The Twenty-Third Man (17 page)

‘But none of these is poisonous?’

‘Exactly, madam. None is poisonous.’

‘You have interested me very much,’ said Laura,
truthfully;
for here, she felt, was a mind not altogether sane. ‘Thank you. And now I must fly.’

She acted upon the word and literally fled.

‘Atalanta! Atalanta!’ called Peterhouse after her. She took no notice, but continued with loping strides towards the veranda. She leapt up the steps and bounded into the nearest public room, where she sank into a chair and metaphorically mopped her brow.

‘That man Peterhouse’, said Mrs Angel, materializing in uncanny fashion at her elbow, ‘is a menace and a pest. In my opinion, he is quite insane.’

‘He certainly does pin one down,’ said Laura. ‘He’s been talking to me about Alpine plants.’

‘Alpine plants? That’s a change, then. I was told that he specialized in orchids.’

‘So was …’ Laura was about to add Dame Beatrice’s name, but recollected herself in time. ‘So was I. At least,
he
didn’t tell me, but I know I got it from somewhere.’

‘He is a rogue, a charlatan, and a blackmailer. He blackmails poor old Ruiz, you know. That’s why he’s able to live here free of charge.’

‘Good heavens! Is he really living free of charge?’

‘Of course.’

‘But what hold has he got over Ruiz?’

Mrs Angel wagged her head.

‘Ask
young
Ruiz,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Laura, determined to take this particular bull by the horns, ‘why does young Ruiz come home so often? It must be awfully expensive to make that long voyage every year.’

‘You’ve been listening to Pilar’s tales. You really shouldn’t take any notice of her. She is utterly lazy and utterly unreliable. I heard she even puts it about that I have the most undesirable commercial interests in South America.’

‘You soon put that right, I suppose?’ Laura was anxious to hear all about the undesirable element in Mrs Angel’s commercial interests. Mrs Angel looked past her
and
fidgeted with the fringed edge of the arm of her chair.

‘To speak sooth, no, I did not. It is better, I find, to take no notice of calumny. Evil rumours die all the quicker for not being contested.’ She seemed about to say more, but changed her mind. ‘I always thought that another guest along your corridor used to talk far too much to Pilar. Did you ever meet Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley? She is, I believe, quite famous in her own line.’

‘She’s a psychiatrist, a doctor of medicine, and is connected in some way with the Home Office,’ said Laura, watching to see what effect the last bit of information would have. She was disappointed. Mrs Angel’s face betrayed nothing except polite interest.

‘Of course, living in England, you would be more in touch with such things than I am, making my life here as I do,’ she said.

‘Aren’t you ever going back to England?’

‘No, no. There is nothing for me to do in England. All my interests are here and in South America. Occasionally I go over there; not often; I cannot afford it. Young Ruiz has offered to pay my fare if I would like to go more often, but I do not care about life in a big city and my interests can be looked after just as well here.’

‘And, of course, cattle and
guano
are more to do with men than with women, I suppose,’ said Laura, probing wildly. Mrs Angel smiled.

‘I am not primarily concerned with cattle
or
with
guano
,’ she said. ‘I do wish you would let me see your baby asleep. I always think a sleeping child is one of the most beautiful and satisfying sights on earth.’

‘Of course you can see him asleep. He’s probably asleep now, if you’d care to come up.’ She had seen, through the open doorway, the stealthy approach of Mr Peterhouse, and she dreaded, above all things at that moment, a continuation of her conversation with him, or rather, a resumption of his botanical monologue. She got up and stretched her vital, magnificent body. ‘Come on, Mrs Angel. Let’s go.’

Even Mrs Angel’s ecstatic and sincere admiration of the baby did not recommend her any more kindly to Laura. Her mysterious references to her South American concerns, however, and the suggestion that Peterhouse was blackmailing old Ruiz and that young Ruiz was willing to pay Mrs Angel’s fare to the South American continent if and when she desired to visit it, had aroused detection fever in Laura. She must unburden herself to Dame Beatrice at once, she decided, and ask her to reinforce the garrison in person.

She got rid of Mrs Angel, fed the baby, went to the post office in the Plaza, and sent off a cable. She was both laconic and cautious, but she tried to indicate that she had found out some things which called for investigation. Whether the discoveries would prove to be mares’ nests was anybody’s guess, but this she did not indicate in the cable.

DAME BEATRICE’S YOUNG
relative did not take long to produce the information she wanted. She had been in London less than a week when documentary evidence arrived in the shape of a great bundle of typescript.

Dame Beatrice ordered a pot of coffee and set to work. Young Lestrange had done a successful bit of research, and she was able to follow the complete and enthralling stories of the death of Ian Lockerby and the trial of Clun. One thing was immediately clear. There was a connexion between the two men. Lockerby had been an acquaintance of Clun and had given evidence at his trial.

She studied the reports about Clun. The evidence was clear. He had been accused of the manslaughter of a man named Empson after both had been drinking. Clun’s own story to Dame Beatrice, that he had hit too hard, was borne out by facts. Unfortunately for him, it seemed clear that he had instigated the quarrel. He had not been able to plead self-defence, and, to do him justice, had not, in the end, attempted to do so.

The other story, that of the death of Ian Lockerby, was more involved and far more interesting. Dame Beatrice made a summary of the evidence and added her own footnotes. Ian Lockerby, it appeared, had been a man of thirty two and was known to have had a violent temper and a nasty tongue. He was said to have had a liking for practical jokes of a cruel nature and to have taken pleasure in humiliating people, even when they were supposed to be his friends. He seemed a man born to be murdered.

The story of his fight with a gang of street louts had been told in court by Telham. The two men had been on a pub-crawl and Lockerby, at the time when the fight began, was considerably the worse for drink. According to Telham’s
evidence,
one of the louts had been pushed by another, deliberately, so that he fell against Lockerby.

‘It was enough to start Ian off,’ the report ran. ‘He began to set about the gang. I did my best to help, but it was two against eight or nine of them, so I shouted to Lockerby to scram, and began to run. I’d been knocked nearly silly by that time, and I’d seen the glint of a knife.’

Later, he had felt ashamed and had gone back. The gang had disappeared and Lockerby was dead. Telham had rung the police and had remained beside the body until they arrived.

It was the story that Dame Beatrice already had heard from Caroline. It certainly shed no light on the death of Emden. She made a note of the name and address of the public house beside which Lockerby had been killed, and then returned to the typescript and re-read the medical evidence.

A knife in the back … signs that the body had been severely kicked after death had occurred. … It was a nasty enough little business. It had happened before, and in the jungle of gangstership it was likely to happen again. People were more and more inclined to avoid going to the rescue of the victim in such circumstances. That Telham had been the only witness willing to come forward was understandable, too, although his descriptions of the young thugs were so vague as to be of little use to the police. Dame Beatrice shook a determined head and gathered the typescript together. She put it into a drawer and went off to look at the public house outside which the fight was said to have taken place.

It was a dingy little house in a side-street, and was unimpressive both within and without. In the saloon bar a rheumy-eyed man in his shirt-sleeves and a red knitted waistcoat was gloomily polishing glasses.

‘Sherry?’ he said, when she had given her order. He appeared to ruminate. ‘Dark or light?’

‘An unusual question,’ said the elderly lady. The man looked surprised.

‘I don’t get much call for sherry,’ he explained. ‘More beer and stout, if you get me. Shorts – whisky and gin. Sherry – no. Port, now, port’s a different matter.’

‘What did the murdered man drink?’

‘Ah, if I could get a few more of
his
sort, trade would look up, trade would. Ah, look up it would, good and proper. Once the murder got put in the papers I made six months’ turnover in a matter of weeks. Not as he drunk anything here. Past closing time, I reckon. No, he never come in.’

‘But, I gather, once the murder was out, others did come in. People have morbid fancies, have they not? I confess to a similar taste for the macabre.’

‘Sherry, you said?’

‘Dry, if you please.’

‘Don’t please me. Don’t
not
please me. It’s your gullet it’s going down. Haifa dollar. Ta, ma. Ah, morbid. That’s the word. Mind you, there was a lot about that business as was very, very peculiar. One thing as puzzled me was how they never got a single one of the gang as did it. The police, they come here time and again to know what I could tell ’em, but, in the finish, I couldn’t tell ’em nothing. “No sound of it come in here,” I says. “Never knew as there was anything going on. Singing and ’ollering? Not on your life! Not in
my
’ouse,” I says. “Always quiet and friendly in ’ere.
Should
’ave heard something of a dirty scrap like that,” I says, “but, oath or not on oath, I never.” But I don’t understand
why
I didn’t, if you take me. Not as I said that to
them
?’

‘I should think the explanation is that he was set upon and killed elsewhere,’ said Dame Beatrice, starting, she hoped, a hare. She was disappointed.

‘If
so
?’ said the barman, ‘what about the evidence given in court by his pal?’

‘Indeed, yes. What about it? Were you present at the inquest?’

‘What about my opening times? You can’t run a job in a pub
and
gallivant about amusing of yourself. I see his
picture
in the local paper, though, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have done the job hisself. One pair of boots is as ’andy as another when it comes to kicking a feller’s teeth in, that’s as clear as the daylight, that is.’

There seemed nothing more to be gained. Dame Beatrice drank a second dry sherry for the good of the house and went home. After lunch she re-read the typescripts. She was not particularly impressed by the fact that, if there had been a fight outside the public house, the barman had heard nothing of it. There was no window giving on to the street, and the doors, like those of most public houses, were sturdy and fitted well. In any case, as the man had said, it had happened, most probably after closing time.

The typescripts, in themselves, were of no further help, but they did give the name of the doctor who had first examined the body. As she was a fellow-professional, she thought that there would be no difficulty in obtaining an interview with him. Neither was there. Doctor Brownlow knew of her reputation and replied, over the telephone, that he would be delighted to accept her invitation to lunch with her at her club and that his morning surgery finished, with luck, at noon at that time of year, when his patients were mostly on holiday.

He presented himself at half past one, refused sherry or a cocktail and drank tomato juice. He was a lean, grey-haired man of fifty who acted as police doctor for his district and was honorary surgeon to the local football club.

‘I’m a physician by training,’ he said, shaking pepper over his soup, ‘but I know enough about bones and muscles to deal with footballers’ injuries. Now, what do you want to know about this young fellow found scuppered outside the Old Bull and Bush?’

‘Everything you can tell me. I’ve read the newspaper reports, but there are usually one or two details which don’t get into the Press.’

‘I can’t think of any in this particular connexion, though.’

‘The weapon?’

‘A thing like the knives they sell to Boy Scouts.’

‘Had only one blow been struck?’

‘No. But I formed the impression, when I performed the post-mortem, that the first blow had caused death and that the others had been inflicted after death had taken place. The blow which was the fatal one was in the centre back just below the shoulder-blades, and it had penetrated the heart. Copy-book stuff, in short.’

‘But there were other wounds?’

‘Yes. Several. You’d expect that, if he was attacked by a gang.’

‘Are not razor-blades more common than knives in these cases?’

‘Well, I expect it depends on the gang leader. If he decides that the trade-mark is a knife-wound. …’

‘Yes, I see. What about signs of a struggle?’

‘None. It would have been a quick job.’

‘But I understand there was a fight, and that the murdered man’s friend – his brother-in-law, incidentally – ran out of it.’

‘Oh, the chap who telephoned! Well, I dare say there was a scuffle, and then the first knife-thrust did the trick.’

‘What was the weather like?’

‘A fine night, but very dark.’

‘Were the public houses still open?’

‘It was after midnight when I was called.’

‘That is very interesting, but, of course, it is clear enough what must have happened. The man who ran away must have taken a long time to make certain that the gang had gone before he decided to go back. It would be quite in keeping with his character, as far as I have been able to judge it. Was the body, so to speak, hidden away?’

‘Well, I gather you’ve seen the public house. The body had been dragged some distance from where it had fallen. The clothes had that appearance. When I saw it first it was in that passage-way beside the men’s convenience, well out of the way of passers-by.’