Below Suspicion Read online

For the next thirt)' seconds he was conscious not so much of any pain as of splintered confusion. His eyes didn't seem to work. Somewhere

  ahead, as he kept his head down and flailed out, there seemed to be a number of horizontal pile drivers. One was always in his face, always in his face, whichever way he twitched his head or forced Gold-teeth backwards. The other pile drivers, at all angles, smote in and struck, smote in and struck. . . .

  Suddenly, to his surprise, he found himself lying on his side on the carpet. Vaguely he smelt smoke and saw yellow light, which he associated with his own head.

  "No," said a hateful voice, hard-breathing, "you never done—"

  Then came the shock of humiliation.

  It ran through him before the voice completed that sentence. Never in his life, not even in school days, had he been brought so low as this. He had been made a fool of, shown up as clumsy and unskilled and a braggart, by someone whom he despised like dirt. In his mind he saw all his friends, and they were roaring with laughter.

  "—done much fighting. Have you, mister?"

  Patrick Butler bounced to his feet, and by sheer luck landed a belly-punch that nearly ended the fight. But Gold-teeth's retreating, weaving, dodging, didn't last long. The pile drivers smashed in again. They jolted Butler's head, banged his jaw, stabbed his stomach against his backbone. If he could only grip his hands round Gold-teeth—!

  But he couldn't. He was on the floor again.

  (Comic-spectacle Butler. Licked by a spiv. Funniest thing in years. Rememhei how he lorded it?)

  Patrick Butler was on his feet again, though staggering. From those mental images he felt almost physically sick. He started to lash out at Gold-teeth; then, bleary-eyed and bewildered, he instinctively stopped.

  Gold-teeth, too, had lost his head and forgotten where he was. Now he stared round stupidly.

  With a whoom of expanding gases, the great altar-tapestry belled out like a sail as flame soared up over it. It dragged thinly, crumpled, and swept down across the altar, knocking over the candelabra and breathing fire-sparks above the carpet.

  Three sides of the room were afire. On the right-hand wall, where it started, burning welts of tapestry sagged on blackened concrete; but it had gushed out across two roof-beams, preceded by a crackling of varnish. Black smoke held to the top of the room, wriggling its way; but a fine brownish haze crawled stifling into nostrils and mouth.

  Butler and Gold-teeth looked at each other.

  "What's the matter with you?" Butler yelled as well as he could. "Put up your hands!"

  " 'R you crackers?"

  Butler walloped out with a right-hander (always the right hand!) which Gold-teeth dodged because he was already running for the stairs. Butler, diving, caught him by one ankle and brought him to the floor with a crash.

  Fire-puffs from the fallen candles bloomed along the carpet. A whole row of undisturbed cushions, stretching halfway across the chapel near the back, gathered into one gust of fire. Gold-teeth, kicking out maniacally, flapped like a landed fish and again screamed, "Crackers!"

  Then his shoe-laces broke. Gold-teeth, freed and with one white sock of his evening clothes, raced towards the stairs. But the line of burning cushions lay across his most direct way. He was a prudent man; he darted to the right to circle them.

  Butler, not a prudent man, raced straight for the cushions; staggered, and cleared them from a standing jump which landed him overbalanced to fall rolling on his side at the foot of the stairs.

  Whether or not he had the strength now, he did it. He lifted the bronze statue of nymph-and-satyr, hoisting it with both hands above his head. He was three steps up, and had whirled round, when Gold-teeth reached the foot of the stairs.

  Again they looked at each other. Both were coughing; words came in short spurts. Both were blinded and stung with smoke-tears. Gold-teeth lifted his lip.

  "Wot's the game?"

  "Don't move."

  "Why not?"

  "This bronze comes down on your skull. I can't miss."

  "Come off it, mister! You won't stay there!"

  "Why not?"

  Gold-teeth grew frantic v^dth reasonableness. " 'Cos we'd both burn to death! That's why!"

  "Then we bum."

  Gold-teeth's smoke-grimed face changed a little.

  Behind him the crackle of the fire had thickened into a faint roar as roof-beams grew as bright as Christmas logs, and a gush of flame ran up the hangings of the fourth wall: intolerably vivid except where the fast-

  blackening smoke strangled it. And the coughing, murderous dialogue went on.

  ''Wotcher want.^"

  "Those letters."

  "You ain't sane!"

  "Stay there then."

  Gold-teeth's streaming eyes strained upwards,

  "There's a roof-beam all a-burning—" His scream became choked. But he pointed above Butler's head, and kept on pointing until breath returned. "She's a-shaking loose! She'll fall bang on your head!"

  "I know that. Letters?"

  Hitherto Butler had been scarcely conscious of the intense heat, as he had been unconscious of injuries in the fight. Now the heat fanned him, enveloped him, slipped a fiery mask on his face. The black smoke, now pressing down, swirled closer. With a sudden crash the eye-light in the roof exploded.

  "Letters?" said Butler. He could scarcely see or breathe.

  Gold-teeth made a dart for the stairs, but jerked back again as he saw Butler's arms tighten to throw.

  "Godamighty!" coughed Gold-teeth, shivering in an agony of reasonableness. Suddenly he pointed above. "She's a-going! She's—"

  In the ceiling, with a long movement, something slithered and ripped. And the burning roof-beam fell.

  It crashed down some five inches in front of Butler's face, aureoled with sparks. It hit the stair-banister without smashing the rail, because its other end landed first. Then it spun over in a flaming wheel—straight for Gold-teeth's face until its upward impetus swept it over his head to thud in a geyser of fire beyond.

  And it broke Gold-teeth's nerve as a stick is snapped. He dragged out the paper-clipped bundle from his pocket.

  "Wha' do?"

  "Throw"—a gush of smoke billowed up the stairs—"on the step where I am."

  "Ain't sane! 'Ow I know you don't bash me anyway?"

  Butler, despite a burning throat, would have found breath to speak clearly if he spoke it in hell.

  "The word of a gentleman."

  Gold-teeth never knew, never guessed, that the look on his own face at that word 'gentleman' brought him very close to death. Butler's arms

  quivered as he held up the bronze weight; but he controlled himself.

  A bundle of papers, white and grey and greenish, flew out of the murk and landed on the step by his right foot. Butler set his foot on it. Then, an intolerable weight released, he tipped the bronze statue to his left over the stair-rail.

  "Get out."

  Gold-teeth wavered, half paralyzed. "Wossat?"

  "You fought fair. Withdraw all charges. Get out."

  Gold-teeth hesitated. Then he ran stumbling up the stairs, unable even to cough, blinded and beaten, past Butler to the trap at the top of the stairs and out.

  Butler, trying to shift his foot, reeled and almost pitched down the steps. Bending over, he seemed in his own mind to take minutes before he groped for and gathered up the hot bundle of papers. With fire crawling up the hangings beside him, he ascended the stairs.

  In a room now impenetrable with smoke except where yellow gushes shot upwards and rolled, the black statuette of Satan grinned alone among the flames.

  At half past two on the following afternoon, Mr. Charles Den-a)V ham sat in his office digesting lunch and glancing over the newspaper, which the morning's pressure of business had not enabled him to read.

  It was Thursday, March 22nd, precisely one month to the day after the death of Mrs. Taylor. Though there has been much shifting-about of offices between barristers and solicitors in the Temple, after th
e blitzes and the V weapons, Charlie Denham steadfastly maintained his former rooms in an entry in Johnson's Court.

  In his own privacy, sitting by his desk at a window opening on a narrow passage outside, Charlie Denham was as neat as a cat—the thin black line of moustache, the dark hair parted and polished, the steadfastness of purpose about him. A brisk coal fire burned in the grate.

  Denham, for good moral effect, always brought the Daily Telegraph to the office. But invariably he read the Daily Floodlight, which, though of only a few pages, has managed to become more American, and infinitely worse American, than any American tabloid.

  Frowning, Denham caught one headline:

  PRIVATE INQUIRY AGENT

  STRANGLED WITH RED BAND

  And, in a hanger:

  Have CJue, Police Say

  The day outside the window was bitter cold, but clear and once or twice sunny. Denham ran his eye quickly down the story:

  Shortly after six o'clock last night, the body of Mr. Luke Parsons, head of a Private Inquiry Agency, was found by a charwoman cleaning the offices of

  number 42b Shaftesbury Avenue, W.I. The victim was found sitting upright in the chair behind his desk. He was strangled with a red band or cord, looped round his neck and then slowly tightened by a pencil tvdsted round and round in the top. Previously he had been stunned by a blow on the head, police say.

  Denham, frowning as though still more puzzled, gave an exclamation of annoyance. He read on, skipping.

  Miss Margaret Villars, the dead man's secretary (picture on front page) states that Mr. Parsons appeared violently agitated since an interview with a client, who gave the name of Robert Renshaw, at 3.30 P.M. At 5 P.M. Mr. Parsons told Miss Villars that she could leave early. The time of death. . . .

  On the desk at Denham's elbow, the telephone rang. He was impatient. But, when he heard from his clerk who wanted to speak to him, he became eager and almost schoolboyishly excited.

  "Hello?" said the breathless voice of Joyce Ellis.

  "Hello, Joyce," Denham replied, and eyed a memorandum pad. As though to hide fiercely repressed emotion, even when alone, he picked up a pencil and drew designs.

  "Have you seen a newspaper?" Joyce asked.

  "Yes." Denham was mildly disturbed. He sketched a couple of crosses and started on a house. "It's a bit unpleasant. I knew him slightly, Joyce."

  In imagination, now, anyone could see Joyce, with her black bobbed hair and grave face and large grey eyes, sitting back to stare at the telephone.

  "You knew him slightly? Isn't he one of your closest friends?"

  "Good Lord, Joyce, I never—" Denham stopped. "Who are you talking about?"

  "Pa-Mr. Butler!"

  "Pat Butler?" Denham dropped the pencil. "What about him?"

  "They never print the whole truth in the papers. It may be worse than they say. Not that I care, of course," Joyce said quickly, "but I do feel that. . . . Have you got the Daily Telegraph there?"

  "Er—yes. Somewhere."

  "Wait! I've got one here." There was a rustling of paper over the 'phone. "It's just a tiny item at the bottom of an inside page. It's headed, 'K.C. Injured in Fire.' "

  "Well?"

  "I'll read it. It says, 'Mr. Patrick Butler, the famous K.C. sometimes called The Great Defender' "—Joyce's voice grew tense, with something like a sob in it, and then went on quietly—" was slightly injured in a fire which broke out early this morning in a church in Balham, S.W, Mr. Butler, whose injuries were mainly bruises, is understood to have received them in escorting others out of the church. The origin of the fire is as yet unknown.' "

  Joyce broke off. "Charlie, what on earth was he doing in a church early in the morning?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're his friend. Couldn't you go round and make sure he's not badly hurt?"

  "I'm very sorry for Pat, of course." Denham gripped the pencil hard. "But must he monopolize our conversation alJ the time?"

  A pause. "I'm sorry."

  "You could go and see him, couldn't you?" asked Denham, his face expressing a passionate hope that she would say no.

  "I can't. Not yet."

  "Good! I mean, that's most unfortunate. Why not?"

  "Because I did go there. I wanted to give him some information." Joyce paused. "I don't mind his being inconsiderate; he can't help that. But when he started to be dramatic I rather preached him a sermon. So I said I wouldn't go back until I could prove who the real murderer is."

  "Murderer? What do you know about that?"

  "I think I've guessed all along," Joyce answered slowly. "But I can't prove it."

  Denham hesitated, fingering the pencil and then throwing it down.

  "Listen, Joyce!" (A clerk, if one had entered then, would have been astonished to see Charles Ewart Denham almost pleading.) "Let's forget Pat, can't we? Why not have dinner with me tonight? And I'll call on Pat this afternoon, if you like."

  "Thanks awfully, Charlie. Dinner would be wonderful." Joyce added, "He lives in Cleveland Row. I wonder what's going on there now?"

  What was going on now, at the house in Cleveland Row, could be described as a row or even a riot.

  Dr. Gideon Fell, arriving on the doorstep behind a taxi-driver who lugged a box of books, was admitted by Mrs. Pasternack to a little eighteenth-century passage. The large wooden box bumped the floor.

  lyO BELOW SUSPICION

  The taxi-driver, off like a flash when Dr. Fell absent-mindedly handed him a pound note for a six-and-ninepenny drive, allowed Mrs. Paster-nack to close the front door.

  From beyond a closed, white-painted door on the left issued the sound of several angry voices.

  "It's only the doctor, sir," Mrs. Pastemack whispered in apology.

  "Now look here," said the voice of the doctor, evidently an old friend. "The swelling in your face has practically gone. You're lucky to have got off with only one black eye, and no teeth lost. Still, you've got 'em. Your body-bruises are painful, and so are your hands."

  A Dublin accent answered him. "Ah, begob!" roared the voice of Patrick Butler. "And what would the likes of ye know about medicine?"

  "Never mind what I know. The fact remains that Mr. . . . Mr. . . ."

  "O'Brien, sorr," spoke up a hearty and confident voice, "Terence O'Brien."

  "Mr. O'Brien," said the doctor, "is not going to give you a boxing-lesson today."

  " 'Tisn't that. Doctor!" said Mr. O'Brien with dignity. "But would ye believe it, now? The idjit expects me to tache him the noble art in one lesson!"

  "And why the hell not, ye spalpeen?" yelled Patrick Butler.

  "Ah, bejasus," moaned Mr. O'Brien. "I'll come again tomorrow."

  "And so shall I," agreed the doctor.

  Both of them, on their way out, passed Dr. Fell. Mrs. Pastemack tapped on the white door. Dr. Fell, maneuvering in, found himself in a rather small but admirable library; it's white-painted book-shelves rose to the ceiling on every side except that of the two v^ndows facing Cleveland Row, and part of the wall opposite, where a log fire crackled under an Adam mantelpiece.

  Patrick Butler, wearing a dressing-gown and not quite reasonably presentable, stood with his back to the fire. He resumed his normal speech and his easy air when Dr. Fell entered, but he was not calm. Gesturing towards the leatlier easy-chair at one side of the hearth, Butler sank back in the other chair beside the dictaphone.

  For a time there was silence except for Dr. Fell's wheezy breathing.

  "Are you—harrumph—feeling better?" asked the leamed doctor.

  "Frankly," replied Butler with a certain grimness, "not much. For

  one thing, it hurts to talk. But talking, sir, is a luxury in which I shall indulge myself even when the hearse carries me to the cemetery."

  "Speaking of conversation," observed Dr. Fell, "did you 'phone Mrs. Renshaw this morning?"

  Butler gritted his teeth, another painful process. But last night he had again dreamed of Joyce Ellis, and of kissing her as he had kissed Lucia. It ex
asperated him.

  "I 'phone no woman," he said.

  "My dear sir! Consider what happened last night!"

  "I am considering it, believe me!"

  "No, no! Mrs. Renshaw and Dr. Bierce and I were standing in tlie grounds outside both upper and lower chapel. We had no notion of a fight or a fire or anything else. All of a sudden, a smoky-faced man in something like evening dress staggered out of the door and ran for the front gate. A few moments later you appeared. Have you any idea of your appearance at that time?"

  "Curiously enough, I had no time to think about it."

  "You handed me the bundle of papers," persisted Dr. Fell, "made an elaborate apology for being longer than three minutes, and then collapsed in a dead faint!"

  "I have never fainted in my life," Butler said coldly.

  Dr. Fell made a hideous face and a bothered gesture.

  "Well, say that you were momentarily indisposed. Mrs. Renshaw— don't grit your teeth!—took one look at you and your papers, and walked away. She was shocked and upset. Archons of Athens! Can't you consider women simply as women—"

  "That is my invariable habit."

  "—and not as feminine counterparts of yourself? How on earth she got home last night," scowled Dr. Fell, "I can't understand. She certainly didn't go v/ith us." Dr. Fell reflected for a moment, his eye roving. "Finally," he added sharply, "I understand from Hadley that you refuse to prefer any kind of charge against this man George Grace, whom you call Gold-teeth."

  Butler's mood changed. All thoughts of Lucia were swept out of his mind.

  "Gold-teetli," he repeated, with soft and unholy relish.

  Then he turned towards Dr. Fell an expression which gave even that seasoned person a qualm.

  "I didn't know the fellow's name was George Grace," Butler said, "until I rang Hadley this morning. Do you know what was pasted on the outside of my window this morning? Two of them, one on each front window beside the door. Mrs. Pasternack found them. Look here!"

  From the pocket of his dressing gown, with something very like tenderness, he took a curled and partly torn slip of paper whose printing—in block capitals—had been a little smeared by its removal from the window.

  It said:

  YOU AND ME HAVENT FINISHED. G.G.

  An ember popped in the fireplace. It was grovdng colder as the afternoon drew on, with a suggestion of mist outside the windows.