Death by Two Hands, page 13
“Thompson’s on the job, isn’t he?”
The sergeant nodded. “He’s death to a quiet life.”
“Yes, I know that. If I’d had any sense, I wouldn’t have brought Spike in. Have you got a pencil?”
“There’s one sticking out of your pocket.”
“I’ll need a dozen before long. Thompson loves reports. ‘On the night of the fifth inst. I was keeping observation.’ That’s how I always start. It’s a polite way for saying, ‘When I was standing outside a public house in the perishing cold with both feet dead.’ And it’s a funny thing, but I always seem to have to be near a pub.”
The sergeant gave him a pencil and grinned. “You should never have gone plain clothes. Look at me. Regular hours. I keeps warm and dry.”
Leith sat down and took a paper off the sergeant’s desk. “Well. I’m going to keep warm and dry till Thompson turns up. And improve my mind at the same time.” He turned to the sports page, and started reading an article entitled, “Best for Harringay to-night.”
When Thompson got the report about Spike, he left Perry to organize a search of pawnshops and fences likely to deal in furs, and went himself to the police station where Spike was detained.
Leith greeted him suspiciously.
“Well, where is he?” Thompson snapped.
The sergeant gave an order to the jailer. “I don’t think he’s the man we want,” he said to Thompson. “But there’s something he’s keeping back, and I thought it better you should see him.”
Spike appeared in his stocking soles. He looked at Thompson and then dropped his eyes.
The sergeant opened a door. “Perhaps you’d like to see him in here, sir. More private.”
“Yes. Bring him in.” Thompson sat on a chair at a table. “Morgan’s your name, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“Sit down. Have a fag.” Thompson waited a minute, and then asked, “Where were you yesterday?”
“Ask the sergeant. I’ve told him all I’m going to say.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“I’m not talking.”
“That won’t do you any good.”
“Talking won’t, neither.”
“Oh, then you have been up to something. Come on, Morgan. Spill it.”
“There ain’t nothing to tell. I’ve got witnesses to say I was at Larry’s bar all day yesterday.”
Thompson did his best, but Spike became dumb. When he had been taken back to his cell, Thompson saw the sergeant. “You’d better let him go, but put some one on to trailing him, and let me have full reports of where he goes and what he does.”
A faint groan came from Leith. Reports! He fingered the pencil the sergeant had given him. It was nicely pointed, and had plenty of lead in it.
“Where’s your D.I.?” Thompson asked.
“I’m expecting him in any time now, sir,” the sergeant replied.
“All right. Tell him about Morgan, and ask him to put a good man on to him.”
When Thompson had gone, the sergeant grinned. “A good man, he said. That’s you, Leith. And I hope Morgan’s fond of pubs.”
When Perry saw Thompson’s expression, he said, “Not so good?”
“No. Drew a blank, that time. I told ’em to let him go—on a string.”
“I see. Spike’s just the sort of man who would pull a job like this.”
“I’ve been thinking that, too. He’s got a rotten alibi. He said he was at Larry’s.”
Perry laughed. “I’d like to see Larry in the box. I wonder what a jury would think of him?”
“No one will ever know what a jury thinks about anything. They’re weird and wonderful. I put up a case once that was cast iron. Not a hole in it. Judge summed up dead against the prisoner, and the jury, bless their hearts, let the blighter off. That was Benny Hart. He’s still going strong. But he’ll fall one of these days, and when he does you’ll hear the bump all over Town.”
Mrs. Kemp watched Spike go, and then went into the house and shut the door. Joe was standing in the passage with his coat on and his cap on his head.
“Where are you off to?” she asked.
“To Rivers’s place. I’m waiting for Alma. She’s going to mind the shop.”
“Mr. Rivers has gone away.”
“Gone! He never said nothing to me about it. When I saw him yesterday evening he told me to come round at the usual time. We was going to the Lower Marsh.”
“He’s gone away. He doesn’t know when he’ll be back. Tell Alma she needn’t bother to go round.” Mrs. Kemp took a shawl from a chair and wrapped it round her shoulders. “I’m going out.”
She went to Rivers’s yard by a roundabout route. The yard gate was as she had left it on the previous night. The door to the top room was shut. She looked up at the window and then walked back to the gate. There was no one about.
Her heart was thumping as she unlocked the door and slipped in. She bolted it behind her, and went up the stairs. The room smelt bad with stale smoke, and she was about to draw back the curtains and open the window. Better not. Don’t want anybody to know I’m here.
She forced herself to look at the place where Rivers had lain, and was relieved not to see him there.
The boards were stained black where the rug had been. Another rug was ruckled back. She pulled it straight. Glass from the shattered picture was strewn over the floor.
She went on to the landing and found a brush and a mop and pail in a cupboard. She filled the pail at a tap downstairs, and went back to the top room. The blood took a bit of moving for it had soaked into the wooden floor, but after half an hour’s work she was satisfied she had cleaned it all up. The water in the pail had turned a murky brown and she emptied it out in the sink before she set to with the broom to sweep up the glass.
There wasn’t a dustpan, and in the manner familiar to her she pushed the debris under a cabinet in a corner of the room. The room was beginning to look a bit better now, if it wasn’t for that rug that Spike had put round the corpse. It had left a gap. She pushed back the sofa and chairs against the wall and rearranged the other rugs so that the space was partly covered.
Then she sat down for a breather, and saw the smashed picture. Better get that out of the way. She got up with a sigh and many creaks, carried it down to the shop, and put it on a shelf with the broken side to the wall.
It was lucky for Spike he’d got her to clear up after him. If any one had seen the room as it was before she had started on it, they’d have thought things. Told the police, most likely, and then where’d they have been?
Spike! He was a devil. Always had been. Hardly human, was what his own father used to say when he saw him torturing a stray cat. He’d leathered him for it, but it hadn’t done no good.
Mrs. Kemp felt very blue, and when she was that way there was but one remedy. She went to seek it at the Green Man at the canal bridge.
“Mild and Burton, if you please, Fred, and let’s have it right up to the top this time. I’m thirsty.”
Her purse, which had many divisions but few coins, yielded two ha’pennies.
Fred looked at the coins laid out on the counter and kept a firm hold of the glass he had filled.
An easy, ingratiating smile came over Mrs. Kemp’s face. “Well, just fancy that, now. I could a’ sworn I’d got another tuppence somewhere.” She felt optimistically in the pocket of her overall. “That’s no good.” She turned her purse upside down. Some dust fell out. Also a button, a shoe lace, and a peppermint.
Mrs. Benson, who was standing at the bar, sniffed, and winked at Fred. He preserved a wooden stare. Threepence was what he wanted for the half can.
Mrs. Kemp fawned on Mrs. Benson. She hated to do it, but the call of beer was strong within her. “You haven’t tuppence you could let me have till to-night, have you?”
Surprisingly Mrs. Benson produced a sixpenny bit. “Here you are.”
“But I was only wanting tuppence. I’ll get you change.”
“You hang on to the tanner. That’s what I’m lending you. If it was tuppence you might forget. A tanner’s different.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s real nice of you, Mrs. Benson, ain’t it, Fred?”
Fred sucked a back tooth and nodded. Mrs. Kemp returned her ha’pennies to her purse and gave him the sixpence. Before he had turned to bang the cash register the mild and Burton was well on its way to a good home.
“Your old man’s home to-day, I see,” observed Mrs. Benson, with the gracious condescension of a creditor.
Mrs. Kemp stopped in mid-swallow to say, “Yes, the bloke he works for has hopped it.”
“Really, now.” The loan of the sixpence had paved the way for the question Mrs. Benson was burning to ask. She had seen the shutters up on Rivers’s shop. “And is he going to be away for long, may I ask?”
“A week or two,” replied Mrs. Kemp. “He said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.”
Fred put down the paper he had started to read. “Mr. Rivers gone away? That’s funny. I’ve been here two years, and he’s never missed coming in here of a night-time. He was in yesterday about six and never said nothing about going away. In fact, now I comes to think of it, he said that him and Joe was going to try the Lower Marsh this morning.”
“He’s gone, all right.” Mrs. Kemp finished her drink. “Give me the same again.”
“Did he say where he was going?” Mrs. Benson asked.
“No, he didn’t. His business is his own, and if he likes to go off for a day or two I wouldn’t ask him about it. He’d bite my head off if I so much as took the liberty.”
“But you knows him well, Mrs. Kemp. He was having supper with you the other night, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he did look in.”
“I saw him going up to your door. You had a lot of company that night, didn’t you?”
Mrs. Kemp decided that the conversation had gone far enough. She finished her second glass of beer. “Well, I must be going now. I’ve got my shopping to do yet.”
Mrs. Benson was going to say that a penny wouldn’t go far, but Mrs. Kemp was out of the bar with the door swinging behind her before she could utter the words.
Mrs. Kemp passed Rivers’s shop on her way home, and saw a bottle of milk and a paper on the step. She hadn’t thought of that. If the police were to see a lot of milk bottles, they might think things and start asking questions. She picked up the milk and the paper and thrust them under her shawl. She hadn’t been seen. She hurried down the alley-way to the street at the back and home by the door in the back garden wall.
Alma was dusting the mantelpiece. “What have you got there? Milk?”
“That’s right, deary. And a paper. I thought you might be wearying.”
“I’m all right. But what d’you want with more milk? There’s a jug in the kitchen not touched hardly.”
Mrs. Kemp was too finished a liar to lie unnecessarily. “Well, as a matter of fact, it’s Mr. Rivers’s, but seeing as how he’s gone away and won’t want it, I thought we could make use of it.” She added, as an afterthought, “Of course, I’ll pay him for it.”
Alma had grasped the state of the finances in the Kemp household sufficiently well to doubt the last statement.
“And as he’s going to be away for some time, I thought it’d be as well if we was to put a sort of a notice on his door. What did you do with that pen and ink?”
“On the dresser.” Alma put them on the table. “And here’s the paper.”
Mrs. Kemp thought, “No it won’t do to use that paper. They might trace it back here.” She said aloud, “Wait a minute,” and went into the kitchen. Part of the lining of a drawer supplied her with her needs. It wasn’t too clean. She gave Alma the pen. “Here, you write it, if you don’t mind.”
“What d’you want me to say?”
Mrs. Kemp frowned. “Now how would you put it? You see, we want to stop people leaving things.”
Alma looked blank. “I dunno exactly.”
“How about ‘Gone away. Back soon’?” After a moment’s thought Mrs. Kemp said, “No, that’s not right. Sounds as if he’d gone to his lunch.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know. Weeks, maybe.”
“Why not say, ‘Nothing wanted. Back in a week’s time’?”
“That’ll do. Now you write it.”
Alma dipped her pen in the ink and started. “This paper ain’t no good. Look! The ink runs all over the place. It’s more like blotting paper.”
“Print it, then.” Mrs. Kemp gathered up the sheets of note-paper, and put them back in their box.
The result was not pretty, but it was legible. “That’ll do fine,” said Mrs. Kemp, when Alma had finished. She took the paper and held it in front of the fire until it steamed and began to curl. “Where’s Joe?”
“Out. He didn’t say where he was going.”
“Then you stop here. I won’t be long.” Mrs. Kemp rummaged in a drawer and found a drawing pin. She put it in her pocket, and went out.
The wood of Rivers’s shop door was hard, and the drawing pin bent and fell to the ground as Mrs. Kemp tried to push it in. She picked it up, but its useful life had ended. She knew what she’d do. She folded the paper and walked up the street to a sweet shop which had a post office sign outside.
The woman behind the counter was weighing out half an ounce of barley-sugar drops. She looked up as the door bell rang. “‘Morning, Mrs. Kemp. I won’t keep you a minute.” She poured the sweets into a twisted paper cone and gave it to a very small boy who regretfully handed over a ha’penny in exchange.
“Sorry to trouble you,” Mrs. Kemp said. “But all I’m wanting is a bit of stamp paper. I wonder if you could oblige. A small bit’d do.”
“Certainly. It’s no trouble at all.” The postmistress took a flat book of stamps from a drawer. She laid it on the counter and put her elbows on it preparatory to a good, long, gossiping talk. But Mrs. Kemp was unnaturally silent. All she wanted was the stamp paper, and to get the job finished.
When she got it she hurried to Rivers’s shop and stuck up the notice, and then, having but one penny in her purse, she went back to Napier Terrace. Joe was lounging in the doorway smoking.
“What time’s dinner?”
“There ain’t going to be no dinner,” Mrs. Kemp snapped. “Not unless you can find something to buy it with. We’re broke.”
Joe smoked on equably. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth to ask, “What was going on last night?”
“Where d’you mean?”
“Here.”
“Why?”
“Alma’s been asking.”
“Where is she?”
“In the back room. And you might tell her to stop all this cleaning up. She fair gives me the jitters.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Joe went on smoking.
Mrs. Kemp took off her shawl as she pounded down the passage. She’d got to put a stop to this talk of Alma’s. Once word went round, people would start asking questions, and that there Nosey Leith would be making trouble. Wanting to know this and that.
When Alma saw her, she said, “Oh, Mrs. Kemp, about last night. I’ve been meaning to ask you—”
“Well.” The aggressive tone made Alma stop her dusting. “What did you want to ask?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Let’s have it.”
“I was just wondering what was going on last night. I heard you walking about. You and Spike. It sounded as if you were carrying something.”
Mrs. Kemp laughed. “What time was it?”
“Late. Near one o’clock.”
“What d’you think we’d be doing shifting things at that time of night?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, but it sounded like that.”
“You were asleep, and dreamed it.”
“Perhaps I did,” Alma conceded.
Mrs. Kemp thawed. “Then forget it, and don’t you go saying things to anybody outside.”
“Of course I won’t. Why should I?”
“Well, don’t, that’s all. Put the kettle on, and we’ll have a nice cup of tea. And you can lay off that cleaning and dusting. If you want something to do, I’ll give you some mending.”
Joe came down the passage from the front door. “Where’s Spike gone?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He ought to be back any time now.” Mrs. Kemp’s mouth broadened in a smile. “And I expect he’ll be wanting to take you out, Alma.”
“I don’t know that I want to go.”
“Of course you do. Don’t be silly,” and Alma knew that if Spike did ask her she would have to go with him. Mrs. Kemp would see to that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Spike left the police station relieved at his dismissal, but yet uneasy in his mind. He hadn’t liked the look of Thompson. He would have to watch his step from now on, and see that Len did, too. Curse Len! Once the splits found the body of the man in the ditch, things would begin to hum. Still, they hadn’t anything on him, and if he kept his trap shut he’d be safe.
He found Len at Larry’s. He was sitting at the long table playing whisky poker. Spike watched him for a few minutes, and then touched him on the arm.
Len threw down his hand and said, “You can count me out this round.” He turned to Spike. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much. Come over here.” Spike pulled up a chair to a table in a far corner of the room. “Where’ve you been?”
“Since when?”
“Last night.”
“Here, mostly. I’ve been for a walk round a couple of times.”
“Any one stop you?”
“You mean the splits?”
Spike nodded. “Leith, for instance.”
“No. I haven’t seen him.”
“That’s something. They picked me up.”
Fear came to Len. His jaw dropped an inch. “What happened?”
Spike gave a short laugh. “Usual stuff. Where was I yesterday? What was I doing? You know.”
“What did you say?”
“Said I’d been here. It was the only place I could think of.”
