The Tiger In the Smoke (20 page)

‘Buff?' They were on her at once, eager with inquiry.

‘I think so. I couldn't swear to it.'

‘It wasn't a navy raincoat, anyway?'

‘No. It was lightish.'

‘Any hat?'

She hesitated. ‘I can't remember any brim,' she said, ‘and yet I don't remember any hair either. My impression is that he had a round, tight sort of head. The thing I do remember and the thing I'd know again is the extraordinary atmosphere of the man, if that's the right word. He was urgent, somehow, rather like you, Chief Inspector.'

‘That's Havoc,' exclaimed Oates, highly delighted. ‘You can't go saying that in evidence, Amanda, but it satisfies me. Don't misunderstand us, Luke my boy, but I know what she means. He's an extraordinarily vital animal. He's got force.'

Luke hunched his shoulders. ‘I don't know about force,' he said bitterly. ‘Just give me his direction. I'm not saying I've not got plenty to go on. His prints were all over the solicitor's office, and I don't doubt they are here. He's leaving a trail like a drag hunt. We're bound to get him before dawn. But meanwhile there's four people dead who ought to be alive, one of them a famous man, and another of 'em one of the best kids who ever lived. When this is over I've got to go and see Coleman's old mum. He was her only one and she hoped he'd turn out like me, God help her. Four murders in my manor since six tonight and the chap jumps quietly out of a ring of us.'

He stuck his long right forefinger through a circle made of his left hand, and took a swinging grab at it with his right fist. It was an expressive illustration, but its point was lost in an uncharacteristic explosion from Amanda, whose brown eyes had become wide and horrified.

‘That man murdered four people tonight? You didn't tell us. Meg and I might have been killed.'

Her reaction was so angry, and so exactly an echo of their own earlier performances, that it punctured the emotional tension like a bubble. Mr Campion began to laugh and Oates joined him. Amanda remained furious, her flaming hair no redder than her cheeks.

‘I think we might have been told,' she said. The unreason of the statement occurred to her the moment it had escaped her, and her expression grew blank. ‘I say, how horrible,' she said in an altered voice. ‘Who is he? A maniac?'

‘Not if I know it.' Luke was softly ferocious. ‘No psychiatrist is going to get him off through that door. He'll see the inside of the topping-shed when I get hold of him.'

‘And you think you'll get him soon?' Amanda spoke absently. She was shivering and she glanced behind her into the shadows.

‘Luke will get him soon.' Oates stirred in his chair. He looked very mild and elderly sitting there, the candle-light falling on his close-cropped head, but his voice was chill with certainty. ‘The animal is trapped,' he said. ‘Nothing can save him. He has a start on us, but now that the machine has gone into action the odds against him are lengthening every hour. By this time his record has been studied. That means that every living soul who has ever been known to have anything to do with him is going to be contacted, questioned, and kept under observation. For instance, we know he had a visitor in prison. So far that woman (she's a lodging-house keeper in Bethnal Green) has not heard from him since he escaped. She won't hear. She won't have a chance. All
her
associates will be examined. He'll have no help there.'

‘He picked up a knife somewhere,' grumbled Luke, ‘and a buff hairy coat. He was in issue clothes when he escaped.'

‘That was at the beginning.' Oates still spoke mildly. ‘You'll find that phase is over. From now on he must become more and more alone. I've seen it happen again and again. Quietly and steadily the holes are stopped, the net grows smaller and smaller. Now he has reached the stage when he can never take another step knowing it to be a safe one. He can never enter another room, never turn another corner, without taking his life in his hands.' He paused and regarded them with cold grave eyes. ‘Tomorrow, if he has not been taken, we shall probably offer a reward. An enterprising newspaper will double it at once. After that he'll never be able to trust another living soul.'

Luke breathed heavily through his long nose. ‘Fair enough, but we ought to have taken him tonight. This was our best bet. He'll keep away from Mrs Elginbrodde and her friends now, whatever he's looking for.'

Amanda was astonished. ‘Why Meg? What is he looking for?'

‘Some documents,' said Campion. ‘Something to do with Martin. He went for Martin's file at the solicitor's.'

He made the explanation briefly and his hand on her arm tightened, warning her to be discreet. She nodded, but her next question was unfortunate.

‘What happened to Geoffrey?'

‘You may well ask.' Luke's bright eyes were very keen. ‘Not a murmur from that young man since he went down an alley with a crook who was picked up dead soon after. There's another person who can vanish like smoke.'

Campion's restraining hand became even heavier. ‘My dear,' he murmured with an old-fashioned primness which was becoming increasingly noticeable in him as he grew older, ‘you and I are going home. If Luke needs either of us he knows where to find us – as he would say himself – at the old address. Meg has been taken home to the rectory, where there are quite a dozen good people anxious to comfort her. We have got to get across the town to Bottle Street somehow in this fog and I feel the time has come when we should try.'

‘Good idea,' said Amanda quickly and she slid her arm through his.

They left the sad little house to Luke and his minions, who had a great deal of work to do, but had some difficulty in escaping from Oates, who had made up his mind to give them a lift in the official limousine of which he was so vain. Salvation came unexpectedly when they got outside to find Mr Lugg was waiting in Mr Campion's sister's remarkable landau. The fat man had been thoroughly frightened and was reacting in the popular way. He was in truculent mood.

‘'Op in the back of this 'ere 'at-box,' he said briefly, his moonface scowling at them through the choking gloom. ‘It only took me two hours to get 'ere, but at any rate no one could see what I was in and laugh. 'Ow did you expect me to find you – second sight?'

Amanda climbed into the warm cabin with relief. Val's town car, if highly individual, was extremely comfortable. She had supervised the renovation of the fine old Daimler herself and had achieved a modern gaiety of décor which was part her practical self and part Dali. The glass partition between the driver and the passengers had been removed, and the upholstery, carried out in olive-green and an intelligent maroon, was openly reminiscent of Georgian backstairs livery, so that the vehicle had been rechristened by the family The Running Footman. It was very gay and gallant and pleasant to escape to.

Amanda pulled the saffron rug round her and sighed.

‘Bless you, Magers,' she said. ‘How did you do it? Telephoned the police station, I suppose?'

‘Not me. I don't stick me 'ead into every narks' nest I 'ear of, like some people.' He leant over the back and pushed the door wide for Campion. ‘If it 'adn't been for that Mrs Elginbrodde – wot a smashereeno, eh! – 'oo come up outside the rectory in a police car looking like a jool in a sink-tidy, I'd be sitting in the square still. She told me quite enough to go on with. Why don't you stick to aeroplanes? They're safer and they're class. Murders is mud and always ‘as been. Don't forget it.'

He cast a baleful glance at his employer, who was at last inside.

‘You're quite content, I suppose?' he inquired. ‘Up to the oxters in blood and 'appy as a lark.'

Mr Campion regarded him coldly. ‘Where's Rupert?'

‘Mindin' the telephone. That's where Sexton Blake is.' Lugg settled himself behind the wheel. ‘'E and the dorg give me the only 'elp I get. I give them the nightwatchman as a runner.'

He let in the clutch with a sigh and pulled out silently into the fog.

‘Now,' said Amanda to Albert as their tight little world moved cautiously through the gloom, ‘now, what about Geoffrey?'

‘Exactly.' Mr Campion borrowed some of her rug. ‘What, indeed? I don't see eye to eye with Luke exactly, but I wish that young man would have the grace to turn up.'

As usual Amanda was forthright.

‘Just how funny does it look?'

‘Hardly a belly-laugh.' Her husband warmed his hands on hers. ‘He was certainly with Duds Morrison the last time the man was seen alive, and they were then only a few feet from where the crook was subsequently found dead. From that moment Levett appears to have wandered off and lost interest. It's not good.'

‘Where was this?'

He told her briefly, sketching in the story of Havoc's escape and the triple crime at the solicitor's office.

She shivered and Lugg, who was both listening and driving, no inconsiderable feat in the circumstances, gave an opinion which if vulgar was not unfair.

Campion took no notice of him. ‘Luke is bitter, naturally,' he said, ‘and he's liable to be rude to him. He's lost a good boy whom he liked and he's savage about that. Missing the man tonight shook him more than he showed.'

‘But he doesn't really suspect Geoffrey of kicking Duds Morrison to death, or does he?'

‘No. I don't think he does. But he feels, as I do for that matter, that this is no time for Geoffrey to play the injured lover. He and Meg have quarrelled, I suppose?'

‘No, they haven't. I'm sure they haven't. She's too worried for that. She thinks something may have happened to him. Could it?'

‘What? You suggest that both these chaps may have run into a third man, and that Geoffrey is lying about somewhere unnoticed?'

‘Oh, don't. Don't. Don't say it. Meg would never get over that.'

‘Nor would Master Geoff, on form,' remarked their driver with relish. ‘It's my belief you could lose anything in this drop of Brown Windsor. But it's not reely likely, is it? I mean, when we've 'ad our laugh we've got to face facts. No corp is goin' to lie about in the street without somone fallin' over it. It wouldn't be natural, would it?'

‘It would not. It's not likely, or even possible.' Mr Campion was frankly worried. ‘I simply can't understand the chap fading away on his own affairs when he ought to have gone to the police himself. He ought to have made a statement at once. Why didn't he report his meeting with Morrison? We shall have to tread very softly in this business, Amanda.'

‘Yes, I do see that.' She echoed his seriousness. ‘Whatever has happened, he must be made to go to the police himself, that's vital. Isn't there a chance that he may not know what has happened yet? Do you
know
that he went down the path after the man?'

‘The inference is that he did. The evidence on that point is rather interesting. The young detective who was stabbed at the solicitor's office had been interviewing the caretaker there when Havoc disturbed them. The detective seems to have been an earnest youth, and he had taken down a long statement in his notebook which he got the old fellow to sign. I can't give it you verbatim, but the old man had stated that he had heard footsteps running down the path which skirts his garden just about the time when Duds and Geoffrey are known to have left The Feathers. He referred to “the rush of many feet” and “I heard a number of men”. The detective seems to have queried him but couldn't shake him. It probably means very little but it hardly suggests that only Morrison ran that way, does it? The caretaker appears to have been in the back room all the evening and said he heard no one else in the passageway until there was all the excitement when the police arrived.'

He ended on an upward note and hesitated.

‘Yes?' encouraged Amanda.

‘Well, the other thing is rather ridiculous. Probably hysteria, poor devil, but it looked very strange written down.'

‘Oh, for gord's sake!' exploded Mr Lugg, a misty mountain in the muffled light from the dashboard. ‘Drivin' this and listenin' to you, it's like being up to me eyes in the creek. What '
ad
the perisher wrote down?'

‘The caretaker said he heard chains,' said Mr Campion, stung into baldness. ‘The precise words were “I heard the rattle of heavy chains as the men ran past, which made me wonder”.'

Mr Lugg grunted. ‘Was this bloke 'Avoc manacled to go to the psycho geezer?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Well, you never know these days – is this a road island we're coming to or the side of Barclays Bank? Manacles was passy when I was at college, but these reforms always 'ave a catch in 'em. I thought perhaps they'd gorn back to leg-irons in the up-to-date ‘e's-not-a-felon-'e's-only-a-nut institutions. 'Oo was wearin' chains, anyway?'

‘No one, presumably. I imagine the caretaker dreamed them.'

‘Someone else for the bin.' Lugg manoeuvred into Park Lane and sat on the tail of a late bus for Victoria. ‘I could do with a spot of p and q in a padded cell myself. That was Marble Arch I was 'ootin' at. I thought she was takin' 'er time.'

‘Chains,' said Amanda thoughtfully. ‘What else sounds like chains, apart from Lugg's gearbox?'

Mr Campion stiffened at her side. ‘Money,' he said suddenly. ‘Coins. Coins in one of those heavy wooden collecting-boxes.'

Through all the excitement of the day a recollection had returned to him. He saw again the perambulating group in the gutter and heard the echo of a song, urgent and ferocious.

‘I say,' he said softly, ‘I say, it's an outside chance, old lady, but I wonder if I've got something there.'

—

GEOFFREY LAY ON
the cot farthest from the stove in acute physical misery. He had not surrendered and his overpowering had been a grim business. He was lying in a far corner of the room on a string netting mattressed with the inevitable sacks and covered with a dirty army blanket.