Terror Tower Page 10

‘Well, sir,’ he replied after a second’s delay, ‘other people might have recognised it, and it would have been rather awkward.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt it would,’ said Lowe dryly, and then suddenly: ‘What made you ill? Did you catch a chill last night?’

  ‘I didn’t go out last night, sir,’ said the butler quickly.

  ‘Then who took out that ambulance that you keep in the Tower room?’ asked Lowe sharply.

  ‘No one, so far as I know,’ said North. ‘Was it taken out?’

  ‘You know very well it was,’ said the dramatist. ‘It was taken out of the Tower room and wheeled round to the drive where somebody was waiting with a car.’

  North’s face showed the utmost surprise. Rather overdone, McWraith thought.

  ‘I assure you I know nothing about it,’ he protested. ‘I was in bed and asleep at twelve, sir.’

  ‘I never said anything about the time,’ snapped Lowe, and North looked embarrassed.

  He tried to rectify his blunder, and in doing so gave himself completely away.

  ‘I — I thought’ — he stammered — ‘I was under the impression that the — the dead man wasn’t found until after that time —?’

  He floundered helplessly and his voice trailed away to silence.

  ‘I don’t know why you should connect that fact with my remark concerning the ambulance,’ said Trevor Lowe. ‘I never mentioned anything about the dead man.’ He paused to give the butler an opportunity of speaking, but North, his face grey and haggard, remained mute. ‘Did you connect the two,’ Lowe went on relentlessly, ‘because you knew the ambulance had been used to transport the body of the man who was killed from the Tower room to the waiting car, which took it to the place where it was found?’

  Still silence from the frightened man by the door.

  ‘You did know,’ said Lowe harshly. ‘You may have gone to bed at twelve, but you got up again to assist at the killing of the man I found in the ditch at the cross-roads. He was killed here — at Greytower — in that locked room, the door of which you said had never been opened to your knowledge, but which I know was opened recently.’

  North’s lips moved, soundlessly at first, and then words came huskily, incoherently pouring themselves out in a stream of denial.

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ he cried huskily; ‘I swear I don’t. You’re trying to fix something on me because I’m an old lag. I didn’t kill the man and I don’t know who did. That’s the truth — whether you believe it or not; that’s the truth and you can’t put anything over on me!’ His voice rose shrilly. ‘I’m not in this business at all, I don’t know anything.’

  He was lying, and they knew that he was lying. There was no ring of truth in that outburst; only fear — fear for his own skin, and the dramatist decided to play on that fear.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Gillman,’ he said sternly, ‘and I’m pretty certain that the jury won’t either.’

  The butler’s face changed from its yellowish grey to a dirty, unpleasant looking white.

  ‘The jury?’ he muttered. ‘Why — what —’

  ‘That’s what it’ll come to,’ said Lowe. ‘You surely realise that there is sufficient evidence to warrant Superintendent Hartley detaining you for the murder of this unknown man?’ He glanced quickly at Hartley, and the superintendent picked up his cue.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said gruffly; ‘I shall have to ask you to come along with me to the station.’

  North gave a little choking sound that was half a sigh and half a cough, and his small eyes shifted from face to face like a trapped stoat.

  ‘I swear to you I had nothing to do with it —’ he began, his voice shaking with terror.

  ‘You may not have actually shot the man yourself,’ said Lowe, ‘but you know who did, and therefore are an accessory, and in cases of murder an accessory is regarded as equally guilty.’

  ‘I — I —’ North swallowed hard, as though he had difficulty in speaking. ‘Look here, supposing I tell you all I know — that’d go in my favour, wouldn’t it?’

  Lowe’s pulses quickened; this was what he had been playing for — hoping that the man’s nerve would break.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘you would certainly get off with a lighter sentence. Wouldn’t he, Hartley?’

  ‘Without a doubt, sir,’ said the superintendent.

  ‘Well, then, listen.’ North glanced uneasily round the room, as though he expected some menacing figure to leap out on him from behind the furniture. ‘I’ve only been doin’ what I was forced to do.’ He came two or three steps nearer to Lowe and Hartley. ‘I couldn’t help myself; there’s a devil in Stonehurst and —’

  Crash!

  The glass of the window overlooking the garden shattered to fragments, and North staggered. His hands went up, clawing wildly at the air, his face contorted into a grotesque expression of horror and surprise, and then suddenly he collapsed, fell across a chair, slithered from there to the floor and lay still.

  ‘Good God!’ gasped the startled superintendent. ‘What was that?’

  Without answering, Lowe stepped over to the prostrate figure of the butler and bent down. A glance showed him that the man was dead, and the spreading stain on the breast of his dressing-gown was mute evidence of how death had come to him.

  ‘That was a bullet,’ he snapped. ‘Somebody shot him through the window.’

  ‘But —’ began Hartley, and found that he was speaking to empty air, for in two strides Lowe had reached the door, jerked it open and disappeared into the hall.

  Rather shaky and white, Jim and McWraith followed him. The front door was open, and they could hear his hurried steps on the gravel outside. Presently they came up with him standing underneath the window through which the shot that had killed North had come.

  ‘The killer must have been listening,’ said Lowe, his brows puckered into a frown. ‘See here, and here’ — he pointed to the disturbed earth of a narrow flower-bed — ‘this is where he stood.’

  ‘Did you see anybody?’ muttered Jim.

  The dramatist shook his head.

  ‘No, he’d gone by the time I got here,’ he answered. ‘He must have made off directly after he had fired the shot.’

  ‘I heard no report,’ said McWraith. ‘Did you?’

  He looked from Lowe to Jim, and they shook their heads.

  ‘He probably used a silencer,’ said the dramatist and stooping suddenly he picked up something that was lying by the wall.

  ‘Here is the spent shell,’ he remarked; ‘so the shot was fired with an automatic.’

  He slipped the little brass cylinder into his pocket.

  ‘H’m! Well, it’s no good attempting to go after the murderer now, he’s had ample time to get away. We may as well go inside.’

  He began to walk back to the front door, and Jim and McWraith followed in silence.

  The death of North — Jim could not think of him by his real name — before their eyes had come as an unpleasant shock, and they both felt rather sick.

  When they reached the dining-room they found that during their absence another person had joined the superintendent and the silent form still stretched motionless on the floor. Mrs. North, her face the colour of old parchment, out of which her coal-black eyes seemed to burn like holes pierced with a red-hot iron, was staring down at her dead husband. Her fingers clutched the back of one of the high chairs with a grip that turned the knuckles to a milky white, and she gave no sign that she had heard them enter.

  Hartley was standing by the table, his big face glistening with perspiration, watching her. But he looked up as Lowe came in.

  ‘Did you find anything, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Only the used cartridge and the marks of the man’s feet where he had stood,’ said the dramatist.

  He took the shell from his pocket and held it out.

  ‘You’d better take this,’ he continued.

  With an obvious effort the superintendent pulled himself together.
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  ‘We must send for a doctor,’ he muttered. ‘Have you a telephone here?’

  ‘Yes, in the hall,’ answered Jim. ‘I’ll show you.’

  Hartley followed him out and Lowe went over to Mrs. North.

  ‘Don’t you think you had better sit down?’ he suggested gently; but she took no notice.

  With her breast rising and falling irregularly she continued to stare at the figure on the floor.

  ‘Mrs. North,’ said Lowe, raising his voice a little, ‘I don’t think you had better stop here. Let me take you into the other room.’

  She heard him this time and turned slowly, looking at him with a dreadful stare. From outside in the hall came the sound of Hartley’s deep tones inquiring for a number.

  ‘Dead,’ said the woman tonelessly. ‘Dead.’

  Lowe took her gently by the arm.

  ‘Come with me —’ he began, and then the horrible calm of her face broke and she began to laugh.

  Her laughter rang through the silent room and floated out into the hall. Sharp, metallic, mirthless.

  ‘Good God!’ breathed McWraith with a shiver. ‘Stop her, can’t you! It’s ghastly!’

  But she continued to laugh violently, hysterically, as Lowe led her out of the room.

  Chapter Thirteen – Death Calls Again

  Doctor Grendon came in answer to Superintendent Hartley’s telephone message and made a preliminary examination, pending the arrival of the police surgeon from Hythe. It was very brief, for the bullet which had killed North had been aimed with deadly accuracy and had passed right through the heart.

  Lowe had been rather interested to meet the local doctor, and was not impressed. Dr. Grendon was stout, inclined to be assertive, and full of his own importance. And yet behind this blustering manner the dramatist thought he detected something that was very nearly akin to fear.

  After he had made his examination of the body and had given his verdict, he accepted with alacrity the drink that Jim offered. And as he raised the glass to his lips his well-kept, fattish hand was none too steady. He caught Lowe’s eye watching him and smiled a little dryly.

  ‘Not used to violent death,’ he said in his oily voice. ‘I’m used to dealing with the opposite in my practice; rather knocked me up.’

  It was the obvious explanation of that trembling hand, and in ordinary circumstances Lowe would have accepted it, but he remembered the look in Japper’s eyes when he had at first arrived at the Crossed Hands, and wondered. Everybody in this village seemed to be inwardly afraid. There was an undercurrent of hidden terror that was most extraordinary. What was the cause of it, and from whom did it emanate?

  ‘I think it would be just as well if you had a look at the dead man’s wife,’ he said; ‘she had an attack of violent hysteria just before you arrived, and although she’s quieter now, I don’t think it would do any harm if she had a draught of something.’

  Dr. Grendon set down his empty glass.

  ‘I’ll go and look at her,’ he said shortly. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I took her up to her room,’ said Lowe. ‘Superintendent Hartley had better go with you. He has the key.’

  ‘Key?’ the doctor looked at him quickly. ‘Did you lock her in?

  Lowe nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘in the circumstances I thought it was best.’

  ‘H’m! All right.’ Dr. Grendon picked up his bag and crossed to the door. ‘Come on, then, Superintendent,’ he said.

  Hartley joined him and they passed out into the hall.

  ‘Aren’t you going to move — it?’ said Jim, jerking his head towards the body.

  ‘They can’t until the police doctor has seen it,’ answered Lowe.

  ‘I wonder what he would have told us,’ muttered McWraith, ‘if he’d had the chance of speaking?’

  ‘What the dead man at the cross-roads would have told us,’ said Lowe grimly. ‘They both held the secret of Stonehurst and they both died before they could divulge it. There’s just a chance, though, that Mrs. — er — Gillman may know something. I think from her attitude that she does, but it’s no good attempting to question her until she’s calmer. Then’ — he broke off as there came a startled cry and the thudding of heavy feet on the stairs.

  He was crossing quickly to the door when it was flung violently open and Hartley appeared on the threshold. He was panting jerkily and his face was drawn.

  ‘Mr. Lowe,’ he said with difficulty, ‘Mr. Lowe — I wish you’d come up — that woman’s dead!’

  ‘What?’ Lowe’s face set.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Dr. Grendon says so,’ answered the superintendent.

  ‘How did she die?’ snapped the dramatist.

  ‘Poisoned herself — there’s a bottle on the table beside her.’ Hartley was recovering his breath a little.

  ‘I’ll come up — you two stay down here,’ said Lowe.

  He almost ran out into the hall and ascended the stairs three at a time with the superintendent lumbering up behind him. As he reached the open door of a room lately occupied by the Norths Dr. Grendon, who had been bending over the bed, looked round.

  ‘She’s quite dead,’ he said. ‘Case of suicide, I should think.’

  Trevor Lowe came in and stood looking down at the woman on the bed. She was lying on her side, and might quite easily have been asleep.

  ‘Why do you think it’s a suicide?’ he asked, and the doctor shrugged his plump shoulders.

  ‘What else could it have been?’ he said irritably; ‘the window was fastened and the door was locked — as you know yourself.’

  ‘How did she die?’ asked Lowe.

  ‘Veronal; here is the bottle.’ The doctor stretched out his hand towards it.

  ‘Don’t touch it, please, sir,’ rapped Hartley; ‘you haven’t touched it, have you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ answered Grendon. ‘I naturally picked it up when we first found there was something wrong.’

  ‘Oh, you did, did you,’ put in Lowe. ‘Yes, of course, I suppose you would.’

  He went over to the window and examined the catch. It was securely fastened, and he noticed that it was a patent catch which could not have been prised up from outside. Also there was no sign of a scratch or mark on its polished surface.

  ‘Was the door locked?’ he asked Hartley as he came back to the bed.

  The superintendent nodded.

  ‘You’re certain?’ persisted Lowe.

  ‘Quite, sir,’ answered Hartley. ‘I unlocked it myself.’

  Lowe bit his lower lip.

  ‘It certainly looks like suicide, and yet —’

  He bent over the little bedside table and looked at the tiny bottle of white tablets. There were four left.

  ‘How many of these would have been fatal?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re half-grain tablets,’ answered Dr. Grendon. ‘Four would have been a fatal dose.’

  Lowe looked round him.

  ‘You haven’t moved anything from this table?’ he said.

  Grendon shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’d expect her to have taken them in water,’ explained the dramatist, ‘but there’s no glass within her reach.’

  ‘They’re quite easily swallowed without,’ Grendon pointed out.

  ‘But most people take these things with water,’ muttered Lowe.

  ‘There’s a glass of water, over there, sir,’ said Hartley; but Lowe had already seen it for himself and was peering into the bottom of the glass.

  ‘Dry,’ he said. ‘Strange she should have swallowed them without water when there was water so near at hand.’

  ‘Well, she evidently did,’ remarked Dr. Grendon testily. ‘Really it seems to me to be a clear case of suicide. The window was fastened, the door was locked. Nobody could have got in.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ agreed Lowe, but he was frowning. ‘Was she lying like that when you found her?’ He addressed his question
to the superintendent.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answered Hartley. ‘I thought she was asleep at first.’

  Lowe pinched his chin. It certainly seemed as though the woman must have committed suicide. Nobody could have gained access to that room, and yet there was no denying that if she had known anything her death was very lucky for somebody. Perhaps, though, she had been deeply involved in this sinister business and had realised that she was in danger of arrest. In that case she might quite easily have chosen this way out. Lowe felt angry with himself for having left her alone, but when he had left she had seemed quite calm; perhaps this was the reason. Perhaps she had already made up her mind as to what she was going to do. All the same it would never have happened if he had had the sense to have her watched. It had been a mistake, and he hated making mistakes.

  He roused himself from his thoughts to find Hartley and Dr. Grendon watching him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing more we can do at the moment; we may as well lock the door again and go downstairs.’

  The doctor appeared to be only too pleased to leave that room of death, and Lowe waited while Hartley shut and locked the door, and then went with him down the stairs.

  Jim and McWraith turned eagerly as they came in and demanded to know what had happened. The dramatist told them.

  ‘Poor soul,’ said Jim in a hushed voice. ‘I wish we hadn’t left her alone.’

  ‘I wish we hadn’t, too,’ said Lowe. ‘It was my fault; I ought to have thought of this possibility and taken precautions.’

  Dr. Grendon went across to the sideboard and helped himself to a stiff whisky, which he gulped down neat. As he set down the glass the sound of a car coming up the drive sent Hartley out into the hall, and presently he came back with the police doctor, who looked more skinny than ever in the full light of day. He glared at Lowe, shot a quick, inquisitive glance at Grendon, and ignored Jim and McWraith altogether.

  ‘You’re having plenty of excitement round here,’ he remarked. ‘Two murders in less than forty-eight hours.’ He clicked his tongue against his teeth. ‘Is this the victim?’

  Before anybody could answer him he had dropped on one knee beside the body and was staring shortsightedly at the wound.