Death in Albert Park (12 page)

Perhaps ‘facts' was too strong a word for what had guided him to his embryo theory. Perhaps, he admitted wearily as he drove home, he never would have more. It was unlike previous cases in more senses than one. A homicidal maniac broke all precedents.

He slept soundly but was awakened in what seemed to him the small hours by a knock on his bedroom door, not the sharp purposeful knock of Mrs. Stick but a casual-sounding, unfamiliar knock with loose knuckles. He called “Come in!” to be faced with unwelcome entry of his least favourite pupil, Rupert Priggley. This precocious youth with his intolerably sophisticated manner
and air of condescension to the adult world had more than once associated himself with Carolus's investigations, for his parents, long since divorced, had a way of leaving him for the holidays at a loose end but amply provided with pocket money.

“What on earth do you mean by disturbing me in the middle of the night?” Carolus demanded.

“It's nearly 8 o'clock,” returned Priggley, “and I bring news that will make you leap with boyish excitement.”

“Get to hell out of here. Where are your parents?”

“Mummy's on a yacht at Ibiza with a Greek, I understand. As for daddy, the least said the better.”

“What do you mean, news?”

“You wouldn't be interested in anything connected with Albert Park, would you, sir? No I thought not. Creeping off there at the end of term without a word to the only human being who has ever been in the least helpful to you in what you so cornily call your investigations.”

“You're an impertinent little wretch. Call Mrs. Stick.”

“It's all right. I've told her. She's bringing your tea. She was delighted at my news, I can tell you.”

Carolus looked about for something to throw.

“What news, you hell-hound?” he shouted.

“It's over. Finished. Wound-up. You've been wasting your time. They've got the Stabber.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went over on the motor bike last night. I thought you might need keeping an eye on.”

“Don't end sentences with prepositions. Well?”

“Well, the whole place was in a ferment. The Stabber
had been caught.
In flagrante delicto,
I gathered.”

“You mean there has been another murder?”

“Really, sir,” said Priggley reproachfully. “Your lust for blood in insatiable. No, not another murder. But as near as, dammit. The man was actually arrested concealed in a front garden of Crabtree Avenue with the famous butcher's knife under his coat. What more do you want?”

“Who was it?”

“Total stranger, apparently. No one connected with any of the cases. Man from New Cross. I can't tell you his name yet.”

“You wouldn't be trying to pull my leg, would you?”

Priggley sighed elaborately and produced a morning paper with large headlines—ALBERT PARK: MAN TAKEN TO STATION. Carolus began to read “Residents in the district of Albert Park slept more peacefully tonight for …” “Quick action by Police Constable Golding …” “The man was still at the station at a late hour …” No name was mentioned.

“So you see,” said Priggley, “this time you've had it. The best I could do to save your face was to put it about that the police were acting on a tip-off from you.”

“Idiot.”

“Don't get irascible, sir. This was bound to happen sooner or later. You can't be lucky every time.”

“Out of my sight,” said Carolus.

“I'll wait downstairs. You'll need my warm-hearted sympathy.”

But worse things came to Carolus. He had scarcely finished breakfast when Mr. Gorringer was announced.

“Ah, Deene! Ah, Priggley,” he said. “I thought you were spending your holiday with the Hollingbournes?”

“I was, sir, but unfortunately one of their children was caught with a glass of port and I was held to blame. I felt it more tactful to withdraw.”

“I'll go into that at a more opportune moment. Meanwhile, Deene, I come to congratulate you. A splendid job. Splendid. In so short a time, too. I am referring to the arrest last night.”

“Oh that. I had nothing to do with it. And it was not an arrest, as far as I can gather. A man is held for questioning.”

Mr. Gorringer gave his dramatic chuckle.

“Come, Deene, you are too modest. You won't convince me that it was not on your information that the police acted in so timely a fashion. It bears all the marks of your peculiar talent. I said to Mrs. Gorringer this morning, ‘another triumph for Deene' and she replied wittily, though somewhat obscurely ‘Albert Park and the lion.'”

“I've only just heard of this development,” said Carolus.

“Now, Deene. You can't catch old birds with chaff, you know. It is true I have asked you, for the sake of the school's fair name, not to associate yourself publicly with these matters, but here you are amongst …” he glanced at Priggley, “you are in the presence of your headmaster. You must tell me how you achieved this prompt and welcome result.”

“I'm not sure there is a result. If there is I had nothing to do with it and it goes flat against any possible ideas I was forming.” Carolus seemed to forget his audience. “How can it have been a stranger to the district?” he asked. “How can a man who has till now shown such cunning—even if a madman's cunning—have walked straight into a police trap? Not even a
trap. He must have known Crabtree Avenue was being watched.”

Mr. Gorringer rose dramatically, his large ears flushed crimson.

“You are not going to suggest, I trust, that the arrested man is
not
the murderer?”

“I don't know. I haven't enough to go on to suggest anything. But I don't see how it can be.”

“He was, I suppose,” began Mr. Gorringer with lofty scorn, “a peaceful citizen enjoying the evening air. He just happened to have with him a lethal weapon similar to, or identical with, that used in three recent murders in the same area.”

“Stranger things have happened.” said Carolus.

“You tempt me to speak incivilly, Deene. What you suggest is beyond all credibility.”

“The truth so often is. I must get over to Albert Park.”

“You are not proposing to return to that suburb?”

“At once, yes. Whatever this is, it provides a god-sent opportunity of clearing up one or two small points.”

Mr. Gorringer prepared to leave.

“You confound all logical expectations, Deene. You intend once again to pit your theories against the wisdom of an experienced police force and against all factual probability. I despair of appealing to your reason.”

He left the room without taking his leave.

“It does seem a bit off, you know, sir. This character they've arrested must have been on the job.”

“So far as we know he has not been charged yet. He was taken to a police station and according to this paper was ‘still there at a late hour' last night. Dyke is no fool.”

Whatever Carolus, or the headmaster, or the Press, thought about the incident of the previous evening, the people of Albert Park seemed to have no doubt that their troubles were over. To get rid of Priggley for a time Carolus told him to move about the suburb and later give him a report of public reactions to the news and he presented lively details of conversations overheard in shops, cafés and the Mitre.

“So they've got him!”

“Good job, too!”

“It was about time, that's what I think.”

“He was just going to do it again, wasn't he?”

“Still, its a blessing we shall be able to walk about.”

And so on.

But Carolus meanwhile was busy. His first call was on Eamon Starkey at his flat on Blackheath. He found the actor finishing a late breakfast.

“I must say I'm relieved,” said Starkey.

“Why ‘relieved'?”

“Obvious, isn't it? Anyone could be suspected.”

Carolus looked at him fixedly.

“Now that it's all over,” he said. “Would you like to clear up something that has puzzled me? You made a great point of your alibi for that night. Why did you think it was necessary?”

“Because I hadn't got an alibi, really.”

“You were at the Crucible Theatre.”

“I went there, yes.”

“You mean?”

“Look here, Deene. I saw the other night that you weren't quite satisfied with what I told you. I trust you, for some reason, and would have told you the truth then but for the fact that no one knew who had killed my sister. You must remember that at first there was no
reason to think it was one of a series of murders. The police asked me the most searching questions and I naturally used my alibi. They seemed satisfied with it, but you weren't. Were you?”

“No. It occurred to me at once that anyone could wear a mask and shout ‘Live, live, live, live' and so on. It would not have to be you.”

“It wasn't, on that night. This is what has worried me, till now. A friend of mine, or I thought he was a friend of mine, took it on and no one suspected. Actually all I wanted was to go out for a drink. I didn't go to the Wheatsheaf, of course, but to another pub called the Crown. I got talking there and stayed far too long.”

“Did you go on your motor-bike?”

“Good Lord, no! Everyone would have heard me starting it up.”

“Unless you wheeled it down the road a little way.”

“Well, I didn't, anyway.” Starkey stared as though he had suddenly realized something. “You mean I
could
have gone to Albert Park?”

“I don't know. I haven't gone into times and so on. But it had occurred to me.”

“Thank God the thing's all cleared up, then.”

“A lot of people are saying that. Now I must rush away. See you again, perhaps.”

“I hope so,” said Starkey genially. “What about coming to see our new show at the Crucible?”

“I'm relieved to hear you calling it a show.”

Starkey smiled.

“It's a revival. The most successful thing we've done. It was written by Thomas Wilkinson.”

“Neoteric, I understand?”

“Enormously. Will you come?”

“Yes. When all this is cleared up. If your play's still on.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It is.”

Carolus drove from Blackheath back to Albert Park. He heard from Priggley some more hearsay details of last night's incident, including the fact that young Gates had been present at the time and according to some reports had actually assisted in the arrest. As it was a Saturday afternoon he hoped that Gates might be at home and drove to number 52 Crabtree Avenue.

Stanley Gates came to the door himself, a rather self-satisfied young man with a crewcut, heavy spectacles and a neat moustache. He had a jocular ‘old boy' manner which grated somewhat, but he was ready enough to talk of last night's incidents, indeed had done so to a number of reporters.

“Most extraordinary thing I ever saw,” he began chirpily when he had asked Carolus to sit down. “I still can hardly believe it happened. I decided to give the avenue the once-over before joining the old folks in the other room for their television session. They don't seem to enjoy it if I'm not there, being bored stiff, of course. I went out …”

“What time would that have been?”

“I was forgetting that. You sleuths are all for the unforgiving minute, aren't you? Must have been just after seven. It was a fairly bright night. I thought I'd just walk up to the top and back, and see if anything was doing. Vigilante stuff.”

Carolus had the feeling that the story had been told several times before and had grown more detailed with repetition.

“I passed one or two bods in the lower part of the
avenue. Old Goggins walking home. Mrs. Sparkett. I passed a copper who came out of Perth Avenue and went on down Crabtree.”

“Did you know him?”

“By sight. Yes. He's one of our regulars since this happened. The police have done what they can, you know. I knew he'd be hanging about for the next hour or so. Oh, by the way, I looked in the garden of the empty house where the first body was found. Number 46. Nothing in sight. I passed the park gates opposite Perth Avenue and as I reached the upper part of the avenue I saw this figure.”

“Which figure?” asked Carolus annoyingly.

“This figure of the man we ran in. The Stabber in fact, though you wouldn't have thought it. It seemed he had been waiting in one of the gardens because he seemed suddenly to materialize in front of me.”

“Which garden?”

“Well, it might have been Turnwright's. Somewhere about there. Turnwright's is 28.”

“What did you notice about this man?”

“His most extraordinary behaviour. He was capering, old man, I can only call it capering, up the pavement in front of me. The next thing I saw was that he was wearing a raincoat.”

“Did it fit him?”

“What d'you mean? Of course it fitted him. Why shouldn't it?”

“Never mind. Do go on.”

“He was wearing a raincoat, a cloth cap and glasses. So I thought to myself, this is it. Well, there couldn't be much doubt of it, could there?”

“Yes,” said Carolus. “What did you do next?”

“What would you have done? Gone up and asked
him if he was the Stabber? No, I went and found this policeman I had seen. Golding, his name is. I told him exactly what I had seen and no more. He had the sense to realize this was It and we walked back up the avenue to where I'd seen him last.”

“And of course he'd disappeared.”

“Yes. But we soon found him. Most extraordinary thing. He was in one of the gardens making a sort of squeaking noise. Like a mouse.”

“Have you ever heard a mouse?”

“I suppose not. But this is the sort of noise they'd make. The creature was barking mad. Well, we've always thought so, haven't we? Barking. We walked up to him and he began to threaten us with this dam' great knife.”