A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women

by Elizabeth George

  It is appropriate that Allingham, with her insights into the puzzles of human character, should be represented by “Money to Burn,” a 1957 non-Campion tale which represents that rarest of detective story subtypes: the pure whydunnit.

  Did you ever see a man set light to money? Real money: using it as a spill to light a cigarette, just to show off? I have. And that’s why, when you used the word “psychologist” just now, a little fish leaped in my stomach and my throat felt suddenly tight. Perhaps you think I’m too squeamish. I wonder. I was born in this street. When I was a girl I went to school just round the corner and later on, after I’d served my apprenticeship in the big dress houses here and in France, I took over the lease of this old house and turned it into the smart little gown shop you see now. It was when I came back to go into business for myself that I saw the change in Louise. When we went to school together she was something of a beauty, with streaming yellow hair and the cockney child’s ferocious, knowing grin. All the kids used to tease her because she was better-looking than we were. The street was just the same then as it is now. Adelaide Street, Soho: shabby and untidy, and yet romantic, with every other doorway in its straggling length leading to a restaurant of some sort. You can eat in every language of the world here. Some places are as expensive as the Ritz and others are as cheap as Louise’s papa’s Le Coq au Vin, with its one dining room and its single palm in the whitewashed tub outside. Louise had an infant sister and a father who could hardly speak English but who looked at one with proud foreign eyes from under arched brows. I was hardly aware that she had a mother until a day when that gray woman emerged from the cellar under the restaurant to put her foot down and Louise, instead of coming with me into the enchantment of the workshops, had to go down into the kitchens of Le Coq au Vin.

  For a long time we used to exchange birthday cards, and then even that contact dropped; but somehow I never forgot Louise and when I came back to the street I was glad to see the name Frosné still under the sign of Le Coq au Vin. The place looked much brighter than I remembered it and appeared to be doing fair business. Certainly it no longer suffered so much by comparison with the expensive Glass Mountain which Adelbert kept opposite. There is no restaurant bearing that name in this street now, nor is there a restaurateur called Adelbert, but diners-out of a few years ago may remember him—if not for his food, at least for his conceit and the two rolls of white fat which were his eyelids.

  I went in to see Louise as soon as I had a moment to spare. It was a shock, for I hardly recognized her; but she knew me at once and came out from behind the cashier’s desk to give me a welcome which was pathetic. It was like seeing thin ice cracking all over her face—as if by taking her unawares I’d torn aside a barrier.

  I heard all the news in the first ten minutes. Both the old people were dead. The mother had gone first but the old man had not followed her for some years after, and in the meantime Louise had carried everything including his vagaries on her shoulders. But she did not complain. Things were a bit easier now. Violetta, the little sister, had a young man who was proving his worth by working there for a pittance, learning the business.

  It was a success story of a sort, but I thought Louise had paid pretty dearly for it. She was a year younger than I was, yet she looked as if life had already burned out over her, leaving her hard and polished like a bone in the sun. The gold had gone out of her hair and even her thick lashes looked bleached and tow-colored. There was something else there, too: something hunted which I did not understand at all.

  I soon fell into the habit of going in to have supper with her once a week and at these little meals she used to talk. It was evident that she never opened her lips on any personal matter

  to anyone else; but for some reason she trusted me. Even so it took me months to find out what was the matter with her. When it came out, it was obvious.

  Le Coq au Vin had a debt hanging over it. In Mama Frosné’s time the family had never owed a penny, but in the year or so between her death and his own, Papa Frosné had somehow contrived not only to borrow the best part of four thousand pounds from Adelbert of the Glass Mountain but to lose every cent of it in half a dozen senile little schemes.

  Louise was paying it back in five-hundred-pound installments. As she first told me about it, I happened to glance into her eyes and in them I saw one sort of hell. It has always seemed to me that there are people who can stand Debt in the same way that some men can stand Drink. It may undermine their constitutions but it does not make them openly shabby. Yet to the others, Debt does something unspeakable. The Devil was certainly having his money’s worth out of Louise.

  I did not argue with her, of course. It was not my place. I sat there registering sympathy until she surprised me by saying suddenly:

  “It’s not so much the work and the worry, nor even the skimping, that I really hate so much. It’s the awful ceremony when I have to pay him. I dread that.”

  “You’re too sensitive,” I told her. “Once you have the money in the bank, you can put a check in an envelope, send it to him, and then forget about it, can’t you?”

  She glanced at me with an odd expression in her eyes; they were almost lead-colored between the bleached lashes.

  “You don’t know Adelbert,” she said. “He’s a queer bit of work. I have to pay him in cash and he likes to make a regular little performance of it. He comes here by appointment, has a drink, and likes to have Violetta as a witness by way of audience. If I don’t show I’m a bit upset, he goes right on talking until I do. Calls himself a psychologist—says he knows everything I’m thinking.”

  “That’s not what I’d call him,” I said. I was disgusted. I hate that sort of thing.

  Louise hesitated. “I have watched him burn most of the money just for the effect,” she admitted. “There, in front of me.”

  I felt my eyebrows rising up into my hair. “You can’t mean it!” I exclaimed. “The man’s not right in the head.”

  She sighed and I looked at her sharply.

  “Why, he’s twenty years older than you are, Louise,” I began. “Surely there wasn’t ever anything between you? You know…anything like that?”

  “No. No, there wasn’t, Ellie, honestly.” I believed her—she was quite frank about it and obviously as puzzled as I was. “He did speak to Papa once about me when I was a kid. Asked for me formally, you know, as they still did round here at that time. I never heard what the old man said but he never minced words, did he? All I can remember is that I was kept downstairs out of sight for a bit and after that Mama treated me as if I’d been up to something; but I hadn’t even spoken to the man—he wasn’t a person a young girl would notice, was he? That was years ago, though. I suppose Adelbert could have remembered it all that time—but it’s not reasonable, is it?”

  “That’s the one thing it certainly isn’t,” I told her. “Next time I’ll be the witness.”

  “Adelbert would enjoy that,” Louise said grimly. “I don’t know that I won’t hold you to it. You ought to see him!”

  We let the subject drop, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I could see them both from behind the curtains in my shop window and it seemed that whenever I looked out, there was the tight-lipped silent woman, scraping every farthing, and there was the fat man watching her from his doorway across the street, a secret satisfaction on his sallow face.

  In the end it got on my nerves and when that happens I have to talk—I can’t help it.

  There was no one in the street I dared to gossip with, but I did mention the tale to a customer. She was a woman named

  Mrs. Marten whom I’d particularly liked ever since she’d come in to inquire after the first dress I ever put in my shop window. I made most of her clothes and she had recommended me to one or two ladies in the district where she lived, which was up at Hampstead, nice and far away from Soho. I was fitting her one day when she happened to say something about men and the things they’ll stoop to if their pride has been hurt, and before I’d r
ealized what I was doing I’d come out with the story Louise had told me. I didn’t mention names, of course, but I may have conveyed that it was all taking place in this street. Mrs. Marten was a nice, gentle little soul with a sweet face, and she was shocked.

  “But how awful,” she kept saying, “how perfectly awful! To burn the money in front of her after she’s worked so hard for it. He must be quite insane. And dangerous.”

  “Oh, well,” I said hastily, “it’s his money by the time he does that, and I don’t suppose he destroys much of it. Only enough to upset my friend.” I was sorry I’d spoken. I hadn’t expected Mrs. Marten to be quite so horrified. “It just shows you how other people live.” I finished and hoped she’d drop the subject. She didn’t, however. The idea seemed to fascinate her even more than it had me. I couldn’t get her to leave it alone and she chattered about it all throughout the fitting. Then, just as she was putting on her hat to leave, she suddenly said, “Miss Kaye, I’ve just had a thought. My brother-inlaw is Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. He might be able to think of some way of stopping that dreadful man from torturing that poor little woman you told me about. Shall I mention it to him?”

  “Oh, no! Please don’t!” I exclaimed. “She’d never forgive me. There’s nothing the police could do to help her. I do hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, Madam, but I do hope you won’t do anything of the sort.”

  She seemed rather hurt, but she gave me her word. I had no faith in it, naturally. Once a woman has considered talking about a thing, it’s as good as done. I was quite upset for a day or two

  because the last thing I wanted was to get involved; but nothing happened and I’d just started to breathe easily again when I had to go down to Vaughan’s, the big wholesale trimmings house at the back of Regent’s Street. I was coming out with my parcels when a man came up to me. I knew he was a detective: he was the type, with a very short haircut, a brown raincoat, and that look of being in a settled job and yet not in anything particular. He asked me to come along to his office and I couldn’t refuse. I realized he’d been following me until I was far enough away from Adelaide Street where no one would have noticed him approach me.

  He took me to his superior who was quite a nice old boy in his way—on nobody’s side but his own, as is the way with the police; but I got the impression that he was on the level, which is more than some people are. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Cumberland, made me sit down, and sent out for a cup of tea for me. Then he asked me about Louise.

  I got into a panic because when you’re in business in Adelaide Street, you’re in business, and the last thing you can afford to do is get into trouble with your neighbors. I denied everything, of course, insisting that I hardly knew the woman.

  Cumberland wouldn’t have that. I must say he knew how to handle me. He kept me going over and over my own affairs until I was thankful to speak about anything else. In the end I gave way because, after all, nobody was doing anything criminal as far as I could see. I told him all I knew, letting him draw it out bit by bit, and when I’d finished he laughed at me, peering at me with little bright eyes under brows which were as thick as silver fox fur.

  “Well,” he said, “there’s nothing so terrible in all that, is there?”

  “No,” I said sulkily. He made me feel like a fool.

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “You run away and forget this little interview,” he told me. “But just so that you don’t start imagining things, let me point out something to you. The police are in business too, in a way.

  In their own business, that is, and when an officer in my position gets an inquiry from higher up he’s got to investigate it, hasn’t he? He may well think that the crime of destroying currency—“defacing the coin of the realm,” we call it—is not very serious compared with some of the things he’s got to deal with; but all the same if he’s asked about it he’s got to make some sort of move and send in some sort of report. Then it can all be…er…filed and forgotten, can’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, very relieved. “Yes, I suppose it can.”

  They showed me out and that seemed to be the end of it. I’d had my lesson though, and I never opened my lips again on the subject to anybody. It quite put me off Louise and for a time I avoided her. I made excuses and didn’t go in to eat with her. However, I could still see her through the window—see her sitting at the cashier’s desk; and I could still see Adelbert peering at her from his doorway.

  For a month or two everything went on quietly. Then I heard that Violetta’s boy had got tired of the restaurant business and had taken a job up North. He had given the girl the chance of marrying and going with him, and they’d gone almost without saying goodbye. I was sorry for Louise, being left alone that way; so I had to go and see her.

  She was taking it very well—actually she was pretty lucky, for she had got a new waiter almost at once and her number one girl in the kitchen had stood by her and they managed very well. Louise was very lonely though, so I drifted back into the habit of going in there for a meal once a week. I paid, of course, but she used to come and have hers with me.

  I kept her off the subject of Adelbert, but one day near the midsummer’s quarter day she referred to him outright and asked me straight if I remembered my promise to be witness on the next payday. Since Violetta was gone, she’d mentioned me to Adelbert, and he’d seemed pleased.

  Well, I couldn’t get out of it without hurting her feelings and since nothing seemed to turn on it I agreed. I don’t pretend I

  wasn’t curious: it was a love affair without, so far as I could see, any love at all.

  The time for payment was fixed for half an hour after closing time on Midsummer’s Day, and when I slipped down the street to the corner the blinds of Le Coq au Vin were closed and the door shut. The new waiter was taking a breath of air on the basement steps and he let me in through the kitchens. I went up the dark service stairs and found the two of them already sitting there, waiting for me.

  The dining room was dark except for a single shaded bulb over the alcove table where they sat and I had a good look at them as I came down the room. They made an extraordinary pair.

  I don’t know if you’ve seen one of those fat little Chinese gods whom people keep on their mantel shelves to bring them luck? They are all supposed to be laughing but some only pretend and the folds of their china faces are stiff and merciless for all the upward lines. Adelbert reminded me of one of those. He always wore a black dinner jacket for work, but it was very thin and very loose. It came into my mind that when he took it off it must have hung like a gown. He was sitting swathed in it, looking squat and flabby against the white paneling of the wall.

  Louise, on the other hand, in her black dress and tight woolen cardigan, was as spare and hard as a withered branch. Just for an instant I realized how furious she must make him. There was nothing yielding or shrinking about her. She wasn’t giving any more than she was forced to—not an inch. I never saw anything so unbending in my life. She stood up to him all the time.

  There was a bottle of Dubonnet on the table and they each had a small glass. When I appeared, Louise poured one for me.

  The whole performance was very formal. Although they’d both lived in London all their lives, the French blood in both of them was very apparent. They each shook hands with me and Adelbert kicked the chair out for me if he only made a pretense of rising.

  Louise had the big bank envelope in her black bag which she nursed as if it was a pet, and as soon as I’d taken a sip of my

  drink she produced the envelope and pushed it across the table to the man.

  “Five hundred,” she said. “The receipt is in there, already made out. Perhaps you’d sign it, please.”

  There was not a word out of place, you see, but you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. She hated him and he was getting his due and nothing else.

  He sat looking at her for a moment with a steady, fishy gaze; he
seemed to be waiting for something—just a flicker of regret or resentment, I suppose. But he got nothing, and presently he took the envelope between his sausage fingers and thumbed it open. The five crisp green packages fell out on the white table-cloth. I looked at them with interest, as one does at money. It wasn’t a fortune, of course; but to people like myself and Louise, who have to earn every cent the hard way, it was a tidy sum that represented hours of toil and scheming and self-privation.

  I didn’t like the way the man’s fingers played over it and the sneaking spark of sympathy I’d begun to feel for him died abruptly. I knew then that if he’d had his way and married her when she was little more than a child all those years ago, he would have treated her abominably. He was a cruel beast; it took him that way.

  I glanced at Louise and saw that she was unmoved. She just sat there with her hands folded, waiting for her receipt.

  Adelbert began to count the money. I’ve always admired the way tellers in banks handle notes, but the way Adelbert did it opened my eyes. He went through them the way a gambler goes through a pack of cards—as if each individual note were alive and part of his hand. He loved the stuff, you could see it.

  “All correct,” he said at last, and put the bundles in his inside pocket. Then he signed the receipt and handed it to her. Louise took it and put it in her bag. I assumed that was the end of it and wondered what all the fuss was about. I raised my glass to Louise, who acknowledged it, and was getting up when Adelbert stopped me.

  “Wait,” he said. “We must have a cigarette and perhaps another little glass—if Louise can afford it.”

  He smiled but she didn’t. She poured him another glass and sat there stolidly waiting for him to drink it. He was in no hurry. Presently he took the money out again and laid a fat hand over it as he passed his cigarette case round. I took a cigarette, Louise didn’t. There was one of those metal match stands on the table and he bent forward. I moved too, expecting him to give me a light; but he laughed and drew back.