CHAPTER ONE

THE REPUTATION OF MAJOR DAWLISH

‘You see that large man in uniform, sitting by the window,’ said the fluffy-haired woman who was having tea with a youthful lieutenant at Penrod’s. ‘No, not that one, you ass, the fair-haired man!’

The lieutenant shifted his glance a little resentfully.

‘He’s Patrick Dawlish—and absolutely marvellous!’

The fluffy-haired woman uttered the name in a hushed tone, but the ‘marvellous’ had attracted attention. Major Patrick Dawlish became aware of the gaze from a dozen pairs of eyes.

‘If it weren’t for that broken nose,’ the fluffy-haired one went on dreamily, ‘he’d be divine! I expect he’s waiting for a friend who hasn’t turned up yet.’ She looked as if she would like to go and comfort him, but he turned his gaze towards her and it was so blank that she went on hurriedly: ‘It isn’t only his looks, Willy. He’s so famous! Even before the war he was always doing something, and his name has been in the papers a great deal since then. I remember, it was about six months ago, when there was that mysterious business in Devon or Dorset or somewhere down in the West country. Some Nazis had landed in England, or something or other, and he—’

She went on and on, her voice low-pitched but penetrating. Dawlish, now smoking his third cigarette since four o’clock, the time when Felicity, his wife, should have been there to meet him, was aware of the covert glances and had some idea of what the fluffy-haired woman was saying.

Fame, Dawlish was apt to say, had been thrust upon him, and he found it a poor substitute for greatness. He had a mild sense of grievance; what he had considered to be one or two innocent adventures before the war had brought him into contact with the police and crime. He had a curious ability to get to the heart of whatever attracted his attention, and to ignore inessentials. After two such adventures he had decided on a quiet life, only to be drawn into greater activity—twice at the instigation of the police themselves. When the war had come he had imagined that the days of public attention were past and that his only action would be abroad. Instead he had been drawn into operations at home. Becoming one of the leading lights in a small branch of Secret Intelligence.

In fact, wherever there was trouble there was Dawlish. At one time he had looked upon these incidents in an amused manner, but they no longer amused him.

He was more aggrieved because his reputation had undoubtedly been responsible for his being stationed in England when he had longed to be sent abroad.

That afternoon, however, nothing worried him but the fact that Felicity was late. She so rarely was.

At twenty minutes to five, the waitress approached him.

‘Would you like your tea now, sir?’

‘I’ll wait another ten minutes,’ smiled Dawlish.

The lieutenant and the fluffy-haired woman were getting up to go. Their departure coincided with the flurried entrance of a girl in A.T.S. uniform.

The lieutenant turned to watch her as she floundered towards Major Dawlish, heedless of his companion’s tug on his arm.

‘Willy!’

‘Sorry,’ he apologised quickly.

‘What has come over you?’ she demanded.

‘Now listen—’ he began, but stopped abruptly and looked at a man who was standing near the kerb. There was nothing remarkable about the fellow, except that he was breathing heavily and his lank hair was ruffled; like the A.T.S. girl, he had been hurrying.

‘Willy, what—’

‘Darling, I may have to dash off and leave you,’ said ‘Willy’ in an undertone. ‘Don’t look round, there’s a pet.’ There was a light note in his voice, but beneath it a certain jubilance. ‘I fancy that something odd is going on,’ he added. ‘You’ll help enormously if you’ll nip over to that tobacconist and buy some cigarettes.’

Surprised and startled, she complied while Willy gave all his attention to the man standing on the kerb. The fellow was glancing along the road, the hands lighting a cigarette, visibly shaking. ‘Willy’ stepped into a nearby porch and watched him.

A car drew up alongside, and the man’s face cleared. When the occupant of the car opened the window, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

As the window was closed a rather high-pitched voice drifted through it.

‘Well, it can’t be helped. Don’t lose him.’

It was the voice of a fat man, and the impression was heightened by a glimpse of humped shoulders and a double chin.

As the car moved off, Dawlish came out of the restaurant, the A.T.S. girl by his side. They passed the young lieutenant. Unnoticed, the man on the kerb began to follow them.

Willy moved swiftly along to the tobacconist and gripped the fluffy-haired woman’s arm.

‘Sorry, pet, but I can’t come back now. Meet me at Pam’s for a cocktail and I’ll tell you all about it then.’ He hesitated, and then hissed into her startled ear: ‘It’s to do with Dawlish.’

He strode after the agitated man, who himself was following Dawlish and the A.T.S. girl.

It looked as if Dawlish was going to walk down to the towing-path and along the river bank, when suddenly he took his companion’s elbow and hurried across the road. It happened so swiftly that the lank-haired man was completely taken aback. There was traffic coming in each direction; for Dawlish had chosen a moment when he and his companion could get across but could not be followed.

By the time his two followers had reached the opposite pavement, Dawlish had disappeared. There were several turnings he could have taken and a dozen shops into which he could have gone.

The lank-haired man gave up at last, and began to walk away.

‘Willy’ decided to follow him.

Both boarded a bus and alighted at the top of Putney Hill. One discreetly behind the other, they walked across the edge of Wimbledon Common, towards the grounds of a block of flats. The lank-haired man walked round to the back entrance and disappeared, while ‘Willy’, not certain what to do, hesitated and then decided to wait. By the time he had noted that the flats were named ‘Hillcrest’ and that the plaques outside said: ‘Numbers 1–41’, a car drew up and he caught another glimpse of the man with the double chin.

He did not see the owner of the chins glance round and peer at him through the rear-window. Thinking himself unobserved, he sauntered across the road towards the common and took up a position by a clump of bushes from which he could see the front entrance to the flats. By now the fat man had entered the building.

‘I wonder if I’m being a fool?’ mused ‘Willy’. He lit a cigarette and prepared to wait.

If he had moved to the right or to the left, he would have been saved, but he stood still. The bullet which came from the window of the fat man’s flat caught him in the forehead, and he died instantaneously. He fell forward, and had been lying still for several minutes before a child running after a ball suddenly turned and fled, screaming:

‘Mummy—Mummy!’

CHAPTER TWO

FELICITY’S BRIGHT IDEA

When Dawlish said that fame had been thrust upon him, implying that the police were solely responsible, he overlooked a characteristic trait which had intrigued certain officers at Scotland Yard from the moment they had first met the large, impassive-looking man with the blue eyes and indolent manner. That characteristic trait was his ability to see past inessentials.

That afternoon was a case in point.

The plump A.T.S. girl had told him, in a whisper, that Captain Dawlish (she meant Felicity) had sent her to ask him to go with her. Immediately they had reached the street he had seen the lank-haired man, and quickly realised what the fellow was doing. He had also noticed the youthful lieutenant.

Once safe from pursuit, he had looked down on the A.T.S. girl with a smile. ‘I’m sorry about the rush,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to make sure that no one followed us. Now, what is it all about?’

‘I don’t really know, sir,’ said the girl. ‘Only that Captain Dawlish told me where you were and asked me to fetch you as quickly as I could. I’m Sergeant Winneger, sir.’

‘We’ll soon find out more about it,’ Dawlish assured her.

For Felicity to be late and then to send an urgent message had been quite enough to make him act first and ask questions afterwards; but he wished he could have followed the lank-haired man. That was his only regret as he approached the camp, a small one on the outskirts of Kingston.

The main entrance was guarded, but Sergeant Winneger led him straight past it, along a narrow road. There was open ground on one side and a fringe of trees in the distance; strong barbed-wire entanglements protected the side abutting on the camp. A series of low buildings and huts were all that could be seen above the hedge on which the barbed-wire was fixed.

‘It’s not far along here,’ said Sergeant Winneger, as they approached a corner.

Turning it, they came upon a little crowd of uniformed people, an ambulance and a small private car.

Almost at once Dawlish saw his wife.

She was talking to a hard-faced Colonel.

On the ground was the body of a girl which two men were about to lift on to a stretcher. Only the head and shoulders of the girl were visible, for she was covered in blankets, but it was possible to see that she was in uniform. Felicity, now finished with her C.O., turned to Dawlish, her grey-green eyes sombre.

‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked gently.

‘I think she’ll die,’ said Felicity, ‘so you can call it murder.’ She sounded a little distraught. ‘Let’s get away. If there had been anything for you to see near the spot it would be trampled on by now.’ She led the way further along the narrow road. Soon, they were out of earshot of the crowd. Only the sound of the ambulance engine came to them.

Felicity gripped Dawlish’s arm tightly. She had been with him through too many fierce adventures to be so affected by murder. Presumably, therefore, there was something else on her mind. Dawlish did not ask questions. In her own good time, she would tell him.

The lane led to a stretch of common-land with trees and bushes on either side. Near one of them Felicity stopped abruptly and flashed an unexpected smile.

‘I must tidy up!’ she said.

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Dawlish, gravely.

He held her small mirror in position while she ran her comb through her hair, and put her forage cap on again at the correct angle. He was still in love with her, and knew that he always would be.

‘Better?’

‘Much!’ he kissed her forehead. ‘You don’t happen to know of a handy place where we can get some tea, do you?’

‘Poor sweet!’ said Felicity, ‘I’d forgotten you missed lunch. I think there is a cottage along here where they used to do teas.’ She lengthened her stride. ‘Pat, it’s the second murder near the camp.’

‘Yes, I remembered that,’ said Dawlish.

‘Two months ago,’ went on Felicity, rapidly, ‘and it looked like—I mean, everyone thought that it was one of the sordid affairs which do happen from time to time. It was late at night, after a dance, and the girl who was murdered had drunk too much. So had the man they arrested, I think. He wasn’t caught for three weeks, and I don’t know where he is now.’

‘At Brixton,’ said Dawlish.

She glanced up at him sharply.

‘Have you followed the case?’

‘Only because it happened near you,’ said Dawlish. ‘I haven’t evolved any elaborate ideas about …’

‘Well, there was one rather queer thing about it,’ went on Felicity, ‘the murdered girl had a fresh tattoo mark on her right shoulder, near the neck—’

‘A tiny five-point star with a circle in the middle,’ said Dawlish, promptly.

‘You haven’t forgotten much,’ commented Felicity. ‘No one could explain it, and it didn’t seem particularly important. The only other thing was that the man they arrested said that he quarrelled with her and left her near the copse. It seemed, at the time, a pretty weak story.’

‘The police certainly thought so,’ agreed Dawlish.

‘I did, too,’ Felicity admitted, ‘but now—Pat, this girl has the same tattoo mark.’

‘Wasn’t she fully dressed?’ asked Dawlish sharply.

‘Oh, yes, but I was in the wash-room with her two days ago and noticed the mark then. Another strange thing is that she and the other girl were good friends. Looking back, Pat, I know that I was a fool to accept the surface explanation so readily. For she wasn’t a girl to get drunk. She was steady and ambitious like Mary Hill.’

‘This one is Mary Hill?’

‘Yes. Neither of them were heavy drinkers, and I was surprised when I heard that she had been drunk that night. I thought the man who killed her first plied her with drinks and made her lose her head, but now—’

‘The fellow’s only accused of killing her, so far,’ protested Dawlish. ‘I think I read somewhere that the trial’s coming off next week.’

‘Oh, well, perhaps I’m making a fuss about nothing,’ said Felicity, ‘but I did see a rather furtive-looking fellow hanging round the scene of the crime. I rather hoped that you would be here before he went away.’

‘Did he have dark, lank hair and a hang-dog look about him?’ inquired Dawlish airily.

‘He most certainly did!’

‘Then he followed your Sergeant Winneger, and then tried to follow me. Did he overhear my name?’

‘Almost sure to have done,’ said Felicity. ‘I called out instructions—to go to Penrod’s and fetch Major Dawlish—fairly loudly.’

‘Now why on earth should he chase after your girl because she was going for me?’ asked Dawlish. They walked on in silence until they came to the cottage with a weather-beaten sign reading: Teas. Gloomily eating and drinking the stale sandwiches and stewed tea served to them, they were glad to leave the musty parlour and get back to the fresh air again.

Felicity had forty-eight hours leave and Dawlish was off duty until the following evening, so they decided to catch the seven o’clock train to Waterloo. The clock struck a quarter to eight as they reached their small furnished flat in Brook Street.

‘What would you like to do now?’ asked Felicity.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Dawlish, restlessly: ‘I do know that the murder—or attempted murder, she isn’t dead yet—of Mary Hill has rather damped our spirits. Too bad on a forty-eight! Would you care to go out and drown your sorrows somewhere?’

Felicity shook her head. ‘Do you know, I think I’ll put a call through to the camp and see how she is.’

The connection took some little time, then Dawlish heard her ask the question uppermost on her mind, and knew from her expression that the answer was distressing.

He was aware of a curious blanket of depression.

He had never met Mary Hill, so it was not the fact that the girl had died that worried him. The incident of the dark-haired man was puzzling, but nothing more. As it was, he found himself thinking of the soldier who was under arrest on the charge of the murder of the first girl. He could not recall the man’s name, although he remembered the circumstances clearly.

‘The truth is,’ said Dawlish abruptly, ‘that I ought to have a word with Bill.’

‘If you do get in touch with Scotland Yard, you might be drawn into some pretty devilish goings on,’ said Felicity. ‘Do you want to be?’

‘Not much,’ said Dawlish, ‘but even so, I think I’ll see if Bill’s at the Yard.’

Superintendent William Trivett, a friend of many years, was not at Scotland Yard, and nor was he at his home. His wife answered Dawlish from the Chelsea house, saying that he had telephoned from Kingston to say that he would not be home until late. Dawlish thanked her, and rang off. He looked significantly at Felicity.

‘Bill’s already at Kingston.’

A ring at the front doorbell interrupted his words.

‘I’ll go,’ said Felicity. Dawlish stood smoking by the window, still conscious of the depressing effect of what had happened. Then he heard a feminine voice which he recognised