V

LONDON

Rollison neared the station. A few cottages were grouped about it, but there was hardly a village worthy of the name. He pulled up outside the little booking-office.

‘Have you a ticket?’

‘Yes. Rolly, thanks. For everything. Don’t lecture me.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Did you know that I’m a prison visitor?’

‘They’ll never send me to prison.’

‘They will, Liz,’ he said lazily, ‘if you go on as you are.’

‘I’d kill myself first,’ she said. Then words poured out of her, hastened because a train was rumbling in the distance. An old porter with drooping moustache came up and Rollison motioned him away. ‘I expect Rowse told you something about it. I hate the police, the law – people! My father was as good a man as you’d find anywhere, and he’s living in hell. Hell!’ she repeated fiercely. ‘When he comes out, I’m going to have a decent home for him, and I’m going to make plenty of money. He’ll never be in want. That’s all there is to it, you can’t stop me, Rowse can’t stop me.’

She opened the door and jumped out.

Rollison drove to London. It was worse than he had feared. Heat rose from the pavements and the roofs, sticky, oppressive – threatening thunder that wouldn’t come. Londoners drooped, the women in flimsy cotton dresses, a few of the men in sensible linen coats, but most in suits which were much too hot and heavy. A few daringly carried their coats over their arms, but looked as hot as the others. Taxi-drivers were in their shirt-sleeves, commissionaires outside the hotels could hardly have been hotter in Turkish Baths, but kept on their thick uniforms. The parks were crowded with people seeking the air.

All this Rollison saw when, a little after six o’clock, he turned off Piccadilly and drove to Gresham Terrace. His flat was on the top floor of Number 22g. The houses in the terrace were tall, narrow, and grey-faced; they had neither the beauty of the Regency nor the ugliness of the worst Victorian period; they were just houses, approached by two steps and with an area in front of each. He went upstairs slowly. He wore Palm Beach suiting, and could not have been dressed more suitably, but the heat gathered on the staircase and in the passages – it was like walking through steam. He took out his keys as he reached the front door.

His man, Jolly, was away; and would be away for another week. That was at Rollison’s insistence, because Jolly had worked with few holidays for far too long. He had gone with some reluctance to spend a month at the sea with relatives whose children called him Uncle.

Jolly, at home, would have had the door open before Rollison reached it; Jolly made the home. Rollison slid the key in and stepped inside. The flat seemed hotter than the landing – all the windows were closed and the blinds drawn. He took off his coat and made a quick tour of the rooms, pulling up the blinds and opening the windows wide; it didn’t make the slightest difference.

The flat had been empty for nearly two weeks; there was dust everywhere, a thin film that would have shocked Jolly. But it was perfectly tidy. In the living-room, which he used for a study, Rollison stood contemplating the wall behind the large walnut pedestal desk; and he smiled faintly. On that wall were the trophies of his hunting – and the most precious prize was a hangman’s noose, which had hanged a murderer whom he had helped to catch.

Such a noose would hang Eddie-Harry’s murderer.

Would it?

There were too many unsolved murders, and it was no one’s fault. The Yard was overworked and under-staffed; while that was so, there would continue to be too many unsolved murders. He didn’t know whether the Yard experts had been consulted by the Devon police; if they hadn’t, they soon would be, because they could give a lot of information about Harry Keller.

He turned away from the trophy wall, poured himself a drink – as always, Jolly had left whisky and soda on a table, ready for him to help himself if he should come back unexpectedly. Rollison left the door leading into the small hall open; and could see the letter-box.

There was a note in the wire cage beneath the box. Yet his post had been sent on.

He took his drink with him when he went to the door. It was a square, cream-laid envelope, and his name was scrawled in pencil: Mr. Rollison – Urgent. He tore it open. There was no way of telling whether it had been delivered by hand the first day he’d left or a few hours ago.

Inside was a single sheet of folded paper and a scrawled message – in an easy, flowing hand.

Mr. Rollison, I must see you, it’s urgent. You’ll find me at Benny Low’s. You know me. Don’t forget the Hexley pub and our Liz, will you. And don’t make any mistake, I mean business. H. Keller.

Rollison glanced at the message again, then walked into the living-room and dropped it on to the desk. Until then, there had been logic in most of what had happened; there was none in this. The problem was to find out when it had been delivered? Surely not before Eddie-Harry had gone to Devon, he could have had a word with Rollison there without difficulty; that suggested it had been dropped in after Eddie-Harry had left the hotel and—obviously!—before he had returned to Hexley, a blunt instrument and a knife.

Yet Eddie-Harry had known he was in Devon. Why should he have to come here? The telephone bell rang.

That startled Rollison; everyone likely to call knew that he was out of town. The bell kept ringing. The pencilled message stared up at him from the paper, which was smeared as with damp fingers. That was another indication of the time it had been delivered; according to the newspapers, the heat-wave had hit London on Sunday, until then the sun had stayed in the south-west. Yet when this had been written, it had been sticky hot, and Eddie-Harry or the writer hadn’t worried about leaving fingerprints. The bell kept ringing.

He strolled across to the telephone, which was on a corner of the desk, and lifted the receiver.

‘Rollison here.’

‘This is Scotland Yard. Just a moment, Mr. Rollison, please. Superintendent Grice would like a word with you.’

So the Yard hadn’t lost much time in discovering that he was back in London.