Murder Somewhere in This City Read online

  “Too true,” said the inspector, making for the door. “Hallam first, to verify.”

  He rounded up Gus Hawkins, Stan Lomax and Bill Bragg, and took them forty miles over the hills to Hallam. There, at his request, the police conducted an identification parade in reverse. The green-handed thief was brought out and introduced to Martineau. “Now,” said the inspector. “Do you recognize any of these gentlemen?”

  “Sure,” said the prisoner. He turned indignantly to the Hallam detectives. “Happen you’ll believe me now. That’s the bookies I backed with yesterday. And that’s his clerk. And that’s his private bruiser.”

  To corroborate the statement, Gus himself remembered the prisoner as a man who had betted persistently and unsuccessfully at his stand on the previous day. He had even commented upon the man’s ill luck.

  “So the money went into a bookie’s pocket,” a Hallam detective bluntly commented.

  “You can have it back,” said Gus, “when you find the three thousand eight hundred that goes with it.”

  The bookmaker’s attention had not been drawn to the prisoner’s green fingers, but he had noticed them. On the way home he referred to them. “Is that the bloke who’s been passing the snide?” he wanted to know.

  “It’s just possible,” was Martineau’s noncommittal answer.

  “It’s poor stuff, if the ink comes off.”

  “It is, if that’s the case,” said the inspector with marked disinterest. That, he thought, was as much as Gus and his henchmen needed to know about malachite green. And the sooner they forgot about the “snide,” the better.

  With the Granchester police, of course, it was different. They were conducting a strictly secret search for green fingers in the city. Only the chemists in their shops would be informed, and they would not be told any more than they needed to know: that there had been a larceny, and that any person seeking a solvent for a green stain on the hands should be kept waiting until the police were called. There would be men standing by in readiness for such a call. They would be on their way almost as soon as the chemist who called them had put down his telephone.

  4

  Gus Hawkins and Harry Martineau had two things in common: they were both married to handsome women and they were both unhappy about it. Gus’s wife was, he suspected, occasionally unfaithful. Certainly she was far too gay for a normal married woman. He sometimes wondered if he gave her too much money.

  It wasn’t as if Chloe was accustomed to money. She had never had much of her own, and she was rather down on her luck when Gus met her. At least, he thought so. She had no money and no job, and she was running around with a shady crowd. Gus was attracted by her, and he was sorry for her. Nowadays, though he still found her attractive, he sometimes wondered how he had been induced to marry her.

  At the time of the marriage, many people had remarked that it was strange how a wise guy like Gus could be snared and deluded by a dumb dame like Chloe.

  As he left his office on the evening of that unhappy St. Leger day, Gus glumly remembered the night before. Last night was typical, he thought. Though he was late, she—depend on it—was later. It was annoyance and uncertainty about that which had made him forget about the four thousand pounds in the unlocked garage. When he arrived home, his comfortable suburban house was in darkness. When he saw it he swore, in a gust of helpless anger. He knew that Chloe would not yet be in bed. Not at home, anyway. She was out somewhere. Doing what? With whom?

  He unlocked the front door and went into the house, and put the light on successively in every room while he looked around. He searched with conscious suspicion, seeing everything. But there was nothing out of the ordinary: the house was in its normal state of moderately clean untidiness. Having switched off all the lights, he went into the front room. He knelt on the settee beside the window, with his arms on the sill. In front of the window was the short drive. The posts of the open gateway were silhouetted against the lighted road outside.

  At a quarter to twelve Chloe came home. She turned in at the gate and hurried up the drive, but there was no sign of guilt or uneasiness in her haste. He stood up and moved back from the window so that she would not see him. As she opened the door with her key he stood silent, and, he hoped, forbidding. She came from the hall into the front room and threw her handbag onto the settee. Then she switched on the light.

  When she saw him she jumped, and said “Oh!” Then she laughed and went straight to him, and hugged him.

  “There,” she said, petting him. “He got home first and no supper. When he’s worked hard all day. Poor tired darling. Never mind, she’ll have it ready in a minute.”

  She left him, and ran upstairs to put away her coat, because she was never untidy with her own clothes. She returned, pushing up the short sleeves of her pretty dress as if she were going to do all the work in the world.

  “What would you like, dear?” she asked.

  “What is there?” he inquired sulkily.

  She giggled briefly. “Nothing much. I didn’t get down to the shop today. Will you have an egg and some ham?”

  “What, again?”

  “You know you like ham and eggs, I’ll have it ready in a jiffy.”

  He leaned in the kitchen doorway, watching her as she stood by the cooker. When the ham was in the pan he said: “Where have you been all this time?”

  “I went to the Odeon,” she said. “Then there was a terrific queue for buses. You know how it is, Friday nights. I just got on the last bus.”

  He remembered the film at the Odeon. “You said you’d seen it,” he grumbled.

  She nodded. “It was so good I thought I’d go and see it again. I enjoyed it twice as much the second time.” Then suddenly she giggled again.

  “Was it so funny?” he demanded sourly.

  She turned and came close to him. She was a petite girl; slender, with a disproportionately heavy bosom. She had fair hair, brown eyes, and a pretty, pointed, elfin face. There was mischief in that face; maybe innocent mischief, maybe—well, Gus sometimes wondered.

  “Did she stay out late then, and make him jealous?” She murmured, with her face hidden against his shoulder. She seemed to be contrite, and yet he thought that she might be secretly laughing at him.

  “You’re always out late,” he growled, “and you always have an excuse. One of these nights your watch’ll be wrong, and you’ll miss that damned bus.”

  She smiled up into his face. His resentment did not worry her. So long as he did not actually know anything, she was sure of her ability to wheedle him into a good humor. “Then,” she twinkled, “she’ll have to take a taxi.”

  She stood on her toes and pulled his head down and kissed him, and because he also had been drinking he did not smell the gin on her breath. Then she turned away and cracked an egg into the pan, and started to cut bread. He returned to the front room, and stared moodily through the window at the lighted gateway.

  When the meal was ready she came to him, and hugged him again. “Now, go and eat his supper,” she coaxed. “Then they can go to bed and she’ll be nice to him. She’ll love him and love him and love him, and he won’t be jealous any more.”

  “If ever I catch her two-timing,” he said to himself, “I’ll break her neck.” And yet he knew even then that it was a vain resolve. He had always had too much common sense to resort to violence.

  She pressed closer, and as his arms went round her his mood changed as it had done before in similar circumstances. He thought that he might be wrong about Chloe. After all, he had no direct evidence.

  That was last night. Tonight, he felt sure that if she had seen an evening paper she would be waiting at home for him. Even Chloe would stay at home to be with a husband who had just been robbed of four thousand pounds and had a valued and trusted woman clerk murdered. In the afternoon he had tried to speak to her on the telephone, but apparently she had been out. Later, when the evening papers had appeared, she had not phoned the office to ask for details, and so, perversely
, he had not tried to reach her again. Now he thought: “Let her wait. I need a drink.”

  He went to the Stag’s Head and had several drinks, but this time he did not conform to his own tradition of drinking champagne from a tankard to celebrate a thoroughly disastrous day. He had lost four thousand pounds, but, with poor Cicely lying dead, he could not drink champagne.

  While he was in the bar, Ugo the headwaiter passed through. Ugo, who was a sort of friend of his, informed him confidentially that he had some rather exceptional steaks. Gus was still slightly annoyed because his wife had not telephoned, and he thought again: “Let her wait,” and ordered a meal.

  Men will stay out when they should go home. That is probably the world’s most common cause of domestic discord and unhappiness. Gus Hawkins should have gone home. Like other men who sometimes linger on the way from the office, he would have saved himself a headache if he had not done so. He would have saved himself a number of headaches.

  It would have been much better if he had gone straight home. Certainly, on this occasion, it would have been much better for his wife.

  5

  Martineau and Devery ended a long day’s work at ten o’clock. “Let’s have an odd one at the Green Archer,” Martineau suggested, because he did not want to go home. These days, he never wanted to go home.

  His domestic trouble was not of the same type as Gus Hawkins’. Julia Martineau was not unfaithful, and it was impossible to suspect that she ever would be. She was only interested in fine clothes, social standing, attractive homes, and the affairs of her acquaintances. The sexual behavior of other people (as a topic of scandalous conversation) was more interesting to her than her own or her husband’s. She was rarely aroused. The sexual act was sometimes a duty, sometimes a favor to be granted, and always a ceremony which she allowed to be performed after it had been suitably prayed for. Lately, Martineau had ceased to pray.

  At half past ten, when the landlord of the Green Archer called “Time,” Devery excused himself. “Sorry to dash off,” he said. “I’ve got a supper date.”

  “If you have to go a-courting at all,” said his disillusioned senior, “suppertime is as good a time as any.”

  “Exigencies of the service, sir,” Devery replied briskly. “She seems satisfied if I show up sometime during the twenty-four hours.”

  He went. Martineau lingered, until he remembered that it was Saturday night. There would be queues of people waiting for outward-bound buses. He went to catch his bus.

  He could not get on a bus before eleven o’clock, and it was eleven twenty-five when he arrived at his neat semidetached house in suburban Parkhulme. A light was showing downstairs, at the back. Julia was waiting.

  “Hello,” he said as he entered the living room, but his wife stared coldly at him and said: “What time do you call this?”

  He looked at his watch and told her the exact time.

  “What time did you sign off?” she wanted to know.

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “And since then you’ve been in some pub.”

  “Correct,” he said.

  “You’ve been working on that murder, I suppose. Have you got anybody for it?”

  He shook his head. “Anything for supper?” he asked, not very hopefully.

  “There’s your tea, if you want to warm it up,” she said. “Other husbands can ring up their wives and tell them when they’ll be home. Of course, I couldn’t expect you to do that. You couldn’t even phone and tell me you’d be working late. You never come home. Not until you have to.”

  He accepted the rebuke. He usually told her when he would be late. But today, when he had remembered that he should tell her, he had been in the middle of wild moorland on his way to Hallam.

  He went into the little kitchen and looked at his “tea” in the cold electric oven. Two small lamb chops, some tinned peas, chips. Gravy in a small jug, with a top layer of cold fat like a sheet of ice on water. It would all have been quite nice at teatime. Even now, warmed up, it would be eatable because he was hungry. He closed the oven door and turned the switches. He went back to the living room, which his wife called the dining room. Also she called the front room the lounge, and he could always annoy her by calling it the parlor.

  Julia sat upright on the edge of her fireside chair. As he had expected, a copy of Vogue was on the table within her reach. She was an extremely elegant woman, with an infallible taste in clothes. The plain, rather severe dress which she now wore was undeniably smart, and it certainly suited her mood and expression. She was thirty-three years of age, tall, darkhaired, clear-skinned. Her face and neck would have given pleasure to a sculptor. She had a perfectly natural model figure, and such a figure she had always had. It sometimes seemed to Martineau that her figure changed itself according to the demands of fashion. He was sure that her breasts had filled out since voluptuous busts became fashionable. If it became fashionable to be fat, Julia would quite naturally put on weight. If flat chests became the thing again, her breasts would seem to melt away.

  “At least,” she said, “one would think you could come home at ten, when you came off duty. You’ve been out of this house since half past seven this morning.”

  A girl had been murdered, he thought. Four thousand pounds have been stolen. And behold, I have been out of the house since half past seven this morning. Mercy on us, I didn’t come home to my tea.

  “I was weary,” he said. “I needed a drink.”

  “You could have had a bottle of beer at home.”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said. “You’d sooner be in a low pub than at home. With low women sitting around the bar, ready to go with you if you want them.”

  “I’ve told you before, you’re all wrong about that,” he said patiently. “I can’t afford to spend my time in that sort of pub. In decent pubs nearly all the women are there with their husbands. They may not come up to your idea of society, but they’re respectable.”

  “You didn’t think about me, waiting here,” she said. “You never do.”

  Martineau admitted to himself that her last grumble seemed reasonable enough. It seemed so. But was she waiting with love or anxiety? He did not think so. He was beginning to believe that as a husband he was merely a property of some value to her. To women of her type all husbands were a nuisance, with their rough ways and physical demands, but they were a necessary nuisance. According to Julia’s pattern of life a woman had to have a husband, the more successful the better. She had to have a husband to hold her head up in society, and to prevent other women from pitying her.

  “It seems to me that my life is all waiting,” she said. “Waiting for you to come in, or go out, or come to bed.”

  She hasn’t enough to do, he thought. She ought to have a couple of kids.

  His conception of a happy home had always included one or two children. He had married Julia under the delusion that children would arrive in the natural course of events. But from the beginning Julia had quite positively refused to have a child. She had never, at any time, allowed her husband’s love-making to become uninhibited enough to produce one. Their sex life had always been artificial.

  Martineau himself did not have a blind fondness for children, nor did he subscribe to the sentimental convention that all children were lovable. He knew that many of them were peevish little horrors who were only loved by their parents and grandparents. Still, a man sometimes met a gruff small boy or a dainty little girl who made him wish for a family of his own.

  But Julia thought that life could be complete without children. When her friends’ children were in her house she was all the time on edge, afraid that they would kick the furniture or mark the wallpaper.

  “My life’s empty,” she said now. “We never go out together, and you’re never at home. I try to keep this place nice, and you treat it like a doss house.”

  It occurred to him that he was having to suffer because she had had an empty evening: no film she w
anted to see, no book she wanted to read, nothing she wanted to hear on the radio, nothing to do. Probably she had been playing bridge all the afternoon, but that was a long time ago; seven empty hours ago.

  “You haven’t enough to do,” he said.

  She looked at him. “You’re not suggesting that I should take a job, are you?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m not. If you take a job it’s your own affair. But you want something to do.”

  “I’d look nice, the great Inspector Martineau’s wife, hunting for a job.”

  “You’re very particular about how things look, aren’t you?” he said. “It’d look all right if you justified your existence by having a baby or two. Your life wouldn’t be empty any more. And we’re both still plenty young enough.”

  “Don’t start that again. Why do you always come back to that?” she said. Then she said: “It would be different if I had Mother and Father here. At least I’d have company.”

  “No!” he said.

  He went into the kitchen and returned with his supper. She watched him sulkily. He picked up the evening paper and glanced at the headlines while he ate, so she got up and banged off to bed without speaking. He said “Good night” but she did not answer. He shrugged and went on with his meal.

  After supper he lit a cigarette, and went into the front room. He did not switch on the lights, but he could see fairly well by the light which streamed from the hallway through the open door. He stared through the window for a little while, then he turned to the piano and absently picked out a tune with one hand. He sat down and began to play. Willfully he dropped his cigarette ash just anywhere on the carpet. He did not do it to annoy Julia, but he knew that it would annoy her. Give her something to do, he thought.

  There was a sweet little tune which he had heard a youth whistling as he waited for his bus. He called it Hildegarde’s song, after the singer who used it for a signature tune. He played it, softly. He was not a serious pianist, but he played well by ear. Almost everybody liked to hear him play. He played Hildegarde’s song several times, getting it just right, putting his own emphasis where he liked it and letting the words of the part English, part French lyric run through his mind.