Inspector West Takes Charge (2 page)

‘If we knew the lawyer we couldn’t stop anything,’ Roger had retorted. ‘I’ve learned one thing you’ll love. Maisie and Claude have been to see Gabby Potter several times.’

‘
That
old scoundrel Mark’s excitement had risen sky high. ‘There’s your chancel Dig up a reason for a search warrant and find what Potter’s had to do with the Prendergasts.’

‘What do you think I’m looking for? The sack?’

‘If I were at the Yard I’d have Potter in jug in five minutes. He’s the biggest crook in England. Ought to have been in Dartmoor years ago.’

‘There are other prisons than Dartmoor,’ Roger had pointed out.

Now, with Janet upstairs, waiting, Roger smoothed his pipe and tried to get the Prendergasts out of his mind. The thought of Potter handling any part of the Prendergast business was disturbing, but the idea that Maisie Prendergast,
nėe
Webb, had married Claude because he might eventually inherit the
Dreem
fortune was just a guess. Whatever Mark said, Maisie hadn’t the mental equipment required. But supposing someone wanted control of the
Dreem
Company through Claude, and planned to use Maisie as his instrument? Gabby Potter was exactly the man to handle dubious company work; many company promoters who side-stepped the law were amongst his clients.

The telephone was on a table behind him. He reached for it and dialled Mark’s Chelsea number. The Wests lived in Fulham, not twenty minutes walk away from Mark’s bachelor flat.

The ringing sound continued in his ears for more than a minute. He put the receiver down and dialled again, but only the burr-burr rewarded him, yet he knew there was a telephone next to Mark’s bed.

PC Diver, of the Division in which Mark Lessing lived, knew that Lessing was a friend of West of the Yard, and kept an eye on Lessing’s home. He knew, also, that Lessing was regarded by the Yard as a shrewd amateur. Diver had little time for amateurs, and the word
criminologist
never impressed him, but he knew Lessing fairly well, and liked him.

He was puzzled when he saw the little car standing outside the block of flats where Lessing lived, because it was in the early-hours, and the last time he had passed there had been no car there. Tenants always took theirs to the underground car park. True, there was nothing surprising in the situation itself; a resident could have been brought home by a friend. Friends of the residents of this particular block of luxury flats, however, seldom drove around in dilapidated pre-war Fords. This one looked much the worse for wear. Pondering over all this, Diver asked himself whether there was any possibility of a burglar. The thought half-scared and half-excited him. He considered hurrying away and telephoning the station, but if it was a false alarm he would look a proper Charley.

He decided to wait by the car and have a word with whoever came to claim it; if it was a man carrying a bag or a case,
he
P C Diver might pull off a single-handed capture which would bring kudos and might help towards promotion. His curiosity grew sharper, and he decided to walk towards the entrance of the flats to see if there were any obvious signs of trouble.

As he stepped inside, not exactly nervous but a little on edge, he did not see the man crouching behind the massive front door.

He heard a whisper of movement, swung round, and saw a man jumping at him. The man’s arm was upraised, and he held a weapon. Diver flung himself backwards. The weapon caught his shoulder, and sent him staggering, and he tripped over a rug. As he crashed down, he tried to pull his whistle from his pocket, but fumbled it. Alarm rose to screaming point, until he saw the man racing out of the entrance hall. He tried to scramble to his feet, but kept slipping. By the time he reached the street doorway, the old Ford was moving off, and all Diver could see was the silhouette of his head and shoulders at the driving window.

Diver wasted no more time. Hugging his shoulder and limping from a bruised knee, he stumbled across to the caretaker’s flat, woke the man, and telephoned the division.

‘The first place I’d try, sir,’ he said to the inspector who came at the double, ‘is Mr Lessing’s. You know, Chief Inspector West’s friend.’ Under his breath, he added: ‘That swine would have smashed my head in. God knows what he’s done.’

Mark Lessing was lying on his stomach. Through the sheet wound tightly about his head he could hear the ringing of the telephone clearly, but there was no other sound audible, not a single movement from the men in the next room. It was possible that they had gone without letting him know. He eased his position, but there was no chance of answering it. The devils had tied him to the bed too securely. At least they hadn’t smashed his head in.

The telephone stopped. He caught the sound of a drawer being opened; it was the middle drawer of the sideboard, which stuck and squeaked when being opened.

Silence followed, and seemed interminable. Had they gone? A sharp ring came, farther away than the telephone; the front door bell.

Whispered voices reached his ears, more stealthy sounds followed by the ring of his door bell. He thought he heard a door close and made frantic efforts to move, succeeding only in making the cords at his wrists and ankles more uncomfortable. He heard nothing more until a sharp voice exclaimed: ‘Well I’m damned!’

He did not recognize the voice, but he heard a door slam loudly enough to shake the bed and the pictures on the walls. Heavy footsteps followed, then a confusion of sounds.

Then this door burst open, and a man exclaimed: ‘Good God!’

‘So Diver was right,’ another man said as he crossed swiftly, ‘Are you all right, Mr Lessing?’

Your friend’s all right,’ the Divisional Inspector assured Roger and Janet. ‘In fact he’s sitting up and taking nourishment. Two men broke in and knocked him out and then tied him to his bed. Then they searched the place. Turned it upside down I don’t know what he’ll say when he sees it.’

The door of the bedroom opened.

‘You’ll soon find out,’ Lessing said, and glared at Roger, then saw Janet. ‘And
you?’
He pulled his dressing-gown together hurriedly. ‘Support me,’ he went on. ‘I bought a piece of Sevres yesterday, so fragile that a puff of wind would break it. I hope –’

He broke off, in front of the living-room door. The sight which met his eyes silenced him. Roger frowned. Janet felt nauseated. A beautiful room had been ransacked; nothing was in its right place.

Then Lessing’s face lit up.

‘The vandals missed it,’ he said, and stepped to a cabinet, opened the glass door, and took out a beautiful figurine in pale pinks and blues. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ he crooned. The Divisional men looked faintly derisive.

Janet exclaimed: ‘It’s beautiful!’

‘Apart from china, what have you got that’s worth stealing?’ demanded Roger.

‘One half-finished manuscript explaining why the police always get their man,’ said Mark. ‘It’s in the study. I suppose they got that far.’ He led Roger to a door leading off the big room, and stopped short. ‘They certainly did.’

The study was small, with three walls lined with bookcases, the fourth behind a large leather-topped desk, A Mirzapore carpet and three hide armchairs seemed to set off several pieces of richly-coloured china, all on wall brackets. Only the china had been left untouched. The books had been tumbled from the shelves, the rest were lying on their sides. The chairs had been overturned arid the webbing ripped apart. Every drawer in the desk was out; papers from them littered it and the floor.

Janet, peering over their shoulders and hugging the figurine, said: ‘I should think they wanted to find something.’

‘I can’t stand that humour just now,’ Lessing protested. ‘It will take a week to put this room straight. And look at the manuscript!’ Pages were all over the place, but none were torn. ‘The vandals, they’ve trodden on some.’ He bent down to pick up some sheets of paper covered with closely-written matter, while Roger looked about the room, examining the drawers of the desk closely.

He straightened up.

‘Two locks forced by a man who knows his job,’ he said. ‘This wasn’t a burglary by chance, they were after something specific. I wonder who’s out and could do this job,’ he added, as he looked down at the desk. ‘I saw Charlie Clay last week. Abie Fenton but we won’t get anywhere that way.’ He watched as Divisional men came in to check for fingerprints and other clues. Large men moved about the study soft-footed and gentle.

‘Better leave them to it,’ Roger thought, and went with Mark and Janet into the living room, where the police had finished.

‘Might as well have a drink,’ Mark said. ‘Give that fire a poke, Jan.’ The fire was a dull reddish glow, but sparks flew when Janet thrust with the poker.

‘Nothing for me,’ she said.

‘Don’t take too much whisky or your head will ache even more,’ Roger said.

‘Your head’s all right, I presume,’ Mark said sarcastically. He poured out. ‘What brought you?’

‘A cat’

‘Kitten,’ corrected Janet ‘And a tom-cat who came home late.’

‘What?’

Janet explained.

‘What brought the burglars is more to the point,’ Roger said. ‘One was seen to go, after clouting a local copper who had his suspicions about a car parked outside. There were two, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they say what they wanted?’

‘
No
.’

‘Any idea what it was?’

‘Not the faintest.’

‘You’ve made yourself thoroughly unpopular with Prendergast and his Maisie. All the world knows that you think you have a peculiar prescience about crime, particularly murder, and you will insist on making your suspicions known.’

‘You’ve never known Mark get his teeth into a case like this without there being some cause,’ Janet interrupted. ‘And you know that he’s been attacked before for poking his nose in.’

‘There’s no obvious connexion between the burglary and the Prendergast case suspicions,’ said Roger. ‘We don’t even know that Mark knows anything that the imaginary murderer of the Prendergasts might want.’

‘Had you found anything, Mark?’ asked Janet.

Lessing rubbed his nose.

‘Nothing specific, but I talked too much in a television interview and hinted that I knew a lot,’

‘You’ll get yourself in dock for slander.’

‘Not a hope. I’ve ideas, mind you, thousands of ideas floating about like clouds of ectoplasm and I put them all down on paper, I left the notes in the right-hand top drawer of my study desk. My God, do you think –’

They moved together. The police had finished in the study, but the top right-hand drawer of the desk was wide open. The contents had been emptied on to the floor. Roger rummaged through them, picking up a sheaf of papers covered with Mark’s meticulous handwriting. The top sheet was headed:
‘Death by Misadventure
–?’

‘It’s all there,’ Mark confirmed, a minute or two later. ‘So they didn’t come for that. No connexion with the Prendergast virtuoso proved.’

‘Don’t misuse big words,’ said Janet.

‘No misuse, sweetie. Murder is a fine art, and three Prendergasts have been murdered. I’m assuming the killer in each case was the same man, woman, or spirit. I had this beautifully-written treatise on the case in that drawer, and my visitors could have read it. The fact that they might have deliberately left the notes behind doesn’t prove anything. Could the Prendergasts killer have lost something he’s anxious to get back?’

‘You stolen something?’ demanded Roger.

‘No. But the P K might think I have if he’s lost anything of significance.’

‘Sheer guess work,’ Roger said. He stifled a yawn. ‘We’ll leave a man on duty outside your door, so that you can have a good sleep without being afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ Mark declared. ‘I just want a few hours rest.’

‘That’s good,’ said Roger. ‘Then you’ll be fit enough to call on Gabby Potter in the morning. If you do, you’ll make it obvious you connect him with this burglary. You might get an, interesting reaction.’

‘Oh, no!’ Janet cried.

‘Damned good idea,’ enthused Lessing. ‘He knows I’m Prendergast case crazy. If he has any nefarious designs on the Prendergast money, we’ll find out.’

‘Do you really think he’s right?’ Janet asked Roger, as they drove home.

‘If Potter’s involved or the Prendergasts have been murdered, Mark’s stirring up the mud. If he scares anyone they might get careless. That’s Mark’s real motivation; of course he can do what the Yard can’t. But don’t ask me whether I think he’s right about Potter.’

At the time when Roger and Janet were driving home, Mr Gabriel Potter, Solicitor & Commissioner for Oaths, was sitting up in a four-poster bed in a large, high-ceilinged room in a very large house on the outskirts of London, and listening in to the telephone. A man with a gruff voice was saying: ‘Not a thing there, Guv’nor. There wasn’t nothing about you, neither. I saw the bit he’d written about Prendergast, though. Guesswork, that’s all. I took a photo of each page, nearly got nabbed staying so long. I’ll send the film over in the morning. The other stuff just wasn’t there. I don’t make mistakes like
that.’

‘
I
trust not,’ said Potter. He was a thin man in feature, figure and voice. ‘I would like that film as soon as possible, please. Goodnight.’

He replaced the receiver, put out the light and slid down in the bed, but he did not get to sleep at once. Yet Potter’s nights were usually so serene and untroubled; tonight he was preoccupied and uneasy.

In a darkened room some miles away, Claude Prendergast blinked. He was restless because of a noise he could not get accustomed to; his wife’s heavy breathing in the next bed. Now and again she raised her voice clearly in coherent speech. It was strange and to Claude a little improper to have a woman sleeping in the same room. Thought and contemplation of Maisie did not comfort Claude; he did not fully understand how he had come to marry her, but he had not yet reached the stage of wishing that he had resisted her.

Quite loudly she said: ‘I wonder if he found them?’