Room 13 (13 page)

“Of course he didn’t shoot him,” said Peter loudly. “It is a ridiculous idea. But you’ll understand that Mr Craig has to make inquiries in all sorts of unlikely quarters. You haven’t been able to get hold of Johnny tonight?”

A glance passed between them, and Peter groaned.

“What a fool! What a fool!” he said. “Oh, my God, what a fool!”

“Father, Johnny hasn’t done this? It isn’t true, Mr Craig. Johnny wouldn’t shoot a man. Did anybody see him? How was he shot?”

“He was shot in the back.”

“Then it wasn’t Johnny,” she said. “He couldn’t shoot a man in the back!”

“I think, young lady,” said Craig with a little smile, “that you’d better go to bed and dream about butterflies. You’ve had a perfect hell of a day, if you’ll excuse my language. Say the firm word to her, Peter. Who’s that?” He turned his head, listening.

“Barney,” said Peter. “He has a distressing habit of wearing slippers. You can hear him miles away. He’s opening the door to somebody – one of your people, perhaps. Or he’s taking your chauffeur a drink. Barney has an enormous admiration for chauffeurs. They represent mechanical genius to him.”

The girl was calmer now.

“I have too much to thank God for today, for this terrible thing to be true,” she said in a low voice. “Mr Craig, there is a mistake, I’m sure. Johnny couldn’t have committed such a crime. It was somebody else – one of Jeffrey Legge’s associates, somebody who hated him. He told me once that lots of people hated him, and I thought he was joking; he seemed so nice, so considerate. Daddy, I was mad to go through that, even to make you happy.”

Peter Kane nodded.

“If you were mad, I was criminal, girlie,” he said. “There was only one man in the world for you–”

The door opened slowly, and Barney sidled in.

“Johnny to see you folks,” he said, and pulled the door wider.

John Gray was standing in the passage, and his eyes fell upon Craig with a look of quiet amusement.

In another second the girl was in his arms, clinging to him, weeping convulsively on his shoulder, her face against his, her clasped hands about his neck.

Craig could only look, wondering and fearing. Johnny would not have walked into the net unwarned. Barney would have told him that he was there. What amazed Craig, as the fact slowly dawned upon him, was that Johnny was still in evening dress. He took a step toward him, and gently Johnny disengaged the girl from his arms.

“I’d like to see the right cuff of your shirt, Johnny,” said Craig.

Without a word, Gray held up his arm, and the inspector scrutinised the spotless linen, for spotless it was. No sign of a stain was visible.

“Either somebody’s doing some tall lying, or you’re being extraordinarily clever, Johnny. I’ll see that other cuff if I may.”

The second scrutiny produced no tangible result.

“Didn’t you go home and change tonight?”

“No, I haven’t been near my flat,” he said.

Craig was staggered.

“But your man said that you came in, changed, took a suitcase and went away.”

“Then Parker has been drinking,” was the calm reply. “I have been enjoying the unusual experience of dining with the detective officer who was responsible for my holiday in Devonshire.”

Craig took a step back.

“With Inspector Flaherty?” he asked.

Johnny nodded.

“With the good Inspector Flaherty. We have been exchanging confidences about our mutual acquaintances.”

“But who was it went to your flat?” asked the bewildered Craig.

“My double. I’ve always contended that I have a double,” said Johnny serenely.

He stood in the centre of the astounded group. Into Marney’s heart had crept a wild hope.

“Johnny,” she said, “was it this man who committed the crime for which you were punished?”

To her disappointment he shook his head.

“No, I am the gentleman who was arrested and sent to Dartmoor – my double stops short of these unpleasant experiences, and I can’t say that I blame him.”

“But do you mean to say that he deceived your servant?’

“Apparently,” said Johnny, turning again to the detective who had asked the question.

“I take your word, of course, Johnny, as an individual.”

Johnny chuckled.

“I like the pretty distinction. As an official, you want corroboration. Very well, that is not hard to get. If you take me back to Flaherty, he will support all I have told you.”

Peter and the detective had the good taste to allow him to take leave of the girl without the embarrassment of their presence.

“It beats me – utterly beats me. Have you ever heard of this before, Peter?”

“That Johnny had a double? No, I can’t say that I have.”

“He may have invented the story for the sake of the girl. But there is the fact: he’s in evening dress, whilst his servant distinctly described him as wearing a grey tweed suit. There is no mark of blood on his cuff, and I’m perfectly certain that Stevens wouldn’t have tried to get Johnny in bad. He is very fond of the boy. Of course, he may be spinning this yarn for the sake of Marney, but it’ll be easy enough to corroborate. I’ll use your phone, Peter,” he said suddenly. “I’ve got Flaherty’s number in my book.”

The biggest surprise of the evening came when a sleepy voice, undeniably Flaherty’s, answered him.

“Craig’s speaking. Who have you been dining with tonight, Flaherty?”

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve called me up in the middle of the night,” began the annoyed Irishman, “to ask me who I’ve been dining with?”

“This is serious, Flaherty. I want to know.”

“Why, with Johnny, of course – Johnny Gray. I asked him to come to dinner.”

“What time did he leave you?”

“Nearer eleven than ten,” was the reply. “No, it was after eleven.”

“And he was with you all that time? He didn’t leave for a quarter of an hour?”

“Not for a quarter of a minute. We just talked and talked…”

Craig hung up the receiver and turned away from the instrument, shaking his head.

“Any other alibi would have hanged you, Johnny. But Flaherty’s the straightest man in the CID.”

In view of what followed when Johnny reached his flat in the early hours of the morning, this testimony to the integrity of Inspector Flaherty seemed a little misguided.

“Nobody else been here?”

“No, sir,” said Parker.

“What did you do with the shirt I took off?”

“I cut off the cuffs and burnt them, sir. I did it with a greater pleasure, because the rounded corner cuff is just a little
démodé,
if you do not mind my saying so, just a little – how shall I call it? – theatrical.”

“The rest of the shirt–?”

“The rest of the shirt, sir,” said Parker deferentially, “I am wearing. It is rather warm to wear two shirts, but I could think of no other way of disposing of it, sir. Shall I put your bath ready?”

Johnny nodded.

“If you will forgive the impertinence, did you succeed in persuading the gentleman you were going to see, to support your statement?”

“Flaherty? Oh, yes. Flaherty owes me a lot. Good night, Parker.”

“Good night, sir. I hope you sleep well. Er – may I take that pistol out of your pocket, sir? It is spoiling the set of your trousers. Thank you very much.”

He took the Browning gingerly between his finger and thumb and laid it on Johnny’s writing-table.

“You don’t mind my being up a little late, sir?” he said. “I think I would like to clean this weapon before I retire.”

Jeff Legge reclined in a long cane chair on a lawn which stretched to the edge of a cliff. Before him were the blue waters of the Channel, and the more gorgeous blue of an unflecked sky. He reached out his hand and took a glass that stood on the table by his side, sipped it with a wry face and called a name pettishly.

It was Lila who came running to his side.

“Take this stuff away, and bring me a whisky-and-soda,” he said.

“The doctor said you weren’t to have anything but lime juice. Oh, Jeff, you must do as he tells you,” she pleaded.

“I’ll break your head for you when I get up,” he snarled. “Do as you’re told. Where’s the governor?”

“He’s gone into the village to post some letters.”

He ruminated on this and then:

“If that busy comes, you can tell him I’m too ill to be seen.”

“Who – Craig?”

“Yes,” he growled, “the dirty, twisting thief! Johnny would have been in boob for this if he hadn’t straightened Craig. If he didn’t drop a thousand to keep off the moor, I’m a dead man!”

She pulled up a low chair to his side.

“I don’t think Johnny did it,” she said. “The old man thinks it was Peter. The window was found open after. He could have come in by the fire-escape – he knows the way.”

He grumbled something under his breath, and very discreetly she did not press home her view.

“Where’s Marney – back with her father?”

She nodded.

“Who told him I was married to you?”

“I don’t know, Jeff,” she said.

“You liar! You told him; nobody else could have known. If I get ‘bird’ for this marriage, I’ll kill you, Lila. That’s twice you’ve squeaked on me.”

“I didn’t know what I was saying. I was half mad with worry.”

“I wish you’d gone the whole journey,” he said bitterly. “It isn’t the woman – I don’t care a darn about that. It’s the old man’s quarrel, and he’s got to get through with it. It’s the other business being disorganised that’s worrying me. Unless it’s running like clockwork, you’ll get a jam; and when you’ve got a jam, you collect a bigger crowd than I want to see looking at my operations. You didn’t squeak about that, I suppose?”

“No, Jeff, I didn’t know.”

“And that’s the reason you didn’t squeak, eh?”

He regarded her unfavourably. And now she turned on him.

“Listen, Jeff Legge. I’m a patient woman, up to a point, and I’ll stand for all your bad temper whilst you’re ill. But you re living in a new age, Jeff, and you’d better wake up to the fact. All that Bill Sikes and Nancy stuff never did impress me. I’m no clinger. If you got really rough with me, I’d bat you, and that’s a fact. It may not be womanly, but it’s wise. I never did believe in the equality of the sexes, but no girl is the weaker vessel if she gets first grip of the kitchen poker.”

Very wisely he changed the subject.

“I suppose they searched the club from top to bottom?” he said.

“They did.”

“Did they look in the loft?”

“I believe they did. Stevens told me that they turned everything inside out.”

He grunted.

“They’re clever,” he said. “It must be wonderful to be clever. Who’s this?” He scowled across the lawn at a strange figure that had appeared, apparently by way of the cliff gate.

She rose and walked to meet the stooping stranger, who stood, hat in hand, waiting for her and smiling awkwardly.

“I’m so sorry to intrude,” he said. “This is a beautiful place is it not? If I remember rightly, this is the Dellsea Vicarage? I used to know the vicar – a very charming man. I suppose you have taken the house from him?”

She was half amused, half annoyed.

“This is Dellsea Vicarage,” she said curtly. “Do you want to see anybody?”

“I wanted to see Mr Jeffrey” – he screwed up his eyes and stared at the sky, as though trying to withdraw from some obscure cell of memory a name that would not come without special effort – “Mr Jeffrey Legge – that is the name – Mr Jeffrey Legge.”

“He is very ill and can’t be seen.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the stranger, his mild face expressing the intensest sympathy. “Very sorry indeed.”

He fixed his big, round glasses on the tip of his nose, for effect apparently, because he looked over them at her.

“I wonder if he would see me for just a few minutes. I’ve called to inquire about his health.”

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Reeder – J G Reeder.”

The girl felt her colour go, and turned quickly.

‘‘I will ask him,” she said.

Jeff heard the name and pursed his lips.

“That’s the man the bank are running – or maybe it’s the Government – to trail me,” he said in a low tone. “Slip him along, Lila.”

Mr Reeder was beckoned across the lawn, and came with quick, mincing steps.

“I’m so sorry to see that you’re in such a deplorable condition, Mr Legge,” he said. “I hope your father is well?”

“Oh, you’ve met the old man, have you?” said Jeffrey in surprise.

Mr Reeder nodded.

“Yes; I have met your father,” he said. “A very entertaining and a very ingenious man. Very!” The last word was spoken with emphasis.

Jeff was silent at this tribute to his parent’s amiability.

“There has been a lot of talk in town lately about a certain nefarious business that is being carried on – surreptitiously, of course,” said Mr Reeder, choosing his words with care. “I, who live out of the world, and in the backwater of life, hear strange rumours about the distribution of illicit money – I think the cant term is ‘slush’ or ‘slosh’ – probably it is ‘slush’.”

“It is ‘slush’,” agreed Jeff, not knowing whether to be amused or alarmed, and watching the man all the time.

“Now I feel sure that the persons who are engaged in this practice cannot be aware of the enormously serious nature of their offence,” said Mr Reeder confidentially.

He broke off his lecture to look around the lawn and well-stocked garden that flanked it on either side.

“How beautiful is the world, Mr Jeff – I beg your pardon, Mr Legge,” he said. “How lovely those flowers are! I confess that the sight of bluebells always brings a lump to my throat. I don’t suppose they are bluebells,” he added, “for it is rather late in the year. But that peculiar shade of blue. And those wonderful roses – I can smell them from here.”

He closed his eyes, raised his nose and sniffed loudly – a ludicrous figure; but Jeff Legge did not laugh.

“I know very little, but I understand that in Dartmoor Prison there are only a few potted flowers, and that those are never seen by the prisoners, except by one privileged man whose task it is to tend them. A lifer, generally. Life without flowers must be very drab, Mr Legge.”