The Chelsea Murders Read Online Free Page B

been the nonsense involving Lord Lucan, and Lady Lucan. There had been the nonsense with Slipper of the Yard, returned from Brazil without his rightful captive, Biggs the train-robber. There had been the Cambridge rapist who had terrorized the university town for months until on his belated, almost accidental, capture he had been found to have a record from here to next week apart from having left prodigal evidence, including signed messages, in his trail.
    None of this was good for the police.
    ‘What’s Ted got on his plate?’ the C.C. had inquired.
    Warton had nothing. He had been cunningly clearing things off his plate in anticipation of translation to other sees.
    This was how he had bought the assignment.
    Two weeks before, an American called Alvin C. Schuster had been found wrapped round a lamp-post near his house in Bywater Street. There were two stab wounds in his chest and he had been dead for three hours.
    A neighbour exercising her dog had first noticed him at a few minutes to midnight. Other neighbours had been stepping in and out of their houses all evening without having noticed him, which had brought Warton out in his first evil distemper.
    Obviously, someone had put Schuster round that lamp-post – and shortly before the neighbour found him. This wasn’t an easy thing to do, unless Schuster had been dragged there from his house. This he had not been. The family dog never failed to bark when Schuster so much as approached the house. It hadn’t barked.
    But if he hadn’t reached the lamp-post via his house, how had he got there? Bywater Street was a cul-de-sac lined bumper-to -bumper with the cars of the residents. It could only be entered from the King’s Road; getting to the lamp-post, which was three-quarters of the way down it, would have caused considerable commotion even by sedan chair.
    Warton’s frazzled inquiries into any possible Intelligence angle – result negative – had brought him an early morning call, at home, from the C.C. He had been curtly told not to put funny buzzes about. The Americans leaked things, and people talked. The C.C. told him to remember the people he had in the district, and to treat the case as one of normal murder.
    Warton knew the people he had in the district – troublemakers of all kinds, judges, bankers, politicians. Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the leader of the Conservative Party, had her well-publicized abode in Flood Street, just a few hundred yards from Schuster’s lamp-post.
    He also knew normal murder. Long grubby experience taught that ninety-nine per cent of it was domestic in origin.
    However, it didn’t seem to be the origin in Schuster’s.
    So far as the most thorough investigation could show, Alvin C. had been having no side orders of sex; no arguments, either, or drink or drugs, or any other kinds of trouble. He had been a cheery horn-rimmed oil executive, sensitive to the anxieties of labour in industry, mindful of the role of management. He owed nobody any money. Nobody owed him any. He hadn’t sacked anybody much.
    Warton thought the most likely thing was that someone had got the wrong bloke.
    Unfortunately, this was worse than getting the right one. Your average bloke, reading his paper, could well understand how even the most violent and baffling of murders had a rational cause. A natural justice or reason would be found lurking beneath the surface of the thing. Wrong blokes were a different kettle of fish entirely. Anybody could turn out to be one of those. It led to anxiety and indignation, and often letters to legislators (many living in Chelsea).
    He had proceeded from the phone call to his Chelsea HQ ( unpromisingly sited in Lucan Place) immediately into the next golden spot of the day. His deputy, Summers, had greeted him with the news that they had got another. Two streets away from Schuster, Jubilee Place, a daily had shown up with a bright good morning to find her employer starkers in the hall. Her employerhad been Miss Jane