Death of an Englishman by Magdalen Nabb

Author:Magdalen Nabb [Nabb, Magdalen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780099443346
Google: tLVdBzwzk-IC
Amazon: 1616952997
Publisher: Soho Crime
Published: 1981-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

The four men sat for some time, notebooks on their knees, in the dimly-lit room, as the dusk outside in the courtyard faded to darkness and smoke from the Chief's pipe eddied slowly about in the gloom near the high ceiling. Some things at least were established: Langley-Smythe had been expecting his visitor, had still been dressed under his dressing-gown, whiling away the night with a science-fiction book and a bottle of whisky in the bedroom, covering himself with the eiderdown to keep warm. The night guard did a round at about three, which was, no doubt, the reason why Langley-Smythe remained in the bedroom rather than by the fire which was the only source of heat in the flat; a light in the living-room would have been visible under the door when the guard left his ticket. Once the guard had gone, and his departure as he banged the great door to, would be easily audible to anyone in the building, Langley-Smythe was free to open the door and let his removal men in.

'But he must have come out to open the street door, sir,' put in Carabiniere Bacci hesitantly. 'There's no electronic switch in his room.'

The Captain frowned. 'The man I suspect of being our Mr X,' he said slowly, 'could have done it from upstairs.'

'Someone in the building,' the Chief pondered. 'Yes … but it makes it all the odder, you know, that nobody ever saw them speak or visit each other.'

'But not so odd,' said Jeffreys, 'that Miss White thought she recognized him and didn't like to say …' But she had said something … Jeffreys could swear it was something to do with one of the other tenants. The Captain was going on:

'Let's assume that the removal men rang, and were let in by someone upstairs, someone who came down here and joined them at Langley-Smythe's door. Once inside here somebody shot him.'

'But not immediately,' pointed out the Chief. 'They didn't just step inside and shoot him, he was shot in the back going into his bedroom, so we need to know what went wrong and what he was going into the bedroom for.'

'To the safe,' suggested Jeffreys.

'But what for? Not to get money out, surely? According to what the Captain's told us, they would be paying him a cut, not the other way about; the dealer made the sales. Any money changing hands would be going into the safe, not coming out, and he was empty-handed.'

'What if they had paid him,' said Jeffreys, 'and taken the money off him after the shooting?'

Carabiniere Bacci put this to the Captain but he only shook his head without answering. 'Why,' he murmured to himself, 'should they quarrel? And why should they leave all this stuff here when they had a truck outside ready to take it away?'

'Well, if a quarrel broke out suddenly and ended in the shooting,' pointed out the Chief, 'and I'd say it must have done because you don't set out to kill with

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