Death Knocks Three Times (2 page)

“Who or what is the Colonel?” asked Crook, frankly.

“Crossed in love. That’s what ‘e is. More than thirty years ago. Going to be married to a proper young lady, all the ‘ouse dolled up, new curtings, new carpets, and then at the eleventh hour she thought she’d sooner string along with a younger chap. So one day she jumped into a bus and went to Charing Cross and sent him a telegram from the station, signed with her married name.”

Crook thought the old boy could give points to some of the modem novelists, who’d have taken forty thousand words to get to that point, but he didn’t say anything and a moment later Bligh stopped in front of a closed door and set down the lamp on a table so thick with dust you could have written your name in it.

” ‘Ere’s the bathroom,” he said, flinging the door wide.

Crook took a step forward. “Holy smoke!” he exclaimed, “Call this a bathroom?”

“What the ‘ell else do you suppose it is?”

Crook nodded. “You win.”

It had been a bedroom once, he supposed, with its cavernous fireplace and a window seat covered with a ragged cushion. But he was prepared to wager everything he hoped to make from this current case that no fire had ever been kindled in that rusty, dusty grate. It was, however, the bath that held his attention. It was a huge Victorian monstrosity, with a heavy mahogany lid at present hooked up against the wall. The interior was chipped with the passing of years, and it stood on four enormous claw feet.

“Does he really get into that?” Crook asked in an awed voice.

“Every Wednesday. Mind you, ‘e still calls it soft. In the Army, ‘e says, a man gets into one of these saucer baths with a soldier servant to bring up the water, and that’s what ‘e ‘as ‘ere the other six days.” He groaned piously. “All very well for ‘im being so fussy about keeping clean, but ‘00 ‘as to carry the water? I’ll tell you— me.”

“Can’t you get it from here?” asked Crook. “Or does he sleep in another wing?”

“I can get the cold ‘ere; there’s no ‘ot. That ‘as to come up from the basement, four blinking cans of it. Think of it, chum. Four cans of ‘ot water brought up four perishing flights of stairs and this the year 1949. Why, in 1918 this bath should ‘ave gone into the Chamber of ‘Orrors and for all I know it may end there yet, and ‘e calls it soft.”

“How many jugs do you have to bring up on Wednesday nights?” asked Crook.

“Wednesday ‘e ‘as it cold—and ‘im past seventy. But ‘e’s tough as a stringy old bean. Mind you, round about ‘ere they think ‘e’s—you know.” He tapped his head significantly. “Never no visitors, never no parties.”

“No relations?”

“Only Mr. John. ‘E’s a nephew. Comes up about three times a year just to keep in touch -with the old man, ‘e says; keep in touch with ‘is money-bags, if you ask me. But ‘e’s got a disappointment coming, you mark my words. I’ll get you a clean towel,” he added, grudgingly, moving away into the dark corridor and taking the lamp with him. As soon as his steps had died away Crook fished a torch out of his pocket and looked around. This place was a booby-trap, all right. If Bligh wanted to get rid of the old chap he only had to release the lid of the bath, shove the old boy’s head under the water and then go for a nice walk. If he didn’t drown he’d choke. Simple as pie. He looked at the great hooks that held the lid in place. They seemed firm enough, but you could never be sure.

Outside the rain roared and the wind shouted. There would be no going on tonight. Even this solid old barracks seemed to rock on its foundations.

Bligh came back with a fine, embroidered towel, and a piece of kitchen soap, but no suggestion of hot water. The mirror was hung too high for a man of his stature and the glass was silvered. However, he didn’t suppose the Colonel would notice if he came down naked.

“This is a funny break,” he reflected, presently following Bligh downstairs. “What’s in it for Walter?”

S
EEN at close quarters. Colonel Sherren proved to be a huge old man dressed in a very old-fashioned dinner suit and a fantastic black tie. Crook’s characteristic reflection was, “Well, if he got a snap invitation to a fancy-dress ball he wouldn’t have to change a thing.”

The room in which the two men sat was enormous, cold as a coffin and, like the rest of the house, lighted by lamps. Crook told himself if anything happened to these two I suppose they could fossilize here before anyone discovered ‘em.

He wondered, not too optimistically, if the old fellow had ever heard of beer. More likely to be offered a glass of vintage port, and he’d be expected to roll it about, nod his head and practically gargle with it. He wondered if Providence would strike him dead if he said he was a teetotaller.

“One thing, you’ve got plenty of room here,” he remarked, controlling an impulse to shout. “Many evacuees during the war?”

“They came,” said the Colonel grimly, “but when they saw we hadn’t all these new-fangled modern conveniences they went away again. Quite right, too. I don’t keep this house to shelter a lot of hothouse brats or aged lunatics.”

Dinner was as bad as Crook had anticipated. During the interminable evening the old man unbent a little. He said he couldn’t think how it was Crook had found the place at all. Crook said perhaps it was Providence.

“What’s that mean?” snapped the Colonel.

“One of these days I might be some use to you.”

“Good of you to suggest it. What d’ye do?”

Crook told him.

“Lawyer, eh? Nothing in that line wanted here. Got all my affairs fixed up.”

“Can’t be sure,” insisted Crook. “F’rinstance, how can you be certain you ain’t breaking the law?”

“Which one?”

“That’s just it. There are about ten thousand. No chap can hope to keep ‘em all.”

“And what can you do? Persuade the police I haven’t broken it?”

“Could be,” said Mr. Crook, modestly.

“Humph!” The old man snorted. “You ought to meet my nephew. He writes books.”

“Oh, yes,” said Crook, looking intelligent. “What you buy off stalls on railway stations. Me, I don’t use the railways much.”

“If they try and sell John’s claptrap at railway bookstalls it’s not surprising railway shares are dropping. It’s my belief he bribes the publishers to put ‘em out.”

“Perhaps his wife,” began Crook, but die old chap snorted.

“John’s not married. He’s a landlady’s pet. And from the look of

him you’d think when she polished the furniture she gave him a polish, too. Face like an apple and eyes like currants. Always the little gentleman. Even in the war …” He broke off an instant, considering. Then, “What’s M.I.5?” he shot out.

“Something hush-hush at the War Office, they tell me.”

“Trust John to get on to something like that. Probably holds the world’s record for listening at key-holes. Did well, he tells me. John Sherren, the Whitehall Wonder. But wear a uniform? Not him. Damn it, man, I said, can’t you even join the Home Guard? But he might have got his dear little face dirty. Pshaw! My brother’s boy. Posthumous. Brought up by women. Not surprising he writes novels, I suppose. The Bright Boy of Brakemouth, that’s John. Faugh! Tell me some more about yourself.”

And, some time later, “Mean to say if I managed to shove this fellow out of the window you could make a judge believe he’d done it himself?”

“Not precisely,” said Crook. “I’d be inclined to plump for self-defense. Your heir waiting to give you a helpin’ hand to the land of hope and glory. Naturally, you can’t allow him to go breaking the law and—well, that’s how I’d see it, and how the old bird on the bench would see it by the time I was through.”

“Dear me!” said the Colonel, and his eyes gleamed. “And I gathered from some nonsensical paper Bligh imported into my house that private enterprise was dead.”

“Not at 123 Bloomsbury Street, it ain’t. Next time you’re in town look me up, won’t you?”

The Colonel carefully wrote down the name and address.

“Better have the home one, too,” Crook invited him. “It’s only a couple of attics in S.W.5,, but at least I have ‘em to myself.”

“No Mrs. Crook?”

“Be your age,” said Crook, rudely. “Do I look like a family man?”

“Quite so, quite so.” The Colonel appeared a little embarrassed, as if he thought one confirmed bachelor should recognize another. “In any case, yours is a sufficiently dangerous existence as it is. If my nephew—but John wouldn’t risk his precious life. What ‘ud happen to literature if he snuffed it out?”

“Ah, well,” said Crook, dismissing the subject of John as unimportant. “It cuts both ways. If there’s a lot of chaps who’d like to

see Arthur Crook under the daisies, there’s just as many who know it’s them or me, and they’ll make it tlieir job to keep me on my pins as long as I can stagger.”

Bligh came in twice more and on the second occasion the old man exploded irritably: “What the devil’s the matter, man? Mr. Crook and I can look after the fire, if that’s all that’s troubling you. Lock up and get off to bed. We don’t either of us want hot milk.”

“It’s long after your usual time,” muttered Bligh sulkily.

“What do you think you are? A nurse? I’ll go to bed when I damn well please. Mr. Crook’s right. I’ve been vegetating here long enough. You’d have me in a wheelchair with an ear-trumpet if you had your way.”

Bligh departed with a very sour glance in Crook’s direction and it was nearly one o’clock before the two men reluctantly left the ashes of the fire and made their way to the ice-cold regions above. The Colonel insisted on showing Crook to his room, and stood in the doorway, complacently admiring his own hospitality.

“Got everything you want, I hope,” he said, looking from the bleak blue blind—he presumably included curtains on his list of womanish luxuries—to the stark furniture, the ragged carpet and the bed, an iron monstrosity with one brass knob missing. There was an enormous washstand supporting a double set of toilet ware, a gigantic wardrobe, an empty grate and a general smell of mice. Beside the bed, on an octagonal bamboo table, stood a china candlestick.

“And you know your way to the bathroom?”

Crook said he thought so, but the Colonel insisted on showing him. It was just as well he did, as Crook would never have found his way alone.

“Handy,” said the Colonel approvingly, looking around the ice-cold barn of a room. “Everything ship-shape.” He drew Crook’s attention to a long thorny object which looked like a strip of shredded wheat eight or ten inches long and which he referred to as a loofah. Crook had seen these Spartan washcloths in many English bathrooms, but never by any furthest chance could he have been induced to use such an instrument of torture. It was secured to a string and fastened to a cup-hook on the lid of the bath; a sponge as big as a man’s head dwelt in a wire basket similarly secured. “All

these flibbertigibbets,” the old man went on. “No method. Get into the bath, find you’ve left the sponge on the basin. I like things to look as neat as my orderly room used to.”

Crook said faintly that was nice, wasn’t it? Yes, he was sure he could find his way back, and listened to the Colonel’s retreating footsteps. They seemed to retreat a very long way. As for Bligh, he probably slept up in the attic or down in the basement or where-ever the kitchen was situated.

It was some time before Crook could nerve himself to remove his coat; as he had anticipated, the bed was as hard as a plank; the linen sheets felt like iron; there was one pillow stuffed with stones, and he caught his big toe in the elaborate fringe of the white mar-cella quilt.

The night seemed endless, as all nights do when you don’t sleep. The house rocked and creaked, the stairs groaned. Once a door slammed loudly, but whether that was Bligh, the Colonel or the storm Crook didn’t get up to discover. He crawled out in the morning convinced he was black and blue, and was instantly relieved to find the rain was over and an optimistic sun had appeared. True, the roads seemed mainly under water, and no man who respected his car would have dreamed of taking it out, but Crook would have backed the Scourge against Noah’s Ark, and he came downstairs whistling vaingloriously to find Bligh putting the finishing touch to the cheerless breakfast table.

“Sun inside and out,” approved Crook, pausing on the threshold. “What d’you do with yourselves all day in this back of beyond?”

“Make ‘istory. Leastways, the Colonel does. D’you take sugar with your porridge? Because there ain’t any.”

“I don’t take porridge,” said Crook.

“Blime, you’re going to be ‘ungry. The old gent don’t keep *ens.”

“What time does the pub open?” asked Crook.

“Ten o’clock.”

“I can last till then. How often does the heir pay a visit?”

” ‘E’s coming today, if you want to know, ‘Ad a card this morning. Why don’t you stop on and meet ‘im?”

But Crook said cheerfully that must be a pleasure deferred.

“Why, you’re not thinking of coming ‘ere again, are you?” asked Bligh, in alarm. “You’ll upset ‘im proper if you do. ‘E’s talking of going to London as it is.”

“Why not?” asked Crook.

“Why not? Because it ‘ud be the death of ‘im. D’you savvy the old chap’s never seen a traffic light?”

“He ought to be in a museum.”

“If they find ‘im wandering around Piccadilly ‘e probably will be. Nor it ain’t no joke neither. It don’t matter ‘im being cuckoo up ‘ere with only me to know, but in London they’d send ‘im out on a chain, like a traveling bear.”

“Oh, come,” said Crook. “What about the R.S.P.C.A.?”

It was slightly disconcerting when the Colonel came storming in and asked Crook who the devil he was.

“If you’re from the government about the lower meadow you can save time—and gas. I’ve told you already …”

“Not me,” said Crook, “and it ‘ud be a waste of breath, because I don’t suppose I’d understand when you’d finished. Crook’s the name.”

“You remember, sir,” broke in Bligh. “Last night …”

“Probably thinks I’m part of his nightmare,” said Crook, quite unmoved.

The Colonel was staring at Crook in an uncertain manner. “I seem to have seen you somewhere. Why, of course, you’re the chap who drove a rattletrap across the moor in yesterday’s storm. Sleep well? Slept like a top myself. You at the first battle of the Somme, by any chance?”