John Creasey - Alibi

“Hallo,” said Roger. “How is she?”

“Not a chance,” Court answered grimly. “The doc’s with her now, and she’s asking for you.” As they went upstairs in the wake of the ambulance men Court went on, “Doc wants to give her a sedative, but I persuaded him to wait until you got here.”

Roger nodded. While the ambulance men were manoeuvring their stretcher up the narrow stairs, he slipped past them, and into Maisie’s room. A woman stood on one side of the bed, a man was bending over the other.

As Roger neared them, he saw Maisie’s head and face.

From the eyes downwards she appeared uninjured, but her forehead and her fair hair were a bloodied, broken, tangled mess. Roger gulped as he reached the doctor’s side. The girl’s eves, so brilliant and seductive last night, were swollen and bloodshot. Yet obviously she recognised him, and she turned her head.

“ Two minutes, ” the police surgeon said. He held a hypodermic syringe, already loaded.

Roger nodded, went down on one knee, and took Maisie’s limp hand.

“Who was it?” Roger asked, in a whisper.

She moistened her lips, and the woman moved from the other side of the bed and moistened them with a sponge.

“Just give me his name,” Roger urged.

“You—won’t believe me,” she muttered.

“Never mind whether I’ll Relieve you,” Roger said. “Maisie, I’m terribly sorry. An® the quicker I know the quicker we can get you to hospital and—”

He actually saw a movement at her lips.

“Waste of time,” she said. “I’m done for. It was— Mario.”

“Mario Rapelli?” he echoed, incredulously.

“There you are,” she said. “You don’t believe me.” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t know there were such things as —good cops. Give me a kiss—Handsome.”

The doctor had gone to the other side of the bed, the woman rolled up the girl’s sleeve, and Roger stood up and bent over her and kissed her lightly. Quite deliberately she opened her mouth, and he rested his lips on hers for a long moment. There were movements which he saw out of the corner of his eyes, and suddenly her lips, her face, her whole body went limp.

He stood up.

The doctor was putting the needle into its box, the woman and one ambulance driver were wrapping sheeting round Maisie’s head. Her eyes were closed, and he felt as sure as a man could be that she would never open them again.

• • •

Half an hour later, Roger was back at the Yard. For once, he wished Coppell were in his office; he wanted to discuss the situation with the commander. He went straight to his own office, and told Danizon, whose look of astonishment was almost boyish.

“But Rapelli was at Brixton all night!”

“Yes,” Roger said. “One place he couldn’t have got away from. There are three possibilities,” he went on in a clipped voice. “First, that Rapelli has a twin or a double. Second, that Maisie lied on her deathbed. Third, that she genuinely mistook her assailant for Rapelli. I don’t favour one idea against the other yet.” He dropped into the chair behind his desk. “Superintendent Court is handling the routine from division. There’s no trace of a break-in, and it looks as if the killer got in over the roof. Abe Court is checking the two divisional men supposed to be watching her. Whoever attacked her had a key to her room, possibly the house. The weapon was a hammer, taken from a cupboard in the room: it was under her bed and there were no fingerprints on the handle. Time of attack hasn’t been determined but it seems likely that it was around four o’clock, according to the thickness of the coagulation of the blood. She was found by one of her friends—Cleo, one of the would-be witnesses for Mario Rapelli—who couldn’t understand why she wasn’t up. They had a hairdressing appointment together. There’s a caretaker and general factotum in the house and he let this Cleo in with a master key.” Roger saw the glint in Danizon’s eyes, and shook his head. “The key was on a bunch which weighs about half a pound and hangs on the head of the caretaker’s bed. Not a chance that was the key that was used.” He paused, as Danizon finished writing, and went on, “Can you make a brief report from that, and start the file?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks. Any messages?”

“They’re on your desk,” answered Danizon. “Your wife called just before you came in but she said it wasn’t urgent.”

Janet seldom called during the day; Roger wondered what it was about, but put it out of his mind.

Opening the top file, he saw several telephone messages. Not only Janet but Benjamin Artemeus had called, and a Harold Phillipson, of the Globe. Phillipson . He was the managing editor of the paper, and had certainly approved even if he hadn’t written the article so critical of him, Roger, and the Yard. The message ran, Can Superintendent West please call before one-thirty?

It was now nearly a quarter to two.

Roger put a call in to the newspaper, running over the details of the article, wondering again why Janet had called and what Artemeus wanted. And he was sharply reminded of the fact that he had not told Janet of the offer from Allsafe. The next moment his telephone rang and the operator said, “Mr. Phillipson, sir.”

“Thanks. Mr. Phillipson?”

“Good afternoon, Superintendent.” The editor had a deep, pleasing voice with a strangely sardonic intonation, with the emphasis on the “good” and the “super”. “I’m very glad you’ve called.”

“I’ve just got in from Chelsea,” Roger said. “I saw Maisie Dunster.”

“The young woman who really began all this,” Phillipson observed. “She died on the way to hospital. Did you know?”

Roger didn’t answer at once. He had been sure it was inevitable but still had a sense of shock. He was disturbed, too, because Phillipson had known before him.

There was a perfunctory tap on the door, and Danizon put his head into the room.

“I thought you should know that Maisie Dunster is dead, sir. She died on the way to hospital.”

“Yes,” Roger said. “Thanks.” As the door closed on Danizon he turned back to Phillipson. “I’m sorry, someone came into the office. Yes, I know about Maisie. I hope you know that I won’t rest until we’ve found her murderer.”

There was a long pause, before Phillipson answered.

“A good case could be made out for blaming the Yard for allowing her to be murdered, you know—particularly since she was a key witness in Rapelli’s defence.”

“Mr. Phillipson,” Roger said evenly, “no one is more keenly aware than I that we fell down on the job of watching her, but we are not legally responsible. Do you really want to make our investigation more difficult by throwing mud at us in your columns? Whether we’re wrong or right, some of it always sticks.”

“Sometimes it should,” Phillipson retorted. He still spoke with that sardonic intonation as if he were laughing at himself, at Roger or the situation. “However, I don’t propose to throw any more, but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about. I’m not sure we should talk over the tele-phone. Could you come and see me this afternoon?”

Roger hesitated. The editor of a national newspaper would not ask him to give up his time unless it were worthwhile. He wanted to interview the men who had been watching Maisie, and he wanted to concentrate on Rapelli, but neither was of urgent importance.

“Yes,” he answered. “About two-thirty.”

“I’ll be glad to see you,” said Phillipson. “Thank you.”

Roger rang off, and immediately put a call in to Janet, but there was no answer; she must have gone shopping or to one of her afternoon committee meetings. He called Artemeus, at Allsafe, half-expecting to find the man out at lunch. But no; he answered the company operator’s ring.