Flowers For the Judge (24 page)

‘When you say the Friday night, was that the evening after Mr Brande disappeared?’

Mr Rigget nodded. ‘I got a fright when I saw him. Afterwards I was pleased. I knew he was there, you see. I knew he was there all the week-end.’

Mr Campion sat up, but Mr Rigget was too engrossed in his own unfortunate reactions to life to notice any added interest in his hearer.

‘I stayed behind on Friday. It’s easier on Fridays. People go home earlier and don’t notice you’re hanging about. I shut myself in the wash-room with the light out until they’d all gone – I did that to-night, and then I let myself out and unlocked the strong-room door with my own key and went in. I didn’t see the body at first. It wasn’t by the door where they found it. It was lying crumpled up in a corner beside the safe, hidden from the door by a lot of boxes and things under the table.’

He hesitated.

‘That’s where I got my key of the safe,’ he explained at last. ‘It was in the lock and the safe door was open. I thought the key might be useful, so I shut the door and turned it. I was frightened, of course, but I was excited, too. I never liked Mr Paul.’

Mr Campion sat enthralled. He did not like to break the thread of the story, but at the same time the man’s attitude towards his important discovery was incomprehensible.

‘You were terrified, I suppose?’ he ventured.

‘No,’ said Mr Rigget. ‘I wasn’t frightened because he was dead – I made sure he
was
dead. I’d have been more frightened if he’d been alive.’

He caught Mr Campion’s expression and attempted to excuse himself.

‘It wasn’t anything to do with me. I hadn’t killed him. I didn’t think he had been killed then. I thought he’d just fallen down in a fit. I was frightened they’d catch me by the safe and think I’d opened it. I ought not to have taken the key of the safe. That’s criminal, really. But I didn’t use it. I never used it. I didn’t bring it to-night because I thought I might use it and I wanted to put the temptation behind me. I took the other key, too,’ he went on, averting his eyes. ‘It was in the lock when I pushed mine in and it fell out on the floor on the inside. I picked it up and when I went out I put it back in Miss Curley’s desk after I’d locked the door.’

‘Why on earth did you do that?’ Campion demanded in astonishment.

Mr Rigget was silent for some seconds and the sulkiness on his face increased in intensity.

‘Well, I thought I ought to leave the door locked in case someone had tried it earlier in the day and had looked for the key and found it wasn’t there. Then I thought they’d have to get him out some time, and I thought they’d probably smash the lock. Then my own key that I’d had made wouldn’t fit any more. I’m mean!’ he burst out passionately. ‘I do things like that. I’m always thinking of
myself
and how to save myself trouble – little petty things like that.’

Mr Campion’s face was very severe.

‘Look here,’ he demanded, ‘do you realize that Mike Wedgwood has been arrested and is going to be tried for his life largely on the evidence that Brande was found dead in a room locked on the outside? Now, according to your story, the dead man was in a room locked on the inside. You must see the difference.’

Mr Rigget shrugged his shoulders. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with me, as far as I saw. I’ve told you, I’m selfish, I’m narrow, I’m mean.’

Mr Campion ignored the last part of his remark.

‘You say when you found the body on the Friday night it was lying in a corner so that no one entering the door could see it immediately?’

‘I didn’t see it until I went over to the safe.’

‘But, good heavens!’ exploded Mr Campion. ‘Don’t you see, you’re corroborating Wedgwood’s story? Didn’t you follow the inquest?’

Mr Rigget leant back in his chair. He looked exhausted.

‘It wasn’t any affair of mine,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Had you got a grudge against Wedgwood?’

‘No.’ Mr Rigget’s sullenness increased. ‘I didn’t have much to do with him.
I tell you
’ he said, his voice breaking, ‘you think I’m a beastly filthy little twerp, don’t you? Well,
I am!
That’s what I keep telling you. I am and I can’t help it. I know I’m being an unspeakable cad not to own up to what I did, to get him off. I know I am: that makes it worse.’

‘Why did you go back there to-night?’

Mr Rigget’s wretchedness would have been distressing on any less momentous occasion.

‘I shall get the sack when the trial’s over,’ he muttered. ‘You were there that day when I went to Mr Widdowson and Sir Alexander and told them about the quarrel I’d overheard. They daren’t sack me now, but as soon as the trial’s over they will – unless I can get something on them first. That’s why I was hunting for something that I could use.’

‘Yes, well,’ said Mr Campion, with disgust. ‘I don’t think much of an education which taught you that tampering with a safe was criminal but didn’t mention blackmail.’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be blackmail,’ murmured Mr Rigget. ‘It would only be something I could just mention. All this is going to come out now, isn’t it?’

‘Some of it’ll have to.’

‘How d’you know I shan’t kill myself?’ Mr Rigget spoke cunningly.

Mr Campion looked at him. ‘You poor little beast, you might,’ he murmured. ‘That’s why I’m going to take you over to Scruby immediately.’

Mr Rigget shrank back in his chair.

‘I’m a witness for the Crown. You can’t tamper with me. You can’t persuade me to say anything I don’t want to. I’ve been talking to you as I’ve never talked to anybody else, but I’m not going to do it in court.’

Mr Campion got up heavily.

‘I shouldn’t worry so much about coming clean,’ he said. ‘Ever heard of Nemesis? Come on.’

THOSE WHO LIVE
in that ghostly part of London which is the most crowded square mile by day and the most deserted by night, insist that at three o’clock in the morning it is as peaceful as a country churchyard, and that there the black rats dance a leisurely saraband down the centres of the glossy streets.

Mr Campion’s hurrying footsteps made sharp echoes on the pavements as he strode through the unsavoury alley which is Red Lion Passage and came out into the shabby comfort of the square.

Most of the flat houses had been converted into offices
long
ago. Standing back from the road, they turned blank eyes to the street lamps and only a single brightly-lit third-floor window twinkled at him mellowly through the budding plane trees in the dusty centre garden.

He made for it and was rewarded. Ritchie was evidently a man of his word and was sitting up. Having no desire to wake the whole house, Mr Campion paused on the edge of the pavement and pitched a halfpenny expertly into the centre of the lighted pane.

Immediately a somewhat fantastic silhouette appeared at the sash, waved reassuringly and vanished.

Campion wandered up to the door, and it opened before him with so little delay that he experienced a slight shock of astonishment.

‘Slide down the banisters?’ he inquired facetiously.

Ritchie did not answer, and Campion, who could not see his face, received the disquieting impression that he was disconcerted. It was a ridiculous incident and passed at once. Ritchie’s great hand caught his arm and forced him up the dark staircase of the house which had seen much better days.

‘People asleep,’ his host confided in a whisper which was like the roar of the wind in a turret. ‘Only kind to be quiet.’

It was a long way up, but the older man moved at a great rate and Mr Campion came thankfully and a trifle breathlessly into the bed-sitting-room which was Ritchie’s home.

It was a huge apartment with a very high ceiling, some two feet below which a shelf had been constructed round all four sides of the room. This ledge was the most striking feature of the place, and first caught a visitor’s attention, since it evidently contained practically all Mr Richard Barnabas’s worldly possessions. Books, clothes and manuscripts were there stacked together neatly, albeit a trifle dustily, and were, of course, extraordinarily inaccessible.

What furniture the room contained was huddled together along the darkest wall, as though space were restricted. The wash-stand stood at the end of the iron bedstead, rubbing elbows uncomfortably with a minute dressing-table.

The rest of the room was virtually bare, the floor covered with several layers of dusty under-felting. A small gas fire burned in the grate and a single folding arm-chair was drawn up before it.

‘Sit down. Rather stand – sit all day.’

A sweeping but completely meaningless gesture of one arm accompanied the hospitality, and Mr Campion, who was beginning to understand his friend, obeyed meekly.

He was about to drop into the chair when he caught sight of something among the corduroy cushions and retrieved it in some astonishment. It was a spangled black tulle frill which immediately suggested to Mr Campion a sentimental relic of a lady in tights dancing upon a
fin de siècle
stage.

If he showed surprise it was nothing to the effect the discovery had upon Ritchie. For a moment he stood gaping, utter consternation on his face, and then, whipping the furbelow out of Campion’s hand, he thrust it for want of a better hiding-place under the pillow on the iron bedstead.

‘Never ask,’ he commanded, bright spots of colour appearing in his thin cheeks and his blue eyes unexpectedly belligerent. ‘Never ask.’

Mr Campion, who was tired and had by no means recovered from his encounter with the athletic Mr Rigget, began to wonder if he himself were not a trifle light-headed. However, Ritchie was still regarding him truculently and he hastened to reassure him.

‘Of course not,’ he said, with dignity.

There was a pause, during which Ritchie seated himself upon the floor, tucking his long awkward legs beneath him with extraordinary dexterity. His excitement evaporated and his eyes became mild and friendly, albeit a trifle worried.

Mr Campion blinked. The vision of a youthful Ritchie and a lady in spangled tights provided a bizarre note in the sober business of the evening and he reflected what an odd, attractive, simple soul his host was. Ritchie glanced at Campion.

‘Been fighting?’ he observed.

Campion gave him a rough outline of his evening’s adventure.

‘I roused poor old Scruby and left Rigget with him,’ he finished at last. ‘It means a flutter among the legal gents to-morrow, I’m afraid, but that can’t very well be helped. The important thing is that the little rat’s story contains two pieces of new evidence: one that Paul was murdered, the key being on the inside of the strong-room door, and the other that the body was moved after rigor mortis had passed and probably after Mike went down to the strong-room on Sunday night.’

He paused and Ritchie regarded him owlishly from the ground. Campion continued.

‘I rather thought that something like that last had happened when I first heard about the hat. A man doesn’t set his hat upon the floor and then lie down carefully beside it to die. But there was no proof, you see. Everything had been so mucked about by the time the police arrived that they were hampered on all sides.’

Ritchie nodded his comprehension.

‘New evidence important?’ he inquired. ‘Vital? Mean release?’

‘Oh, no, I’m afraid not.’ Mr. Campion succumbed to the impulse to explain things gently to Ritchie. ‘It’ll weaken the case, of course, but Mike must stand his trial. You see, to do everybody justice, Mike is the obvious person to have killed Paul. He had opportunity, he admits going to the garage and starting the car, the shower tube had belonged to him, he had bought and read a book describing the method of murder in detail, and in the police opinion he had a motive.’

‘Gina?’

Mr Campion bowed his battered head.

‘The degrees of familiarity between the sexes in ordinary social life differ from clique to clique and class to class more than anything else,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s practically the only subject on which the authorities are consistently muddled. I’m afraid police circles are inclined to be prurient-minded and lawyers worse.’

‘Understandable,’ said Ritchie unexpectedly. ‘Always having unfortunate experiences.’

Mr Campion continued his dissertation.

‘That’s the positive legal case, roughly. But then there’s all the negative evidence which only counts in the back of people’s minds. Someone killed Paul, someone killed him intentionally and ingeniously. That someone apparently killed him between six in the evening, when the office went home, and nine in the same evening, when Mike turned off his engine and both Mrs Tripper and my new friend Widgeon noticed the noise had ceased. That someone had access to either Twenty-three or Twenty-one, because it was only through either of these houses that the car could be reached. That someone either knew that Paul would be in the strong-room at that particular time or inveigled him into the place. That someone knew of the hosepipe and therefore also knew the back entrance at Twenty-one. The only people who could have known and done all these things are Mike, you, Gina, John, Curley and the janitor – or possibly Paul himself, although it seems an idiotic way to commit suicide. And, anyway, in that case who moved the body?’

‘Might be others,’ said Ritchie dubiously. ‘If Rigget stayed behind why not others? Girl Netley. Rigget himself. Anyone in the office.’

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ said Mr Campion cheerfully. ‘Otherwise Mike and Gina are very unfortunately placed. Everyone else has an alibi.’

He leant back in his chair and removed his spectacles as Ritchie’s eyes watched his face.

‘Miss Curley left the office on the Thursday evening at half-past five and went to Peter Robinson’s to have her hair shampooed. She left there at six and hurried on to the cocktail-party which Mike should have attended in Manchester Square. At seven-thirty she left and went on to dinner at Rule’s with Miss Betcherley of Blenheim’s literary agency, and at eight-fifty she caught a tube train to Hammersmith.’

He paused and smiled.

‘Then there’s you. You left the office early and came back here, where you collected your landlord –’