Chapter Sixteen

Why Murder Mannering?

Mannering went out in the heat of the afternoon. A middle-aged man limped past him, carrying his jacket, collar and tie loose, braces taut. A few people stood and looked across as if they expected further sensations. Two Yard men, including the comfortable-looking Grimble, now dressed in brown serge and almost hot enough to collapse, were in Hart Row. Grimble nodded. Mannering went along to his car, got in, lit a cigarette, and waited.

It was twenty minutes since Dibben had telephoned.

Mannering had just heard from the hospital; Sylvester was dead.

That was the harsh, cruel fact. The man who had served him loyally for years, gentle, patient, courteous, friendly to everyone, had been brutally attacked and murdered; and he had been protecting him, Mannering; protecting Quinns.

He hadn’t even been able to sound the alarm.

Beneath Sylvester’s desk had been a bell-push; once touched with the foot it would have sounded the alarm up and down Hart Row, upstairs in Quinns, down in the strong-room.

Mannering switched on the ignition, pressed the self-starter, and moved off towards Hart Row. Why should “they”, why should anyone, want to kill him? Dibben had told what he believed to be the truth. Honour among thieves showed in expected guises and came from unlikely places; and he had used the right tactics with Dibben.

But why should anyone want to kill him?

He drove off, slowly until he was in the stream of traffic in Bond Street. He headed for Piccadilly and then New Scotland Yard. He watched the driving-mirror closely, but as far as he could judge wasn’t followed. His mind wouldn’t stop posing the question: Why did they want to kill him?

Fenn was in his office, just after five o’clock; in his shirtsleeves, his tie loose, forehead and upper lip sticky with sweat. It was much hotter than it had been at midday, but the sun was behind a mass of almost black clouds. The cloud would open and the downpour come at any moment. Thunder rumbled some way off.

The telephone bell rang; it never seemed to stop.

“Fenn speaking.”

“Grimble here, sir,” came a deep voice. “Mannering left about an hour ago. No one has been to the shop, except a couple of customers who rang the bell once and then went off. I’ve their descriptions and all that, sir.”

“Good. How’d Mannering look?”

“Like plain ruddy murder,” Grimble said. “I wouldn’t like to get in his way just now.”

“Know him well?”

“Fairly well, sir.”

“Trust him?”

“Trust Mr. Mannering?” Grimble sounded astonished. “Well, I would and I wouldn’t. He’s honest, sir, if that’s what you mean, I’d trust him with my last penny or my young daughter, day or night, but he isn’t above putting one across us. If he thought—”

“Go on,” Fenn urged, when Grimble stopped.

“Don’t know that I’m justified in saying that, really, sir,” said Grimble cautiously, “but if he thought he could lay his hands on the brutes behind Sylvester’s murder, I think he’d kill them himself. It’s a funny thing with Mannering, once you’re one of the family, so to speak, you’re there for keeps. Anyone who works for Mannering is damned lucky, if you ask me.”

“Except Sylvester.”

Grimble paused, and then said slowly, “That’s different, sir, isn’t it? I don’t mean that way.”

“I know what you mean,” Fenn said. “Thanks.”

He rang off, and looked at the photograph of a Yard XI in white flannels, with absent Superintendent Bristow well to the fore. Bristow wouldn’t have needed to ask Grimble that, but knowing Mannering too well had its disadvantages as well. The Mannering whom Fenn had seen at Quinns had been first dazed and then deadly; and Grimble confirmed that opinion.

Fenn studied reports which had come from Midham, and a dossier, already very thick, on Bill Brash. One thing had been discovered about Brash: he was a close associate of Crummy Day, a pawnbroker with an “iffish” reputation.

Brash’s finger-prints were on the spear which had killed Revell. That was something that Mannering didn’t know.

Fenn got up and hurried out and downstairs to the waiting-rooms. He thrust open the door of one, and Mannering looked up from an armchair in a corner.

“Sorry, Mannering,” Fenn said, as if he really, meant it. “The A.C. held me up, and then there were two or three jobs I couldn’t avoid. Now I’ve all the time you want. Cigarette?”

Mannering took one. “Thanks.”

“Care for a drink?”

“No, thanks,” Mannering said. It was cooler in the waiting-room, which had one small window, but still too warm for comfort. Mannering looked grey about the cheeks; and still very bleak. “I’m taking a chance on you,” he said, “and I hope you’re going to justify it. The man I let go last night is named Dibben.”

“Changed your mind, have you?” Fenn looked pleased.

“No. He telephoned me to say that I was on the spot—in line for murder. He didn’t say why, just warned me, and hung up. There couldn’t be any purpose in that, unless it were true.”

Fenn looked his disagreement. “None?”

“What do you think?”

“If he’d wanted to put the wind up you—”

“That would make him an actor who could put himself over perfectly,” Mannering said. “I’ve ruled that one out. I’d like to find out who he works for, what he’s doing, and what contacts he has, and I can’t do it myself. Will you—without pulling him in on the Dragon’s End job?”

Fenn said, “Listen, Mannering, there was a murder down there. Remember.”

Mannering looked at him levelly.

“I don’t forget murder,” he said. “I don’t forget anyone’s murder. All right, he could have done it. You’ll know his name, directly you get any other evidence you can pull him in. I’m not asking you to do less than your duty.” That was almost a sneer.

Fenn said, “I’ll let him ride, Mannering. Dibben, eh?” He took out a pencil and a small note-book.

“M. Dibben, 17 Penn Street, Whitechapel,” Mannering said.

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“Not yet,” Mannering said.

Fenn closed his note-book, put his pencil away, and stood upright – ramrod straight, for once not looking convex. He smiled faintly, but his expression and his voice were serious.

“If I were you, John,” he said, “I’d go home and take it easy. Talk this over with your wife. Sit back, and leave the rest of the job to us. You didn’t get much sleep last night, you’ve had a strenuous day and bad shock. You might do something you’ll regret if you don’t give yourself a rest.”

There was a pause; then Mannering gave a taut smile.

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate that. If I don’t do it, you can’t blame yourself.”

“Taken by and large, I’d rather see you alive than dead,” Fenn said. “And I don’t like this threat to you.”

“Suspicion all over?” Mannering demanded. “I’m not any weaker physically, and still have a strong right arm.” Fenn just grinned.

On his way downstairs, into an early evening which was eerie because of a great dark cloud casting a pall over the centre of London, as if sulphurous smoke were pouring down from some turbulent volcano in the skies, Mannering thought of the way he’d started. “If I were you, John.” A friendly gesture, and Fenn didn’t make gestures, didn’t do anything, without a purpose.

Mannering drove out into the Embankment, and was on the far side of Parliament Square, which was choked full with home-bound traffic, when the deluge came. A few huge spots of rain struck the cars, the huge red buses, the teeming pavements; and then suddenly the rain fell, as it does in the tropics, with a roar which scared a lot of people who had never heard its like before. It smashed upon London in a torrential stream. Cars, their drivers suddenly blinded, banged bumper to bumper. A dozen skidded. The pavements were suddenly emptied as everyone on foot rushed for cover. The thronged square and the long width of Victoria Street were as deserted as they would be at midnight; every shop doorway was tightly jammed with people; pale faces were turned up towards the lowering yellow sky, in awed amazement.

Mannering was jammed in.

The rain came down for ten minutes in one solid wall; and although traffic began to move again afterwards, it was only at a crawl. Gars were parked on either side of the road, with drivers who hadn’t the nerve to go on. The hold-up gave Mannering time to think again, and he didn’t want to think.

He had to tell Lorna about Sylvester.

She had known him for a long time, he was part of Quinns. She had been worried before, now—

She needn’t know about Dibben’s warning.

The rain was slackening, and the sun began to shine behind the clouds. The light was strange, almost yellow ochre in places, becoming a brighter yellow. It reflected off the glistening pavements, the streaming road, the roofs of the cars and the scarlet buses. Mannering got into a stream of traffic which was moving fairly fast.

Was Fenn right? Did they want to kill him for something which had happened at Dragon’s End the night before? Something he had seen – or noticed – yet the significance of which he had not understood? Something in one of the grotesque carved figures, perhaps; or in one of the stuffed animals, perhaps even at the floorboards.

There was the other angle, the one at which Fenn had jumped immediately: that Dibben was simply working on his nerves. He didn’t believe it. The man had been almost insolent at first, but it had been an insolence covering fear: he had begged for a chance, been given it, and – tried to make amends. One to Dibben.

Did his warning to Mannering put Dibben himself in danger?

Would Fenn keep his word?

The traffic thinned out, the rain stopped. Water was rushing down the guttering of houses and shops and pouring like miniature torrents down the kerbs. Great pools of water collected by the drains, twice Mannering had to drive through one. Children were already playing at the sides of the roads, dipping sticks in muddy puddles, trailing pieces of wood and paper boats, paddling.

He reached Green Street.

Only the Yard man was in sight, in a doorway opposite. Everything seemed normal. Lorna would be back by now, and Miranda with her; he could think of Miranda’s glorious eyes and her pristine beauty, it could drive away the dark and ugly thoughts.

Lorna had to be told, remember.

He got out of the car, slammed the door, glanced up at the window. No one was in sight. Perhaps they weren’t back yet.

He heard a sound, glass smashed, someone was shouting: the words became intelligible.

“John, John, John!”

That was Lorna, her voice strident with fear and with warning.

“John, John, John!” she screamed.

He ducked back from the doorway as he heard a vicious humming, then the thud of a bullet in the front door. He dropped to the wet ground and squirmed backwards into the cover of the car. Lorna had stopped shouting, but her cries and the roar of the shot were still in his ears.

He squinted through the window of the car, and from the crouching position saw the face of a man at the window of a house opposite; the first-floor window. He didn’t recognise him, but saw the gun in the man’s hand, levelled and waiting until he showed himself.

But the Yard man was on the move, his whistle shrilling out, and he came running into the road. Mannering didn’t see but heard him, and shouted:

“Get back, get back!”

The Yard man came on, the gun barked, the man staggered. As Mannering caught sight of him, he did a funny little pirouette, and collapsed.