A Press of Suspects Read online

  A couple of inquiries brought him to the road, and after a brief reconnaissance he found the house. It stood in a biggish garden, surrounded by well-covered trees and a hawthorn hedge, but it was semi-detached. That wasn’t so good. He stopped the Riley with a scrunch at the gate—at least he had arrived in a most impressive car—and walked resolutely up the short drive. The problem was to know where to begin—and he mustn’t hesitate. House, garage, shed? Where would Jessop be most likely to keep the stuff? It might even be buried in the garden. In spite of his resolve, Cardew couldn’t help casting a nervous glance at the next-door upper windows. There was no one visible there, and he felt reassured. He saw that the garage doors, though closed, were not locked, and he pulled one of the doors open and went in. Here was temporary concealment, at least. He looked round and saw that this part of the search wouldn’t take long. There was nothing much there—a couple of old oil drums, a hose for the garden, some lengths of timber, a bundle of pea sticks, and an ancient tarpaulin thrown over the beams—nothing promising. It was possible, of course, that Jessop had abstracted some of the ZYKLON from the original tin, put it in a small container, and disposed of the rest. It would take a long time to search every container on the premises. Still, that would have to be done.

  He closed the garage door and walked quickly round to the back of the house. The curtain of green between himself and the adjoining house had a thin spot here, just near the garden shed. And the shed itself was locked. Cardew felt exposed, and decided to try the house first. There were french doors opening out from the sitting-room on to a crazy-paved terrace, screened by tall rose bushes. He’d have to take a chance on the noise. He picked up a thick piece of wood and tested its weight. With the right thrust, the glass should fall neatly on to the carpet. He could hear a car accelerating as it came up the hill. Just before it changed gear he thrust the wood through the pane of glass nearest the door handle. A hell of a row! He put the piece of wood against the wall, opened the door, and slipped in, his pulse racing. There was no turning back now! He stood listening for a moment, but all was quiet. Perhaps the people next door were away from home.

  Encouraged, he began systematically to ransack the house. There was no need to worry about leaving traces. If he failed to find the stuff he was done for anyway. He’d never be able to conceal the fact that he’d been here. If he did find it, he’d be forgiven the escapade. He started with the pantry and kitchen, and they presented fewer problems than he’d expected. Jessop evidently did little more than sleep in this house. He opened every tin, every bottle, every receptacle that could possibly hold cyanide crystals, smelt each one and flung it aside. It took him a quarter of an hour to go through everything, and he drew a blank. He looked in the downstairs cloakroom, and in cupboards, bureau, sideboard and every article of furniture capable of holding anything at all. No luck! He went upstairs and tried the bathroom. More lids came off, but there was no hint of cyanide. He climbed a sliding ladder to the loft, switched on the light there, opened and searched a number of trunks. Nothing. He combed through the bedrooms with feverish speed, flinging back bedclothes and turning out wardrobes. Sweat poured off him, and very soon his hands and face were coated with grime. Still no sign. He looked desperately round at the havoc he had caused and for a moment stood aghast. He felt a bit crazy himself. It seemed incredible that he should be doing this. Incredible and yet exciting. Almost as exciting as going after Messerschmitts when you’d written yourself off for lost anyway.

  He hadn’t found what he was looking for, but it must be here somewhere. There was still, of course, the shed and the garden. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to tackle the shed. It was dangerously near the dividing fence, and it wouldn’t be easy to break into. However, he couldn’t stop now. He went out, pulling the french doors to behind him. He heard the voice of a child in the next house. So they weren’t out! He walked quickly to the shed. It was secured with a heavy padlock, which he couldn’t hope to smash, and its single window was too small to get through. Somehow, he would have to wrench one of the staples out of the wood. He looked around for a tool. Luck was with him—lying on the ground against the shed there was a small rusty handpick. He wedged the pointed end inside the staple and exerted leverage, his muscles straining. He felt it begin to give. He heaved with all his strength, and suddenly it came out of the wood with a dry, protesting shriek. He pulled the door open and slipped inside. The sight that met his eyes appalled him. There were tins everywhere. He found a screw-driver and began systematically to prise off lids. Through the thin weatherboarding he heard someone come out into the garden next door. He looked frantically up at the shelves, moved a row of empty jars. Nothing there. He shifted some old tins of paint and a big keg of washable distemper and … Holy Moses, there it was! He could have wept from exhaustion and relief. ZYKLON, bold as red letters could make it. The original container, and almost no effort at concealment. This was indeed the confidence of madness. He tucked the tin under his arm as though it were a rugby football and emerged from the sweltering shed, hot, dirty, but triumphant.

  A voice came through the thin green hedge. “Is that you, Mr. Jessop?”

  For a fraction of a second Cardew hesitated. Should he run, or should he bluff? It didn’t very much matter now, except that he wanted to get back to the office without any delay. It might be simpler to bluff. “I’m a friend of Mr. Jessop’s,” he said, peering through the hedge. “He asked me to get something for him.”

  “Oh, I see,” said the voice dubiously. Cardew could just make out a bald scalp shining through the leaves. “I heard a noise—I just wondered. Of course, if you’re a friend …” The voice petered out. Cardew suddenly realised how little he must look like a friend of the neat, respectable Jessop. He must look more like a tramp, or the survivor of a bad street accident. He didn’t stop to argue but went off quickly down the path, with difficulty preventing himself from breaking into a run. He flung the ZYKLON into the back of the car and dropped into the driving seat. As he started the engine he heard a front door open and glanced over his shoulder. The man with the bald head was looking out. Not so good! The chap was probably taking the number of the car. Still, Cardew had his proof. He let in the clutch with a slam and headed the Riley towards London.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  There was much less custom at the Crown than usual. The day men had left London in search of cooler spots, and the night men, sensing imminent drama, were standing by in the office for news of the missing Cardew. Bill Iredale was sitting alone at an empty stretch of bar with a copy of the Standard propped against a soda syphon, drinking iced whisky and water. When anyone came in he concentrated on the paper. He was in a morose mood.

  He had just finished his first drink when Katharine Camden appeared, looking very attractive and cool in tussore silk. “Hallo, Bill,” she said in a casual tone. She didn’t want to give the impression that she had been looking for him.

  “Hallo,” he said, regarding her with mixed feelings. “What are you doing around at this time? Been on a late story?”

  She nodded, puckering her nose. “Quads at Mile End.”

  “Salubrious spot.”

  “Horrible. I should hate to be a Mile End quad.” She hesitated. The conversation seemed unpromisingly laconic. “Do you want to go on reading?”

  He swivelled a stool round for her. “Not particularly, but I warn you, I’ll be damn company.”

  “I can bear it.” She slid in beside him.

  “What’ll you have?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Gin and tonic.” Her eyes searched his face. “What’s the matter, Bill? You’re not worrying about that notice, surely?”

  “I’m afraid you’re behind with the news,” he said, prodding tobacco into his pipe. He hated to tell her, but he’d have to some time. “This evening the police found cyanide in my jacket pocket.”

  She stared at him, her glass poised in the air. “Bill!”

  He nodded grimly. “Traces, anyway. In
a tobacco tin—exactly like this one. A thing like that doesn’t make one feel very sociable.”

  She looked at the tin. “I don’t understand. Somebody must have put it there.”

  “Thank you,” he said gravely.

  “What made the police think of looking?”

  Iredale told her about Cardew’s telephone call to the inspector and his own conversation with Haines.

  “But, Bill—what a dreadful thing to do!” She looked appalled. “I know they were saying upstairs that Cardew was the man, but I couldn’t believe it. Now it looks as though they were right.”

  “I can’t believe it myself,” said Iredale. “I don’t mean he couldn’t kill anybody, but I can’t believe he’d try to swing it on to me. He’s about the last man I’d expect to play a lousy trick like that.” He rapped on the counter. “Let’s have another drink.”

  “I suppose it was Cardew, and not someone else?”

  He shrugged. “It was Cardew who telephoned—that makes it pretty conclusive.”

  Katharine sat in silence for a while. She too was trying to imagine Cardew framing a colleague for something he’d done himself, and she couldn’t. Perhaps there was some other explanation—perhaps someone else had told him about the tin and he’d simply passed the information on to Haines. She twisted her glass to and fro. “I wonder …” she began, but didn’t complete the sentence. “Of course, if the …” Her voice trailed off again. She was looking at Iredale but not seeing him.

  He tapped her arm. “Of whom do you think when you talk to me?”

  She jumped. “I’m sorry. I was thinking aloud.”

  “I feel privileged to be present.”

  “You are an ass,” she said. “As a matter of fact. I was wondering about other people.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, almost anyone. You say the jacket was hanging in the Foreign Room all afternoon. How about Jessop, for instance? He must have been around.”

  “Now don’t you start that,” said Iredale with a shade of exasperation in his voice. “The whole place is full of budding Sherlocks already. Why drag Ed in?”

  “Why rule him out?”

  “Ed? Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “I’ve heard him say very bitter things about people.”

  “Oh, that’s only talk. He’s like an old sweat—full of grouses, but it doesn’t mean a thing. He wouldn’t shoot the sergeant-major!”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Sure—why not? We grew up in the business together.” He had never really considered the matter before.” I’d as soon suspect my own brother. Don’t you like him?”

  “He doesn’t give me much of a chance. He always treats me as though I’ve no right to be in Fleet Street. Actually, I think I’m a bit sorry for him.” She dropped the subject abruptly. “Any news of when you’re going away, Bill?”

  Iredale gave a rueful smile. “Better ask Haines. I’m still more or less on parole.”

  She looked surprised. “But if Cardew …” she began, and stopped. Of course, the inspector might believe Cardew’s accusations. “Anyway,” she said emphatically, “it’s absurd to suspect you.”

  “I always said you didn’t pay enough attention to the facts,” he teased her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s nice to be believed in—especially by you, but I’m not out of the wood. That notice was put up for people like you. You ought to be watching your drink.” He took the tin from his pocket again. “What is it—tobacco or cyanide? Just turn your head the other way.”

  “That isn’t a bit amusing,” said Katharine.

  “Facts are facts. I quarrelled with everyone—you can’t have forgotten. I brought the stuff to England. And now it’s been found in my pocket.”

  “You’re just being a masochist.” Katharine was unperturbed by the catalogue. “I have a hunch about you and I prefer to stick to it. As a matter of fact you’re just as unreasonable over hunches as I am. I can’t believe you’re a murderer—you can’t believe Jessop is. Neither of us can really believe that Cardew is. Evidence is what proves that people we don’t like are guilty.”

  “This week’s great thought!” said Iredale. “Katharine, you do me good.”

  The door opened and a small group of people drifted in, Jessop among them. He detached himself and joined Iredale and Katharine. She gave him a friendly smile; if Bill liked him, she was prepared to make an effort. Iredale ordered a whisky. “Any more news, Ed?”

  Jessop shook his head. “Cardew still hasn’t turned up.” He knew that the police had interviewed Iredale again, but he obviously couldn’t mention the tin, and it didn’t look as though Iredale were going to. Probably he wouldn’t want Katharine to know about it. Jessop felt very cheerful. Everything was going well now. He was like a general who sees the enemy positions crumbling at all points, and senses a rout. Power—that was what he was enjoying at last. All the people who had despised and rejected him were now at his mercy. They were his puppets. His brilliant manoeuvres had confused the police and scattered his enemies. Hind dead, Ede disposed of, Cardew in flight, and Iredale scared. What a triumph! It was pleasant to watch Iredale, to gloat over him. The man who had called him a lunatic! He raised his glass. “Cheers, Bill.”

  “Cheers,” responded Iredale. “Have you abandoned your post, Ed?”

  “There’s a boy there,” said Jessop indifferently. “Anyway, who cares?”

  “It’s all right with me. I was only thinking that we might go on somewhere else. I feel like a pub crawl. What do you say, Katharine?”

  She looked at him doubtfully. She didn’t much care for his mood, and yet she was reluctant to see him go off alone. “If you’re planning to get drunk,” she said, “I don’t know that I particularly want to be there.”

  “I won’t. It’s just that I can’t stand this place any more—it’s too near the office. Let’s try the George—we can get some food there. How about you, Ed?”

  “Good idea,” said Jessop.

  “All right,” Katharine agreed suddenly. “I’ll come.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Cardew was well out of Beckenham, his mind concentrated on the interview that lay ahead, when a peremptory blast on a horn jerked him from his automatic driving into an awareness of his immediate surroundings. What he saw in the mirror gave him a nasty shock. A police radio car was racing up behind him. It passed him at speed, cut in across his front wheels, and forced him to draw up at the kerb with a shriek of tyres on tarmac.

  Two of its four occupants—a uniformed sergeant and a constable—got out and walked towards him with infuriating deliberation, as though they now had all the time in the world. The sergeant went round to the driving side and the constable made a slow, inquisitive circuit of the vehicle, as if he had never seen a car before.

  “What’s the trouble?” asked Cardew, with an effort at nonchalance that sounded unconvincing even to him. It had been all very well to tell himself that he didn’t care what happened, now that he had the ZYKLON, but the roadside was hardly the place for explanations.

  “This is not a racing track, sir,” the sergeant said severely. “This is a public highway. You were doing forty-two miles an hour in a restricted area. Can I see your driving licence and insurance certificate, please?”

  Cardew produced the documents with a sense of relief. What was a speeding charge to him? “I’m sorry, sergeant—I was in a hurry to get back to my office. Press, you know.”

  The policeman looked him up and down, noting his matted hair. the black smudge across his cheek and collar, the grimy hands. “A dirty job!” he said ambiguously.

  Cardew tried to smile. “I’ve been helping a colleague with some house decorations.”

  “You have, eh?” The sergeant handed back the documents. “He wouldn’t be a man by the name of Jessop, would he?”

  Cardew sank back in his seat. So the speeding was incidental. Jessop’s neighbour had rung the police; these fellows had bee
n watching out for him. He wondered just how much they knew.

  “Look, officer …” he began.

  “I think you’d better do your talking at the station,” said the sergeant grimly.

  The constable, who had been poking about in the back of the car, suddenly said, “What’s in this tin?” He was trying to get the lid off.

  “Careful!” cried Cardew. “It’s cyanide—deadly poison.”

  “Cyanide, eh?” The sergeant looked even more grim.

  “I can explain everything, though,” said Cardew earnestly. “There’s been a murder—you must have heard about it—at the Morning Call. That’s my paper …”

  “Yes, we know all about that,” said the sergeant. “We have instructions to pick you up. Better come along.”

  Cardew’s spirits sank. “Look, officer,” he said desperately, “what you don’t know is that I happened to find out who did the murder—only an hour ago. This cyanide is the stuff that was used, and I’m taking it along to Chief Inspector Haines. He’s at the office, in charge of the case. I found it at Jessop’s house. I’ n not trying to get out of anything, but for God’s sake if you’re going to take me anywhere take me to Inspector Haines. I must see him at once. It may be a matter of life or death for someone, and I mean that.”

  The sergeant looked very hard at him. “You wait here,” he said after a moment. He motioned to the constable to watch Cardew, and went back to the radio car at the same unhurried pace. Five long minutes passed while he sought instructions. Then he returned to the Riley.

  “All right,” he said, “you can tell your story to the inspector. We’ll come along with you.” He climbed in beside Cardew and the constable got in at the back. The radio car went ahead; a traffic policeman on a motor cycle, who had attached himself to the convoy, brought up the rear.