The Knocker on Death's Door

“Robert,” said Hugh, softly and earnestly, “it isn’t much I’m asking you for, this time. Not even to lie. Only a head start, that’s all, just time to get away. Nothing new has happened—there needn’t be any alarm. Just give me tonight, that’s all I want. Just tonight—and your silence…”

Robert had halted, only a few steps into the room, when Hugh moved to put a wall at his back. Slowly he turned to face him directly again.

“Robert, I’m not asking you to do it for me. But won’t you, for Mother’s sake…?”

It had been his trump card for years, but this time it fluttered ineffectively to the ground, and Robert’s first advancing step trod it underfoot. The pale, calm face did not change at all.

“It won’t work any more, Hugh. She’s safe enough from you now. She’s dead.”

He halted for a moment, and looked at Dinah, and the fixed lines of his long, tired features softened briefly.

“Go home, Dinah. Just walk out now and take the car, and go. Leave me with him. He won’t try to stop you.” Hugh didn’t move, didn’t make a sound; for suddenly the only weapon he had was the tiny, deadly weapon in his hand, and for all its deadliness, suddenly it was not enough. It seemed to Dinah that she could indeed have walked straight out at the door then, between the two brothers, and got into the Mini and driven away. But she didn’t move, either.

“Go, please, Dinah,” said Robert gently. “I tried to tell you yesterday that you shouldn’t so much as come near us, let alone ever think of tying yourself to one of us for life.”

Hugh drew a long, careful breath. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me. She isn’t dead, you’re only trying to kid me into giving up…”

“She’s dead, Hugh. Five or six minutes ago. I came down to telephone Braby. And I heard the table go over. Don’t bet on her any more, Hugh. She’s dead—it’s finished.”

He was walking forward slowly, measured step by step, and his eyes were fixed on Hugh’s face with an unwavering purpose that matched the fixity of the gun’s one minute black eye. And as he came he talked, quietly, coherently, without passion.

“Bad enough that I covered up one murder for you, and kept you fed and indulged with money ever since, so that you’d never feel the need to kill again. Bad enough that I’ve acted as your grave-digger and watchman and nurse all this time, and caused another death, all to keep her from ever knowing what you and he between you have done to her name and her life—the only two people she ever cared about in the world. That’s enough. It’s all over now,” said Robert clearly, “I can call things by their proper names now. You’re a murderer and I’m an accessory. And we’re both bastards. And she’s dead! Thank God!”

Only a few feet separated them now, and still Hugh had not moved. Robert held out his hand with authority for the gun.

“Give that thing to me!”

“Keep off!” said Hugh loudly and violently. “Keep off and let me by, or I’ll fire. I’m clearing out!”

“No, Hugh, you’re not going anywhere. It’s finished.”

Dinah was distantly aware of a loud knocking that seemed to be within her head, for no one else heard it. Then she knew it for the knocker on the front door. The night nurse arriving? The police returning? Dave coming to fetch her home?

“Keep off, I warn you, or I’ll kill you!”

And Robert smiled at him and came on, his hand extended. Dinah understood, a fraction of a second too late, that Robert had his own inviolable reason for moving in like this on an armed and desperate man, a proffered target closing to pointblank range. All he wanted, at least in that moment, was to be dead and done with it, all that long purgatory of horror and disgust. Out in the hall there were men entering, the front door stood open; they would have seen this one subdued light, and it was here they were coming. But Robert did not want them to arrive in time.

Dinah saw the slight convulsion pass through Hugh’s forearm and hand. She shrieked: “Hugh— no!” And perhaps it was her scream that diverted his attention at the very instant of firing, or perhaps in this face-to-face confrontation his hand shook in superstitious dread, and some last instinct in him tried subconsciously to turn the shot aside, for after all, this was his brother. The report of the shot closed with the echo of Dinah’s scream, and Robert’s tall body jerked a little backwards, folded slowly at the knees, and collapsed in an angular heap. And suddenly the room was full of men, Chief Inspector Felse and Sergeant Moon and half a dozen others, and Dave hard on their heels.

George Felse said afterwards that there was one moment when he gave Dinah Cressett up for dead, because she launched herself like fury straight between the police and the gun, which had still five serviceable rounds of .25 ACP ammunition in its eight-round magazine, as they afterwards confirmed. Dinah was not thinking of herself or the police, or the nearness or remoteness of her own death, but only intent on reaching Robert’s body and feeling for the pulse and heartbeat that were still alive in him.

But the moment passed without another tragedy; for Hugh, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, did the only thing left for him to do, and turned his little plaything upon himself.

This time he felt no superstitious terror, and his hand did not tremble. This time he made no mistake.

CHAPTER 14

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THEY rushed Robert to hospital at emergency speed, siren blaring, and Comerbourne’s chief surgeon spent most of the night getting the bullet out of the wreckage of his left shoulder and putting the pieces back together, which was rather like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. For so small a calibre it had done a lot of damage; if he got off without a long stay in an orthopaedic ward later, he’d be lucky, but there was a good chance of an eighty per cent recovery eventually.

“Lucky for him,” said George to Sergeant Moon later, “that his father only brought back a Walther 8 from North Africa with him, instead of one of those 9 millimetre Lugers or something even bigger. A lot of the ranking officers in the German army carried those little fellows as auxiliary arms in the last war. I wonder how many of them are still running round loose in this country?”

They had the report from ballistics by then, and knew that the bullet recovered from Thomas Claybourne’s skull