Such Is Death (7 page)

She said this in a confidential tone as though she thought Carolus was eagerly waiting for a chance to converse with her, and when, as she predicted, ‘the Rotary' trooped out she leaned over the bar.

“I saw you were booking in,” she said. “I thought to myself, well that's a funny thing, the last gentleman we had come here on his own was the poor fellow who was murdered. You've read all about that, I suppose.”

“Yes. I've read something of it.”

“We had him in here, you know,” went on Doris proudly. “Yes, he stayed all the evening drinking doubles. Didn't he, Vivienne?”

“Mmmm,” said Vivienne.

“He wasn't drunk, mind you. We wouldn't have served him if he had of been. But he wasn't sober, either. You should have seen the way he walked out of here. As though he was holding on to a rail, he went. Then no sooner had he got down to the shelter than this murderer knocked him on the head with a coal-hammer. It doesn't bear thinking about, does it?”

“Yes,” said Carolus. “Had you ever seen him before?”

“Me? Him? Never in my life. I said to Vivienne—didn't I, Vivienne?—I've never seen
him
before. It wasn't a face you'd forget, either. Staring eyes, he had, like I don't know what. Seemed to drill right into you. And he was talking all this about having been presumed dead and coming back to life though some wouldn't like it. Enough to give you the creeps. Which room have you got?”

“Number three.”

“I thought so. That's the room he had, only Mr Rugley doesn't like it being talked about. You don't need to worry because it's all been done out since. The police came and took away what little he had and it's been cleaned nicely. It's nothing to upset you now.”

“It doesn't,” said Carolus. “After all, he wasn't murdered there, was he?”

“Oh, what a thing to say! Of course he wasn't. I'm surprised at you saying a thing like that. D'you hear what he says, Vivienne? He says, ‘he wasn't murdered there, was he?'‘

“Mmmm,” said Viviennne with a remote demure smile.

“Thank goodness he wasn't,” went on Doris. “We've had enough of it as it is with the police here every five minutes asking questions. I told them the last time, I said, perhaps you think one of us done it? They didn't like that. Well, it's silly, I think. If they can't find out who it was, what's the good of asking me what time he went to the telephone? I said to them, what do you think I
am? An alarm clock? I can't tell you what time it was. It was after seven, I do know that.”

“You're not really sure whether he did telephone, I suppose?”

“He went in the box all right because George saw him. That's the porter. Whether he got through or not I don't know. Only it seems funny if he didn't, otherwise who was to know he was going to that shelter? It's not everyone would go there on a night like that with an icy wind nearly cutting you in half every time you looked out.”

“So you think he arranged to meet the murderer there?”

“That's what it looks like, doesn't it? Though who's to say now? I don't suppose we'll ever know the truth about it. It's a funny business all round. Of course, it quite upset me'n Vivienne at the time. Well, it would, wouldn't it? Anybody being murdered like that. But I don't think much more about it. One of the papers was going to put my picture in, only it never cane to anything. Still, it's an experience. All in a life, as you might say.”

“Did this man seem nervous?”

“No, it wasn't that. He didn't seem as though he was expecting it to happen, if that's what you mean. He kept filling up with another double Scotch till I wondered where it would stop, but you couldn't say he was jumpy or afraid of anything. He didn't take much notice of the other customers, either. I was surprised, really, when I heard about it after. Well, it wasn't what you'd expect, was it? But I said at once to Vivienne that there was something very funny about him. Those eyes! I shall never forget them. And the way he talked about coming to life again. We both thought it was funny, didn't we, Vivienne?”

“Mmmm,” said Vivienne whose glance was fixed on faraway things in the ceiling.

“It's not every day you get anything like that,” Doris went on. “I sometimes wonder what it will be next.”

“I suppose,” Carolus said, as though it was of no great
concern to him but he wished to make conversation, “I suppose you didn't notice whether any of your other customers had their eyes on him at all?”

“It's funny you should ask that,” said Doris. “Because I said to Vivienne afterwards, I said, Mr Lobbin seemed quite taken up with that fellow, I said. He could scarcely take his eyes off him. He's ever such a nice man, Mr Lobbin. Has the paper shop a few doors away. I've never heard him say an unkind word. What it was about this other fellow I don't know but he stood there watching him for a long while.”

“Did he say anything to you about him?”

“Yes. Asked me his name. And when George had looked it up in the book I told him, but he didn't make any remark.”

“Anyone else interested?”

“Not that I was aware of. This fellow didn't do anything to call attention to himself, really. There may have been others who noticed him. I couldn't say. But Mr Lobbin certainly did.”

“No one followed him out? Rafter, I mean?”

“You want to know a lot, don't you?” said Doris good-humouredly.

“Yes, I do,” said Carolus at once, deciding that frankness with Doris would pay. “I've been employed to investigate this murder.”

“Detective, you mean?”

“An interested party.”

Doris nodded. “I see. Well it
is
interesting when anything like that's happened. No, I don't think anyone followed him out, particularly. Only I noticed Mr and Mrs Bullamy, who were sitting over there, went out soon after. I noticed it because they never go before closing-time. I said to Mr Bullamy, are you going? I said, and he said, yes, he said, we've got to feed the baby. He was only joking, because they've got no children. They're only staying in the town, not residents, but they come in every night, regular as clockwork, and stay till we close. You ought to see her! She's quite a nice party but she looks
more than half like a man. He's smaller than she is. They've got a little money, I should say, though they don't throw it about. You'll see them tonight if you're here.”

“Where are they staying?”

“Oh right up the other end of the town.”

“When did Lobbin leave the bar that evening?”

“Oh, not till we were just going to close at ten o'clock. That's about usual for him. You see his wife has all the say. He seems scared of her though he's a big fellow. It's a shame, really. She's one of those that never stop. Nag, nag, nag. He's a quiet peaceable sort of man. That very evening he was telling me they'd had a real up-and-downer and he'd come out to get away from it for a few minutes. I said I didn't wonder. I know what she is. A proper tartar. Still, there you are. It takes all sorts to make a world, doesn't it?”

“I gather the murdered man's family lives in Selby. Do you know any of them?”

“Only by sight, really. I'd never heard of them before this happened. Vivienne knows Mrs Dalbinney, don't you, Vivienne?”

“Mmmm,” Vivienne assented and added, “she lives in the block of flats where my husband works.”

After that somewhat surprising confession her attention went back to the distances.

“Yes,” enlarged Doris, “Vivienne's husband is the night porter at Prince Albert Mansions, so they're both on at night, which suits them very nicely. This Mrs Dalbinney has a big flat on the first floor, very posh Vivienne says it is. She's Separated, you see. When I heard she was the sister of this fellow who'd been murdered I couldn't help laughing. It seemed funny because he was half down-and-out-looking, as you might say, and from what Vivienne says she's very high and mighty. Oh, very high and mighty she is, Vivienne says. Her sister's not, though. That's the unmarried one, Miss Emma Rafter. She's started coming in here—Vivienne serves her, don't you Vivienne? There's nothing stuck-up about her. It's more
horses and that. She looks that sort, too. Always with a big Boxer dog.”

“What about the brother, Bertrand Rafter?”

“I don't know anything about him. They say he's very quiet. He never comes in here. Well, if it's true what they say he can't very well. See, he's living with that young secretary of his. I don't know why they don't get married. They've been together a long time, now. I tell you who does come in sometimes, though. That's young Dalbinney. He can't be more than twenty-one or so and they say he's ever so clever. Has a lot to say for himself, anyway. Books and that.”

“He wasn't here on the evening we're talking about, was he?”

“I wonder. I can't be sure, really. I don't think he was, else I'd have remembered. Unless that was him talking to Mr Stringer over there. No, that was another night. I'm sure he wasn't in, was he, Vivienne? Young Dalbinney? On the night that fellow was murdered?”

“I really couldn't say,” said Vivienne without much feeling.

“I don't think so, anyway,” said Doris, dismissing the matter. “Are you going to have lunch in the hotel? They've got sheeps' hearts on today.”

“I might,” said Carolus, thinking this was the end of Doris's confidences, at any rate for the moment.

“You'll enjoy them. Our cook does them ever so nicely. And I'll try and think of anything else I can tell you. Oh! There was one thing I didn't like. When he first came in—this fellow who was murdered, I mean—while he was sober he paid with a note pulled from his pocket case. A small case it was, the folding kind, that he took from his hip pocket. But when he'd had a few of those large whiskies he pulled out an envelope full of money and paid from that. It looked like a lot of money to me and I didn't like it, with him having had a lot to drink.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No. It wasn't for me to say anything. I didn't think any more about it, really.”

“Have you told anyone else this?”

“No. I've only just remembered it. And the way those police spoke to anyone I shouldn't have told them whatever happened.”

“An envelope?”

“Yes. Just an ordinary envelope. He kept it up in his breast pocket. I think there was some writing on it.”

“Did anyone else see it?”

“I don't think they could have done. Not here, anyway. There was no one near him at the time.”

“Did you know everyone who came to the bar that night?”

“Pretty well. I didn't know who Miss Rafter was at the time, but I heard after. There was no one out of the ordinary in that evening.”

It was three weeks since the murder, yet Carolus felt very close to it. The splendid little Doris could obviously think about nothing else and had been remarkably observant. Then Carolus was occupying the room in which Rafter was to have slept and drinking in the bar in which he had spent his last evening. This afternoon, moreover, Carolus intended to walk down to the shelter on the promenade in which the body was found. That time had passed since the murder was unimportant. Carolus felt, as he had intended to feel, in the thick of it.

More so when after lunch he set out for a walk along the promenade. There was a direct road called Carter Street from the Queen Victoria hotel to the sea as he had noticed when he had driven over it this morning. Carolus took it and reached what he took to have been the point at which Rafter was hesitating when the policeman saw him. Nothing whatever could be deduced from that hesitation. He could have been merely wondering, in a half-drunken stupor, whether to turn left or right, or he could have been debating in which direction the last shelter lay if he had made an appointment to meet someone there. Or just getting his breath.

At all events he had turned right and Carolus did the same. There had been a strong wind against Rafter, he remembered, and very few people about. Today there was a last streak of pale sunlight on the sea and it was cold. He passed a number of people well wrapped up who seemed to be taking their exercise seriously.

Ahead of him he counted four shelters, about two hundred yards apart, so that the last was nearly half a mile away. It would have taken Rafter at least ten minutes, in that wind, to reach it. The first two shelters were fairly well occupied but, by the time he reached the third, people passed less frequently, and in the shelter only two people sat looking rather chilly.

Beyond it no one seemed to be walking. The road dividing the promenade from the houses which overlooked the sea now curved inland, leaving a long triangular garden between it and the promenade. This garden broadened out till by the time Carolus reached the last shelter he was thirty yards or so from the road. The garden had iron railings and before approaching the shelter Carolus turned in to it and spoke to a man working there.

“Is this garden loogked at night? “he asked.

“How many more times?” asked the man. “If I've been asked that question once I've been asked it a score of times since this murder's happened. Yes, I lock it myself every evening at eight in winter and ten in summer. Never do to leave it open. You'd be surprised what they get up to if a garden's open at night.”

“No I shouldn't,” said Carolus truthfully. “It was locked on the night this man was killed?”

“Certainly it was. That's not to say someone couldn't have popped over the iron railings if he was a bit nippy. It's been done before. We had a lot of plants stolen last year.”

“You've no reason to think anyone did so that night?”

“No, I haven't. The police was examining all along the railings and in the flower-beds and that. I don't know whether they found anything. They don't say. But I saw
no sign of it having been got into. If this murderer was the sort of Jack the Ripper I think he was …”