Death in Albert Park (13 page)

“To
threaten
you?”

“Yes, old man. I thought this was It. I started …”

“How do you mean, ‘threaten' you?”

“Just that. He threatened us.”

“Are you sure he wasn't merely showing you the knife?”

“I ask you. What would he want to show it for if he wasn't threatening?”

“What did he want to squeak for if it wasn't to call your attention?”

“I tell you. He was batty.”

“Exactly. But go on. You and the policeman disarmed him.”

“Well, yes. It wasn't so easy…”

“Did he say anything?”

“He was babbling. He'd done them all, he said. With that same knife we'd taken off him. His name was Samuel Hoskins and he lived in New Cross. He'd intended to do another one tonight and he did not know
how many more. You should have seen his eyes! He had the most beastly stare I've ever seen. Talk about homicidal mania.”

“How did the policeman manage?”

“Old Goggins came up just then and we got him to phone for a squad car. But we had to wait with him there for about ten minutes and it wasn't pleasant, I can tell you.”

“Big man?”

“Medium size. Pretty powerful customer, though. They say lunatics are unnaturally strong. I can quite believe it.”

“Did he struggle?”

“Not after we'd got the butcher's knife off him. I don't know what happened later. I wanted to go along with them to the Station but the copper in charge thanked me and said it wouldn't be necessary.”

“I thank you, too, Mr. Gates. Seen Viola Whitehill lately?”

“Viola? Yes. I see her. But she's not really my type. Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity,” said Carolus. “It's a vice of mine.”

He was not surprised to find, when he reached Inverness Road and bought a newspaper, that Samuel Hoskins had left the police station without being charged. The police, it seemed, had satisfied themselves that he could not have been responsible for any of the murders. His family had undertaken to look after him ‘for', one of them said, ‘we've had this sort of trouble before with Uncle. He's perfectly well-behaved generally and the doctors say there's no cause for anxiety but we shall have to see that nothing of this sort occurs again.'

“Now, I suppose,” said Priggley that evening, “you're
going to congratulate yourself on being so remarkably shrewd.”

Carolus smiled.

“It didn't need much shrewdness,” he said. “But it served one good purpose.”

“He was one of these confession fiends, I suppose?”

“Yes. There are always a few after much-publicized murders. They're a nuisance to the police. Dyke had to check up on the man but I don't suppose he was fooled for a moment.”

“And now?”

“Now Joyce Ribbing,” said Carolus shortly.

C
AROLUS
thought that six o'clock in the evening would be a good time to call on Goggins and his wife. His ring was answered by Goggins himself who stared at him suspiciously. Carolus explained himself, wisely adding something to suggest that Goggins as a Vigilante and an observant man might have sources of information untapped by the police.

When he was first shown into the sitting-room, Carolus thought he had disturbed the couple at tea, for the pot was still standing there.

“Stone cold, I'm afraid,” said Ada Goggins. “We have tea at four. But have a cake.”

Carolus refused but Ada bit off more than half a cream bun and continued to munch happily. Carolus discovered that one meal in this house only really ended when another began, at least for the hostess. Goggins was smoking, appropriately, a meerschaum pipe.

“I don't know whether there's anything I can tell you,” he said ponderously.

“He was alone that evening,” said Ada Goggins, attacking an eclair.

“Which evening?” Carolus asked.

“The evening when Joyce was murdered. That's what you want to see us about, isn't it?”

“Partly, yes. But the first murder …”

“We don't know anything about that. Never seen the woman, to my knowledge.”

“You had a friend here that evening, I believe?”

“Did we? Oh yes. Williamson from my husband's office,” said Ada, scattering cake crumbs from her mouth as she remembered the occasion.

“I am what you might call semi-retired,” explained Goggins. “Williamson is an accountant in my firm, Marryat, Goggins, Richmond and Partners. We're chartered accountants. Offices in Chancery Lane.”

“He doesn't want to know all that, you old silly,” put in Ada, returning to the bread and butter. “It's the murders he's interested in.”

“What time did Mr. Williamson arrive that evening?”

“About this time, I should say,” replied Goggins thoughtfully.

“And stayed till?”

“Nine-ish, wasn't it, dear?” said Ada.

“About nine,” replied Goggins judiciously. “Scarcely surprising that we heard nothing, therefore.”

“There's not much traffic in Crabtree Avenue at night?”

“Very little indeed.”

“Have you yourselves got a car?”

“No. We had until two years ago but we've given it up.”

“You're not pestered by young people on motorbikes?”

“Oh no. It's a quiet residential neighbourhood,” said Goggins seriously, “that is why we selected it.”

“But you must sometimes hear a motor-bike?”

“Occasionally, I dare say. Very occasionally.”

“You don't remember hearing one that night—when your friend Mr. Williamson was here?”

They both looked thoughtful.

“I have no recollection of it,” said Goggins.

“I do seem to remember one about that time,” Ada said brightly. “Several evenings about then, I think. I can't be sure it was that night, though. Why? Had the Stabber a motor-bike?”

She had turned away from the tea-things and opened a large box of chocolates.

“You never noticed any strangers about the avenue, I suppose? I mean before any of this happened.”

“Tell him about the tall woman,” said Ada, unwrapping a chocolate.

“Oh that. I scarcely think that would be of interest,” replied Goggins. “But I'll tell you, for what it's worth. It was about ten days or a fortnight before the unfortunate schoolmistress was found. I was returning to the house late one afternoon at about five o'clock in fact…”

“Oh get
on!”
pleaded his wife, battling with a hard centre.

“I was about to open the gate when I noticed a somewhat tall woman coming down the steps from the front door. Presuming it was a friend or acquaintance of my wife who had just emerged, I raised my hat and opened the gate for her, at the same time saying good-evening.”

“Trying to get off,” said Ada gaily, playing for safety with a peppermint cream.

“Did she reply?” asked Carolus.

“She bowed, and passed on. There was something odd about her.”

“Hold it!” said Carolus with uncharacteristic excitement. “That very expression was used of another person observed in this case. Please try to answer this, Mr. Goggins.
What
was odd about her?”

“It's very hard to say. When I came in I mentioned the occurrence to my wife and she told me that no one had called, no one had rung the bell, no one had been seen by her for the last hour.”

“You mean that it was odd she should be coming out of your gate? But you
said
there was something odd about
her”

“There was,” said Goggins obstinately. “There was. I noticed it at the time. But I cannot for the life of me tell you what it was.”

“Was she preternaturally tall?”

“She was tall, but it was not that. I don't notice women's clothes much, but I gained the impression that she was somewhat overdressed. Yet I don't think it was that.”

“You had never seen her before?”

“No. Yet I had a strange, almost psychic sense of recognition.”

“Did you see her again?”

“Never. It was as though I had seen a ghost.”

“When you say ‘recognition'—who did she remind you of?”

“No one, at the time. But later it occurred to me when I was travelling up to town with a neighbour of ours named Heatherwell that if he had a sister she might well have resembled the woman I saw.”

“Did you mention that to Heatherwell?”

“I did just ask him if he had a sister, and he seemed
almost to resent the enquiry. ‘No, certainly not', he said, and I refrained from telling him why I asked.”

Ada's face was contorted by the mastication of an obstinately cohesive caramel.

“Could the Stabber be a woman?” she asked.

“I see no absolute and final reason against it,” said Carolus. “May we move forward, now, to the night of the second murder?”

“That we can tell you more about,” said Ada who had mastered her difficulties and was seeking more with a burnt almond. “I played Bridge with poor Joyce that very evening and Lionel',' Carolus remembered that Goggins was Lionel, “discovered the body in the morning. We knew nothing about the lover, though.”

“My dear, I hardly think…”

“Well, he was her lover, wasn't he?”

“You were playing Bridge at Mrs. Whitehill's?”

“Yes. We started after tea. About half-past four. It was nearly nine when Joyce said she
had
to go. I stayed on to supper.”

“Nothing unusual occurred during that time?”

“A few sharp words from Stella Whitehill to her niece. Joyce and I won twenty-seven shillings.”

“And Joyce Ribbing went off quite cheerfully?”

“Quite. Said something about neglecting her old man and fled. Nobody thought anything of it at the time. There had only been one murder, you see. She wasn't the sort of woman you'd think anything could happen to. Capable, you know, and downright.”

“What time did you come home?”

“About ten. I had left Lionel some food. He doesn't eat much, anyway.”

“So you must have passed within a couple of yards of the body as you walked up to your front door?”

“Must have, mustn't I? Nothing in that, though. We don't have an outside light and the body had been shoved right under the front hedge.”

“Still, if you'd turned that way you'd have seen it.”

“If
I'd turned that way. But fortunately I didn't. I should have had a fit.”

“What I'm getting at,” said Carolus patiently, “is that when the murderer left the body there he did not very much care whether it was discovered before morning or not. He could see the lights in your hall. If it was someone who knew all about your movements he knew that you would be coming home from WhitehilPs and might easily see it. If he knew nothing, he still must have thought you might have to let the dog out, or receive late callers, or something. He did not mind how soon the body was discovered so long as he was out of the immediate vicinity. He made no attempt to conceal it, did he?”

“None, beyond putting it well under the hedge.”

“Where you, Mr. Goggins, first saw it in the morning?”

“Yes. I looked out to see what kind of day it was and saw it at once.”

“We were just having a cup of tea and a biscuit,” put in Ada. “It quite upset Lionel. He has a very sensitive stomach. Well, its not very nice to find someone you know lying murdered in your garden, is it?”

“I've never had the experience,” admitted Carolus, “but I should think it was highly unpleasant. So the assumption is that Joyce Ribbing was murdered almost outside your gate.”

“That is so,” said Goggins.

“And you were in the house the whole time?”

“I was.”

“Television?”

“Yes, indeed. My wife, Mr. Deene, is what I believe is termed a Bridge fiend, and I have become accustomed to passing the hours of her absence with one or another of the programmes.”

“I see. So even if there had been quite a disturbance in the street you might not have heard it?”

“I certainly shouldn't. The set is in the back room.”

“And your next-door neighbours?”

“We have no acquaintance with them but I have observed that both have aerials. Well, it would be strange if they hadn't, wouldn't it?”

“It would indeed. Yet it still seems to me even stranger that a woman can be murdered a few yards from a number of dwelling-houses at nine o'clock on a winter evening in England and no one be the wiser.”

“One of the blessings of television,” said Ada Goggins gaily as she wiped the chocolate from her fingers.

“There must have been some sound,” Carolus pointed out.

“The police are of the opinion that there was almost none, I understand. The stabbing was an expert job,” remarked Goggins.

“Even so…”

“And what about the first one?” asked Ada. “Up the road, I mean. No one heard that.”