Jack on the Gallows Tree (19 page)

“Thanks, headmaster.”

“But I have your word, have I not, that neither my name nor yours will ever appear in any public account of this business?”

“You certainly have my word that I will do all I can to prevent it.”

Just as he left them Carolus heard Miss Shapely address the headmaster.

“And what is your part in the programme?” she asked, with a queenly smile.

“Hm. Photography,” said Mr Gorringer and screwed up his eyes as though measuring the volume of light.

C
AROLUS
had a strange feeling as he left the bar of the Dragon that it was for the last time, that he would not again see Miss Shapely ruling her domain with benevolent severity. He was very conscious of leaving behind him an atmosphere of warmth and light and good-fellowship, ‘and
laughter, and inn-fires', to come out into a night of darkness and driving rain with yellow street lamps making the buildings look drab and sickly.

He felt, too, that dull depression which so often settled on him as he neared the end of a case and saw the inevitable denouement, the arrest and afterwards the long trial and the fearful punishment. He would not have it otherwise; there had only been one murderer in his experience whom he had wished to leave undetected, and that one was dead before he had identified her. Carolus was like all good sportsmen, he enjoyed the chase but not the kill.

He was convinced that tonight would bring the revelation he needed, but he felt no exhilaration. A human being, however guilty of whatever cowardly crime, putting his head into a noose is not an exhilarating sight.

Leaving his car outside the Dragon he started on the short walk towards Rossetti Lodge behind which was Orchard Street. The pavements were almost deserted and although as he crossed the Promenade he could see a few people round the Granodeon Cinema he passed only a policeman sheltering in a shop doorway.

But he turned once and saw at some distance behind him a man walking unsteadily in his direction. Charlie Carew, he decided, going according to custom to his home for food before returning to the Dragon for his last hour's drinking. Carolus decided to let him pass, and being just then near the house called Charlton in which Mrs Plummer was the caretaker he entered the gate and stood back. He did not need to be very cautious, for Charlie Carew lurched by, muttering, but Carolus thought he saw at one of the front windows of the house the moonlike shape of a pale face watching. Mrs Plummer, perhaps, was again worried about her dog.

Near the pub called the Windmill, John Moore was waiting. There was no greeting between the two men as they crossed the road towards the high wooden door beside
the carriage doors of the stables of Rossetti Lodge. He rang a bell and after a few minutes Bickley called from the other side—“Who's that?”

John Moore told him and the wooden door opened, but Bickley bolted it again after they had passed through.

“Come in,” he said, himself hurrying across the yard to his cottage, for it was still raining hard.

“Sorry to drag you out,” said Moore when they had entered a comfortable sitting-room and removed their wet raincoats. “Mr Deene has something he wants to tell you.”

“We were just looking at the telly,” said Mrs Bickley, a little resentfully. “So please let's know what it is because I don't want to miss the next bit.”

“I'm afraid this is rather serious,” Carolus told them. “Another lily was stolen from the same garden last night. I believe that means that an attempt is to be made at another murder. As I have told you, I am convinced that the intended victim may be you, Mrs Bickley.”

Husband and wife exchanged glances.

“I hope you're not upsetting my wife for nothing,” said Bickley.

“I'm of course very sorry to have to come to you both with such an alarming story,” said Carolus. “And I cannot pretend to be certain about it.”

“What do
you
think about this, Inspector?” asked Bickley, with an air of speaking as one policeman to another.

“You put me in a difficult position,” said Moore. “I am here quite unofficially, of course. At the same time I've known Mr Deene for some years and I have often found his ideas, though they seem far-fetched, hold water.”

“I don't know what Inspector Wilkes would have said,” remarked Bickley. “He was before your time and our Detective Inspector for twelve years. I can't see him running round at night saying someone was going to be murdered.”

“No one is going to be murdered if we can help it,” said
John Moore. “That's why we've come to you this evening.

“I want your help, Mr Bickley. I honestly believe that there's a good chance of clearing up this business for good if we act together.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“I want you to go round to the Dragon and remain there till closing time. The Inspector and I will stay here with Mrs Bickley.”

“Seems a funny business to me,” said Bickley. “I don't know what Inspector Wilkes would have said.”

“I'll give you my word, of course, that your wife will not be left alone till you return.”

“You mean you think he'll come here? The one who murdered those two poor women?”

“I do.”

“But whatever for?” asked Mrs Bickley. “Why should he want to do for me, I'd like to know? I've never done anyone any harm that I know of.”

“Nor, I think, had Mrs Westmacott or Miss Carew. But they were strangled.”

“If I really thought it was going to happen,” said Mrs Bickley, “I'd like to have my husband here In Case.”

Carolus found he had an unexpected ally. Perhaps Bickley wanted a drink.

“You'll be all right with them,” he said. “Better off than with me, very likely.”

“Still, it's not the same,” said Mrs Bickley dubiously.

“He's a Detective Inspector after all,” her husband pointed out. “And the other gentleman has helped in a good many cases.”

“Why does he have to go?” asked Mrs Bickley.

John Moore answered.

“I don't know quite all Mr Deene's idea,” he said, “but surely the murderer is scarcely likely to come here if he knows your husband's in the house.”

“You think he's round at the Dragon, then?”

“Whoever and whatever the murderer is, I think your presence there, Mr Bickley, will be noticed,” said Carolus.

“Don't forget there's several ways he can get in,” Bickley pointed out. “He can't open the gates into Orchard Street, but on a night like this with no one about he could very soon hop over them, and there's a bit of wall there that a child could climb.”

“Yes. I noticed it.”

“I don't say he could get into this cottage, because the only windows look on to the yard. But he could come across from the house.”

“So he could,” said Mrs Bickley, “if he could get in there, and he seems to have managed that on the night he did for poor Mrs Westmacott.”

“You needn't be uneasy, Mr Bickley. I assure you that neither Mr Deene nor I would take the slightest risk. We are not going to wait till he makes a move, if that's what you think. The mere fact that he comes here tonight will be sufficient for me.”

“No, I'm not worried,” said Bickley. “Nor's my wife, now she knows you're both going to be here.”

“Well, I haven't been a policeman's wife all these years for nothing,” said Mrs Bickley proudly. “I'll do it, so long as I can have the telly on. I'm not going to miss ‘Blotto'. Not for any murderer.”

Carolus writhed.

“I don't think the darkness …” he tried.

“You can lock the doors if you like,” said Mrs Bickley. “But I won't be without seeing ‘Blotto'. That's all about it.”

“No one knows you're here, of course?” Bickley asked John Moore.

“I hope not. I'm pretty certain not, unless someone living in Orchard Street was watching.”

“I think,” said Carolus to Bickley, “it's time you went round to the Dragon.”

“You'll want your umbrella,” said Mrs Bickley. “It's pouring with rain and so dark you can't see your hand before your face.”

When Bickley was ready Carolus came out to bolt the yard door behind him and returned to find the lights already lowered and Mrs Bickley squatting in an attentive posture before the television set.

“I've put the kettle on to make you a cup of tea,” she said. “I'll go out when it boils.”

John Moore sat where he could see the screen, but Carolus sank into an armchair on the other side of the room and closed his eyes.

He felt that he was facing his greatest test. He remembered how tenuous were the threads, what capricious assumptions he was making and how easily he could be altogether wrong, not in his interpretation of the crime itself—he was secure there—but in his prediction for this evening. He wondered whether he was not after all an interfering amateur.

John Moore showed extraordinary tolerance with him, he decided, but John Moore was an unusual policeman, and even he, quite rightly, had not committed himself to any official recognition of Carolus's scheme. He was here in a private capacity, about to have a cup of tea with an ex-policeman's wife.

“There!” exclaimed Mrs Bickley as ‘Blotto' made way for the commercials. “Now I'll go and make your tea for you. I could do with a cup myself. It's the first time in my life I've ever had a murderer coming for me, so to speak, and I feel it, somehow.”

“I'll come out with you,” said Moore.

“Oh, there's no need for that. There's no back way into the house. Still, you can come if you like.”

The two returned with the tray. Mrs Bickley hastened to
pour out and hand the cups, in order to turn down the lights again.

Time passed. Till a little past nine none of them moved, but then Carolus restlessly went across to the window.

“Can't see a thing,” he said after peering out. “There doesn't appear to be a light in Rossetti Lodge either.”

“Mr Gabriel's away a lot,” said Mrs Bickley. “Goes up to London in his car. I shouldn't be surprised myself if he wasn't going to get married. I know there's Someone, because he's got the picture up in his room. Now hush, I want to hear this.”

The only sound audible now was that of rasping voices from the television set.

In half an hour, thought Carolus, the Dragon will be closed and Bickley will return and any chance of the appearance he expected would be gone. But in the meantime, what? If the third lily had the significance he attributed to it, tonight was the last occasion on which he could reasonably expect results.

After another long silence he moved closer to John Moore.

“John,” he said, “I've known you for a good many years and I've never been more glad of your British phlegm. You see, I happen to believe that an attempt at murder is going to be made now, in this town, within the hour.”

“I know you do. I think you may well be right.”

“Then how can you be so appallingly calm about it? After all, I've admitted that it's no more than a circumstantial guess of mine that it will happen
here.
I'm working on that because I can't do anything else. I can only be in one place. But you've got every old woman in the town as your responsibility.”

Moore pulled at his pipe.

“The police can't be everywhere, either. In our clumsy way we have to get hold of the other end of the stick. The murderer's end.”

“You mean you know who it is?”

“I'm at least as sure as you are about tonight. I can't provide every old woman in the town with a bodyguard. The best I can do is to have my suspects watched and followed.”

“And you've done that?”

“Of course I have. You don't think I'd be sitting here if I hadn't?”

Carolus did not answer but Mrs Bickley spoke sharply.

“I wish you two would keep quiet for a minute. This is an interesting bit and all I can hear is murder, murder, murder, from the pair of you.”

Once again time passed without an interruption. Carolus with difficulty looked at his watch and found it was nearly half-past nine. He began to be reconciled to a probable failure.

He heard the voices droning from the set and could distinguish the faint popping sound as Moore smoked his pipe. The room was close and drowsy.

Then, without anything to give warning of an approach, there were three loud hollow knocks on the door.

In these old converted stables there was no passage and the door behind Carolus opened straight on the yard. So within six feet of him, presumably, was standing the person who had given that melodramatic signal.

“What shall I do?” whispered Mrs Bickley.

Her hand went forward to switch off the television, but John Moore signalled her to leave it on. He took up his position against the wall to the left of the door while Carolus stood where the open door would shield him. The lights remained lowered.

“Get him inside,” whispered Moore. “Whoever it is.”

Before their preparations were fully made the knock was repeated, rather more loudly. The rain was probably still coming down and the visitor was impatient.

There was a chorus of inane laughter from the television set as Mrs Bickley went forward. Carolus remembered
afterwards the glimpse he caught of the little woman, apprehensive and curious too, but courageous and determined. She pulled the bolt back.

As she opened the door the intruder pushed violently in. Mrs Bickley stood back and he almost passed her.

Carolus had his finger on the light switch and pressed it so that the intruder, as he came into the room, was brightly lit.

It was Gabriel Westmacott.

The first thing Carolus noticed about him was that in his right hand he clasped the stem of a lily, so faded and torn that it was scarcely recognizable. He looked like the crazy and degenerate caricature of a Pre-Raphaelite angel.