The Detective Wore Silk Drawers (16 page)

What the devil! A bunch jabbed deep into the tender area below his right eye, stretching the flesh across the rim of bone like a drumskin. Such was the pain that the splitting of skin actually came as relief. He blinked, and his eyelids dipped into the freshly made cut to spread a film of blood across the eye. This was calamitous! Never mind double vision—another blow like that could blind him altogether.

Mercifully the Ebony must have appreciated the gravity of the injury. He most decently relaxed his hold, crashed both fists onto the back of Jago’s neck, dropped him like a log, and so ended the round.

He lay face to the earth for perhaps four thankful seconds before half a bucket of cold water on the back of his head shocked him into full consciousness. A seering pain in the region of his scalp was soon accounted for; someone had grabbed a handful of his hair to jerk his face upwards for inspection. Vibart, talking to D’Estin across his back.

“Nothing too serious. We can move him.”

So he was moved, half dragged by the legs across the turf to the corner. Depressingly undignified, he vaguely registered.

Then, as he slumped on Vibart’s knee, more water, a dripping sponge that came to his face yellow, but moved away alarmingly crimson. D’Estin, clearly visible now, addressed him:

“Keep cool-headed, Jago. Use the length of your arm to hold him off. We agreed no suit in chancery, but if he’s tried it once, he’ll do it again. Let me see the cut. Lint, Vibart. Not so bad, you see. Hardly an inch long. I don’t like this mouse over the other eye, though. That’ll split next time he touches it. We’d better puncture it. Where’s the lancet, Vibart?”

“Have a nip of brandy and water,” suggested Vibart as he handed D’Estin the instrument. “There’s twenty-four bloody rounds to go, you know.”

¦ “Are you seriously proposing that I should raise a party of men at half-past two on a Saturday afternoon? This is Tun-bridge Wells, Sergeant, not Scotland Yard. Three-quarters of my men are off duty, and that leaves four of us. I refuse to close the office to hare off after a bunch of London riffraff that might be over the county boundary by now. I’ve got the town to look after.”

He had to be an inspector. Anyone of lesser rank would have jumped to accommodate Sergeant Cribb.

“You could call them back on emergency duty, sir, if you’ll pardon me suggesting it.”

“Emergency?” From the inspector’s tone it was clear that the term was inappropriate to anything that happened in Tunbridge Wells. He was a huge man wedged behind a ridiculously small desk. Getting in there must have been a considerable feat of human engineering, certainly not to be performed more than once a day. “Listen to me, Sergeant— if you can stand still a moment. I happen to know where three of my best constables are this afternoon, and that is on the cricket field. The annual match against the men of Maidstone is taking place not ten minutes away from here, and it happens that two of my constables open the bowling for the town and the third keeps wicket. It would have to be a very grave emergency indeed for me to interrupt that.

Damn it, man, you’re asking me to destroy an entire career devoted to cultivating local good will.”

This was enough for Cribb. “I suggest to you, sir that you reconsider that point. I’m from Scotland Yard, as I told you, and I wouldn’t come asking you for support if it wasn’t more important than a Saturday cricket match. There are men among this bunch of riffraff, as you call ’em, who are under suspicion of several murders. If we don’t get out there with a group of able constables in the next half-hour, there’s going to be ugly questions asked when I get back to London.”

“I hope you’re not trying to intimidate me, Sergeant.”

“Not at all, sir. Simply stating facts. And this gentleman here,” Cribb jerked his thumb at Thackeray, “will no doubt have a clear record of our conversation, seeing that he’s been specially assigned to accompany me and make a full report to the Director of Criminal Investigation on the conduct of this inquiry.”

Thackeray felt for his pencil.

The inspector moved.

¦ “A better round, that,” said Vibart. “Some of this blood on your arms belongs to him, I think.”

“You leave the talking to me,” snapped D’Estin. “And watch what they’re doing in the other corner. If they’re using resin, we’ll appeal to the referee. Now listen to me, Jago.

You’re just a chopping block at the moment, and the crowd’s getting restless. You’ve got to come back at him. Use your legs.

You should be nippier on your feet than he is. Go for the throat. Good, straight punches with the knuckles pointed forward. Remember what the bastard did to Isabel.”

“Time!” called the referee.

Jago toppled to scratch where the Ebony waited to commence round seven.

¦ Sergeant Cribb sat in the semi-darkness of the Tunbridge Wells police van with Thackeray and the three young men in cricket flannels. It was being driven at high speed along the road to Groombridge. Conversation at that level of vibration was difficult, but instructions had to be given.

“The driver should take us as close as possible—up to the ropes if he can. Then it’s the men in the ring I want, and the attendants. Never mind the rest. Bundle them in here as soon as you’ve got the bracelets on ’em. Then we’re driving back to Tunbridge Wells. And, Thackeray—”

“Yes, Sarge?”

“I want nothing said about us being at Radstock Hall this morning, or what we found there.”

Thackeray nodded sullenly. Cribb might have spared him that small humiliation in front of the local constables. The Sergeant was singularly uneasy, and he could understand why, but there ought to be some measure of confidence between them by now. Cribb hadn’t intimated even vaguely who it was he expected to charge with Mrs. Vibart’s murder.

“What about Jago, Sarge?”

“Jago? What about him?”

“He’ll be there in the ring, Sarge. Do we arrest him?”

“Of course we do! He’s prize fighting, ain’t he?”

¦ Barely two-thirds of the way through, and he was so sore about the knuckles that every punch connecting with the Ebony brought more agony than it inflicted. Both fists were grotesquely swollen; they had an independent weight, like iron gloves. But they were flabby as joints of beef, and almost as raw. Their cutting edge had been blunted in the first quarter of an hour, turned to pulp in the next. And champions endured four hours of this!

The Ebony, for his part, had kept the fight alive by attacking the body, once the face was too lavishly ornamented with cuts and swellings. Two or three times he had allowed Jago to bring him to grass with a wrestler’s hold; once, for self-esteem, he tossed Jago heels over head against a side stake, and the crowd surged forward from the outer ring to see the damage. By good fortune it was minimal, and in the next round Jago had upset the backers by rocking the Ebony against his own corner post and bringing a trickle of blood from his ear.

Now, though, there was a change in Morgan’s tactics.

The lethal knuckles, rested by several rounds of obscure grappling, resumed the orthodox pose, taunting the victim in cobralike darting movements. The urgency directing them was inescapable. Jago waited, Argus-eyed. With eighteen rounds gone, the real fight was just beginning.

¦ “What have you stopped for now, Constable?” barked Cribb from inside the police van. The vehicle was quite stationary; the occupants, dressed as they were, might have been sitting in any pavilion waiting for a shower to pass.

“Crossroads, Sergeant. I don’t know whether to go on to Withyham or take the left turn into Ashdown Forest.”

“Look at the tracks, man, the tracks! We’re following a thousand or more blasted men and wagons. If you can’t see which route they took, you’d better come down and give the reins to me.”

The reassuring clatter of hooves began again.

“A thousand!” exclaimed the wicketkeeper, sweeping around for support. “How can we possibly take on a thousand roughs dressed like this?”

Cribb gave him a withering look. “You should know. Stand right up to ’em—and if you miss a catch, you’re for it.”

“How’s that, sir?” murmured Thackeray.

¦ “Finish him!” screamed the crowd.

“He’s going! He’s going!”

“Look out! The blues!”

Jago sagged on the ropes, unable to visualize anything but general areas of light and shade. Mechanically his head continued to dodge and sway. Hands stilled his pawing fists.

“Told you I knew when to intervene,” said the voice of Sergeant Cribb.

CHAPTER

16

CRIBB’S FIRST ORDER ON ARRIVAL AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS police station was for the Ebony and Jago, still linked by handcuffs, to be separated and helped away to be cleaned up and examined by a doctor. The others who had been detained, D’Estin and Vibart (the Ebony’s attendants having vanished into the crowd), were taken to the inspector’s office for questioning. Cribb took the chair. Its owner had dismissed himself for a rest after the earlier excitement.

“Now, Mr. D’Estin. You say you want to tell me something important. Damned if I could hear anything in that confounded van with the two fist fighters groaning every time we went over a bump.”

“It’s of the greatest importance, Sergeant. I want to report a murder.”

“Murder? What do you mean?”

Thackeray, seated between D’Estin and Vibart, remembered the strategy and tried to look as shocked as Cribb.

“It happened in Essex—at Radstock Hall, Rainham—late last night. Mrs. Vibart, this man’s sister-in-law, was stabbed in her bed. Morgan, the black, is responsible. I was his trainer at Radstock Hall.”

“Really? My information was that he spent the last week in London, taking his breathings with a man named Beckett.”

“Quite true,” confirmed D’Estin. “He deserted us a week ago.”

“How could he have killed Mrs. Vibart last night, then?”

“Ah, he came to Rainham with Beckett and another man to settle the arrangements for the fight. Mrs. Vibart left the party early to conclude the business with Beckett—he had brought the battle money, you see. The course of the fight was prearranged and had to be paid for. Beckett soon returned, but Morgan had also quit the room and he was absent for half an hour or more. He said he was intending to collect some personal articles, and when he returned, he was carrying a bundle, it was true, but it now occurs to me— and to others, I think—that the bundle could have contained the dagger that killed Mrs. Vibart, and some bloodstained clothing as well.”

Thackeray listened with increasing interest. This was new information; he had dismissed the Ebony from all his speculations because he believed he was in London the previous evening.

“Why should he have wanted to kill her?” asked Cribb.

“Theft. Beckett had just paid her five hundred pounds.

Morgan openly despised her anyway. He simply went to her room, stabbed her, and took the money. We found her this morning. The safe in the room was open, and empty. It was obvious who had done it.”

“If it was obvious,” said Cribb, “how did Morgan expect to get away with it?”

D’Estin slowly shook his head. “He’s not as simpleminded as you might think, Sergeant. He reasoned that we were all too implicated in this illegal fist fighting to inform the police. But he reckoned without the Englishman’s inborn sense of integrity. I’m sure that I speak for Vibart here when I say that whatever inconveniences we face over this fist-fighting nonsense, we know where our duty lies.”

“If that were true, sir,” commented Cribb, “you’d have reported all this to the Rainham police first thing this morning. Now, Mr. Vibart. You’ve heard what’s been said. Are you prepared to confirm that to the best of your knowledge it is true?”

Vibart, still spotted with Jago’s blood, nodded his head.

“It appears to be the only reasonable explanation.”

“Very well,” said Cribb. “Then, seeing that we’re all upright Englishmen, we’d better call Morgan in and put this to him. Will you fetch him, Thackeray?”

The Ebony was brought in, nursing his left wrist in his cupped right hand. His eyes, usually eloquent, were hardly visible for swollen flesh. Cribb explained in detail the turn that the inquiry had taken.

“In short, Mr. Morgan, you come under pretty strong suspicion.”

“I? Suspicion? You think I killed her? I didn’t know she was dead until this moment! Why should I kill her?”

“For the five hundred pounds Beckett handed her,” said Cribb, unaffected.

“You think I would kill for that? Listen to me, mister. I didn’t need money like that. I was getting paid nearly as much by Beckett, and I stood to pick up another three hundred in side bets. What did I need to kill her for? I was free of her, and all this lot. This man”—he pointed at Vibart—“helped me to make an arrangement with the London mob. I was finished with Mrs. Vibart.”

“Good God!” said D’Estin, open-mouthed.

“What was in the bundle you carried away from Radstock Hall last night?”

“Why, this dressing gown I’m wearing right now. If you think this is her blood on it, you’re wrong. It’s mine and Jago’s.” His protesting voice was at crescendo pitch.

“So you left the room to collect your dressing gown,” said Cribb calmly. “Why were you out so long if that was all you were doing?”

“You weren’t there,” blazed the Ebony. “You couldn’t possibly know how they were treating me. I stayed out because I wasn’t going back to be insulted by men like these two. They weren’t my masters, and I could do what I liked.

So I stayed in the changing room until it was time to leave.

You couldn’t know the atmosphere at Radstock Hall. It was evil. I was glad to get away, I can tell you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Things I heard from time to time. It made me feel my own life was in danger there. I wasn’t the first pug at Radstock Hall, you know. There were others before me. But they died or vanished. No one would say where they’d gone, but they hadn’t succeeded as fist fighters. I don’t know who they were, novices like Jago or experienced fighters like me.

Mrs. Vibart didn’t like to be reminded of them, I can tell you. You know what I think? I think they were put in the ring with hard fighting men and beaten senseless. Mrs.

Vibart made her money out of failures. She backed other fighters to destroy her own men. That’s what she was doing with this man Jago. I tried to warn him to get away—you can ask him if I didn’t. I was gentle with him today, though.

He’ll be quite well in a fortnight. You see if he isn’t.”

“Thank you,” said Cribb. “I shall have some more business with you later, Mr. Morgan, but that’s enough about this matter. I’ll be obliged if you’ll leave us now.”

The Ebony was quick to co-operate. When he was gone, Cribb regarded the others with eyebrows quizzically raised.

“Convinced me,” he said. “How about you, Thackeray?”

“I’m inclined to believe him myself, Sergeant.”

“The timing makes nonsense of it, anyway,” said Cribb.

“Morgan had half an hour—let’s give him three-quarters— in which to kill her. But in that time Mrs. Vibart is supposed to have concluded her business with Beckett—fifteen minutes would you say?—gone to her room, undressed, washed, folded all her clothes, brushed out her hair, got into bed and been murdered. Anyone who believes that knows nothing about women.”

D’Estin was about to speak, but Cribb checked him with a raised hand.

“Before you say another word, sir, I think I’d better give you all some information. Wouldn’t want you to commit yourself to anything before you know why we’re here, so to speak. These other men Morgan spoke of—pugilists who trained at Radstock Hall and later disappeared. I’m in charge of an inquiry into the manner of their disappearance.

We fished one of ’em out of the Thames, you see. Man named Quinton. No head. You remember him, don’t you?”

Vibart spoke: “Yes, he was with us. I didn’t know he had an accident, though, poor bastard.”

“Didn’t you now? He left you voluntarily?”

“Oh, he may have had a few wry words with my sister-in- law. He wasn’t much bloody use as a fighter, you see. My recollection is that he left after some kind of misunderstanding.”

“He didn’t get along with Mrs. Vibart?”

“Few of ’em did. It doesn’t come easily to a man to be ordered about by a woman who knows a devil of a lot more about the prize ring than he does.”

“You weren’t the expert on knuckle fighting at Radstock Hall, then?” queried Cribb.

“Me? I’m a blasted church organist. I did what I could for her after my brother died. She couldn’t negotiate direct with flash characters like Beckett. But she was the authority, not me. You can ask D’Estin here, or Jago.”

“Jago!” repeated D’Estin, suddenly inspired. “Henry Jago! He’s the man you want, Sergeant! He’s the only person who could have killed Isabel.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s abundantly obvious when you think about it! He was the only one with a room near hers. Just along the corridor, it was.

I caught him prowling near her door only the other night, when he knocked against a suit of armour. He was quite spoony about her. You could see it, couldn’t you, Vibart? She didn’t care a fig for him, of course, or she wouldn’t have matched him with Morgan. When he finally got into her room, she rejected him outright, so he killed her.”

“That’s all very plausible,” admitted Cribb, “except for the money. Whoever killed her emptied the safe as well.”

“Then he took the money to make it look like theft,” said D’Estin. “If you search him, he’s probably got it now.”

“I went through his clothes myself on the way back in the police van,” said Cribb. “Unless he had the notes tucked away in the boxing drawers he was wearing, he hadn’t got the money. Where is it, then?”

“Must be still in the bloody house somewhere,” suggested Vibart.

Thackeray had listened in wrapt attention. Nothing had been said against Jago that would not be accounted for— well, nothing of substance. The rest was based on supposition. Didn’t Henry look a bit dewy-eyed in repose anyway?

Yet these men seemed so sure . . . And there was still that worrying discovery in his room at Radstock Hall.

“We’d better give him the same chance Morgan had to explain himself,” said Cribb. “See if he’s able to come in, will you, Thackeray?”

There was not much of Jago’s face visible when he entered. Someone had been busy with lint and bandages.

“Are you able to answer a few questions?” Cribb asked with a touch of compassion.

The reply was muffled. “I’ll try, Sergeant.”

“I just want you to tell us your reason for prowling about Radstock Hall at night. You can speak freely.”

Jago paused, adjusting his thoughts. Anything that happened before the fight must have seemed like pre-history. “I was looking for evidence, Sergeant. I did not find it, or I should have reported back to Scotland Yard at once.”

“Scotland Yard?” echoed D’Estin, unable to comprehend.

“Jago is a police constable,” said Cribb. “One of your good old-fashioned crushers. No use accusing him of murder. He was working for me when he walked the corridors at night, not making overtures to Mrs. Vibart. So you see, gentlemen, we’re down to two suspects.”

Vibart responded at once. “Not so, Sergeant. You came late to the fight this afternoon, didn’t you? It sounds to me as though you didn’t see what thousands of others saw.

Give us a view of your back, Jago, and then tell Sergeant Cribb about your feelings towards Isabel!”

“What’s this?” snapped Cribb, robbed of the initiative.

Jago stood compliantly and slipped off the dressing gown he was wearing. His body was hideously blotched with bruises, but the mark that riveted Cribb’s attention was the scratch in four narrow lines the length of the back.

Thackeray paled.

“How did you come by this, Constable?”

“It was not done last night, Sergeant,” answered Jago.

“Did she do it?”

“Yes.”

“In what circumstances?”

Silence.

“Ain’t it perfectly obvious to all of us?” said Vibart. “It won’t be the first time a bobby’s put himself on the wrong side of the bloody law. It was a neat deception sending him to Radstock Hall, Cribb, but you should have chosen someone less susceptible to a woman’s charms. Poor bloody Jago.

You might get him off with manslaughter if you handle it carefully, Sergeant. We’re all discreet men.”

“If Jago is accused,” said Cribb with deliberation, “the charge is murder. I was at Radstock Hall myself this morning. I found this”—he produced the wad of banknotes from his pocket—“in Jago’s room under his pillow.”

D’Estin gasped audibly.

“As I said all along—” began Vibart unctuously.

“Permit me to finish. If I’d ever harboured doubts about Jago—and I don’t say I had—the finding of this dissolved ’em. If a trained constable decides to place himself on the wrong side of the law, to use your expression, do you really suppose he hides the main evidence under his own pillow?

And after the crime is discovered, does he still go through with a fist fight and get battered black and blue for no reason at all? No, Mr. Vibart, Jago or anyone else cuts away with the money as soon as those dogs are shot and the way out is clear. It’s plain enough to me someone put the five hundred in Jago’s room as a safeguard.”

“What do you mean?” asked D’Estin.

“Sharp thinking on the part of the murderer. He expected the Ebony to take the blame—you all agreed he was the man.

You had your own plans to even the score, I should guess. But suppose something went awry. Putting the worst possible construction on events, suppose someone else got to know about the murder—a servant perhaps—and brought the police to Radstock Hall while you were at the fight. Wasn’t it a smart precaution to have a suspect in reserve? Uncommon smart, I say. If nothing happened, our murderer could have gone back to Rainham after the fight, picked up the money and none of us would have been any wiser. Confidentially, though, the money wasn’t the only evidence I was looking for. There was the knife, you follow, and there had to be bloodstained clothing. To put you fully in the picture, gentlemen, I found ’em in the cavity under the window seat—dagger, coat, a case of documents and a saw as well—now, why would anyone want to hide a common saw? So you see, I can’t possibly oblige you by arresting either Morgan or Jago. Your theory rested on Morgan carrying the things away with him. And as for Jago, well, he’d have hidden the five hundred with the other things, wouldn’t he?” Cribb sighed with a forced air of reluctance. “Which means there’s only two suspects left for me.

You, Mr. D’Estin, representing unrequited passion, if I may be so bold, and you, Mr. Vibart, on the side of personal gain— inheritance, in fact. There’s good arguments in favour of either of you, until we look closely at the crime itself. Remind us of the injuries to Mrs. Vibart, will you, Thackeray?”