Peel was wrong. Ma Beesley left the apartment a little after ten o’clock. She did not look up and down the street, although she must have known that she was being followed. She waddled toward the corner where there was a dimly lit telephone kiosk, pulled open the heavy door, and squeezed into the box.
She could not close the door on her bulk. That did not seem to trouble her. She had some coppers in her hand, and twisted her body, so that she could insert them and use the dial. Keeping in the shadows, Peel went as near as he dared. He could actually hear the whir of the dial after the pennies had dropped. He saw Ma peering through the window away from him; she seemed determined to ignore him.
“Hallo, George,” she said, clearly.
“Warrender,” Peel muttered.
“Yes, George, it’s me,” went on Ma Beesley. “I couldn’t phone before, because I’ve had a little trouble with Eve. That dreadful West man came and questioned her again, and I had to see that she was all right. I think someone ought to spend the night here.”
There was a pause.
“Well, I will if there’s no one else,” said Ma. “Yes . . . yes, I would like a word with Paul. . . . Hallo, Paul!” Ma’s voice oozed syrup. “Yes, I spoke to her about it . . . she wouldn’t accept the offer . . . you see, she’s very loyal. . . . Oh, yes, I tried, but she wouldn’t agree; she doesn’t believe that you’re so fickle!” Ma sniggered. “Yes, Paul, I’ll stay.”
She rang off, edged herself out of the box, and approached Peel, who was hiding in the shadows of a house. She plodded along the pavement, and he could hear her wheezing. She drew level with him, and passed. “She hasn’t seen me,” thought Peel.
She turned and looked over her shoulder.
“Isn’t it a dark night?” she remarked, and padded on.
Peel swore at her under his breath, and waited until she had gone into the house before he telephoned the Yard, and asked for a message to be sent to Handsome West.
Peel himself couldn’t make head or tail of the situation. Why had Ma Beesley come to pay the girl off, and then reported her failure to Raeburn?
Katie Brown was subdued when Roger went to see her again at the Putney hospital, next day. She said she was relieved that Bill was inside, and hoped he would stay there until the affair was over, but obviously she hated all thought of it. Yes, of course, she wanted to help as much as she could, she said, and the doctor had declared her fit enough to leave hospital.
Roger gave her a cigarette, as he asked: “Do you still remember the voice of the man on the Common?”
“Shall I ever forget it!”
“I want you to listen to a man speaking, and to tell me whether you recognise the voice,” Roger said. “Will you do that?”
“Of course I will.”
“He met with an accident, and may look a mess,” Roger told her, “but don’t worry.”
As they neared Joe’s ward at the City Hospital, the matron caught sight of Roger, and hurried across. She was a great talker, and reported earnestly that she was worried because Joe was making no progress. She thought that he was pretending to be more ill than he really was, and although he still said little and showed no interest in anything, he ate well enough: that was the only satisfactory thing to report. And—this was the main burden of her story—did Mr. West think that the policeman could be removed from the ward for a few hours? It might be possible to judge the patient’s real condition, then.
“I’ll see what I can do,” promised Roger. “Does he still talk to the nurses?”
“A word or two, that’s all.”
“I wonder if you’ll go and have a word with him now,” Roger said. “I’d like you to leave the door open, so that I can hear.”
The matron nodded, went in, and spoke cheerfully to the invalid. At first, Joe answered only in monosyllables which could hardly be heard. Gradually, his voice strengthened, until he said clearly: “I tell you I don’t want anything else, get the hell out of here!”
Katie gasped:
“Quiet,” whispered Roger.
Katie gripped his arm tightly, and stood staring at the door.
It was a help, another piece in the puzzle, but it did not lead to Raeburn.
Roger made time to go through all the evidence in any way connected with Raeburn, and to summarise and analyse it. There was still little to enthuse over. The Yard’s foremost solicitor agreed that it would be folly to put Bill Brown into the witness box against Eve; although there were no convictions against Brown, he had committed- dozens of petty offences, and Abel Melville would find little difficulty in discrediting him in court. Even a confession of guilt from Eve would have its drawbacks; and, as the solicitor pointed out, they had to prove not only that Eve- had lied, but that Raeburn had been a party to her perjury. That was going to be the difficulty.
Joe remained a man without an identity. The East End Divisions were working at pressure to try to discover more about him, but there was no evidence that he lived in this district. Andy and the other men who had been caught at Berry Street were still on remand.
Tenby continued to spend most of his leisure in The Lion at Chelsea; Mark Lessing, his face better, went there several times, but Tenby was always on his own.
Raeburn and Warrender spent a great deal of time at the City offices of Raeburn Investments, ostensibly occupied with legitimate business. Ma Beesley stirred from Park Lane only to do the shopping. Eve remained at her apartment for two days on end, and Roger began to hope that Raeburn had thrown her over. If he had, out of
