So Many Doors, page 7
“Well, sir, people always wear gloves,” said the other disgustedly, and walked away.
Bobby went back into the outer hall. He asked Long, whom he found there, about the two women, Vea Burden and Grace Williams. Long said he hadn’t seen either. He thought they must be both in Vea’s rooms upstairs. He was sure they had had no chance to slip away unseen. Bobby said he supposed not, not with so much going on. He and Long went into the inner or lounge hall, whence rose the great main stairway. Vea was sitting on the stairs. She watched them as they came in, but she did not move or speak. Only her great dark eyes, dark circles beneath them, straight, thin dark brows above, showed by their intent gaze that she was aware of their entrance. A figure of fate, she seemed, Bobby thought; for there was something brooding, patient, ominous in her motionless form. Bobby did not speak, nor did she, only watched them intently. Bobby had hoped she would be the first to break the silence. As she clearly did not intend to do so, he said:
“We are wondering if there is anything you or Miss Williams can tell us. Is she upstairs?”
“In bed and asleep,” Vea answered. “No good waking her, either. She got so worked up about it all I told her to take a nip of whisky, and she did. Several.”
“I see,” Bobby said. “Of course, all this must be terribly upsetting for both of you.”
This very conventional remark earned him, he was not sorry to notice, a glance of extreme scorn. It was always an advantage to be under-estimated, and he was already aware of a feeling that in Vea Burden he was face to face with a formidable personality—on which side, for or against, he was not sure. He was not even sure that she herself knew that as yet. He said:
“Well, perhaps there is something you can tell us. I am sure we can depend on your giving all the help you can.”
She seemed to meditate on this, cupping her chin in one long, thin hand. Presently she said in her harsh, husky voice:
“You think there’s been a murder here.”
“I have not said so,” Bobby answered as he had answered before.
“Well,” she said. “Well!”
“What do you think?” Bobby asked.
“If there was,” she said, “who was it? who?” and when she repeated this last word it was like a cry of terror and despair from the very depths of her being.
“Will you help us to find out?” Bobby asked, very gently. “Will you?”
But to that she made no answer. Only sat there very still and quiet, except for a faint swaying motion of the body so that her long pearl earrings swung slowly to and fro.
When she was still silent, Bobby took from his pocket the photograph of Mark Monk that Maggie Kerr’s abrupt departure had prevented him from showing her. He showed it to Vea now, and she transferred to it her intent and hungry gaze.
“It’s Mr Monk,” she said at last. “How did you get it? Why? What about him?”
“Will you tell us what you know of him?”
“Very little,” she answered. “He has something to do with Jerry. I think he has money in this place, but I don’t know. Ask Jerry. He comes sometimes, but it’s always Jerry who looks after things. He wouldn’t murder any one, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Every one keeps talking of murder except me,” Bobby complained. “I’m only trying to find out what did happen. When Mr Monk came here, had he generally a girl with him?”
“I don’t know about when he came,” she answered slowly and carefully. “You never saw him without half a dozen little fools buzzing round. He couldn’t help it.” She paused and then, as if she had been searching for a Word, she said: “Glamour. That’s what they would have called it in a girl. But it didn’t mean a thing, he always—” She stopped abruptly, as if conscious she had been about to say too much. “Glamour,” she repeated.
“He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”
“No,” she almost snarled, and then she began to cough. She put her handkerchief to her lips, and when she took it away Bobby thought there was a speck of blood on it. He waited gravely. She said: “What chance do you think I had against all those kids? He only had to look at them. It’s all men want, a pretty young face and an empty head. Till—till—”
“Yes,” Bobby said. “Yes. Till . . . till . . . ?”
“Till trouble blows up,” she said. “Then it’s different. Then they remember . . .” She cut her sentence short again and got to her feet. “I’m tired,” she said. “Done in. I’m going to bed.”
“One moment,” Bobby said. “Did you notice if there was any one girl he seemed to be with more than another?”
“You mean that girl you were asking about? What was her name? Winlock? Isobel Winlock? A little devil for the men.”
“Who? Miss Winlock?” Bobby asked, surprised.
“If that’s the one you mean,” Vea answered, and there was deep anger in her voice. “Took you in, very likely, if you ever met her. She used to sit in a corner and look shy and pathetic and lonely and lost. It always worked. Poor little shy girl!” she mocked. “And all the men feeling big and protective and running to fetch her things, and then she had ’em, she was so grateful and clinging—especially clinging.” Bobby felt himself flush slightly. It did rather describe what had happened that day at Mrs Barrett’s party. Did it also account for a certain readiness he supposed he had shewn to interfere on her behalf? But Olive had more or less felt the same. As if she had read his thoughts, Vea went on: “Women, too. Sometimes. If they were older and feeling motherly and kind. Never with girls. They knew. The others found out. Later.” Her dead-white face blazed suddenly with a fierce, controlled passion. Her expression changed again. “When trouble blows up,” she said, “then it’s different.” She got to her feet and stood looking down at them, pale, still, and upright. She lifted a hand and said something that startled considerably both Bobby and Sergeant Long. “They all think I’m going to die,” she said, “but I’m not. Not yet. I’ll live as long as you.”
With that she turned and went swiftly away, up the stairs, and still after she was out of sight they heard her dry and distant cough.
CHAPTER VIII
“FAIR GIVES ME THE WILLIES”
Bobby went again into a ‘trance’. Above a door banged and the sound of coughing ceased. Sergeant Long said: “Well!” This producing no reply from the still meditative Bobby, he said:
“Well, sir, if you ask me, she’s got a flap on—good and hard. She knows a lot.”
Bobby, aware of a murmuring voice by his side, woke from his abstraction.
“It’s jolly late,” he said. “I think I’ll be off home.” Long was immediately consumed with envy and deep yearning for the day when he, too, would be senior enough to take himself off to bed whenever he chose. No bed this night, he knew well enough, for such small fry as sergeants. “Have to let Mr Ferris know about those two women,” Bobby added. “What was that you were saying, sergeant? Got a flap on? You spotted that? But I don’t think she knows a lot. What’s troubling her is just the opposite—that she doesn’t know. No more than we do. Something happened, yes. No telling what. And she can’t tell either, and it’s upsetting her pretty badly. No telling even whether Monk and Miss Winlock were in it. May be something quite different.”
“She doesn’t think so,” Long remarked.
“No. That’s why the flap’s on,” Bobby answered. “She’s afraid. Looks to me as if what she called Mark Monk’s glamour has worked on her all right. And I should guess she has a sort of hope that if he’s mixed up in it, then he may turn to her for help.”
“I was thinking,” Long suggested, somewhat diffidently, for he knew sergeants should listen to the suggestions of their seniors, not make suggestions themselves—“I was thinking perhaps it might have been her used the knife on the Winlock girl, if all that about glamour meant she was jealous. A jealous woman—” said Long; and left it at that, thinking it enough.
“It might be that way,” Bobby agreed. “Yes, it might be that way.”
“What do you think all that meant about she wasn’t going to die soon?” Long asked.
“I think it meant she knows she is, but she doesn’t mean to,” Bobby answered. “Perhaps she won’t, either. I should say she’s plenty of will-power—enough even for that. To keep off even old antic Death.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said Long, puzzled.
“Meant for a quotation,” Bobby explained apologetically, “but I think I got it wrong. Ought to be old Antic Law, not Death. Much the same, though—fatal in the long run. You know, Long, Vea Burden has me worried.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Long, and thought to himself that it was time the Commander did take himself off to bed.
They went to find Ferris. He had established himself in one of the smaller rooms, leaving the technicians to get on with their job in the supper-room and elsewhere. When Bobby and Long entered he was in the act of examining the contents of Miss Winlock’s handbag, recovered from Maggie Kerr. There was nothing in it of much interest—nothing more than the normal contents of a woman’s handbag. Inspector Peate was there, sitting at a table and making a list of the various articles found. Ferris listened to what Bobby had to tell him. He did not seem much interested, but remarked that he supposed that in the morning he would have to put Miss Burden and the other woman ‘through it’. Bobby thought, but did not say, that putting Vea ‘through it’ was not likely to have much result. He dropped a hint that he would be inclined to suggest not ‘putting them through it’ just yet, but rather ‘going easy’ with them both for the present. Of course, Mr Ferris must use his own judgment, and of course, too, there might be developments. But for the moment there was jolly little to go on. Ferris, who liked to go to American films, so as to study police technique in the United States, said:
“You’re telling me.”
He spoke with some bitterness. Bobby tried to cheer him up by remarking that possibly the whole thing would peter out. Might be a case of much ado about nothing instead of a last-act-in-Hamlet affair. Ferris, who was no Shakespearian, looked puzzled. Bobby said he was going home to bed, and Ferris remarked sadly that he didn’t suppose he would see his bed that night, and a busy day to follow, too. Who wouldn’t, he asked passionately, chuck the police and go for a sailor, if only it wasn’t for being seasick?
He was, in fact, feeling nervous about his ability to handle the affair. He had only recently been appointed to the very responsible post of Divisional Detective Inspector in the famous ‘O’ division, one that had a reputation to preserve, and was, indeed, the first in which the present careful and elaborate C.I.D. organization had been set up. He had his hands full, he said, with at least half a dozen other important investigations, and he dropped a broad hint that ‘off the record’, so to speak, he would like to drop in now and then to ask what Bobby thought about any fresh development.
Bobby, drawn by any hint of a problem as is a woman by the suggestion of a new hat in the spring, remarked, with a careful suppression of any show of eagerness, that of course he would be always ready to give any help he could. Whatever else a Commander (Senior—unattached) was for—and on that he himself wasn’t too clear—he was certainly there to be helpful.
With that he departed to snatch an hour or two of sleep before turning out again to attend a conference at the Yard on some far-reaching organization scheme, specially affecting, as it happened, ‘O’ Division.
Ferris ought to have been there, but wasn’t, the ‘O’ Division superintendent explaining that Ferris had a difficult investigation on hand.
“You know something about it, Commander, don’t you?” he asked Bobby, and Bobby admitted, reluctantly, that somehow or another he had got mixed up in it.
“A missing girl,” he told the conference; “bloodstains or, rather, pools of it; mixed-up handbags; a man who hasn’t a record, having been acquitted on a charge of murder; another man, unknown, who managed to give his hand a bad cut the same night; and a woman who says people think she is going to die, but she isn’t—not her. And what all that adds up to may be anything or nothing. Ferris has a job on.”
“I expect you are thankful it isn’t your job,” observed, with sarcastic intent, one of those present.
Bobby said, falsely, that he was indeed more than thankful, and was surprised to notice a smile go round the table. He couldn’t imagine why.
In the afternoon, however, Ferris turned up in Bobby’s room, arriving almost at the same time as the traditional cup of tea and bath-bun, which are, as every one else knows, the chief preoccupation of all public officials. So Bobby sent for another cup of tea and bath-bun and asked how Ferris was getting on.
“Getting on like an escalator in reverse,” said Ferris gloomily. “No trace of either the man or the girl.”
“Oh, well,” Bobby said, “very likely they’re quite happy in some remote village inn, all peace and roses and romance.”
“Have to get the B.B.C. on the job,” Ferris said. “Grace Williams says she knows nothing about anything. Vea Burden says she knows less. Close as a clam, both of them. Miss Williams has a small newsagent’s and tobacconist’s shop in Pimlico. She says it doesn’t do very well, and she is glad to go to Bexley House, or anywhere else, to get a little extra money. She helps the Burden woman, who acts as housekeeper there, mistress of ceremonies, receptionist, and anything else, including, if you ask me, what goes on on the side; and, in my view, that’s plenty.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Bobby agreed. “To make it more difficult. The whole thing may have nothing much to do with the runaways.”
“On the spot by a sort of coincidence?” Ferris asked doubtfully. “In that last lecture of yours you gave us you said never to put your trust in coincidence. Too much of a coincidence, you said, to trust to coincidence for an explanation.”
“That’s the worst of lectures,” Bobby sighed: “always liable to rise up and hit you in the eye.”
“Anyhow, we got the address of the shop,” Ferris went on. “I rang up Centre and asked them for some one to keep an eye on the place. They gave me Miss Rice.”
“Good!” said Bobby, for Miss Rice was known as one of the most efficient of the women police attached to the C.I.D.
“I asked her,” Ferris continued, “to go first to the Universal and General Bank to see if she could pick up anything. She had Mr Winlock’s card and their authority to make inquiries. She was to say it was feared there might have been an accident. Miss Rice says Miss Winlock seemed very popular with the male staff. Less so with the girls. Apparently she had the name of what one of them called ‘pinching your boy’ if she got half a chance. Miss Rice thinks some of them will feel a bit more sure of their own boys if she doesn’t come back. There were hints that one of the sufferers from this boy-pinching act was Miss Maggie Kerr. You knew she worked at the same place?”
“Yes, she told us that last night,” Bobby remarked. “Did Miss Rice get any details?”
“No, only that there had been some gossip that a boy who had occasionally been seen waiting for Miss Kerr after business had later on been seen with Miss Winlock.”
“That might be worth following up,” Bobby agreed. “Could it be Mark Monk?”
“I don’t think so—much younger, apparently. But we could keep it in mind,” Ferris answered. “The line the Winlock girl takes is that it isn’t her fault, she can’t be rude to people and, anyhow, if you can’t keep a boy when you’ve got one, it’s your own look-out. The head of her department couldn’t understand such a nice, quiet little thing as Miss Winlock stopping away without saying anything. Not what you would expect, not from a timid little thing you would hardly think would dare say ‘Boo’ to a goose. Her work had always been quite satisfactory, though a little lacking in initiative. Not like Miss Kerr, for instance. She was the equal of any man, and better than most. Did you know she was the heroine of the bottle-of-ink affair?”
“What was that?” Bobby asked.
“It was in the papers at the time,” Ferris said. “Just on closing time a man came in and tried to snatch a pile of notes a customer was counting. Miss Kerr made a grab, too, got some of them back, and then, as the fellow was making a bolt for it, chucked a bottle of ink at him. He didn’t get very far. All over ink, and attracted attention. Miss Kerr had a letter of thanks from the bank. There was a sequel, too—a spot of jealousy, apparently—and a woman supervisor, or whatever they call it, made some sort of complaint against her. Miss Kerr went in off the deep end, and seemed inclined to repeat the bottle-of-ink stunt. In the end the supervisor lady was transferred to another branch and Miss Kerr was told to lay off bottles of ink for the future, as far as the staff was concerned, anyhow. Bit of a tartar, apparently.”
“Little things like that,” Bobby remarked thoughtfully, “are worth knowing. Show up character, and character means pretty well everything. I wonder if there’s any chance that Miss Winlock made a dead set at Miss Kerr’s boy to show that if she couldn’t compete in handling bank robbers she could all right when it came to boys.”
Ferris said possibly it might be like that. In tones as thoughtful as Bobby’s, he remarked that some girls were catty enough. Plenty of scratch beneath the purr.
“From the bank,” he continued, “Miss Rice went on to Pimlico. There she had a stroke of luck. Just as she got there she saw a man go into Grace Williams’s shop and she noticed that his hand was bandaged—rather carefully, with a roller bandage, as if it had been done either by a doctor or by some one who knew something about first aid.”
Bobby beamed. You might accuse him of being dull or plodding in his work, or tell him that an Oxford training had been wasted on him, or almost anything else you liked, and he would listen meekly. But you had to be very, very careful about showing any disrespect for his knowledge or ability in administering first aid.
“It wasn’t such a bad job,” he agreed, with a modest smirk. “Done practically in the dark, too.”
