Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (16 page)

Chapter XVIII

In Which an Emotional Crisis is Surmounted

I don't know if you've ever sat in a fisherman's pub opposite a woman in tears, a woman, moreover, whose fiancé has just been accused of murder. If you have you will know that I felt about as uncomfortable as a man well can. The fact that Mrs. Skilbeck had left us had slightly cleared the atmosphere; but there was no doubt that a feeling of great emotional tension existed, a feeling not at all easy to dissipate.

Foster leaned protectively over Maya Johnson, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

“Come on, snap out of it!” he counselled her. “What does it matter what the woman said?”

Maya Johnson raised her head. Her eyes were red and her face already considerably tear-stained. “But she said that you had killed Tilsley,” Maya said.

“What does it matter what she said?” asked Foster for the second time.

“It matters a lot!”

I could see that this remark shook Foster considerably. He sat up and looked surprised.

“In what way?” he asked.

“Well, if she goes around saying that sort of thing it will sooner or later come to the ears of the police!”

“And what if it does?” I couldn't help admiring the sheer pudding-headed obstinacy of the man, unwilling even for a moment to admit that such an accusation of murder could in any way hurt him or have any sort of effect on his life. Still, I personally thought that Maya Johnson's attitude was the more sensible one. It would have been foolish to deny that the slinging about of murder accusations is a dangerous business, especially when the police are to all intents and purposes stumped by a case. If enough mud is slung at anyone, as the old proverb has it, some is likely to stick. I thought it was high time I took some part in this argument, and tried to make this obstinate young man see some sense.

“Look here, Mr. Foster,” I said, “you must realise that there is a lot of sense in what Miss Johnson is trying to say. If a woman as bitter as Mrs. Skilbeck slings about accusations like that there will be plenty of people who will believe that she is telling the truth. You know—there's no smoke without fire, and all that sort of thing.”

“But I don't care what people believe. I know that I didn't kill Tilsley, and that's enough for me.” He set his jaw obstinately. I could have kicked him. It is all very well to be firm, but firmness eventually becomes stupidity, I think.

“It isn't what you know, Mr. Foster,” I said. “It's what the police think that will eventually settle this case, and we don't yet know what Mrs. Skilbeck may be telling the police.”

“You think that she will tell the police what she told us?” This was Maya Johnson, and the nervousness in her tones made it clear to me that she was very deeply in love with Timothy Foster. I had, indeed, for long thought that this was so, but her response to this threat to him made it clear to me that her feelings were deep.

“I don't think that she will have any option,” I said. “If the police hear of these accusations—and they're bound to do so sooner or later—they will at once pull her in for questioning. They'll have no option in the matter, either. They would be fools to ignore it. This case is a real mystery, and anyone who makes an accusation which seems to have some factual support is bound to be listened to with considerable respect.”

The people in the pub had by this time ignored us. When Maya Johnson had first collapsed over the table the barman had made a move towards us, as if he thought that this was a case of a drunken customer who would have to be requested to leave; but since she had apparently settled down quickly he had changed his mind.

What I had said seemed to impress the lady fairly considerably. Even the obstinate Foster appeared to see that there was much good sense in what I was saying.

“You do see, don't you, Tim?” Maya Johnson said earnestly. “This is not something that you can just laugh off—you've got to take it seriously. Your life may depend on what happens in the next day or two—and if your life doesn't matter to you, it matters a lot to me.”

I was impressed by this girl. She was amazingly beautiful, but, unlike many beautiful girls, her face was not merely a brilliant façade with nothing behind it. I thought that she was a very intelligent woman, with a lot of good sense in her pretty head.

“All right,” he said. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I've got a proposition,” she said, and paused. The emotional crisis appeared to have passed, but I was still conscious of some tension in the air.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You are investigating this case, aren't you?” she said. “I mean, you are reporting it for your paper, and you're trying to see if you can get hold of any fresh information which will give you a chance to beat the other papers to it.”

I nodded. “That's so,” I said.

“And you believe that Tim is innocent?”

“I do.” This was nothing more than the truth.

“Well, will you do your best to clear Tim of this accusation that Mrs. Skilbeck has made?”

“Well, in a sense I'm doing that already,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

I smiled. “Well, I'm doing my best to find out who is responsible for the death of Tilsley, and if I do manage to find out who it is, that will clear Tim, won't it?”

For the first time since Mrs. Skilbeck had entered, Miss Johnson smiled. It was not a very strong smile, but nevertheless it was a big improvement on the strained expression which had previously filled her face.

“Will you come back to my flat with us?” she asked. “I feel that we should have a further chat about this, and a place like this doesn't seem to me to be at all suitable for such a discussion.”

“O.K.,” I said, draining my glass.

So in a few minutes we were installed in Maya Johnson's comfortable flat. I sat on the settee under the window, and Maya Johnson and Tim Foster occupied cosy armchairs on either side of the empty fireplace.

“Now,” she said with an air of determination, “I think that this is a sort of council of war.” It was odd how this beautiful woman had, in a sense, taken control of the situation. I was slightly amused. Actually, there was no doubt which of the two young people was the stronger personality. I had no doubt that they would have a happy married life; equally I had no doubt that the big decisions would be hers and not his.

“Well,” I remarked, “there is one thing which might be settled right away, and you can settle it without any difficulty at all, I should think.”

“What is that?”

“That is whether either or both of you have an alibi for last night.”

She looked puzzled. “Why
last
night?” she asked. “Tilsley was killed the night before.”

“True,” I explained, “but you forget that Margerison was killed last night, and there is obviously a connection between the two crimes. Personally, I don't think that there is any doubt at all that whoever killed Tilsley also killed Margerison. The police, I know, share that opinion.”

They looked at each other. “What time was it that you left here, Tim?” she asked.

“About ten o'clock,” he said.

“You were here from some early hour until ten?” I asked.

“I shut the garage at about half-past six,” he explained, “and came straight around here. Maya cooked us a meal, which we ate at about half-past seven. I was, as I said, here until about ten o'clock. Then I went home.”

“See anyone you knew on the way?”

“Not a soul.”

“Anyone see you enter the house?”

“No. It's a service flat that I've got, and there is no porter on duty after nine. All the residents have a front-door key and let themselves in.”

“H'm.” I thought this over. It did not seem to be too promising since it was clearly in no sense an alibi.

“When was Margerison killed?” asked Maya Johnson. She was now icy-cold and clear. The trace of hysteria which I had seemed to sense in the pub had now gone.

“The police surgeon is playing for safety,” I said. “All that he will say is that it was some time between seven o'clock and midnight last night. The sensible doctor, in these cases, will not commit himself too closely, you know.”

Maya Johnson looked a little scared. “Then Tim hasn't got any sort of alibi,” she commented.

“Not for the latter part of the period, anyhow,” I admitted. “And even for the earlier period, they will probably think that your evidence is biased. They do not accept without considerable reservations the evidence of a fiancée for the man to whom she's engaged. From the police point of view after all, that's good sense. You might well be lying, and, supposing that Tim was guilty, you might be expected to lie if you thought that you could save his life.”

She nodded gloomily. “Yes, I can see that they would argue that way,” she said. “But it means that we shall have to find some other method of attack.”

I agreed. “It's no good, I think, to try to work this case from the angle of trying to prove Tim's innocence,” I said. “He can probably
not
be proved innocent. I mean to say, if he were arrested, his counsel at a trial might find difficulty in getting him off.”

“But what do you think we should do?” asked Miss Johnson, a trace of hysteria again creeping into her voice, though I could see that she was doing her level best to control herself.

“I think that, since it is impossible as things are to prove him innocent, the angle of attack is to prove someone else guilty,” I said.

“But who?”

“That's the problem,” I admitted.

“Can't you think of something?” she asked. “If we don't move, that Mrs. Skilbeck will be spinning her yarn to the police, and then we shall be in a real jam, you know. After all, Mr. London, you admitted a few moments back that it might be very difficult, if Tim were arrested, to prove that he did not commit the murders.”

Tim Foster grinned. “Nice callous pair you are,” he said. “The way you talk you might think that I'd already got the rope around my neck.”

“Tim,” I said solemnly, “the point is to make sure that we do something
before
the rope is around your neck. If we wait until the police have decided that there is something suspicious about you, and that it is time that they considered an arrest, we may well be too late—or we are, at any rate, making our job of getting you off doubly difficult. That's what I'm anxious to avoid—and that, I think, is what Miss Johnson here is also anxious to avoid.”

“That's right,” she said eagerly. “Now, Tim, think! Can you think of any valuable information which we might not have given to Mr. London?”

He shook his head. “I told him everything that I knew,” he said. “After all, your questions were pretty exhaustive when you called at the garage yesterday, you know.”

I had to admit that this was true. Yet I felt in my bones that there must be something which could be done. In a short time I had become quite friendly towards this couple. Indeed, I was in a way very fond of them. I thought that they were the sort of folks one would be glad to help, and I knew that they would be able to do some worth-while jobs in the world, given the opportunity. It is, after all, not every day that one has the chance to do a really good turn to a well-disposed couple, to make their lives happier. I thought that I was lucky to have the chance. But that I should have to have a bit more information than had yet come my way in order to do so I felt certain.

“Tilsley is the king-pin in this game,” I said. “The murders spring in some way from the life that he has been leading. And only if we get to know something more about his activities and where they led shall we be able to get some concrete evidence of the sort that we're after.”

Maya Johnson looked worried. “But won't the police be able to do all that far better than we can hope to do?” she asked.

“They're doing it already,” I said. “And fortunately Inspector Shelley from Scotland Yard, who is in charge of the case, is a good friend of mine. I've already been able to help him a bit, and so he keeps me fairly well posted with what's going on. He knows that I'm working on the case independently for my paper, so that he won't be surprised at my wanting to ferret out any additional evidence. That is one thing in your favour, Tim; you have got a friend on the inside. If the police do ever think of arresting you, we shall have due notice of the fact, since I'm pretty sure Shelley would tell me if an arrest was imminent. You see, in return for a few good turns which I have been able to do him, he has promised to keep me posted as to what he is doing in the matter.”

“Well, that's one good thing, anyway,” said Maya Johnson. “But it is a sort of negative virtue at the best. It's all very well to know when Tim is likely to be arrested. But what we want to do is to make sure that they don't arrest him at all.”

“Agreed,” I said. It seemed to me that we were arguing all around the point anyhow. We had to bring the thing down to earth, see if we could not get hold of some correct points of evidence which would point the suspicions definitely in one direction. And, as I had already said, the matter of the activities of John Tilsley was the crucial matter.

“Can't you think of anything more about Tilsley?” I said. “You told me that he was selling spare parts of cars—spare parts that were in short supply—and that he sold them at a price considerably over the price agreed on by the makers as fair and reasonable.”

“That's right.”

“Well, what sort of spare parts?” I asked.

“Mainly the small stuff—cotter-pins and pieces of carburettors,” answered Tim. “They were the sort of thing that any competent mechanic could make. But if they were made by an ordinary mechanic they would take a long time, and would be very costly.”