John Creasey - Inspector West Alone

Chatworth’s eyes sparkled, and were frosty.

“Anything,to do with West?”

Roger would have expected that. Sloan hadn’t. He gulped, smoke got mixed up with his larynx and he coughed and spluttered. Chatworth tapped the gold pencil on the glass top.

“Well, is it?”

“In a way, yes. I——”

“Been devoting a lot of time to West, haven’t you?”

“Not official time, sir, it wasn’t my job, but——”

“Spare time? A good detective shouldn’t have any spare time. He should either be working or relaxing in order to equip himself for the next real job that comes along. You don’t think West is dead, do you?”

“No.”

“You don’t think he’s turned bad, do you? Or this nonsense about a split mind.”

Nonsense! Sloan’s eyes glowed. “No, sir, it’s utter rot. There are times when I feel like—did you read the Sunday Cry yesterday?”

Chatworth said: “I prefer evidence. You know the evidence that piled up against West. Never mind—you’ve been ferreting on your own, you think you’ve unearthed something and as a result, you’ve been threatened. That it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sloan said: “I’m not sure how much you want to know, sir.” He meant “ought to know”, and thought that Chatworth understood that. “There have been a lot of loose ends. I’ve worked on the theory that West uncovered something about a big organization of which we know little or nothing, and they had to get him out of the way. I don’t pretend to know how they’ve done it, but I’ve a feeling that he’s still alive and still working.”

“Working, eh?”

“Yes. If he is alive, he’s working. It’s all vague and——”

“At least you realize that.” But there was no bite in Chatworth’s voice.

“I haven’t any evidence that West is alive, but you remember that after the Copse Cottage job, we had a squeal from someone we brought in that a man named Kennedy could explain a lot about it. We never traced the Kennedy. But I went through the records and turned up another whisper about a certain Kennedy. He was supposed to have been behind the big forgery job up north, when a man named Kyle was sentenced to seven years. I thought it would be a good idea to watch Kyle when he came out, and put a man on it—Mr. Abbott authorized that, sir.”

“Go on.”

“Kyle went to see a man named Rayner, at offices in Lyme Street, Strand. This Rayner says he made a pile in Africa and came back and bought a general commission agency. He bought it from a man named Wiseman—sorry if I have to be confusing here, sir—and Wiseman had a sleeping partner, named Kennedy. That’s a commonplace name, but it was interesting that Kyle should go to someone who had taken over a business from the Kennedy already referred to in his trial. The Kennedy is only a name —I’ve never set eyes on him, haven’t been able to pin anything on to him. I talked to Kyle myself after the visit to Lyme Street, but he said he’d gone to ask for a job, and didn’t get one. I talked to Kyle about himself, and discovered that while he was inside, his wife was killed in a street accident.”

Chatworth nodded.

“Although he seemed bitter about it, I couldn’t make him talk freely. But I did discover that one thing frightened him—the possibility that his daughter, who lives in France, should discover the truth about him. The daughter’s name was Lucille. We always thought that a French girl was killed at Copse Cottage, if you remember.”

“There are other French names,” Chatworth said.

“I know, sir, but—well, remember the whisper that a Kennedy was involved both in the Copse Cottage job and West’s kidnapping. We’ve been looking for a French girl, and among the missing people reported at our request by the Paris Sûreté there was a Lucille Dinard. Just following that line, sir, I slipped over to Paris when I had a week-end off not long ago. I discovered that this Lucille was really English, but I couldn’t find out the English name she had before she went to live with this uncle and aunt in Paris. My French isn’t very good, and the Sûreté man who was with me wasn’t very interested. I just let it seep into my mind, sir, and watched Kyle. A month after he’d visited Rayner—the Kennedy contact—he fell under a train at Edgware Road. Someone told the police that he’d been pushed, but wouldn’t swear to it at the inquest. The coroner had a lot to say about vivid imaginations, and the verdict was accidental death. Like that on Kyle’s wife, some months ago. I checked, and Kyle had Rayner’s telephone number on a slip of paper, as well as a name—John Pearson—and a Strand post-restante address. There was a letter containing ten pounds at the Strand Post Office, waiting for Pearson, so someone was staking him.”

Chatworth rubbed his round, red nose and grunted.

“Then another queer thing happened—a girl named Marion Day was killed in a street accident. It all seemed normal enough, but I had an obsession about street accidents on this job, and spent a lot of time checking them. I couldn’t cover them all, but I had a bit of luck with Marion Day. She was killed in a stretch of Kensington High Street which is usually free from accidents—I investigated all of those in the accident-free parts, it narrowed the line of inquiry. When found, she had a telephone number in her possession—the number of the Kennedy contact whom Kyle had gone to see. That made three accidents, all connected with Kennedy. It was still vague, but I spent some time checking on this girl Day. She’d worked at a nursing home—a private asylum, really. They dealt in schizophrenic cases. The home was closed down a few days after Marion Day was killed. The doctor and staff vanished, and very little was known about them. There was no list of the staff, no record of the doctor in charge—named Ritter—in medical or surgical lists. But I spent a few odd hours up there—it’s near Worcester—and managed to find an old man who’d worked in the garden. He didn’t know much, never went inside the house, was paid by a member of the staff whose name he didn’t know. But he told me that a Mr. Kennedy often called there until a couple of months ago—he knew, because Marion Day occasionally had a talk with him, and once or twice she’d said she was expecting Mr. Kennedy. Now, he said that Marion Day had a special patient. She took him for a walk round the garden once, and—well, the gardener wouldn’t swear to it, but he thought it might be West. The gardener remembered being called away from the back garden on the occasion when he saw this patient. I showed him photographs. Slipped up, I’m afraid, sir—instead of giving him a selection to choose from, I let him see just West’s. Even then, he wasn’t sure, but he was sure about the name Kennedy. And this patient was at the nursing-home immediately after the Copse Cottage murder. As I’ve said, the nursing-home closed down after the death of Marion Day.”

Chatworth grunted; that might mean anything.

“So I had another go at Rayner, tried to get him to admit that he knew Kennedy and Marion Day and Kyle. I didn’t get anything out of him. I don’t rate him as a bad man— that doesn’t mean he isn’t one, some cover it well, but I doubt if he’s a professional crook. I saw him yesterday. Late last night I had a mysterious telephone message, warning me that I was likely to meet with an accident— that rang a bell, all right!—and also giving me an interesting piece of information. The man said that if I wanted to find the identity of the Copse Cottage victim, I ought to try 23 Rue de Croix, Paris 8. That’s the address of the Lucille Dinard whose relatives I went to see. As a result——”

Chatworth said heavily: “You want protection as well as official support for your line of inquiry, men to work with you, and—you’d like to carry a gun, wouldn’t you?”