Chapter Seven

Lying Wife?

 

The woman was scared when Roger arrived; there was no doubt about that. The problem was to decide what she was scared about. She was rather small, rather plump, with an incredibly tiny waist and what his sons would call a dreamboat figure. She wore a cotton dress high at the neck, which seemed to mock at modesty because of the bulge below it. She was fair-haired, and had nice china blue eyes and a beautifully smooth complexion. On the back of her left hand was an ugly scar, about two inches long. The little house was spotless, and furnished in a way which very few people who lived in Brasher’s Row could afford. Roger tried to make up his mind the best way to approach Endicott’s widow, and decided, as often in the past, that he would have to shock her, perhaps cruelly, to loosen her tongue.

“I don’t understand. I don’t know what you’re doing here,” she said, running the words into one another. “My husband hasn’t got into trouble, has he?”

“Why should you think he has?” demanded Roger.

“I didn’t say that, but what else can I think, with you coming up here, and him being away all day? What’s the matter? What’s happened?” She caught her breath, and then her eyes seemed to light up and she went on with a rush: “He hasn’t met with an accident, has he?”

Roger said: “A kind of accident. He was murdered early this morning.”

“Murdered!”

She brought the word out explosively, as if astounded, but that didn’t get rid of the brightness in her eyes. That convinced Roger that she knew the truth already, and that some-tiling he had said had pleased her. He began questioning her, slowly and deliberately, but as the minutes slipped by he realised that she was much tougher than she looked.

She swore that she hadn’t known where her husband had been all night; that she knew nothing about his business; that she knew none of his friends. She said that he had occasionally been out all night, so she hadn’t been surprised this time. She admitted, almost as if it were against her will, that after he was out all night he often came back and gave her a very bad time; she said that was why she had been frightened when he, Roger, had arrived. That could even explain why her eyes had brightened at the prospect of her husband having met with an accident – and explain why she hadn’t been appalled at the news that he had been murdered.

For three hours, on and off, Roger questioned her; and she gave the same answers. She didn’t know where her husband went, what he did for a living, whom he worked wit – he left her at home all the time, he didn’t mix business with pleasure. There was obviously a great deal of basic truth in all her answers, while neighbours corroborated much that she said. Three of these testified that they knew how Lionel had beaten her up from time to time.

Roger had a feeling of acute frustration when he left, at nearly ten o’clock that night. He felt sure that the girl was lying part of the time, that there was a great deal which she could tell him – but he had a feeling, too, that she would be able to maintain this steely resistance for as long as she wanted to.

She identified Lionel Endicott’s body, without showing much emotion; and the final moment came when she told Roger flatly that she couldn’t help it, she was glad her husband was dead.

“Now perhaps I’ll get a bit of peace,” she said.

 

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Roger said to Bellew, “but I’m going to have the Division watch her for a few weeks. If she’s under pressure, or if she’s playing any part in the racket, someone will contact her—if they haven’t already.”

“Daresay you’re right,” Bellew said. “I’ve checked Stone’s movements, by the way. A dozen witnesses would swear he was two miles away at the time of the murder.”

It was at half past two next morning that Roger pulled up outside the shop in Kemp Road, Clapham. The Stone delivery van was parked away from the corner, and some grocery orders were already piled up in cartons inside.

The morning papers had carried the news of Endicott’s death, and the Echo especially had screeched delight because of the likeness between the artist’s drawing and the photograph of the murderer. But the smash-and-grab raid, as well as the discovery of two corpses chained back to back in a cellar in a derelict house, took most of the newspaper space. Casual references were made to Endicott’s being a gang killing, but only one newspaper referred to the possibility that the murder of Mrs. Stone might have repercussions. The general attitude was that Endicott had been paid for his crime with a kind of rough justice.

Old Mrs. Klein, wearing a starched white smock, was at the provisions counter, cutting up cheese with a wire. A thin, very plain girl with a hooked nose but a mop of the most lovely chestnut hair, was serving an elderly man with biscuits. The door of the shop leading to the living-room was open, and Stone appeared. He stopped short at sight of Roger.

“Will you come back here, please?” said Stone. He kept the door open, and Roger stepped over the patch where the blood and treacle had mixed, and then into the room, which looked exactly as it had when he had first seen it. Stone closed the door. He was wearing a khaki coat, obviously freshly washed and pressed. He was pale, but his face had a strong look about it. There was calmness in his eyes, too.

“I take it that you’ve seen the newspapers,” Roger said.

“Yes, Mr. West, I have.”

“We’re quite sure that the dead man was your wife’s murderer,” Roger said.

“I daresay you are, Mr. West.”

“I don’t want you to be in any doubt,” Roger went on, but he felt much the same as he had when he had talked to Endicott’s wife last night, frustrated, even a little angry. “I’ve brought photographs of Endicott’s head and shoulders from the back, and close-up of his face. And I’ve brought enlargements of the prints found in this room last Friday.” He opened his briefcase, took out the photographs, and spread them on the sideboard for Stone to examine. Stone looked at them all with close interest, and then said: “I don’t doubt that’s the man, .Mr. West.”

“Do you recognise the face?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That’s good,” Roger said. He felt the barrier of resistance even more strongly, and was fully convinced that Stone was holding something back. He hoped to make the man talk more freely as he said: “I was afraid that you would go chasing shadows. I didn’t want there to be the slightest doubt about this man’s identity.”

“There isn’t any,” Stone said. “Are there any more formalities, Mr. West?”

“There will be some, but they’re not urgent,” Roger answered. The odd thing was that he didn’t quite know what to say next; it was like boxing a shadow. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“There is one thing, apart from thanking you for being so considerate about it all.”

“Forget that. What’s the one thing?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time with old newspapers in the Public Library,” went on Stone, “and I’ve been studying all the robberies at shops like mine. There have been a lot of them, haven’t there?”

Roger thought: “Oh.” He hesitated, trying to make sure of the best way to answer; he plumped for complete frankness “Yes, far too many.”

“And this man Endicott was murdered, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“Not yet, but we soon shall.”

“It won’t help you much if someone else kills his murderer when you catch up with him, will it?” asked Stone, and bitterness forced its way through his enforced calm. “This is the question I want to ask you, Mr. West: do you believe that these robberies are organised by the same people?”

Roger said, very slowly, very carefully: “I’ve considered the possibility, and so have some of my colleagues, but there isn’t any evidence except that which you’ve been able to deduce from the newspapers. We have the same information in more detail, that’s all. There are indications that the thefts could be organised, but it’s at least as possible that the only real connection is the fence, or receiver—”

“I know what a fence is.”

“Then you may know that crooks who specialise in the same kind of stolen goods often use the same fence—and in this case the fence is probably someone who can find an easy outlet for cigarettes. But even that’s guesswork, and we’ve certainly no evidence.”

“But you, personally, think there could be a connection between all these crimes?” asked Stone.

“Obviously there could be.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. West,” said Stone. “That’s all I wanted to ask you.”

It would be possible to keep on questioning him, but he was quite as stubborn as Lionel Endicott’s widow. In their way, they had a lot in common and temperamentally they seemed very much alike.

Roger said: “Let me know at any time if I can help, will you? I won’t be handling the rest of the formalities myself, Mr. Bellew will do that, or one of his men. But I’ll always be available on the telephone.”

“Thank you, Mr. West,” Stone said.

He did not offer to shake hands.

Roger felt the disappointing gaze of Mrs. Klein, and the interest of the auburn haired girl with that absurdly hooked nose, as he went out of the shop. Stone politely opened the door for him. Roger got into his car, reversed into Middleton Street, and by the time he was driving off, Stone was carrying more cartons of groceries to his van. It was a strangely unsatisfactory climax, or anti-climax, and he was no happier about this man than he was about Endicott’s widow.

He drove to the Clapham Police Station and went up to Bellew’s office. Bellew, in his shirt sleeves, was studying a map of his big, sprawling Division, and in his mouth he held half a dozen pins with red heads. “’Arfaminnit,” he mumbled, and consulted a paper on his desk, stuck two pins into the map, studied the paper again and stuck in another pin, then spat the others out into the huge palm of his hand, and said: “Sorry, Handsome. Had a proper crop of burglaries last night. Fourteen, and looks as if half of them were done by the same crowd, too.”

“Want any help?” Roger asked.

“Dunno yet,” said Bellew. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“I’ve just seen young Stone,” Roger told him. “I fancy it would be a good idea to keep an eye on him for the next few weeks. He thinks Endicott may have been killed to keep him quiet, and he’s pretty deep.”

“He’ll soon forget it,” said Bellew, over-confidently. “I’ll tell my chaps to keep an eye on him, though.” He glanced at the map, as if he much preferred to think about the crop of robberies. “Any luck from the Old Man about checking up on the possibility of an organised shop robbery racket?”

The truth was that with the murderer dead, Bellew himself wasn’t deeply interested; as a Divisional Superintendent he had to worry about the crimes under his nose, and there were plenty.

“Not yet,” said Roger.

“Lemme know if I can help,” said Bellew, absently.

“Jack.”

“Yep?”

“Once every week or two I’ll look in and collect the latest report on Jim Stone,” Roger said. “Don’t let it get lost in a filing cabinet, will you?”

Bellew grinned.

“Tell you another thing,” Roger said. “Endicott’s widow might know a lot more than we realise, so I’m going to get Charlie Baker to keep an eye on her, too.”

For the first time, Bellew looked as if he were really giving Roger his full attention, and his gaze did not stray to the map or to the red-headed pins now on his desk. He began to smile, and sat back in his chair, looking enormous against the pale green background of the bare wall.

“Just warning me that you’re not going to be put off, eh? Never mind what the A.C. and the Commander say, you’re more on the ball than they are, and you’re going to find out what’s going on. Right?”

“So long as we understand each other.”

Bellew gave a deep, half-amused laugh.

“Be damned difficult not to understand what you mean, Handsome, but okay—I’ll see that Stone’s watched for the next few weeks. That’s a promise. I suppose the truth is that I doubt if we’ll get much in the way of shop robberies for a while, especially if they really are organised. Last night’s crop of bad men got me on the raw. Got anybody with you on this?”

“Dr. Appleby.”

“If you two can’t get to the bottom of it, no one can,” said Bellew, picking up the pins again. “Now if it’s all the same to you, I’ll get some work done.”