Murder first class, p.1
Murder First Class, page 1
Murder First
Class
Leonard Gribble
© Leonard Gribble 1950*
*Indicates the year of first publication.
CONTENTS
Chapter
I A PRICE IS PAID
II SLADE ON THE CASE
III A SCUFFLE IN THE DARK
IV A WOMAN’S STORY
V AT DENE TOWERS
VI VITAL THREADS
VII THE PACE QUICKENS
VIII A CRASH
IX THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFFS
X A GAME OF WITS
XI A TRAP IS SPRUNG
XII BETTER THAN FLOWERS
CHAPTER I
A PRICE IS PAID
THE little green Hants and Dorset single-decker bus wound down the ribbon of road into Corfe Castle village. The driver jammed on the brakes, and they squealed protestingly. The bus drew to a shuddering stop, and the conductress swung back the sliding door. She poked out a trim head of neat dark brown curls.
“Wareham bus,” she announced.
The three people waiting for the bus climbed aboard, the sliding door closed with a swish, and the conductress rapped on the window with a penny. The driver released his brakes, and the bus slipped down the sloping road towards the left-hand turn, which led out of the village.
The bus was only half full, and the two men who had joined it at Corfe Castle sat at the rear. The third passenger, a middle-aged woman, encumbered with a large wicker basket, sat on one of the front seats. The conductress moved along the bus, collecting fares. Both the male passengers who had just entered were going to Wareham. One surrendered a return ticket, the other inquired the price of a single fare. The conductress, who had been on the Swanage-Wareham run since two years before the end of the war, barely gave them a glance. She went back to one of the front seats and began checking her tickets.
The man who had had his return ticket punched lit a pipe and leaned back, resting an elbow on the attaché-case he had brought aboard. The other man, well wrapped in a large dark worsted overcoat, which must have made him feel warm on such a bright autumn afternoon, twisted in his seat and looked back at the ruined pile of the ancient castle on the skyline. His features were blunt, lit with a pair of deep-set eyes, which were almost closed as the sunlight found his face. He turned round in his seat, felt in a pocket, and produced a cigarette-case. There was a half-smile on his face, and an interested onlooker glancing at him might have supposed that he was amused at something. Certainly he seemed very contented.
The bus sped on between rows of grey Dorset stone walls, crossed a stretch of heathland that in the war years had been used as a tank-training ground, and behind it rose a trailing cloud of dust.
When he had finished his cigarette the man in the thick overcoat felt for a pocket-wallet, from which he took a slip of paper and a pencil. He wrote three words in block letters on the paper, and replaced pencil and wallet in his pocket. For some moments he sat staring at what he had written, and the smile round his mouth curved in deeper at the corners. He waited until the bus was perhaps two miles out of Wareham, and then he got up and changed his seat. He sat at the very end of the bus, behind the man with the attaché-case. Presently he leaned forward and tapped the other man’s shoulder.
“Excuse me,” he said in a low voice, “but I think this will interest you.”
“You think——”
The other man hesitated, took the folded piece of paper held out to him, and opened it. He read: “BILL LOVES AMY.”
He sat staring at the words for some moments, as though they held a message full of deep and significant information. He must have read them several times before he looked round, and when he did his eyes were bright with a hard, brittle light.
“You are right, I am interested,” he said quietly.
The man behind him nodded pleasantly. “I thought you would be. What do you suggest?”
“A talk?”
“Excellent. You are going on to Bournemouth. So am I. How about to-night?”
“You are well informed. Yes, to-night, by all means. But I am afraid——”
“There is no need—yet,” the man in the back seat replied, “I am staying at the Sea Rock Hotel. Be there at eight o’clock. It wouldn’t be wise to change your mind.”
The man holding the paper said, “I shan’t change my mind. Eight o’clock.”
In Wareham the passengers alighted at the corner of West Street. Some made their way to the stand for the Bournemouth buses, and among them was the man with the attaché-case. He still gripped his pipe between his teeth. But it was no longer alight.
The other man turned into a restaurant not far from the bus stop and spent the time until the Bournemouth bus had departed smoking a cigarette and sipping a cup of tea. When the bus had gone, and with it the man with the attaché-case he settled his bill, left the shop, and crossed the road to a garage almost opposite. Five minutes later he left Wareham in a taxi he had earlier hired in Poole.
He was, seemingly, a person who took few chances, but a vast number of precautions.
He was also a punctual man. He was waiting in the lounge of the Sea Rock Hotel at five minutes to eight. He sat in a heavily upholstered armchair, a glass of whisky in his right hand, while he watched the world through a screen of cigarette smoke.
He saw the man he had accosted on the Wareham bus enter, and before rising smiled his approval. His visitor had not kept him waiting.
“A drink ?” he suggested as the other came towards him.
“No, thanks. Where can we talk?”
“My room?”
“Suits me. Lead on.”
“A moment, please.”
The man with the glass smiled, went across to the reception clerk’s desk, and said to the girl in the glass-enclosed cage, “Please see that I’m not disturbed for the next half-hour. I’m attending to some business with this gentleman.” He nodded towards his visitor.
“Very good, sir,” said the girl.
The two men walked towards the staircase. The visitor smiled thinly.
“Very thoughtful of you,” he said.
The other shrugged.
“It pays to think out one’s moves in advance,” he said blandly.
“As you have tried to do?”
“No. As I have done,”
The glances of the two men met and clashed. Neither offered another word until the one who smoked cigarettes opened the door of his room invitingly.
The visitor lit his pipe, settled himself in an armchair, and said, “How did you tumble on the secret?”
“Pardon,” said his host. “It was no tumble. It was the result of quite a piece of ingenuity. And I am a modest man.”
“Others know as much as you?”
“That would be telling.”
“Isn’t that why you asked me to come, so that you could tell me enough to demand a price?”
If there was a thin vein of contempt underlying the words the man who smoked cigarettes preferred to appear obtuse.
“The price is all that matters,” he said. “Of course, if you need further demonstration of what I know I am willing to oblige. The price will remain . . . ten thousand.”
His glance was keen as he named the figure. The other man smiled with his mouth.
“An amateur’s price. Nothing practical about it. This set-up is expensive, the profits are cut drastically to make distribution damned——”
“Five thousand . . . not a penny less.”
“It’s still high——”
“And still five thousand.”
Again their glances clashed, like steel crossing steel. The man in the chair lifted his shoulders.
“Very well, but I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re not making friends.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Also you’re not——”
“Listen, stop beefing. I’m not being warned off, pal. I’ve got you and the outfit to rights. You pay—on the line. Otherwise you won’t last forty-eight hours with what I can spill. And threats won’t go over big with me. I’ve tried all the angles and weighed all that goes to it. I’ve got you here, mister.”
He extended his right hand, and slowly folded the fingers until the hand was clenched, the knuckles gleaming white. Then the fingers slowly and deliberately unfolded.
“Give,” he said abruptly, and his tone was harsh.
“All right. A couple of hundred now——”
“Five.”
“Say, how d’you think——”
“Five. You got the tip-off this afternoon in the Wareham bus. You didn’t come to stall. Not when you know just how much Bill loves his Amy.”
The man in the armchair took a deep breath, and at that moment his face was not pretty. He drew out a wallet stuffed with currency.
“You’ve gone my limit,” he said, taking out a fat bundle of fivers. “There’s a hundred. Well, aren’t you going to count ’em?” he asked, as the other picked up the bundle and put it in his pocket.
“No. There’s a hundred in that bundle. You wouldn’t start anything at this stage. But the other four thousand five hundred—that’s a horse of a different colour.”
“It’s a whole damned stable.”
“If that’s the way you feel, we’d better get into the saddle and start getting somewhere.”
They talked for nearly twenty minutes. At one stage in the angry cross-talk it looked as though they would come to blows, for the man who smoked cigarettes was stubborn and kept to h is price.
But the other seemed capable of a gesture—when he had no apparent alternative.
“All right,” he conceded finally, “five hundred a week for nine more weeks. Are you staying here? Can I get you any time I want you?”
The other shook his head.
“Not a chance. I’m going back to London to-morrow, but I’ll be back this time next week, and each week after for nine weeks. You and I have a parcel of dates, friend. The sort I’ll keep.”
The man in the armchair smiled.
“You’re damned sure of yourself, aren’t you?” he growled.
“Never been more so.”
“And how do we know you won’t double-cross us?”
“You don’t. But you know I’m not a fool. And as long as you pay off you won’t be fools. That about makes us all a lot of smart boys, doesn’t it?”
“It also about makes my lingering here a waste of time.”
They went down to the lounge, and the man who smoked cigarettes watched the other leave. He expected him to look back when he went through the swing doors of the Sea Rock Hotel. But he didn’t. He walked like a man who had somewhere to go and wanted to get there without delay.
The man who smoked cigarettes went back to the armchair in the lounge and ordered a fresh whisky.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” he announced at the desk when he had finished his drink. “Catching the ten-twenty at the West station. Have a taxi round for me in time.”
“Very good, sir,” said the girl in the glass cage. “Mr. Stoddart, isn’t it?”
She didn’t know that it wasn’t his real name, and, truth to tell, she didn’t care . . . at any rate, not till much later, when Inspector Baxter called at the hotel and began asking questions.
The taxi was waiting next morning, and the man who went by the name of Stoddart was deposited at Bournemouth West station at precisely seven minutes past ten. There was a small queue of people lined up at the ticket office, and he took his turn to purchase a first-class single to Waterloo. It seemed strange that such a keen man of business should not take a return ticket. Especially as he knew he was coming back the following week.
As he was picking up his change he felt a prick in his upper left arm, and turned round quickly, annoyed.
“Why the devil don’t you—— Oh!” he broke off.
The person behind him was an aged lady whose garb was reminiscent of the days of hansom cabs and antimacassars. She was fumbling with a large and voluminous handbag, bobbing her wide and heavily beaded black hat to and fro as she muttered, “Dear me! What have I done with it?”
It was plainly one of the large hatpins protruding dangerously from the side of her bobbing head that had pricked the arm of the man in front of her. With an impatient word, he turned and proceeded on to the platform. The ten-twenty was in.
But it did not leave on time.
Two minutes before it was scheduled to depart on its journey to London a man pulled open the door of a first-class compartment, and found the only occupant lolling across a seat.
“I say, excuse me——” he began, then hesitated, and peered closely. “By God!” he exclaimed. “He’s dead.”
In that one penetrating glance he noticed that the right hand of the dead man was stained with nicotine from the smoking of many cigarettes.
It was some time later that Inspector Baxter of the local constabulary discovered a receipted bill from the Sea Rock Hotel in the dead man’s pocket. The bill was made out to Henry Stoddart.
CHAPTER II
SLADE ON THE CASE
THE Assistant Commissioner looked up as the door of his office opened.
“Oh, Slade,” he said to the newcomer, “draw up a chair. It looks as though we’ve got a lead at last, and from the South Coast. Of all places, from that height of retired respectability Bournemouth.”
Anthony Slade drew up a chair and sat facing the A.C. across the wide desk covered with telephones and papers. Only a few weeks before Slade had started work as the Yard’s sixth Superintendent. His appointment had been much publicized in the national Press, for the promotion had been promptly hailed by crime reporters throughout the United Kingdom as the inauguration of the Big Six in place of what hitherto had been the Big Five.
He was the only one of the Yard’s Superintendents without a regional area for which he was responsible. His task was to co-ordinate the work of Scotland Yard with that of provincial constabularies. To some extent his commission was that of a roving free-lance within the framework of police jurisdiction, and the appointment had been made following upon Slade’s release by the Government Departments which had engaged his service during the war years. Throughout the war, with the rank of Chief Inspector, he had undertaken various special duties for the Ministry of Supply and the Board of Trade, and on one notable occasion he had been sent on a particularly difficult mission by the Ministry of Economic Warfare.
He had left his work for the Government to come straight back to tackle a problem that had been giving the Yard chiefs plenty of early post-war headaches. Drugs were being smuggled into England from the Continent, and a new dope ring had been formed whose activities were spreading and becoming month by month more menacing to the national life. The unknown heads of the new criminal organisation were smart, and moved with comparative safety. Further, they had perfected a system of distribution which left investigating Special Branch detectives completely baffled.
The new Superintendent had been given the task of breaking this national crime ring. So far, as Slade himself frankly admitted, he hadn’t made much progress. Night-club raids, comb-outs of the dock areas of London, Liverpool, and Cardiff, and the rounding up of racetrack crooks had brought some minnows into the police drag-net, but Scotland Yard had got no nearer to discovering the identity of the brains directing the dope traffic or the whereabouts of the men controlling the secret and clever distributive arrangements.
The A.C. looked up from his desk.
“A man was found dead in a train in Bournemouth yesterday morning,” he informed Slade. “At first it was thought he had died from heart failure, but the post-mortem examination proved he had been poisoned. Someone had pricked him in the upper arm. He died within a quarter of an hour. Curare works pretty fast.”
“Curare. Not exactly rare. But fairly uncommon.” Slade looked his interest. “The Bournemouth Police have established his identity, sir?”
“Not yet.” The A.C. smiled drily. “Oh, they know he registered at the Sea Rock Hotel in the name of Henry Stoddart. Fortunately they took the precaution of sending along his fingerprints.” The A.C. sat back, like a man prepared to enjoy a surprise he is about to spring on his listener. “He’s in our records, Slade, as Slim Harry, otherwise Henry Stebbing, or Fingers Stebbing, who before the war served a term at Maidstone for robbery with violence. He came out in thirty-nine, and was called up in his age group. He went through the Desert Campaign with the K.R.R.’s, and was invalided out after the Sicilian landings.”
The speaker paused, as though waiting for some comment from the other man.
Slade shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t register with me, sir,” he admitted. “Should it?”
The A.C. nodded. “It will. Stebbing—if that’s his real name—changed it after he came out of the Army. Probably got a faked identity card through the Black Market. Anyway, he got the job of chauffeur to Lady Celia Morden.”
This time the news registered. Slade sat upright.
“Good God—Staines, the missing chauffeur!” he exclaimed abruptly.
“I thought that would give you a jolt.” The A.C. sounded pleased with himself. His smile became less dry. “Stebbing, Stoddart, Staines—or what the devil his name was—disappeared after her death for one reason, Slade. You decided that yourself.”
“Because he knew something.”
The A.C. got up, walked round the desk, and leaned against a window overlooking the Embankment.
“Exactly. He knew enough to take him to Bournemouth. And what he knew was sufficient, too, to make it necessary for him to be removed. Obviously he was making better progress than we had done.”
“Looks like we were running round in circles at the docks—unless——” Slade paused, looked up and met the A.C.’s narrowed gaze. “Unless, sir, Poole Harbour is the place we want.”
