Death Before Breakfast (20 page)

‘I shall want a proper explanation of all this from your Super. And it had better be good. I've got my rights, you know.'

When Trodd saw Sammy Barnes, now a bit puzzled and depressed by the mystery of what was going-on, but trying hard to bluff it out, he went off the boil and looked as disturbed and down in the mouth as his boss.

As for Mr. Peeples, who had been hastily rushed from the pub where he was being entertained by his father-in-law, and sent by express post to Willesden, he was a complete wreck. His father-in-law had insisted on accompanying him to London and the police had insisted he shouldn't. The police had won and Mr. Peeples was now wishing they hadn't. He felt the need of some support. He hadn't even had time to change out of his blazer, with a phoney coat-of-arms on the pocket, and his flannel bags.

‘I thought we were pals,' he told Cromwell when they met.

‘So did I, until I heard how you spoofed me about the whooping-cough. Now you're just an ordinary witness in the case. Come on.'

Peeples didn't understand what it was all about, until he saw Sammy Barnes. Then he thought the worst. His boss had been arrested! Peeples collapsed and when they got him in the doctor's house, he was given brandy, and recovered.

At first, Dr. Macready thought Peeples had been brought in as a patient. Perhaps a repetition of the Jourin affair.

‘Not again! ' he said, but he changed his tune when he saw the police.

‘What is the meaning of all this? Can't we be left in peace on Sunday, above all days.'

Sunday seemed to have some special significance among
the irreligious occupants of July Street. Perhaps they thought the law ceased to operate on the Sabbath, as Mrs. Jump used to call it piously but incorrectly.

They all filed indoors as if driven along by an irresistable force. They hadn't been invited, but they went in. They seemed to think it had all been arranged. A sort of free-for-all.

Grace Macready emerged from the room behind. She looked from one to another of them, including Sammy Barnes, who removed his cap when he saw her.

‘Whatever's happening? On Sunday, too!'

Another Sabbatarian!

Sammy Barnes seemed to have an immense respect for Grace Macready. He stood before her, apologetic, like a convert caught backsliding.

‘You'd better speak to the Super. It's all his doin'. I don't know what he's up to.'

There was the question of accommodating the lot of them. Peeples was being given a stimulant by the doctor, who apparently thought a retreat into his profession might give him time to take his bearings. In a crisis, he seemed to leave matters to his sister.

‘You're not staying long, I hope. Perhaps you'll tell me what all this is about, Mr. Barnes.'

‘I told you, Miss Grace, I don't know. But I'm not staying long, I can assure you. I haven't had my tea yet.'

Cromwell and Littlejohn exchanged glances. Nobody seemed to realise they were involved in a murder case. It might have been an informal meeting of the shop stewards from the garage.

‘Do you mind if we use your sitting-room, Miss Macready? There are several matters to discuss about the case of Jourin's death. Some important information has come to light.'

She couldn't refuse after that. Grace was as eager as the
rest to know just how much the police had found out. They all looked uneasy and uncertain now.

‘You'd better all come in, then.'

Cromwell, carrying his borrowed tape-recorder in a brown paper parcel, shepherded them in. Littlejohn held back and buttonholed the doctor. Macready gave him a startled look.

‘Dr. Macready. A day or two ago, your sister kindly showed me round this house. I missed seeing one room, however. The one behind the locked door at the head of the stairs. May I look inside it now, please?'

Macready reared.

‘Certainly not. This isn't a public house. It's a private residence and I resent the free and impertinent way in which you are using it. You're causing us great inconvenience. I think it outrageous for you to impose this mob upon us. You'll have it to answer for. But when you ask to intrude further on my privacy and enter my study, where I keep my papers and do my work, I draw the line. The answer is No.'

‘Very well, sir. Please excuse me whilst I ask the driver of the police car to go back to district headquarters for a search warrant. I have an idea what the room contains. I insist on making sure.'

Macready looked ready to burst and the veins stood out on his forehead. Then he changed his mind and started to wheedle.

‘I know you're anxious to wind-up this case, Littlejohn. So am I. It is becoming a nuisance to us all. But there's nothing, as I said, in there, except my private possessions, many of a sentimental nature. I beg of you. …'

‘I must insist, doctor. Will you go up and open the door?'

Macready didn't know which line to take next. Finally, he gave in.

‘Very well. But I shall see that a complaint about your conduct reaches the proper quarter. I have friends in the Cabinet.'

He looked it, too. Elegant as a diplomat, in his Sunday clothes, in spite of all the rumpus and confusion.

At the head of the stairs, Macready hesitated a moment as though ready to resist again. Then he shrugged his shoulders, took out a key-chain from his trousers pocket, selected one from a bunch, and unlocked the door. As he stood aside for Littlejohn to enter, his self-confidence seemed to seep away and he looked like someone beaten.

Inside, it was a workroom; no trace of a study, as such. Neat and orderly, with nothing much in sight, except a workbench with a small electric motor bolted to it, a powerful bench-light to illuminate the job, a drill, a lathe, and an expensive steel vice. There were cupboards on the wall above the bench. Littlejohn opened them one after another. They contained delicate tools of all kinds, from small flat hammers and drills to small steel chisels, files and tweezers. There were buffing-wheels to fit the lathe, cutting and polishing implements; even engraving tools. It was obvious from the fine and precision nature of the set-up that this was a complete jeweller's equipment for dismantling, breaking-up, re-setting or transforming precious stones.

‘Was this equipment Jourin's?'

‘It belonged to both of us.'

Macready realised that the game was up. He answered in a tired, flat voice.

‘So, you are a jeweller, too.'

‘Jourin taught me. I used to be a good surgeon. I knew how to use my hands and delicate tools for fine work. It didn't take me long to master this hobby.'

‘Hobby? Excuse me, doctor,
profession
. I understand that you were an accomplice of Jourin, engaged in transforming
and making unrecognisable the booty he brought here. How did you dispose of it afterwards?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about. I told you, this was merely a hobby. … I … I. …'

He didn't know how to explain it. In fact, it was quite impossible to explain it at all.

‘I know all about you, doctor, so please don't prevaricate. I know Jourin was your brother-in-law and that you and your sister were members of the gang who helped him dispose of the results of his thefts. Now, please answer the question. How did you dispose of the proceeds after you'd broken them up?'

Macready was like someone in a dream. He was stunned by what he'd heard. He'd had no idea that justice had been walking so closely on his heels. He just gave up.

‘It was disposed of to jewellers and small dealers in precious stones.'

‘Fences?'

‘No. The trade itself.'

‘Who did it for you?'

‘I suppose you'll find out. It was Barnes. He had friends in Clerkenwell and elsewhere, where such things change hands. I liked the skilled work. I wanted no part in selling the results. Barnes did that.'

He was utterly defeated. At the end of his tether.

‘I suppose this puts paid to me.'

‘We shall have to see about that. Who killed Jourin?'

‘I don't know. I've told you the truth already. He was dead when I found him in July Street that morning. He was badly wounded when I first saw him in the garage. I don't know who stabbed him.'

‘When did you first meet Jourin?'

‘In France during the war. You may not think it to look at me, Littlejohn, but I was dropped among the French Underground as a doctor. Jourin was a prominent man in
it. He was wounded and I attended to him. We kept in touch afterwards.'

‘And after he came from gaol for the last time, did he visit you and put a proposition to you?'

‘Has Grace been telling you all about me?'

‘No. Answer the question.'

‘Yes. In course of time he fell for Grace. I couldn't do anything about it. She was as bad as he was. They got married. I had to agree. Otherwise, she'd only have become his mistress. It was that way. I knew his weakness for women, but what's the use of taking that line with a woman. She always thinks she'll be the one it won't happen to.'

‘Let's go downstairs. They'll be waiting for us.'

They returned to the room below.

Barnes and Trodd were sitting about the room on two contemporary chairs looking very uncomfortable. Barnes's huge bulk oozed over the sides of his seat, concealing the legs and frame. He looked to be levitated in thin air.

Peeples was half reclining on the modernist couch under a painting of still life embodying sunflowers, tomatoes, lobsters and red capsicums, which made him look a more ghastly colour than ever in contrast.

Grace Macready was sitting on a wrought iron stool, as though ready to give a recital, only the audience didn't look the chamber music style.

Cromwell was standing in the alcove of the window, the curtains of which had been drawn, with the palms, ferns and general undergrowth forming a sylvan background. He looked bewildered.

Littlejohn smiled grimly to himself as he looked at them all. His friends Luc and Dorange, of the French police, would probably have lined the lot of them up along the wall and made them stand there, perhaps after handcuffing
a couple of them to impress the rest and take the fizz out of them.

The doctor loitered by the door, as though ashamed to mix with such a motley crew.

‘Why don't you put us all in handcuffs?' said Sammy Barnes, showing-off for the benefit of Grace. She was wearing a kind of tea-gown with her arms bare and her bosom almost as naked, and Barnes couldn't take his eyes off her. He was trying to prove that he didn't care a damn about the police.

‘Sergeant Cromwell will oblige if it will make you happy, Barnes. I wouldn't try his patience too much.'

Trodd didn't appear to be much impressed by the police; neither did Barnes, for that matter.

As for Grace, she seemed to regard Littlejohn as an accomplice. The doctor had gone to pieces and the rest were a lot of riff-raff. She and Littlejohn were in a class apart.

‘You all look very comfortable and happy,' said Littlejohn. ‘You seem to forget that one of you might hang for murder.'

He looked from one to another of them.

Peeples was ready to collapse again. He shouted that he didn't do it and began to snivel. The rest were deflated, too. They were trying to hang together, but hating one another all the time and finding it difficult to keep in countenance in the circumstances.

Littlejohn lit his pipe. The smell of incense and Grace's perfume were a bit too much.

‘About three years ago, Miss Macready met Etienne Jourin here. They fell in love and later were married. The reason for Jourin's visit was that he was a wartime friend of Dr. Macready. He and the doctor were already accomplices.'

Grace gave the doctor a malevolent look, as though he'd supplied all the information.

‘The doctor had been a proud man, proud of his position
and the esteem in which he was held by the neighbourhood. Then, in a single night, he lost his self-respect. He thought he'd killed a child on a bicycle with his car. He made the mistake of asking Sammy Barnes to repair the incriminating damage to his wing and mudguard, probably inflicted by someone in a car-park. A witness testified to having seen the doctor in the vicinity at the time of the accident. Imagine the disgrace of killing a child and, in a fit of panic, driving on. Barnes obtained him an alibi, put his car right, and saved him. Saved him from the public, but not from blackmail. …'

‘Hey! What are you up to? Who told you that? It's a lie!'

‘Peeples, who did the rapid renovating job so well, will agree with me, I know.'

‘Don't you be led into. …'

Peeples almost squeaked with fear.

‘I did it. I don't care now what happens to you, Mr. Barnes. I'm through. I did the job. It looked to me like a parking accident. There was nothing about it like the doctor had hit a bicycle. I'm not goin' to prison. I'm tellin' the truth.'

‘You little rat, Peeples. You little lyin' rat. …'

‘Be quiet, Barnes. We're going to get to the bottom of this before we leave here. You blackmailed the doctor. … That is so, doctor?'

‘Yes. Until. …'

‘Until you bought him off by letting him share your racket with Jourin?'

‘How did you find that out?'

‘There was no other answer to the problem. Now, let me tell you something, doctor. Did you know that you didn't kill the boy, at all?'

Macready suddenly grew alive again. He came to the middle of the room and thrust his face in Littlejohn's.

‘How do you know that?'

‘The police reports say that about a year later, a man who met with an accident, confessed before he died that he'd killed the boy on the Willesden road. It wasn't you. It was someone else who died almost the same way as the boy.'

Macready didn't wait. He turned and flung himself upon Barnes and clawed at his throat. It was an outrage the extraordinary little wrought iron chair could not tolerate. It overbalanced and pitched the two men rolling, plunging, panting on the carpet. Macready in his fury sat on top of Barnes's huge paunch, beating his head on the floor.