Читать книгу The Private Eye - Ernest Dudley - Страница 5

THE ASH-BLONDE

Anyone who knew Nat Craig personally would also know that if they walked into his office they would almost invariably find him with his feet on the desk, tilting his chair lazily backwards in order to obtain a better view of the clouds of smoke which rose to the ceiling from the tip of his inevitable cigarette.

Craig said it helped him to think.

He was tilting, smoking, and thinking hard when Mr. Geoffrey Moran rang him up.

“Speaking,” Craig said laconically into the mouthpiece. “What’s on your mind?”

Mr. Geoffrey Moran had plenty on his mind.

He spoke rapidly and nervously for a few seconds and gave Craig his address in Ealing.

“I’ll be over. Two-thirty. Hello, hello?”

The faint click in his ear told Craig that Mr. Moran, apparently having no desire to prolong the conversation, had hung up.

Craig eyed the telephone speculatively for a moment, shrugged, and went off to lunch.

He took a tube train at a few minutes to two. He wondered idly if Mr. Moran’s abrupt end to his phone-call might have been inspired by someone else in the household interrupting him. Someone whom Geoffrey Moran wouldn’t want to know about private detectives.

Craig grinned to himself and lit a cigarette. He hoped the Moran family wasn’t a large family. The process of elimination could become tedious.

The street was wide and lined with trees that hid the neat houses with their sedate formal gardens from curious passers-by. A few were superior to their neighbours in that they possessed garages. Geoffrey Moran’s house was one of these.

Craig walked up the short cement drive and pressed the bell. He pressed it three times before he heard approaching footsteps. A tall ash-blonde opened the door.

“Yes?”

Craig told her pleasantly:

“I want to see Mr. Moran.”

“I am Mrs. Moran. I am afraid my husband has just gone out.”

She had a slightly guttural accent and Craig taped her as a Scandinavian. The solid type. Cool and not easily ruffled. He raised an eyebrow and murmured:

“Pity.”

“Is he expecting you?”

Craig eyed her and let an amused quirk tip the corner of his mouth. “I would not have come all the way out here on chance.”

“Well.…”

The ash-blonde hesitated, and her lips widened showing small white teeth. It was a particularly humourless smile, and the scent of some subtle, clinging perfume she was wearing drifted across the porch to Craig’s nostrils. Finally, she offered:

“Can I help you?”

“Maybe, yes. Maybe, no.”

Craig unhitched his shoulder from the doorpost where it had been taking a rest and told her who he was. He watched her face, but she didn’t bat one of her mascaraed eyelashes. Instead her forehead wrinkled up in a puzzled frown.

“I wonder what on earth Geoffrey would want to see a detective about?”

Craig enlightened her as far as he was able.

“Seemed afraid someone was going to bump him off.”

She stared at him, hesitating. Then:

“Won’t you come in?”

“I’d love to,” Craig accepted politely.

She took him through a small hall and held open the door on the right. It was the lounge, and ran the width of the house, with a bay window at the front and French windows leading into a long rhododendron-lined back garden with a cluster of trees at the bottom.

She picked up a silver cigarette box and offered it to him. He indicated his unfinished stub and watched her as she helped herself, tapping the cigarette thoughtfully on a crimson thumbnail.

She appeared to be deliberating on what to say next, and Craig was in a singularly unhelpful mood.

“My husband said he was going over to see a friend who lives in the next road.”

She spoke at last, slowly and keeping her voice carefully conversational.

Craig nodded expectantly.

“He knew I was going to be in here all the afternoon,” she went on. “I wonder he didn’t tell me you would be calling.”

Craig suggested obligingly:

“Maybe he thought the idea of a detective around the house would worry you.”

She nodded in agreement.

“I expect that was it. Anyway, if he’s expecting you, I’m sure he won’t be long.”

Craig grinned amiably. He said cheerfully:

“Don’t let’s have any misunderstanding about this, Mrs. Moran. I am a detective and not somebody trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner, and your husband is expecting me. He asked me to be here at two-thirty.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s just that now.”

She began a slow smile that indicated she wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or not.

“It’s such a lovely afternoon,” she suggested. “Geoffrey may have decided to go for a stroll on the way home which would take him longer.”

Craig eyed her.

“It could work out that way,” he agreed.

There was a pause while she regarded him levelly. Then her face clouded, she crossed to the open French windows, stared out for a moment before turning back with a sudden restless movement.

He thought it was all very nicely timed and melodramatic, to say the least of it, and she heightened the effect by twisting her hands together despairingly.

She said, as if she had just come to a difficult decision:

“Mr. Craig, I might as well admit it, I’m worried about my husband. He’s been so very moody and strange these last few months. It’s overwork, but though I—I begged him to go away for a holiday, he just won’t move. I haven’t told anyone before what I’m telling you because he’d be furious with me. But after what you have said, I mean, that he’s afraid someone is going to—to kill him—”

Her voice trailed off, leaving Craig to prompt her.

“You mean he’s, shall we say imagining things?”

“We-ell—” It was a long-drawn out syllable. “It does seem rather farfetched to believe anyone would murder him, doesn’t it?”

Listening to the suddenly matter-of-fact tone in the bright little lounge on a sunny afternoon, it ought to have seemed ridiculous. Mrs. Moran gave the impression she thought so at any rate. Craig, who looked for trouble, and murder in particular, in the most unlikely places in any kind of weather, smiled.

“But you are afraid of something.”

He put the query gently. As he spoke, he became aware of a creaking sound above his head. It was so soft even his sharp ears could not be sure of it, but it was always as well to check up. He said slowly:

“Perhaps you don’t like being left alone in the house?”

She laughed.

“Oh, no. I assure you I am not the sort to imagine things. My husband is out a lot, but it would not worry me even if the neighbours did not live so close to us. I do not feel lonely, ever.”

Deliberately, Craig looked at her. He said blandly:

“I’m glad of that.”

Her mood changed again. She should have been an actress, he thought.

“But you’re right, Mr. Craig. I am afraid. Afraid that my husband might do something desperate.”

There was a pause. Then she started nervously as there came an unmistakable noise from overhead.

“One of the windows banging. I think I’ll just slip up and close it.”

She hurried from the room, and after a moment Craig crossed to the French windows and gazed out at the garden.

He lit a cigarette and blew the blue smoke out into the warm air. Everything was very still and dreamily lazy. A perfect afternoon, and there was a faint hum coming from somewhere which could have had a most soothing effect, if only he had had a deckchair, he reflected regretfully.

Craig stepped slowly through the windows and the humming grew in volume. He tilted his head and listened. It could almost be bees busy among the flowers. Only it wasn’t bees. A speculative look narrowed his eyes and then a voice behind him said.

“It was a window.”

He turned to face the ash-blonde. She was breathing a little quickly.

Craig grinned.

“Oh, those stairs,” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

He shook his head, still grinning. “It doesn’t matter.”

She looked at him curiously, then flicked at a cushion that had slipped down into the corner of the couch.

He realized that everything in the room from the curtains to the walls seemed to match Mrs. Moran. The dress and the shoes and the clasp she wore, and the colour scheme, certainly suited her blonde sophistication.

Craig told himself she was either out of her element or all dressed up for something, which wasn’t an afternoon alone. Or both.

He glanced at his watch again.

“You know, I think your husband must have forgotten me after all.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure he hasn’t really,” she protested, and he decided she rose to the occasion pretty well. Then she continued quickly: “But if you’d rather not wait, I will tell him you called, and I expect he will get in touch with you again.”

Craig nodded.

“I am a busy man.”

She flashed him a smile.

“I realize you must be,” she said, “I can’t apologize enough, but it just shows the state of my husband’s mind these days. I do hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you too much?”

He told her: “Think nothing of it.”

He followed her through the hall to the front door. In the porch he turned.

“Your husband has a car?”

She hesitated. “Yes.…” And her eyes flickered past him towards the gates at the end of the drive.

Craig said slowly:

“Maybe he’s gone farther afield than into the next road to see a friend? Shall we take a look-see at the garage?

She shook her head. “If Geoff had taken the car, I should have heard him leave. I’ll tell him you called.”

“You said that before. As for hearing him leave…I don’t think your hearing is as good as it could be.”

Her eyes flew back to his face.

“What do you mean?” she demanded jerkily.

A humourless smile crept across Craig’s mouth.

“I hear a buzz,” he said. “Don’t you?”

She looked at him, puzzlement in her eyes.

“I—” She broke off and tilted her head back. She seemed to be genuinely trying to catch the sound that he had noticed in the lounge.

“Yes—” she said at last. “Yes, I do hear something.”

“Shall we go along to the garage?” he said again.

Without a word she led the way along the gravel path at the side of the house. The humming noise grew louder as they walked. He heard her catch her breath in her throat and she turned quickly towards him.

“He must be in there,” she cried, indicating the garage ahead of them.

The doors were closed and Craig moved fast. One shake was enough to show that they were not only closed, but well and truly locked.

“The key?” he rapped.

She was frightened now. He could hear her breath coming in staccato gasps.

“There’s only one—behind the front door.” She gulped and stood staring at him as if the power to move had deserted her.

“Get it.”

She turned and ran then, while the hum persisted steadily behind those locked doors.

She was back in a few moments and Craig pushed her away as he threw open the doors and the choking smoke from the exhaust billowed out at them.

“My God!” choked Mrs. Moran.

Craig fixed a handkerchief rapidly over his face, ducked into the garage and reached the car. A figure was slumped over the steering wheel. Craig leant across and cut the engine.

“Geoff! Oh, Geoff!” The woman was sobbing, all her stolid calm gone to the four winds. “Is he dead?”

He rasped at her:

“No one could sit that out and live.”

Craig coughed as the deadly carbon-monoxide fumes caught at his throat and lungs.

The air in the garage was cleaning as he lugged the body out of the car and dragged it outside. Mrs. Moran clutched at the dead man’s coat hysterically.

“You can’t do anything,” Craig told her briefly.

Whimpering and crying his name, she helped him carry Geoffrey Moran into the house. They dumped him on the couch and Craig looked on bleakly while he watched her push the cushion under her husband’s head.

“It’s no use!” she moaned. “It isn’t any use!” And then she promptly collapsed on her knees beside the couch.

Craig regarded her for a brief moment. He said:

“Get a doctor. Not that he can do a thing. Then phone the police.”

“Police…?”

She raised her head from her arms and looked at him wide-eyed through a tangle of ash-blonde hair.

He nodded unperturbed.

“It’s murder. But, of course, you know that.”

His words seemed to slap her in the face, and she looked up at him as if he had been a ghost.

“What are you talking about?”

She moved towards him. She looked as if she was about to spring at him.

“Take it easy,” he grinned at her amiably. “Or I am liable to forget my manners. And when I sock people,” he added pensively, “they have a habit of staying socked. Personally, I don’t think you killed him.”

“No?” she jeered. “Thanks for nothing! Who did, Mr. Clever?”

But her eyes were guarded and frightened.

Craig cast a fleeting glance out at the garden:

“Outside,” he said crisply, “there isn’t enough breeze to stir a leaf—so that was not a window banging. I should say it was your accomplice—boyfriend, maybe—hiding upstairs.”

She gasped. He smiled almost apologetically and went on:

“These modern houses are the devil. They relay every sound.”

“You…!”

She was on her feet facing him, and her face was livid. Craig’s eyes hardened and he went on relentlessly:

“Your boyfriend no doubt knocked out hubby, dumped him in the car with the engine running. You were hoping to get away with a suicide set-up. You’d overheard him phone me, so you didn’t wait. You didn’t dare; it would have been a bad mistake to have let him have that little chat with me. Only thing was,” he said slowly, “you made a mistake of another kind. One of you locked the garage and returned the key.” He nodded towards the front door. “Which was silly. If the key was there, how could your husband have locked himself in? It couldn’t have been taken without your knowing.… In your own words, you have been here all the afternoon.”

For a moment there was silence while they stared at one another, then her eyes suddenly widened and shifted to a spot over his shoulder.

Craig spun on his heel, ducking his head to one side—and the heavy poker that the curly-headed young man had aimed at the back of his neck whistled harmlessly past his ear.

The woman screamed:

“Jim!”

“Hallo, son,” said Craig chattily, and whipped his fist into the newcomer’s stomach, bending him up like a jack-knife.

Curly Head gave an agonized grunt and lurched forward. Craig grabbed him with his left hand and pushed him back to arm’s length. His right fist draped itself shatteringly on Curly’s jaw. Craig released him and let Curly Head sink gently to the floor.

“And now, Mrs. Moran,” Craig said genially as he put his foot firmly on the poker, “Shall you call the police? Perhaps, after all, you don’t feel up to it, so I will.”

And Craig picked up the telephone.