'

‘No,' said Jack, remembering an old, veined hand resting on a photograph frame. ‘Neither am I.'

Meredith Smith paced restlessly round Jack's rooms. Where the dickens was he? The table was set for breakfast, complete with a neatly folded newspaper beside the empty plate. The percolator on the spirit lamp had ceased to make plopping noises and now steamed contentedly, awaiting the return of its owner. A heap of notes beside the typewriter on the desk by the window had attracted his attention, but they turned out to be ideas for a detective story. Stories, for God's sake! He looked at the tall bookcase in the alcove with disgust. Weren't there enough books in the world without churning out more? He pulled down Bartlett's
Dictionary of Familiar Quotations
and flicked through this repository of knowledge without reading a single word. Damn the man. Where was he?