The Toff and the Fallen Angels

“Roily,” said Grice, very firmly, “this is murder, it looks like a particularly violent murder, and there is no time at all for half-truths. Why did you break in? What made you suspicious?”

“Bill,” said Rollison. “I had no reason at all to suspect that Keith Webberson was in danger. I was simply puzzled, and—”

“I don’t believe you,” interrupted Grice. “You didn’t come here simply to find out if Webberson was all right. You had a stronger motive. What was it? What puzzled you?”

Here was the moment to tell the whole truth . . . and Rollison still had not made up his mind. But he knew that if he held anything back at this stage, then for the rest of the investigation he would be in conflict with the police, and it was the last thing he wanted.

“I can tell you why I was puzzled,” he said. “The very simple truth. I’d been asked by a Mrs. Naomi Smith, who runs a hostel in Bloomsbury, if I would help her find out what was happening there. She told me that Webberson had suggested that she should get in touch with me. That was a week ago. For a week I’ve been trying in vain to get in touch with him. Then I learned that he hadn’t turned up to give his usual lectures. As an old friend, perhaps his oldest friend, I felt justified in breaking in.”

He saw the quick exchange of glances between Grice and Lumley, as he talked, and felt an increasing disquiet eased only by the certainty that he had been right to tell his story.

“I’m very glad you broke in,” Grice said in a more relaxed voice. “And I didn’t suppose we can blame you for not telling us about the hostel problem. Did you know that two of the residents were missing?”

Slowly, Rollison answered : “Not missing. I knew they’d left.”

“They are missing,” Grice stated flatly. “And we’ve reason to believe that one of them is dead.”

CHAPTER 6

Missing—Or Dead?

 

ROLLISON placed his hand on the arms of his chair and levered himself to his feet. He had another mental image of Angela, and he felt sick. Seeing his expression, Lumley and Grice exchanged glances again, and Grice spoke in an almost long-suffering way.

“What have you been up to? What haven’t you told us, yet?”

“Didn’t you once meet my niece—Angela Pax-Elliott?” asked Rollison.

“The pretty, roly-poly girl?”

“You’ve met her,” said Rollison.

“She plagued me for an hour, asking if there were any short cuts to becoming a woman member of the C.I.D.,” said Grice. “What—my God! Is she a resident there?” Grice was filled with great alarm, and with surprise if not astonishment. After a brief pause, he went on : “And if she was in trouble, why didn’t she go to Lady Gloria at the Marigold Club?”

“In your cynical sense, she is not in trouble,” Rollison replied. “She is satisfying her craving to play detective.”

“Well I’m damned!” exclaimed Lumley.

“Your idea?” Grice asked Rollison, grimly.

“Yes,” admitted Rollison. He moved to the window and looked down into the open space where the cars were parked—and he saw an ambulance move off. This was the one carrying the body, of course: what an end for a man like Webberson. “Yes’ he repeated, “it was my idea, and at the time it seemed a good one. At least I arranged for Angela to telephone me once a day, and immediately if there is any sign of emergency.”

“Did you speak to her tonight?”

“Yes—and she told me Webberson hadn’t been to his normal classes at the hostel, that really sparked me off. Bill—have you any reason to suspect other residents are in danger?”

“No,” said Grice. “But I wouldn’t like a daughter of any friend of mine to be there.”

“Have you any reason to believe that Naomi Smith knows that the girls are missing?”

“She reported them missing,” answered Grice. After a moment, watching the emotions chasing one another over Rollison’s face, he went on : “So she didn’t tell you that.”

“She just said they’d left,” answered Rollison.

It wasn’t really a lie, but how could Naomi Smith have any doubt that by keeping this grave aspect of the problem back, she had been deceiving him? He could see and hear her in his mind’s eye : that beautiful voice and those lovely eyes and the earnestness of pleading. Why hadn’t she told the whole truth? Hadn’t she realised that if she had even hinted that the two girls were missing, he would have been more likely to agree to help? And why hadn’t she told him when she had learned that Angela was going to take up residence—good God! How could any woman with decent instincts allow such a thing to happen?

“Getting angry?” inquired Grice, mildly.

“Simmering,” Rollison said. “But as all good policemen say, first get all the facts. You won’t raise any objection to my looking for the facts, will you?”

“No—if you undertake to pass on any you find,” said Grice.

“I’ll pass them on,” promised Rollison grimly. He was seething rather than simmering, but at the back of his mind hovered the realisation that he was probably enraged as much because Naomi Smith had fooled him as because of the danger to Angela.

He wasn’t really troubled for Angela : he could go and fetch her away now.