The Heel of Achilles: A Golden Age Mystery Page 3

  Canley ignored the accusation. “When you went out of that window, Jack, you had £1,000 worth of jewellery in your pockets. I put it in, so I know. That’s what I’d gone there for. All the time I was in prison I said to myself that Jack Edwins had a nice nest egg for me when I came out, something on which I could start up again. We’d agreed to share it out at a pub, hadn’t we?”

  “We hadn’t, and you know it.” Porter denied the allegation. “You know very well that I knew nothing of what you were going to do.”

  “But the police never recovered the jewellery did they? Oh, no.”

  “I sold it, and I sent the value of it to the owner years after, when I made good in a business I bought with the £300 I got for it.”

  Canley sat back in his chair and roared with laughter. “That’s a good story, Jack. Three hundred pounds for stuff that was worth more than a thousand. Don’t expect me to swallow that, do you?” His voice changed. It grew dangerously quiet with intimidatory and transparent menace.

  “Trying to do me out of my five hundred quid, are you? Don’t try that game on me, Jack. I served three years in quod for that five hundred, and I’m going to have it. Else—” He let the sentence remain unfinished.

  “I tell you that I sent £1,000 to Paignton for the owner of the jewellery. Ask the police there, if you don’t believe me.”

  “Then the more fool you. You’ll have to find the money yourself, then—Oh, don’t get into a panic. I don’t say I want it all at once. But I’ll have a fiver now, just to be going on with. I’ve struck a bad time and a fiver will come in handsome.”

  “And a fiver is all you’re going to get, now or at any other time.” Porter turned on his blackmailer. “I had nothing to do with the Paignton business, and you know it.” He handed a five-pound note over, and rose to go.

  Canley placed it carefully away in an inside pocket of his waist-coat. He escorted his visitor mockingly to the door.

  “I’ll be seeing you again, Jack,” he said. “You’ve bought a little business, have you?” He laughed loudly.

  * * * * *

  The five pounds became ten pounds, and twenty pounds. Within a few weeks five hundred pounds had gone from the pockets of Porter into those of Canley.

  Each demand had grown in size, until—

  At the office of the garage which Porter had built up on the by-pass road at Staines, a letter was handed to its owner by the post-man. It was marked ‘private and confidential’. Porter opened it.

  Dear Jack—I’ve got to come to you again. I said that with the five hundred the account between us was settled. But I’ve had a spell of bad luck, and I’m on my uppers again. Bring me a hundred pounds to the cottage on Friday night. And don’t fail me. You know what to expect if you do.

  It was at that moment that Jack Porter knew he had to kill James Canley.

  CHAPTER II

  Some years before the meeting of Porter and Canley in Kingston two men wended a precarious passage up Shorton Valley Road. The road climbs a strenuous way from the back of the seaside resort of Paignton to Shorton Woods, which stand on what once were, indeed, wooded heights midway between Paignton and its larger and more garish neighbour, Torquay. The woods have now mostly given way to houses; but a country lane wending between trees still exists, and a copse here and there with a house set in its shadows continues to justify the name Shorton Woods.

  The two men walked precariously because they were both the worse for drink; to put it bluntly, they were drunk. It was a warm evening, and the climb in the sultry air combined with the beer to bring beads of perspiration to their brows, a circumstance which necessitated frequent applications of handkerchiefs.

  James Sprogson was less drunk than his companion. Old William was twice his age to begin with, and he had drunk much more beer, though he didn’t know it; Sprogson had played him for a purpose and was still engaged in the play, which was the reason for his accompanying William to the house in which the old man was butler when the family were in residence, and caretaker when they were not. They were not in residence at the moment.

  Yew Tree House hove into their sight at long last. It was a large manor house built of grey stone in the manner of the good builders of old, when money was no object, and only comfort regulated the size of the dwelling and the style of it.

  The house was set in grounds of about a quarter of an acre and shadowed by some of the few trees still left in Shorton Woods. There were no yew trees, strangely enough; but doubtless yew trees had stood there when the house was built some forty years ago. On one side of the grounds ran a large and high bay hedge in close proximity to the kitchen—which made it handy for the cook to snip a couple of leaves off when she desired a little vanilla flavouring for the custard to the sweet course!

  The house and its grounds were fairly secluded; some two hundred yards away a wooden bungalow stood, screened by yet another bay hedge, and sheltering beneath a row of poplars. Its occupants were two women—and a cat. With the exception of this dwelling and a castellated farmhouse (a queer architectural parody) there were no other residences until the summit of the hill was reached; along the high road which skirted the summit, buses ran on their way to Torquay.

  Old William paused at the entrance to Yew Tree House, and regarded his companion with the comic solemnity of a drunken man.

  “Very goodsh of you to come along old man,” he said. “Couldn’t—made it on me own. Come in and have a bite to eat?”

  Sprogson looked doubtful. “I’d like to, old boy, but—er—what will the family say? Eh?”

  “No family.” William waved a hand comprehensively, taking in everything. “Gone away—London—for a week.”

  Sprogson had already acquired that information after considerable and guarded inquiry; but he wanted the butler’s confirmation.

  “Got a tasty bit of chicken,” announced William, invitingly.

  “All right. May as well. I’m feeling a bit peckish,” agreed Sprogson. They entered together.

  Half an hour later Sprogson sat back, comfortably satisfied inwardly. But not so satisfied mentally.

  He looked round the room.

  “Nice place you’ve got here.” The suggestion was couched in a voice that might have suggested uncharitable envy. “A nice cushy job, too, I’ll be bound.”

  “Not so bad,” agreed William. “Not at times. But a lot of ’sponsibility when family’s away. See?”

  “Responsibility?” Sprogson looked inquiringly.

  “Antiques. See. Very old—”

  “They would be, if they’re antiques,” sneered Sprogson.

  “And silver,” added William. “Come and see it.”

  He led the way to the butler’s pantry. The pantry was a large square room at the side of the house. It was provided with a large table, and a smaller side table, a comfortable armchair and two plain wooden chairs. A window gave a view from the side of the house when it could be looked out of: at the moment it was sheathed with double steel doors or shutters fastened on the inside and secured with a padlock through the horizontal bar which ran from side to side.

  Sprogson gazed at it with surprise. He waved a hand in its direction. “Bit hot, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Hot?” William looked puzzled.

  “Are they afraid somebody will lam the butler over the head or something?” interpreted Sprogson.

  “Ah!” William looked mysteriously round the room. “Valuables—kept in here. See?”

  He opened a large cupboard and displayed a quantity of silver table-ware. Sprogson examined it with interest, and disappointment.

  “Crested,” he snorted. “No good to a burglar. He couldn’t sell it, and it wouldn’t be worth anything melted down. Doesn’t seem worth the iron curtain.”

  “Ah!” said William again, only more mysterious-like than before. “That ain’t all. It’s the jewels, see.”

  “Jewels? What, in this room? In cupboards?”

  “You’d never guess, would you?” Old William
became arch.

  “No, I wouldn’t. You telling me a fairy story, old boy? Where are they?”

  “Ah!” William’s monosyllable was becoming monotonous. He leaned against the wall. Sprogson, who was still gazing round the room seeking a possible hiding place for jewellery, turned at the sound of a slight grinding noise, and stared. A section of panelling had parted, disclosing a cavity behind. What Sprogson stared at was a safe in the cavity. It looked out from its hiding-place, a cache of considerable size, and of burnished steel, with an obvious combination lock wheel in the front of it.

  “So that’s it,” said Sprogson. “And you say there are jewels inside it?”

  “Full of jewels, old boy.”

  “Let’s have a look at ’em. I’ve never seen a lot of valuable jewels all in one little nest.”

  “No. Can’t do it.” William shook his head. “Can’t show ’em. In me custody. See? ’sponsibility.”

  “Oh, well.” Sprogson looked regretful resignation. “Silly of me to ask. I don’t suppose you could open the safe, anyway.”

  William bridled. His custodianship, complete custodianship, was a point of pride with him—a fact of which Sprogson had been made boringly aware during the last three or more evenings. The suggestion that he had not been trusted with the means of opening the safe during his custodianship, annoyed him. He gave vocal vent to the annoyance.

  “Ho! Couldn’t I?” He protested. He leered still half-drunkenly, in spite of the meal just concluded. “Couldn’t I? Got combination. See? In me head,” he added, sagely.

  “Good story, old man,” said Sprogson, and laughed.

  The laugh incensed William. He snorted. “I’ll show you,” he said. He turned to the safe. A few turns of the wheel and he pulled open the doors.

  Sprogson peered inside. William had exaggerated when he had announced that the safe was full of jewellery. There was, however, quite a valuable collection. Sprogson valued it at, roughly, several thousands of pounds. He had time for only a hurried look, for William, repenting his bravado, and scared for his charge, slammed the door and swung the wheel again. At the same time he slid the panel back into its place, hiding the safe from view.

  Sprogson examined the panel. It showed no mark of a join, and no hint that it was any different from any other panel which lined the walls in light oak.

  “Clever,” he commented. “Clever. Open it again, William.” William obliged. The panel slid open almost silently, and again returned.

  “Blessed if you aren’t a Maskelyne, old man.” Sprogson looked at him admiringly. “How the devil do you do it?”

  “Hidden spring,” William grinned.

  “Let’s see if I can do it.” Sprogson felt and pushed at likely spots in the embroidery of the panel, but without result. William watched him for some moments, and then giggled.

  “You ain’t nowhere near the place,” he chided.

  “Then where the devil is it? Go on. Show me again. Then we’ll go and have another drink up at the Hole. They’ve got your favourite wallop there, haven’t they?”

  “They have.” William moved to the wall again. “It’s the little rose,” he explained. “Secret spring, see.”

  He pressed the rose and the panel disappeared. Another pressure and it returned and closed.

  “Derned cute,” said Sprogson. “Well, come along and have that drink before they close.”

  It was two hours later that the pair left the ancient smugglers’ inn at the top of the hill overlooking the golf course. By that time half a dozen glasses of powerful black wallop had reduced old William almost to helplessness coming on top of the earlier libations.

  It is doubtful if he would have left the hostelry even then had not the landlord refused to serve him with more drink.

  “No. You’re drunk. Out you go, William,” he had dictated. “I’ll lose me licence if the police find you here like this.”

  So out the pair went, Sprogson, with a grin, supporting his butler friend. He felt for the keys in the man’s pockets and unlocked the front door of Yew Tree House.

  “I reckon I’d better get you to bed, William,” he suggested. “You’re too drunk to get there by yourself.”

  “No!” emphasized William. “Got—ter—look in safe. Shee if things ish a’rightsh,” he explained. “It’s me duty, see. Every nightsh, look in safe.”

  “All right. Come on, then.” Sprogson escorted him to the butler’s pantry. “Better let me open the safe for you, hadn’t you?” he asked.

  “No!” William showed alarm. “Word’s a secret—never tell—living soul,” he protested.

  Sprogson shrugged his shoulders.

  William lurched to the safe and leaned against it. Sprogson watched him amusedly as he swung the wheel a full turn and began to work the combination. Suddenly he sprang to stiff attention. The old man was muttering under his breath, as though counting or repeating something he had difficulty in remembering in his drunken state. Sprogson, still as a mouse, listened.

  “T,” and the wheel moved. “R,” another turn, “E—E—S,” the wheel being gyrated at each letter.

  Satisfied, William pulled open the door of the safe and with difficulty of vision decided that the contents were whole and untouched. He swung the door to again, touched the spring which slid the panel into position, and turned to Sprogson.

  “Ish a’rightsh,” he announced with solemnity of a custodian and the comicality of a stage ‘drunk’.

  “Good,” responded Sprogson, and meant it. “Now come along and I’ll get you into bed.”

  The operation was concluded not without some intractability on the part of William. But he expressed his gratitude at the end.

  “You’re a good fellow. Dunno your name, but you’re a gennelman. Anybody can shee that,” he lisped. “Gennelman, that’s what you are. Like—meet you—again—have more wallop.”

  “That’s all right, William. Call me Fred. Now, look here. Be at the Hole again tomorrow night at 9.30. If I’m not there at the time, wait for me. I’ll be along, but I may be a few minutes late. We’ll have another evening out, eh?”

  “Tomorrow at 9.30—tomorrow at—” William sought to impress the date on his mind.

  “Here. I’ll leave you a note on the table to remind you,” promised Sprogson, and wrote it on the back of an envelope.

  That was the end of a perfect day for William. And for Sprogson, who left the house and walked rapidly down the road into Paignton, and on to the back-street boarding house in which he had a temporary room.

  It was eleven o’clock, and as he approached the house a man ahead of him walked up the steps and opened the door. Sprogson called a warning to him as the door was about to close. “Half a minute, Jack!” he shouted.

  Jack Edwins turned and recognized Sprogson. He frowned. He had at that very moment been thinking of the man. Not with any feeling of pleasure, or anticipation of seeing him. In point of fact, he had only a quarter of an hour before parted from his sweetheart after a heated argument over Sprogson and his companions. The discord which still jangled in Edwins’s recollection, was over the desirability of Sprogson as an acquaintance for himself. The argument had been unsparingly acrimonious on the part of Mary Reed; in fact, it had amounted to an ultimatum threatening to end a love romance which had developed unexpectedly from a chance holiday. It was also their first quarrel.

  The holiday belonged to Edwins. With work slack in the London garage where he was a mechanic Edwins decided to take an early break. A spell of fine weather which looked like lasting over a fortnight helped his decision; his employer attracted by the idea of not having to pay a man during the slack weeks had agreed with enthusiasm. Newspaper paragraphs recording hours of sunshine in Devonshire had led to Edwins deciding on Paignton as the location for his break.

  Bed and breakfast, and meals where I want them, had been Edwins’s idea for the holiday. ‘No boarding house meals for me and paying for food I’m not there to have,’ he had added to himself. It is, by the way
, the argument of twenty-five per cent of the family holiday-makers today at most of the resorts; and is a popular course with landladies, since it relieves them of the task of preparing meals, and of the presence of lodgers throughout the daylight hours, except on wet days.

  After a tour of the town Edwins decided on the Café Rouge as his regular lunching place. He liked the red tables with their snowy-white tablecloths, the clean red chairs and the atmosphere of quiet luxury about it. He liked, too, the welcoming smile of the girl who came forward to wait on his table.

  Mary Reed took to her customer from the first meal she served him—after she had found a shilling tip underneath the plate, which was an advance of ninepence on the average tip. She looked on him with considerable favour when he appeared at the same table the next day.

  Mary was an attractive woman of about twenty-three years of age. Her face was not pretty, as the word is understood of the female sex. She had no glamour; but there was a likeable something in the pleasant smile of her grey eyes, which drew customers back to her table after a first visit. She dressed neatly and becomingly; a woman observer would have remarked that her frocks had been well worn over a long period, for there were neatly done darns, and embellishments of embroidery which told most women of frayed or shiny parts thus disguised by a covering.

  Edwins, lonely in the evenings of his holiday, whispered to the girl after his third meal.

  “What time do you close here?” he asked. She smiled.

  “Six o’clock. We don’t serve evening meals. It means double staffs,” she explained, “and doesn’t make it worth while with the additional expense. At least, that is what the management says.”

  “Then how about you and I going to the pictures?” Edwins looked anticipatingly pleased.

  “I’d love to,” replied Mary Reed.

  The evening’s meeting was repeated. Edwins found that his liking for her grew with each evening’s jaunt along the promenade, or at the cinema, with a night-cap of fish and chips in a late café. He also found that his liking for her had an echo in Mary’s regard for him. The mutual pleasure of each in the other’s company was sufficient to convince Edwins that his future lay not in London. Mary Reed agreed, enthusiastically; she had been living a lonely life since coming to Paignton, and the company of a sound, good-living artisan such as Jack Edwins was something she had for long desired.