A Scream in Soho (3 page)

“Is that to be taken as meaning that you'll refuse duty if you're called out?” Sir William said with a laugh.

“Consider it refused in advance. Good night—and don't lose yourself between here and Bedford Square. The Yard would never get over the loss.”

Chapter III

The Scream in the Black-Out

Opinions in that particular portion of Soho in which the crime was committed differed as to the exact quality of the terrible scream that rang out at five minutes past one, precisely. Police Constable C. 1285, working a Soho beat, part of which forced him to inch himself through the gloom from Oxford Street the length of Dean Street to Shaftesbury Avenue, was positive that it came from the throat of a woman; anyhow, it stopped him dead. For a scream in the early hours of the morning in Soho, even from a female throat, to stop dead in his tracks a hard-boiled constable who had worked in that cosmopolitan quarter for years, had to be something entirely out of the ordinary, as, indeed, this one was!

He was passing the short entry into Soho Square at the time, and the sound came from the left of him; that is to say from the direction of the square itself. Male or female, it undoubtedly came from the throat of a person in mortal terror and, to judge by the curious gurgling note upon which it finished, the sound had been stopped by someone other than the screamer.

On the other hand, Detective Inspector McCarthy, but an hour or so after leaving Sir William Haynes, and at that moment in the act of switching out his light before stepping into bed, was very positive that the scream came from the throat of a man. Not a matter, it might be thought, of any great moment, but should that scream which penetrated the Cimmerian blackness herald a case of murder, as it certainly sounded to do, it could be of considerable consequence.

The inspector promptly flung up the window of his bedroom which fronted on to Dean Street, and peered out in the direction from which the sound had seemed to him to come. For all he could see he might just as well have switched out his light and peered under the bed.

Pulling an overcoat over his night attire and slipping an automatic pistol hurriedly into its pocket, he groped his way downstairs and was out in that thoroughfare in his slippered feet almost before the echoes of that ghastly sound had died away. To him, also, the direction from which the cry came seemed to be Soho Square, towards which he groped at such speed as he could make, thumbing back the safety-catch of his automatic as he went. The thing he had forgotten to bring was the one most necessary of all—his torch.

The windows of flats and other lodgings situated above the shops of Dean Street were being flung up rapidly, and heads of people not usually disturbed by such sounds were being thrust out of them. Not that they could see anything, any more than anyone could see them, but it is to be supposed that they got a certain amount of satisfaction from their futile effort to penetrate the impenetrable. Which served to show still more the terrible quality of that cry when, even in a neighbourhood where midnight screams were no strange sound, this one was unhesitatingly set down as an accompaniment, prelude would perhaps be the better word, to murder.

Just how many times in his career McCarthy had boasted that he could traverse Soho at any hour of the day or night blindfolded, or in the thickest fog, was borne in weightily upon him at this moment. Fog was one thing, and bad enough in the congested streets of Soho to rattle anyone. But this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned black-out business was the absolute frozen limit! For the safety of the populace it was necessary, he supposed, and therefore had to be endured, but how the divil any man was supposed to get quickly upon the track of crime committed in it was something more than he was prepared to answer.

His first crash was into a light standard which received the shock without murmur; his second was into someone who gave indignant tongue in a manner to which the word “murmur” could certainly not be applied.

By the feel of the obstacle it was the front of an extremely stout Italian lady who cursed him fluently in what McCarthy instantly recognized as the Neapolitan idiom of his dead mother. It was interlarded with many calls upon the
Madonna mia
, and many other of the better known saints of her native land. Uttering in the same tongue the soft, appeasing words which, we are told, turneth away wrath, and in which the lady recognized instantly the voice of the Detective Inspector McCarthy that staggered officer reassured her. She apologized handsomely and sent the inspector upon his way with the cheering personal opinion that the lads of either the
Mafia or Camorrista
were at it again!

At the corner leading into the square itself, McCarthy also bumped into C. 1285 who, all things considered, was also showing a fair turn of speed. He recognized the voice of the inspector instantly—aided possibly by the quality of some of the adjectives he was using.

“Where?” McCarthy snapped, when he, in turn, recognized the voice of the bumped.

“It seemed to me to come from the square, sir. By heaven, it was an awful scream!”

Into the square and round it the pair crawled, to find the windows of such places of residence as are still left there well up, and presumably filled with a wondering and shuddering audience. For the rest of it, the square might have been a large expanse of black velvet, for anything that could be seen in it.

At that moment there occurred one of those happenings which the inspector was wont to refer to as “the Luck of the McCarthys.” For all that, at the moment and in the circumstances, it might have seemed to him a manifestation of a beneficent Providence, to other persons concerned, such as the owner of the premises, the A.R.P. authorities and the fire brigades, it probably took on a totally different aspect. These things all depend upon the point of view.

At any rate, and without the slightest warning, a sheet of flame burst suddenly from the roof of one of the few old tenement houses left standing in the vicinity of the square, though rather back from it. It later transpired that some attic dweller, aroused from slumber by that ghastly scream, had darted out of bed in a more or less bemused state and knocked over a paraffin lamp which, despite superhuman struggle, promptly had the place in flames. Although the efforts of the firemen managed to prevent it spreading to other nearby buildings, the one in question was eventually gutted, and in the process lit the square and those who rushed into it almost with the searching light of day. It amazed the inspector to find how many hundreds of people had managed to find their way into it, and as for the audience at the surrounding upper windows, their name was legion.

By this time the pounding of heavy feet along the pavements and the constant shrilling of police whistles told both McCarthy and C. 1285 that further official assistance was upon the way. In the next few moments their force was augmented by a panting sergeant accompanied by two uniformed men; another minute saw that number enlarged by a still further force of both uniformed and plain-clothed men. McCarthy promptly took charge.

“Beat the square, every inch of it,” he ordered. “And lose no time about it. In a minute or two we'll have the brigades here and what in the way of clues they don't trample out of sight for ever, they'll hose to blazes! Grab any person that looks in the least suspicious and hold them for interrogation.”

But although his orders were carried out with extraordinary alacrity and such thoroughness that scarcely a pin dropped upon the pavement would have been missed, and, additionally, was got through before the first of the fire engines roared their way into the square, not one sign of anything appertaining to murder in any shape or form had there been found.

“Well, this beats Bannagher, and he beat the divil!” McCarthy muttered to himself. “We'll try the entrance to the square,” he said to the sergeant. “It was from there that cry came, I'm more than positive.”

“I'd have thought so myself,” that grizzled officer returned perplexedly. “Though, mind you, Inspector, I was at the Oxford Street corner of Soho Street when I heard it. But that's where I'd have said it came from.”

In the lurid light of the now fast-rising flames, they searched every doorway on their left hand, but it was not until they came to the deeply-recessed entrance of the last of the historic residences left of a time when Soho Square was as fashionable a place of residence as Berkeley Square is to-day, that they came across unmistakable signs of what they sought.

Two old and well-worn stone steps led up to a magnificently-carved and pillared doorway, above which was an ornate fanlight, carved in the centre with the date 1702. The lintels and the pillars supporting the porch were painted in a deep green, but the door itself was spotless white—except where both lintel and lower panels were liberally bedaubed with blood, some of which still slowly trickled down the smoothness of the heavily enamelled woodwork! In the light of the fire it looked like black ink, but not to the experienced eyes which gave it their keen survey.

The two worn wells in the centre of the old stone steps were literally little pools of blood which had splashed as far as the ornamental fencing, fronting stone steps which again led down to a basement. Turning the sergeant's torch down there, McCarthy let out a gasp, and before anyone realized what he was at had darted down the steps to pick up gingerly a long three-edged stiletto, the blade of which was thick with blood!

That the weapon was of foreign origin he was positive. Near it, and caught in a piece of wire-netting which had been suspended above part of the basement for some purpose, was a tiny square of linen, surrounded by deep, but very fine, lace; a woman's handkerchief. It, too, was heavily spotted with blood. But of the victim of what was obviously a ghastly and blood-thirsty crime there was no sign whatever!

Chapter IV

McCarthy Follows a “Hunch”

By the time the inspector had made these gruesome discoveries, a veritable avalanche of people, drawn as much by the fire as the thrilling, fast-spreading rumour of murder, or more likely the wholly-entertaining combination of both, had descended upon the square from every angle. Despite the efforts of the uniformed men, now strongly reinforced, they had hard work to keep the morbidly curious from off the heels of even McCarthy, himself. That officer beckoned the sergeant to him.

“Don't let 'em be too busy at that, Sergeant,” he said quietly. “It's as likely as not that the one responsible for this may be among that lot. It wouldn't be the first time that the person who's done a job of this sort has mingled with the crowd to watch events. Just keep them out of my pocket and that'll do. I'm keeping my eyes wide open.”

But with all the evidences of a ghastly death which were there plainly to be seen, one thing fogged McCarthy completely. Here upon the step and actual door of this old residence, now, by the way, cut up into sets of offices, used for the greater part by legal men and business agents for foreign importers, was every trace of a terrible crime. But there those traces stopped dead; upon the pavement itself there was not as much as a drop of blood.

“It almost looks, sir,” the sergeant whispered, “as though whoever committed the murder had opened the door and dragged the body inside.”

“Ye won't mind my mentioning the fact that we're only
pre-supposing
a killing, Sergeant,” McCarthy pointed out. “To have a
bona fide
murder you must have a corpse, the body must be produced at any subsequent festivities, and up to now there's no sign of one.”

“There's all the signs I'd want,” the sergeant said flatly. “Not to mention that scream.”

“And how do you know,” McCarthy said, “that some foul brute in a lust of cruelty hasn't cut a dog's throat to account for all this blood, then thrust it in a bag and carted it off?”

“A dog doesn't scream like a tortured soul for one thing, nor does it use expensive-looking lace handkerchiefs like the one you found on that wire,” the sergeant argued stubbornly.

McCarthy nodded. “True; true. Such evidence as is before us suggests a woman in the case. So, you think, does that scream. I'm not so sure of that. But I'm still pointing out to you that until we find a body we're pre-supposing a murder. Though, mind you, again I'll admit freely that such evidence as we have is all in favour of the idea.”

The sergeant gave a quick glance at him. Although he had known Detective Inspector McCarthy practically ever since he had left the uniformed force for the Yard, he had never come in contact with him on a case. Rumour said that the inspector, albeit as clever as paint and a man who was bound for the top of the tree fast, was not only as mad as a hatter, but an inveterate joker under any circumstances. With the incontestable evidence of murder plainly in front of his eyes, not to mention that scream still ringing in his ears, the sergeant found himself wondering whether that uncrushable sense of humour he had heard of was at work again, with himself for the goat.

But what little of the inspector's face he could see showed no signs of anything but frowning perplexity; certainly there was nothing of humour lightening it at that particular moment.

“And,” Inspector McCarthy went on thoughtfully, “we're also taking it for granted that the killer was a man, principally because in this delightful part of the world when there's any murdering done it's generally men who do it and women usually the objects of their attention. And, once more, the evidence of that handkerchief is entirely in favour of that deduction. Yet it may be leading us entirely astray.”

“How could it do that, Inspector?” the sergeant questioned. “There is the handkerchief and the dagger…”

“Stiletto,” McCarthy corrected. “Not a weapon to be commonly found in Soho. Knives in plenty, as I've no doubt you and the rest of the lads of the C. Division know as well as I do. I don't doubt that you've had to intervene in a fair number of knife fights in your time.”

“Plenty,” the sergeant answered promptly. “And an ugly job it is too, when their blood is up and they mean business.”

McCarthy nodded his agreement; he had had his fair share of that most ungentle pastime as well.

“But,” he continued, “I doubt very much if you saw a weapon of the type I found here in any of their hands, Sergeant?”

“No, I can't say that I have. It looks a fancy sort of thing to me.”

“That's just it,” the inspector said. “A stiletto of that type, small, three-edged and pointed, is invariably the kind of weapon that the ladies hug to their bosoms. Which is all right as long as they don't drive it into someone else—which they're just as likely to do as not, if worked up sufficiently over an affair of the heart gone wrong, rabid jealousy or some soul-searing business of that kind. It's the kind of weapon they can keep handily tucked in their bodices, blouses or whatever they call 'em. I've even known them appear with startling suddenness out of their garters before to-day.”

“I never thought of that,” the sergeant said, somewhat lamely. “Come to think of it, it
is
more a woman's weapon than a man's.”

“And then,” McCarthy pursued, “we have Exhibit B—the handkerchief. Why should it not be just as much the property of the murderer as the murdered? The odds are fifty-fifty with a slight shade in favour of its belonging to the murderer—murderess in that case, of course.”

“Damned if I can see that,” the sergeant grunted. The inspector's deductions were getting a bit too involved for him.

“Simply because ninety-nine times out of a hundred, murder committed by a woman is a
crime passionel
, and while she is on the job everything else has gone from her mind. She's far more likely to leave damnable evidence of her guilt behind her than any man is. No matter what may be at the bottom of his killing, he's thinking of himself first, last, and all of the time; it's generally by some well-thought-out bloomer that he's convicted. However, I'm not being didactic about it,I'm simply pointing out to you that until we find the corpse it's an even chance either way.”

The sergeant made no response, but the thought passed through his mind that there was not much of this “mad as a hatter” stuff noticeable about the inspector when he was expounding a deduction.

Borrowing the sergeant's torch again, he turned it upon the handle of the door.

“You'll notice, Sergeant, that there's not as much as a mark on the handle of this door to suggest that anyone concerned in this sticky business opened it?”

“Been wiped perhaps,” the sergeant suggested.

McCarthy shook his head. “If it had had as much as a drop of blood on it and been wiped, it would show a smear; as it is, it's perfectly clean; only dulled a bit in the course of the day's usage. However, we won't take chances, there may be ‘dabs' on it when it's gone over properly.”

Taking out his handkerchief, he wrapped it around the handle and tried the door. It was locked.

“I think I'm right when I say that there's no caretaker to this particular lot of offices?”

“None,” the sergeant said. “There are a couple of old women who come in about six o'clock in the evening and clean up the place. They shut the door after them. There's a bit of a lad who gets here about eight o'clock in the morning, opens up, and puts the post in its proper receptacles before the others arrive. As far as I know, that's all the staff there is here.”

McCarthy applied the torch to the keyhole and studied it intently.

“Without being positive I'm fairly certain this has never been touched recently,” he said. “Though how the person, or whatever was killed, was got off the ground in the space of time that it
must
have been, has got me licked. There's only one way that I can think of at the moment, and that's a car.”

The sergeant shook his head.

“I doubt they had a chance to have got anyone from this step into a car and run out of the square between the time that scream was heard and we got to it. Not in the black-out and without being heard. And don't forget,” he added, “that the men on beat in this particular part of Oxford Street, and also the Charing Cross Road, heard the scream, and they would have been on the look-out for anything that came out of the square. With a sound like that in their ears they'd have taken a chance and pulled up anything on wheels.”

As the inspector listened his eyes were wandering with apparent casualness over the fire-lit crowd which had gathered. Most of them were Sohoans, and for the greater part of foreign extraction, but there were also a few late birds who had hurried in from the main thoroughfares to satisfy their curiosity.

Most of them were well-known to McCarthy, many of them honest, hard-working people, for the greater part employees of the restaurants and hotels of the West End. But there were also others whose hard and furtive eyes told of very different ways of earning a living; men known to him as gangsters and depredators of the most vicious type. And as they caught his eyes upon them, their glances shifted quickly and they unostentatiously dropped out of view.

But, somehow, he had the feeling that they had no hand in this business. This murder, if murder it proved to be, was too cunningly conceived for any of them. The whole business was too unusual, had been too cleverly worked for him to have any suspicion of them being concerned in it. Their methods were wicked enough in all conscience, but never by any stretch of imagination brainy. And, besides, that stiletto had not been a thing to be picked up for a few shillings, or a few pounds for the matter of that; he would not be at all surprised to find that it was an antique weapon of very considerable value, while if some expert in such matters did not inform him that the lace handkerchief was an extremely pricey article, far beyond the means of the average lady of Soho, he would be a much mistaken man.

Others there were, too, who had drifted into the square for no other reason than the fire and the whisper which had shot around. They were certainly not of Soho or, for the matter of that, of either of the preceding classes. Men in evening dress covered by overcoats, in some cases accompanied by women; late scholars from some private bottle parties or, still more likely, from some of the “underground” night clubs which still flourished, despite either the black-out, or the earnest efforts of the authorities.

He was about to turn back to the door again when his eyes fell upon one person standing at the corner of the actual square itself; a person whose presence there gave him quite a shock, though why it should have done so was more than he could have explained to himself or anyone else. It was the man with the ice-blue eyes who had left the
Café Milano
at the very moment of Bill Haynes' entrance. Singularly enough those queerly-compelling eyes of his seemed, in the lurid glow cast by the fire, to be lighter than ever—they stood out from the man's immobile face almost like those of a cat in the dark.

And, moreover—that it might have been pure imagination upon his part he conceded freely—the man's mouth, albeit the rest of his face seemed to express nothing at all, appeared to be twisted into a supercilious smile. It was almost as though he might be saying to himself, as he watched the efforts of McCarthy and the sergeant: “Look at those two benighted idiots; what do they think they are going to accomplish between them?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man approach the constable engaged in keeping the crowd back at the corner of the square and put what was evidently a question to him. The constable, McCarthy could see, answered it civilly, and with a curt nod of acknowledgment the questioner turned and moved slowly, and with that almost insolent gait of his, in the direction of Charing Cross Road. Which was the last McCarthy saw of him, for at that moment a squad-car swung into the square from the same direction and pulled up within a few feet of him, cutting the man out of his vision. From it there alighted McCarthy's own superintendent, accompanied by his chief-inspector, and as murder in the Division was up to the former, McCarthy was ready for his superior to take over, there and then.

Giving that overworked official a short but detailed account of what had taken place, he concluded his report by saying that as the superintendent would doubtless wish to take hold of the case he, personally, would be off back to his bed and endeavour to make up such of the time he had lost.

But Superintendent Burman shook his head. “I don't think so, Mac,” he said. “Since you've been in this right from the beginning, you may as well see it through. In any case I'm going away for a conference to-morrow, and I'm not letting this or anything else break into it. So you can go ahead with a satisfied mind that you'll get no interference from me.”

Which was, in Inspector McCarthy's opinion, a good hearing; very definitely so. The “Sooper” was a good sort, but a man of old-fashioned methods and hide-bound with Red-tape and Regulations. If McCarthy was any judge of a case from its first leads, this was going to be one which called for something very different to the routine stuff Superintendent Burman would not only have applied to it himself, but would, if advising, have seen that the officer in charge did as well.

“I tackle this on my own lines, sir?” he asked quickly.

The superintendent eyed him askance for a moment. “Within reasonable bounds, McCarthy, yes, of course. But,” he added, sternly, “I hope you'll employ none of those lone-handed methods of yours that, nine times out of ten, are as illegal as anything the criminals you're chasing have done.”

“I wouldn't dream of anything of the kind, sir,” the inspector answered mildly.

“Well, is there anything we can do?” the “Sooper” asked, agreeably surprised by this emollient answer.