Murder Somewhere in This City Read online

  “In a place like this there are bound to be ways of getting in. Anyway, we mustn’t assume it was Starling. It could have been somebody else. Where is the man who was attacked?”

  “I had a few words with him and sent him off to the hospital. He got a pretty bad crack on the head. The person who hit him wasn’t worried about breaking his skull.”

  “That sounds like our Don. It’s getting to be a habit with him. Didn’t the man see or hear anything?”

  “Nothing, sir. He says he was working at a little desk they have down there. He must have been attacked from behind.”

  “Obviously,” said Martineau. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  “I had the hotel surrounded, sir,” said Ducklin helpfully. “There’s just a chance he might still be with us.”

  “You’ve done very well,” the inspector conceded. He turned to the head cellarman: “Shall we take another look downstairs?”

  “Certainly,” François replied. He led the way. Martineau, Ducklin and Weiss followed.

  “We turned this place upside down two years ago,” the inspector commented as he looked around the wine cellar.

  François smiled. “I remember thinking that you would impair the foundations,” he said.

  “We found nothing, anyway. Are you sure there’s nothing missing now?”

  “Without taking stock I cannot tell,” the old Frenchman admitted. “But I cannot see anything missing.”

  They went on, into a portion of the cellar where there was no wine. He looked into a disused, ill-lit chamber which contained a few broken cases, some old dusty bottles, some empty kegs and three huge casks which loomed shadowy in the background.

  “I’ve looked in there, sir,” said Ducklin.

  “Of course,” said Martineau absently, staring around.

  His gaze lingered on the casks. He remembered them from the previous search. They were immense, taller than a tall man, and of tremendous girth. Even when empty they were much too heavy for one man to handle. Francois had declared that they were two hundred years old: storage casks for rum of brandy. Nowadays, who ever had that much liquor to store?

  Two of the casks were equal in size; the third one was slightly smaller. Its outline seemed to be proportionately narrower, too. Martineau stepped forward and peered, at the same time feeling in his pocket for his flashlight.

  “What’s the matter with that end cask?” he asked.

  “The smaller one?” Ducklin asked quickly. “There are a couple of staves missing.”

  “What?” cried François, fairly leaping forward. “The old casks? Who has done that?”

  All four men made their ways around kegs and cases to the big casks. Ducklin did a balancing act and nearly fell when he put his foot on an empty bottle, but he was there first. He hesitated only when he was quite close to the broken cask, and he made the final approach as if he expected Don Starling to be lurking inside. Reassured, he stood at the long opening and looked right into the cask.

  “There’s nothing—” he began, and then an object glittering in reflected light made him draw back so quickly that he collided with François.

  “There’s a one-eyed rat in there!” he exclaimed, and the tone of his voice indicated that he definitely did not like rats.

  Martineau was there with his torch. “Let’s look,” he said. He stooped cautiously, exploring the cask with his light, for he also did not like rats.

  There was no small rodent, but still the red eye glittered from the floor of the cask. Martineau squatted on his heels, and reached, and picked up a small ruby.

  “So now we know,” he said, turning the stone in his fingers. “He’s got the stuff, and he’s on his way.”

  “Weren’t these casks examined just after the Underdown job, sir?” Ducklin wanted to know.

  “We looked on top,” the inspector said, “then we tilted ’em up and looked underneath. It’s obvious we didn’t tilt ’em enough, else we’d have heard the stuff sliding about.” He smiled wryly. “These casks are a bit too big to pick up and shake, you know.”

  He reached up and tried to pull out the bung. It was firm. “Starling hammered it in after he dropped the stuff piece by piece through the bung-hole,” he said. “He didn’t even disturb the dust on top of the cask. Very crafty. Very crafty indeed.”

  Ducklin picked up a stave and looked at it closely. “He used a jimmy, inch-and-a-quarter,” he announced. “Would he find it down here?”

  François led the way back to the cellarmen’s desk. In the desk there was an inch-and-a-quarter case opener. But, he insisted, there should have been two.

  Martineau nodded. “All right, we can assume that Starling now has a case opener.”

  They went upstairs to the kitchen level. There, on a little landing, was the door giving access to the cellar steps, the big swing doors leading to the kitchen, the service stairs, and a service lift.

  Martineau looked from the narrow service stairs to the cellar door. “Four strides,” he said. And the cellar door wasn’t locked. It’s a piece of cake.”

  He stepped to the foot of the stairs and looked up. “They used much?” he asked.

  “In emergencies,” the manager replied. “When the lift is out of order.”

  “How far do they go?”

  “Past every floor, right to the roof.”

  “Evening, sir, evening, all,” said a newcomer. It was Devery. “I was passing. Saw the place surrounded. Thought I’d see if I could be of help.”

  Martineau looked at his watch. “Have you been courting till this time? Well well, you’ll get no sleep now.”

  Devery grinned. “I said I could do it, sir.”

  Martineau’s own grin was slightly mischievous. “So you did,” he said. “You and Ducklin had better tackle those stairs, as far as the roof. Mr. Weiss and I will go up in the lift.”

  The lift stopped at the top floor. From there the police inspector and the hotelier took the stairs to the roof.

  “This door should be barred on the inside,” said Weiss with some asperity, as they stepped out into starlight.

  “Somebody has unbarred it,” said Martineau calmly. “I suppose one could get off this roof without going back into the hotel?”

  “There are four fire escapes.”

  “Show me,” said the policeman.

  Devery and Ducklin arrived, a little leg-weary. They followed the other two men around the roof.

  Two of the fire escapes gave access to the hotel yard. The third was in a side street, and quite near to the front of the hotel. The fourth was near the back, and it zigzagged down into the narrow alley between Little Sefton Street and Lacy Street.

  “I guess he made his departure by this route,” said Martineau, leaning over the parapet and looking down. “He could have used any of them, but this is the likeliest.”

  Far below, there was a very faint, brief glow of fire. Some uniformed policeman, detailed to watch that way of escape, was holding a forbidden cigarette in his cupped hand. A fugitive on the roof would have seen it. It was very bad police work; a man having a smoke in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

  Martineau was not stirred by the facile indignation of the superior officer. He was not even slightly annoyed. His mood was one of extraordinary calm.

  “I wish I had some used light bulbs, good big ones,” he said, and the others laughed.

  He stood up straight, and looked out over the starlit city. He was above it looking down, because Granchester, after the fashion of English provincial cities, did not have many buildings taller than eight stories. The light of street lamps reflected on darkened windows sent faint illumination skyward, so that there was a glow even where lights could not be seen. Distantly, steam from some huge condensers shone eerily white, while in another direction the red glare of a steelworks could be seen. Even at this late hour fumes from many, many chimneys drifted upward, and the stars had smoke in their eyes.

  Away down below there was the sudden hoarse bray of an adolesce
nt male excited to mirth. It sounded like the veritable voice of ignorance. A creature of the abyss?

  Martineau quoted: “‘Hell is a city much like London—a populous and a smoky city.’ Much like Granchester too, if you ask me. Who wrote that?”

  There was no immediate answer, then Weiss said: “Do you really want to know?”

  “No, Mr. Weiss, not really. I’m just trying to impress these two dumb coppers. Shelley, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” said Weiss, in a tone which suggested that any puns or limericks about Shelley would not be appreciated.

  Martineau looked over the parapet again. From the height the alley seemed to be very narrow. It almost looked as if a fugitive could jump, across and downward, from the fire escape to the roof of the four-story building across the alley. Yes, he decided, an active man could do it, but there was no point in it.

  “It looks as if our man got clean away,” he said. “Up the fire escape, through the first window he could open, down the service stairs and into the cellar: then up to the roof via the service lift, down the fire escape, and away. Perfectly simple. He’s quite a boy, is our Don. Quite a boy.”

  His words were a true reflection of his mood. Four times in a few days he had crossed the trail of Starling, without ever getting near him, and he was beginning to be philosophical about it. His intuitive feeling, that he would have a chance to arrest the man, might be nothing more than a strong wish. Every policeman in the city might feel the same. It was a large city, and a very big world. He could not count upon being the man among thousands who would find another. It was better to be easy about it. “If I set eyes on him, he’s mine,” was the attitude. “If I don’t, well, good luck to the man who gets him.”

  It was to be expected, now, that Starling would try to get away from Granchester. If he did the obvious thing—which could also be the double bluff—he would head for Liverpool and the docks. The Liverpool police were expecting him. They were looking out for him.

  But if he stayed in Granchester even a day longer… The police were methodically blocking the rat holes. They would find him.

  Martineau casually shone his torch on the lower roofs, then turned away. “We can’t be sure he’s gone,” he said to Weiss. “In the morning there’ll have to be a thorough search of the hotel. I’m afraid we can’t do it tonight, with all your guests asleep in bed.”

  “I should say not!” said Weiss.

  “Tonight, though, we’ll search as far as we can without disturbing anybody. All unoccupied rooms and service rooms.”

  The Swiss nodded. He did not like having the police in his place, but he was a reasonable man.

  20

  Sustained by coffee made by the night porter, the C.I.D. men stayed on duty at the Royal Lancaster throughout the night. When the hotel had been searched except for the bedrooms, Martineau arranged with the obliging manager to spread a network of plainclothesmen and hotel employees in the morning. The men would be stationed at strategic points looking along corridors, so that Starling could not move about if he were still in the hotel. And as the suites and bedrooms became unoccupied at the breakfast hour, they would be searched by floor valets and police. So long as there was a slight possibility that Starling might be in the hotel, the search had to be made, though Martineau himself summed up the general opinion by saying that it was like looking for a needle in the wrong haystack.

  At Police Headquarters, Superintendent Clay was also up and doing, directing a wider search than Martineau’s. Within the city boundaries there were check points, foot patrols, motor patrols, and roving detectives following information and hunches. Outside the city, in Borough and County areas, a second, wider cordon was in operation. In places further distant, country policemen and city detectives had Starling’s likeness and description stuck in their pocket books and imprinted on their memories.

  It was an army searching for one man, in a land where the habits and ideals of the people make the prolonged survival of a hunted criminal almost an impossibility, and where geographical obstacles preventing his escape are enormous. He might evade capture for a few days, or even a few weeks, but eventually…

  Superintendent Clay was soberly confident that Don Starling would be captured

  PART IV Starling and Martineau

  1

  At ten o’clock in the morning, with the breakfast dishes washed, the beds made, and the old man safely out of the way in the shop, Silver Steele blithely climbed the stairs to the top floor, to make a preliminary assault upon the dust and dirt which lay upon her grandfather’s huge collection of Victorian “antiques.”

  She carried a vacuum cleaner and a cardboard case containing a flexible pipe and extension brushes because, first of all, she had to remove the thick dust which lay upon everything.

  She put down her tools and looked around. Sunlight was streaming dustily through the windows of the big, square warehouse room. On two sides she could see blue sky and a vista of roofs, on the third side there was the back view of some big shops in Lacy Street, and on the fourth side, across the alley, were the third-floor windows of the Royal Lancaster Hotel. She blushed warmly as she imagined what the people in the hotel rooms would think about the dusty windows of her grandfather’s top floor.

  She worked for a few minutes, moving along with the humming cleaner, then she stopped. She had a feeling that someone was watching her. Her glance went to the hotel windows opposite. She thought that one of the chambermaids might be wanting to wave to her.

  Then her sensitive nose made her aware of a stale tobacco smell. Cigarette tobacco. Near her, she knew, was someone who had been smoking quite recently. She stopped, just in time to avoid getting within reach of a man who crouched, waiting for her, around the end of a big wardrobe. She was suddenly afraid, and she turned to go. But now she was too late. As she hurried along an alley between wardrobes arranged in rows, she could not hear the man who ran upon the other side. He stopped and faced her when he was between her and the stairs.

  Don Starling! Terrified, she stood open-mouthed. Her very soul was screaming, but she could make no sound.

  When he observed that silent scream. Starling relaxed. He remembered that the girl was dumb. She was no danger to him, so long as she did not get away down the stairs. He would soon be going down the stairs himself, and he hoped to sneak out of the shop without being seen. He could tie up the girl with the flex from the vacuum cleaner, and leave her to be found.

  He smiled. “Steady,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She backed away. Her eyes were wild with fear.

  “Take it easy,” he coaxed, as he advanced. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  She fled from him. With an exasperated growl he followed. But at the end of an alley of sideboards she slipped through an opening, and he had to turn and race back, to keep between her and the stairs.

  He pursued again, but she was not easy to catch. She wore flat-heeled crepe-soled shoes, and she was fleet and agile. She was slim enough to pass through openings between heavy pieces of furniture which were too narrow for him. And he was always hampered by the vital necessity of keeping her away from the stairs.

  He tried new tactics. He began to push furniture around, closing ways of escape as he advanced. It became obvious that she would eventually be cornered. She stared around in desperation, looking for some way out. Then she picked up a heavy black marble clock, the pride of some nineteenth-century mantelpiece. She managed to raise the clock in both hands and hurl it through the window. There was a great crash of glass, and a second crash as the clock landed like a bomb in the street below.

  “You bitch!” cried Starling, in astonishment and alarm. He abandoned his earth-stopping measures and went after her in headlong pursuit.

  As she ran from him she caught up, with one hand, a bronze statuette of a muscular man with two rearing horses, and slung it through another window. Then, when she had barely eluded his clutching fingers by squeezing between two huge mahogany
sideboards, she picked up a vase. It made a great noise as it went through a third window and burst on the concrete of the street.

  Starling reacted according to type. He brought out his pistol. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it, or I’ll shoot!”

  The pressure of swift and alarming events made him forget that the girl could not hear him. It seemed that she just wasn’t heeding him. She was defying him. He saw her lift a small but ornate lacquered chair, and run at a window with it.

  At that moment he had only one thought and one intention; to stop the infernal din. “I’ll shoot!” he threatened.

  She knew that she was temporarily out of his reach. She never looked at him. A second chair followed the first.

  He fired one shot. She heard neither the report of the pistol nor the smack of the bullet as it struck the wall behind her. She reached for a bronze ornament. He fired again. He was not an expert with a pistol. It was the third shot which struck her and sent her reeling against the broken glass in the window frame.

  2

  Devery persuaded Martineau to turn up his nose at a hotel breakfast. “Come round the corner with me and see my girl,” he urged. “She’ll be delighted to meet you.” He smacked his lips. “There’ll be ham and eggs, I wouldn’t be surprised. Plenty on your plate.”

  “But it’s after ten o’clock,” Martineau demurred.

  “That makes no difference,” he was assured. “She’ll have ’em ready in a jiffy. She’s as good as gold.”

  They left the hotel, and they were walking along Lacy Street when they heard the first crash. They stopped and stared around. Traffic was running smoothly: there was no commotion. “Somebody smashed a window somewhere,” Devery commented as they walked on.

  They did not hear the second and third crashes, because those were in Little Sefton Street, but when they turned the corner into the alley they saw a uniformed policeman run past the other end.