Two way murder, p.20
Two-Way Murder, page 20
“Sorry, sir. I’ve got a car in tow and I thought you might be turning in behind me. It’s a nasty night—I’ll wait till you’ve passed.”
As Brent got moving again, he saw that it was Tom Hudson who was at the wheel of the car on the towrope; he stopped abruptly and called: “Have you passed anybody on the road to the mill, Tom?”
“Yes. Reeve—just going up the ridge towards the quarry. I think he’d got Miss Maine beside him.”
“Oh my God! Why didn’t you stop him?” cried Brent, and his voice was no longer cool and controlled. As the big Heron shot forwards, Hudson thought he heard Brent call back to him: “The man’s a murderer… it’s got to stop…”
“Well I’m damned… what does A do now?” asked Hudson, but the van driver in front of him was shouting back: “I’m getting going again, easy does it over the bridges,” and Tom Hudson was towed forward, willy-nilly, towards the traffic of the main road.
III
Michael Reeve’s car might have been an old one but it was still capable of putting up a fast performance—if you didn’t mind noise. As soon as he accelerated, Dilys realised what he meant when he had told her not to talk until he slowed down or parked. It wasn’t so much engine noise as body rattle—every plate and part in the hard-worked, ill-treated coachwork rattling like castanets over worn-out springs and worn tyres. Dilys only said one thing before they reached the bridge:
“Oh Michael, how awful of me! Commander Brent rang up the hospital and said he’d drive over to take me home, and I just forgot all about him and never even left a message.”
“Never mind,” said Michael. “I expect the porter will explain—he was a decent chap. And last time Brent drove you it wasn’t too good, was it?”
Dilys hardly caught the last words, and then they turned over the bridge, roared on for a couple of breathtaking miles on the level, and then began the pull up the ridge which was between them and the Foxlea valley. Michael bent towards her and said, “Only a few minutes and you’ll be safe home, Dilys. That’s what I’ve been thinking about all this time—to get you back safely. It’s a pretty beastly night and I didn’t want you to have any more bother.” He laughed a little and added: “It sounds as tho’ I’m getting jittered myself, doesn’t it—but there’ve been too many things happening lately… Down we go, all plain sailing now.”
A few minutes later he ran the car into the long drive of the Maines’ house, pulled up and said: “Tell me what’s bothering you. I can’t bear to see you looking so unhappy and frightened—you look like a startled ghost.”
His voice was perfectly steady, just the cool, friendly voice Dilys had always liked, and he made no attempt to touch her: no arm around her shoulders, no touch of hand on hand, whereby he had sought to comfort her when he had found her crying after her mother had died. He leant back against the window of the car, sitting sideways, well away from her, and said again,
“Tell me—what’s the trouble?—or are you imagining things? Is it just that your father’s so ill, or something else?”
“It’s something else, Michael: something much worse. He was out that night—Saturday. We don’t know what he was doing, but when he came in he tried to make me believe it was much earlier than it was; and he’d been fighting—or something like that. He was so ill because he’d had a knock over the head and we didn’t know. He ought to have been in bed, but he tried to hide everything. And it may be silly, but I can’t help believing it was something to do with the dead man—and the police believe it was. They keep on coming.”
“Dilys, I don’t know what your father was doing—though I can guess—but I’m certain it wasn’t anything to do with the body on the low road. That’s nothing to do with him, nor he with it. It’s to do with me: somebody’s trying to saddle me with murder, but your father’s not involved. I swear he isn’t. He may dislike me and distrust me because I’m a Reeve and he believes we’re all bad, but he’d never have tried to down me by killing a man who was like my brother and then running my car over the body. That’s what somebody did, you know. Do you believe for one moment that your father would do a thing like that? You know he’s incapable of it.”
“Yes. I do know,” she said, “because I know him—but the police don’t, and they suspect him. I know they do.”
“Give them a chance,” said Michael. “They haven’t had long to get things sorted out, have they? It’s only two days since this thing happened, and they had to find out who was on the road that night. Cheer up, Dilys. It’s not what you think. Your father wasn’t on the low road at all: I’m certain he went scouting round Hoyle’s place—and more fool he. Hoyle isn’t as bad as folks make out—I know that. And if the police get tough about your father, I’ll make Jim Hoyle come across with the truth. So don’t go getting in a panic over your father, or telling fibs to the police. That won’t help.”
“They asked how I got back from the Hunt Ball. I wouldn’t tell them, because the time I got back is all muddled up with the time Daddy got back.”
“He probably didn’t know what time it was when he got back,” said Michael. “If he’d had a knock on the head he was probably hopelessly confused about the time and everything else, too; and the police will know they can’t do anything about his evidence because he wasn’t in a fit state to give evidence. So cheer up, Dilys, and don’t go imagining horrors. Now you’d better go in—Alice will look after you.”
“Michael, you’ve been awfully patient with me. I’m terribly grateful. I wanted to tell you—the only reason I’ve been avoiding you lately is that Daddy was so difficult about things.”
“All right. You haven’t got to explain. I know,” he said. His voice was abrupt and terse, but suddenly he bent forward and kissed Dilys’s hand as it rested on the steering wheel. She had stretched it towards him in a vague appealing gesture which he had disregarded, but then, seeing the slender fingers in the faint light from the dashboard panel, he pressed his lips to her wrist almost involuntarily and then drew back quickly.
“Oh, my dear… why must things be as they are…?” he cried. “Just when I thought I was clear of the tangle, out of the mess, I get caught up again in all this foul coil…”
“Michael, what do you mean?”
He recovered himself by an effort. “Never mind now, Dilys. I’ll tell you one day—but I’ve got to earn the right to tell you. Go indoors now, Alice will look after you—and don’t go dreaming any more horrors about your father. It will be all right—I swear it will.”
IV
After Dilys had let herself in to the dark house, Michael Reeve started his engine again. He was shaking, his vision blurred, his mind refusing to function after that moment when he had nearly told Dilys how passionately he loved her, and he did a thing which he would never have done when he was in a normal state of mind. Instead of patiently reversing his car in the awkward drive, he backed out through the gates onto the road, hardly knowing what he was doing, his foot on the accelerator. Too late he became aware of headlights coming up the narrow road: there was a clang of metal as he struck the approaching car and he jerked forward over the steering wheel as the lights behind him were extinguished when the rear of the old Ensign rammed the front of the other car. His head bemused, his senses spinning, Michael thought. “It’s Brent… damn him to hell…”
*
Almost at the moment that the two cars locked in the impact of bumper and wing, Tom Hudson was at the telephone, ringing the police station at Fordings. Worried to death by what he thought he had heard Brent say, Tom felt he couldn’t keep quiet about it.
“Look here,” he shouted over the line at Inspector Turner, “I may be making a fuss over nothing, but I’ve got to do something. Michael Reeve passed me on Foxlea Hill with Dilys Maine in his car; five minutes later Brent pulled up beside me and asked me if I’d seen anybody pass. I told him. Brent said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop him?’ and then went blazing on. I think he shouted ‘The man’s a murderer’. Anyway, if Brent catches Reeve up there’ll be murder or I’m a Dutchman—and that girl’s there. Do, for the Lord’s sake, do something about it.” And with that he slammed down the receiver before Turner could ask any questions.
Turner only said dourly: “This is Waring’s job. Better tell him and he can sort it out.”
Chapter XVII
I
For a moment after the collision, Michael Reeve sat slumped over the wheel, the blood singing in his ears, his eyes still blurred: then, suddenly, he recovered his senses and his head cleared. He jumped out of the car and felt his way towards the rear: it was very dark—the impact had sent his own headlights out as well as those of the car he had hit, but he was in no doubt whatever as to who the driver was. Suddenly a flashlight blazed into his face and Brent’s furious voice said:
“You tried it before and you’ve tried it again, and that’s going to be the last time. You thought you could finish me this time—”
“Don’t rant!” snapped Michael. “You’re talking nonsense and you know it. This time it was an accident, and you know it—you shouldn’t come speeding round blind turns on a night like this, or if you do don’t bleat when something hits you.”
“Hits me! by God, you hit me before, I know that, you dirty murderer—” Brent’s voice was shaking and the hand which held the torch was shaking. Suddenly he swung his arm up; the torch hit the car beside him and the light went out, leaving the two men in darkness.
Michael Reeve stood dead still; he was not three paces from Brent, but he couldn’t see him in the murk.
“You call me a murderer, Brent—murderer yourself! If you want a showdown, you can have it, here and now. You can’t get away—the road’s blocked behind you and I’m in front of you, and you can listen, here in the dark. You thought I didn’t know about you and Rosemary. I held my tongue: there were plenty of rumours, weren’t there, and I wasn’t going to pin it on the poor lass that you’d fooled her—you, who pretended to be a woman hater. She might have thrown herself over the cliffs for all I know.”
“Don’t think you can get away with it, telling lies about the past,” said Brent furiously, and Reeve knew from the shrillness of the other’s voice that he was nearly out of his mind with rage.
“It isn’t lies, and you know it,” retorted Michael. “That poor swine you killed told me about Rosemary going over to your place. I knew—and I kept quiet about it. I didn’t want the papers to print a smear story about my sister and you—enough had been said against her already, poor wild thing that she was: but when I saw that poor devil in the mortuary, I knew who had downed him—and why. He’d come back to cash in on his dirty knowledge, and you’d finished him and left me to pay.”
“You’re mad,” said Brent thickly. “You’re making up a tale which has no evidence to support it.”
“So you think. There’s evidence, all right. There’s Betty Hoyle. She’s not dead, you know. She’ll have plenty to say when they’ve got her better, and Hoyle won’t stand for this. He knew about you and Rosemary, but he kept mum, didn’t he? You could have ruined him if you told all you knew—snooping around, watching his silly games—and taking a hand when the coast was clear. What did Betty see on Saturday night, Brent? She knew your car, didn’t she? So you gave her a lift this evening and chucked her off—and thought you could get away with it.”
In the darkness, Michael Reeve could hear Brent panting. He was certain now—Brent wanted to hear just how much he, Michael, knew—and then he’d finish him somehow: break his neck and leave him in the crumpled mess of the two cars. As he listened to the heavy breathing, Michael was certain he could hear another sound: somebody was moving in the darkness, not very far away. “God! It’s the police,” thought Michael. “They’re listening… if I can only madden him into admitting it, they’ll hear… and they’ve guessed most of it already.”
Then he realised that Brent was moving towards him in the murk—he couldn’t see a thing, but he sensed the other’s presence, only a yard away.
“Listen,” said Brent, “listen to me a minute. You’re fighting for your own life by trying to pin this time on me.” (“He’s trying to close up, getting me off my guard,” thought Michael.) “Don’t think I wasn’t sorry for you,” went on Brent. “You’ve had a thin deal with that mad family of yours, and then this by-blow came rootling in, threatening to tell some more dirty stories just when you wanted a clean sheet. Oh, I knew—and I played fair. I didn’t utter a word to help the police get on your trail. If you’d only left Dilys alone…”
“You can leave Dilys out of this,” said Michael furiously. “You were responsible for my sister’s death: you wanted to get clean of her and her vixen’s tongue—oh, I know—but somebody knew what you’d done, and you had to get rid of them, and get rid of me, too, because I was in your way. Do you think I don’t know how you did it?”
“Know, you fool? I’m the one person who couldn’t have done it. There’s proof of that.”
(“He won’t shoot,” thought Michael, “that wouldn’t help him. He’ll break my neck with one of his Commando tricks…” He side-stepped in the darkness. “If only I can make him mad enough to own it, he’s half out of his mind already, or he wouldn’t stand yattering here—unless he thinks I’ve left written proof and he’s trying to find out…”—so swiftly thoughts ran through his mind as he stood poised in the murky darkness.)
“Proof,” went on Michael. “There’s proof enough. No one knows where you were after seven on Saturday evening, do they? You sent the servants out—they know that in Fordings. And Betty Hoyle saw your car behind a hedge on the Greenham Road while she was there with her boyfriend. And you picked Macbane up at 8.15—plenty of time, wasn’t there? Don’t think I’m guessing. I know.”
“Betty Hoyle’s a born liar—and she’d say anything to get you out of a mess,” said Brent. He was standing still now, and was talking more easily, as though his wits were beginning to work again. “How can you be fool enough to say I left that body in the low road? I drove Macbane over that road when we went to Fordings and the body wasn’t there. Who put it there?”
“You did,” said Michael. “You met the poor devil on no-man’s-land and killed him there and drove his body to the low road and ran my car over it. You had plenty of time between seven and quarter past eight when you picked up Macbane. And you didn’t drive Macbane by the low road at all: you drove him by the Greenham Road. It was misty—and he knows no more about our roads than I know about Timbuctoo. You told him it was the low road he was on and he took it as fact. They’re parallel roads, with the same dips and rises—how would he have known on such a night?”
There was dead silence, and Reeve went on: “And when you came to my house to telephone to the police, you dropped some evidence for them to find, to make certain of hanging me. Only I found it—after I’d bashed your head for you.”
“God!” shouted Brent—and Michael knew that he was startled out of all caution now. “It was you who came at me?”
“Yes. I came at you—I’d every reason to bash your face in—and then I realised you were up to something that spelt a noose for me. And it was only tonight I tumbled to how you’d worked it—by tricking Macbane into thinking you’d driven him by the low road and so proving the corpse wasn’t there then—and that let you out.”
“You tumbled to it,” said Brent slowly. “That’s the last thing you’re ever going to tumble to. Your time’s up.”
“And I was right!” shouted Michael.
“Yes. You were right—and that’s why you’re for it,” said Brent, his voice curiously quiet—and then he sprang.
Michael swung sideways, avoiding the full weight of the other man’s spring, but Brent caught him round the knees, and they went down together, Michael undermost. Michael was a big powerful fellow, but his strength was helpless against Brent, who exerted a stranglehold, his legs and arms gripping the man beneath him almost as a cobra twines around its victim; then Brent’s head butted his jaw, jerking his head back, slamming into his throat and the prehensile hands came up to finish the job. It was as a red haze floated across his vision that Michael became aware that someone else had joined in the fight: an additional weight came down, crushing the breath out of him, and then Brent himself gave a horrible strangled cry and his gripping hands slackened on Michael’s neck. For a second or two a wild fight went on, the sound of men’s muscles almost cracking in their all-out endeavour, and then the weight on Michael’s body lessened. He caught a great breath of air into his gasping lungs and realised that a light was blazing down on him. A voice cried, “No, by hell you don’t… Catch his arm, I’ve got him down… of all the foul filthy tricks…” and then a final blow from he knew not where knocked Michael into blackness and silence, so that he seemed to go down and down into a bottomless pit.
II
“That’s better,” said a voice from very far away. “He’s a tough, this one: knocked out, that’s all.”
Michael Reeve made an effort to lift his battered head—and then gave up trying: he felt a cool swab wiping his face, and realised that hot blood was trickling down his neck. “It’s all right—a bit of plaster will soon settle that—but it was a near thing,” went on the voice. It was Waring’s voice and Michael groped for his scattered wits.
“You heard it all?” he gasped out.
“Yes: we heard—and you’ve got a lot to answer for when you’re fit to answer, young Reeve—butting in on our job. You asked for trouble and you came damn near to getting it. That wasn’t a knife which cut you: if you can keep your eyes open long enough to see it, you can look.”
