Salt is Leaving

by J. B. Priestley

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Not quite. We may have to take the lid off Birkden. What we find inside may be very unpleasant. It might even be dangerous.’

  ‘Dr Salt, I’m disappointed. I didn’t think you’d be the sort of man to exaggerate like that—’

  ‘You were right then, wrong now.’

  ‘We’re in Birkden, not Chicago or New York—’

  ‘You’re years out of date, Maggie. You’re now in a distant suburb of New York and Chicago. I’m not talking for effect. I never do. I’ve spent seven years as a GP here in Birkden. I know what goes on. But not all. Not enough.’ And he almost shouted this, surprising Maggie, who told herself again what an odd man he was. ‘And now I ought to see a man, and, if you’re going to help, then you might learn something by coming with me. I’ll ring up to make sure he’s there.’

  ‘Then I’ll clear away the tea things.’ And then, when she saw the kitchen, he surprised her again. Instead of being a horrible mess of unwashed dishes and cutlery and mouldy this and smelly that, it was cleaner and tidier than their kitchen at home. Hastily she began washing and drying the tea things.

  ‘He’s there. Let’s go.’ He was so curt that she wondered if he resented her being in the kitchen. Did men feel things like that? She went out, wondering. He was certainly very much a doctor and yet quite unlike any other doctor she’d ever met. As she waited for him to lock the door, she noticed the card he had pinned on it: L. H. Salt. ‘What do L. H. stand for?’ she asked him as they went to his car.

  ‘Lionel Humphrey,’ he told her gruffly. ‘And now just forget ’em. Call me Salt when you’re tired of doctoring me.’

  ‘Okay, Salt,’ she cried, a bit too heartily to cover her nervousness.

  He neither smiled nor seemed offended. Probably he didn’t care a damn what she – or, for that matter, anybody else – called him. He seemed the oddest mixture – one minute sleepy, simple and rather sweet – the next minute hard and ruthless. Either too busy driving or thinking hard, he didn’t talk, so she had plenty of time to wonder about him as he drove through a number of side roads, by-passing the centre of the town, and finally arriving at a part of it strange to her. It was a dingy and tumbledown region; most of its buildings looking as if they were waiting to be demolished.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At Buzzy Duffield’s

  1

  Dr Salt stopped the car near a barred entrance, which had above it a neon sign, not switched on yet, that said Buzzy’s. When they got out, he found a narrow doorway, not far from the club entrance, and he led the way up some rickety wooden stairs. At the top there was some sort of office hardly bigger than a hanging cupboard. Looking important in it was a thin, spectacled youth, like a rather older version of Reg Morgan. ‘To see Mr Duffield?’ he inquired primly. ‘Have you an appointment?’

  ‘Yes. I’m Dr Salt.’

  ‘Of course – you telephoned. This way, please.’

  The room beyond was larger but so narrow that it looked as if it had been made out of a corridor. There was no outside window at all – it had three very bright electric bulbs with green shades hanging from a high ceiling – but a sheet of glass ran the whole length of the left wall, while against the opposite wall was a very long table, higgledy-piggledy with cigar boxes, bottles, glasses, plates, an enormous pork pie and some cheese, two vases filled with dusty artificial flowers, a green telephone and a red telephone and a pile of directories. Maggie was able to take in all this because they had to wait a minute or two for Mr Duffield, who then came in, wiping his hands and face on a very large pink towel, through a doorway at the other end of the room. He was wide and fat and bald, with an enormous face on which his features merely seemed to be huddled together in the middle.

  ‘Hello, Buzzy,’ said Dr Salt. ‘Miss Maggie Culworth – Mr Buzzy Duffield.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Culworth.’ Mr Duffield, having got rid of the towel, shook hands with her: she felt it was like having her hand wrapped in meat. ‘It’s a pleasure. It’s a privilege. Bzzz.’ And if he made this bee noise all the time, no wonder he was called Buzzy. He was shaking hands now with Dr Salt. ‘Doctor, it’s a treat to see you. It’s lovely – lovely.’ He turned to Maggie. ‘Five to one he’s never told you what he done for my brother. Saved him when he was nearing death’s door. In Australia now – fit an’ well – an’ never more miserable in his life. Never satisfied, Arthur isn’t. Bzzz. Dr Salt here could make rings round the lot if he wanted to, Miss Culworth. I call you Miss Culworth – y’know, bit of class – but you call me Buzzy – promise—’

  ‘All right, Buzzy.’

  ‘Mind you, that’s no privilege. This town’s full of twerps I wouldn’t spit on that call me Buzzy – when I’m not there. Bzzz.’ He looked at Dr Salt. ‘Now you’re here, Doctor, I’ll tell you something. When I invited you to a big, classy French dinner at the Queen’s – anything you wanted – y’know, just before I got Arthur off to Australia – an’ then you wouldn’t wear it – I was hurt – honest to God I was deeply hurt. Bzzz.’

  ‘I’d too much to do, Buzzy. Saw too many people – all day and half the night. Just wanted to be quiet when I was off duty.’

  ‘I’ll bet, I’ll bet. Here – what we drinking? Miss Culworth?’

  ‘Isn’t it rather early? Oh well – a gin and tonic, thank you, Buzzy.’

  ‘If you’d like anything fancier, just name it. I’ve got everything. Doctor?’

  ‘A little Scotch, thank you, Buzzy. Neat – if it’s good.’

  ‘The best – twenty-one years old. Like mother’s milk – if you happen to be born a tiger. Look, Doc, why don’t you help yourself while I attend to Miss Culworth? Over there, if you don’t mind. You can pour me one while you’re at it. Bzzz. So now you’re packing it in, Doc. A lot of people are going to be sorry.’

  ‘Not many. A few, only a few, Buzzy.’

  ‘You’re dead right, of course. Only a few. You said it. Most of ’em wouldn’t notice if a wooden dummy was taking their temperatures. They’re only bloody wooden dummies themselves. Bzzz. Here’s your gin an’ tonic, Miss Culworth, an’ you’ll have to excuse me if my language an’ expressions get a bit fruity—’

  ‘Buzzy, I spent five years as a secretary in a stockbrokers’ office in the City. You ought to have heard some of them. But tell me – why do you have this window thing – here along the wall?’

  ‘So I can see what’s happening in my club. The dance floor’s down there. Any trouble – I can spot it. Bzzz. Come in later one night – any night except Sunday – when it’s all lit up down there – and you’re looking through a window at a monkey house. Got another room the other side – six one-arm bandits – one roulette table – and another for pontoon. Not classy here, y’know. Not enough money, town this size. Not even a licence, though some of our bitter lemon drinks behave as if somebody had gone an’ put gin in ’em. An’ don’t ask me how it happens. I’m just Old Buzzy, the one they wouldn’t give a licence to. All right, Winston boy, what d’you want?’ The prim, spectacled youth was looking round the door.

  ‘It’s Charlie, Mr Duffield. On the blower – from Northampton.’ He still sounded prim. ‘Do I put him through?’

  ‘No. What’s he want?’

  ‘He’s got eighty-five transistors. Jap jobs. He’ll take four-ten each, he says.’

  ‘Not from me, he won’t, Winston boy. They must be all hotter than a baker’s flue. Tell Charlie not to be silly. Bzzz.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Duffield.’ The door closed.

  Buzzy waited a moment, then looked from Maggie to Dr Salt. ‘What about that one, I ask you? Winston. Winston Sandby. Born in our Finest Hour. Bzzz. I pay him ten quid a week and he’s here from ten in the morning till all hours, doing the accounts and the books and taking messages on the blower and behaving to me as if I was Chairman of Barclays Bank. Doesn’t smoke, never takes a drink, never tries to get one of the girls up here. He isn’t human. Winston – can you b
eat it?’

  Before either of his visitors could say anything, the red telephone rang. ‘Buzzy here,’ he told it. ‘What’s new? . . . What, again? Then tell him to stay away and keep away. Bzzz. No, listen. Get Whitey to tell him – y’know, all sinister, like they do it on the pictures. Oh – and you, Whitey and Joe had better report here a bit earlier tonight. . . . I don’t know, but I might have something special for you to do – or one of you. Bzzz. Yes, and I only hope you don’t feel as tired as you sound. Like ringing up a bloody old men’s home. Bzzz.’ He left the telephone, swallowed his whisky, then lit a cigar. ‘You heard what I said to Fred then? One of my boys. I suddenly had a hunch. I get hunches. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they’re sheer flaming lunacy. So now, Doc, what’s worrying you? Or is it Miss Culworth?’

  ‘It may be both of us, Buzzy. First of all,’ said Dr Salt, ‘who’s an unpleasant young man with reddish hair, dark glasses and a leather jacket, who thinks he’s an American gangster?’

  Buzzy thought for a moment. ‘His name’s Russ. Came from Coventry. Worked for me for a few weeks, but he had some wrong ideas. A villain. Been inside. Not going to give you any trouble, is he, Doc?’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘Well – now look. I’ve got some hard boys working for me that could take him apart – and anybody he goes around with – just for a light workout. Bzzz.’ Then he gave a hoarse little laugh and looked at Maggie.

  ‘You heard me then, Miss Culworth? To hear me talk you’d think this was Chicago or Detroit and young Winston out there was cleaning a tommy-gun. Me – talking like that – born an’ bred here in Birkden! All right, I run a couple of betting shops, a cheap night club – I’m a promoter – I’ve done a few deals on the swift and shady side – but I’m no American gangster. Yet you noticed the way I talked? And we all do it. What’s the matter with us?’

  ‘Oh – I suppose it’s films, television, paperbacks,’ said Maggie. ‘All the trends.’

  Dr Salt nodded his agreement. ‘They’re turning us into a slow-motion shabby America. This must have been a decent little provincial town once.’

  ‘And not so long ago neither,’ said Buzzy. ‘Not more than a market town, when I was a nipper here. Real farmers coming in with their red-cheeked, fat-arsed wives and daughters, wishing nobody any harm. Then – Bzzz – just before the War, during the War, just after the War, industry moves in – and all of a sudden we’re a big town – we make shoes, we make hats, we make nylons and terylenes and what-not. We have the United Anglo-Belgian Fabrics—’

  ‘Stop there, please, Buzzy. At the Fabrics. It’s one reason why I’m here, to ask you about them. They run a club, don’t they?’

  Buzzy contorted his features, already too small for his face, so they almost seemed to vanish. ‘They do, Doc. But they won’t have me in. Too common. I know about it, though. Ask me an’ I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Young girls from the town go there sometimes, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s right. Special parties. Party girls, these kids are. They feed ’em to their Belgian directors and big buyers from the States and South America. Bzzz. I have two girls working here who used to go, before they got too hard and tough. They like ’em young and fresh up there – same as vegetables. And I’d say they’re wrong, even if they’re only out for the old goona-goona—’

  ‘So would I, Buzzy. Young girls are for boys. Men should have women. But it’s chiefly the idea that fascinates these fellows – taking something that doesn’t belong to them.’

  ‘But does a party girl have to go to bed with somebody?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Oh – no, she could just keep on teasing ’em. Bzzz.’

  ‘Buzzy, I met Sir Arnold Donnington yesterday morning. We were both visiting the police. I didn’t like Sir Arnold, but I can’t see him attending these parties—’

  ‘Him? He wouldn’t admit they existed. He fines school-kids two quid for necking. Bzzz. He’s a blue-nose if there ever was one.’

  ‘Yet he’s the big boss at United Fabrics.’

  ‘That’s right. But the old dolchy-veety up there at the Fabrics Club is run by the Sales Director, Tommy Linsdale. And he likes the gay life, Tommy does. I know him. He used to bet with me now and again. He and a fancy piece he’s keeping, they run the parties. Bzzz. She finds the girls. He brought her here one night – slumming. A classy handsome piece – and about as soft and tender as a sheet of high-duty alloy. Jill Something – I forget what—’

  ‘Would it be Jill Frinton?’ said Maggie.

  ‘That’s her. You know her, Miss Culworth?’

  ‘No, not really.’ She glanced at Dr Salt, who was staring hard at her. ‘I was serving in the shop one Saturday afternoon, and she came in with a man. She bought one book and asked for another we hadn’t in stock, so she ordered it and gave us her name and address. And there are two reasons why I remember her name. I once had a dreadful fiasco of a holiday at Frinton. The other reason is that my brother Alan happened to be in the shop that afternoon, and he couldn’t take his eyes off this Jill Frinton. We teased him about it afterwards. She’s tall, dark, very smart – and I suppose very attractive if you like that type.’ She couldn’t resist looking inquiringly at Dr Salt, but he wasn’t having any.

  ‘But why the Fabrics Club, Doc? If you’re thinking of living it up before you go, I can’t oblige you there. But you can have anything you want here at my Club. Buzzy’s is all yours. Bzzz.’

  ‘Thanks, Buzzy, but I like a quiet life. I’m asking questions because a young patient of mine is missing. Noreen Wilks. She’s not been heard of since September 12th. And I think she went that night to a party at the Fabrics Club.’

  ‘Noreen Wilks, did you say? I’ll ask around. Some of my boys and girls might know something. Excuse me.’ He pushed past them, shouting, ‘Winston, make a note.’ When Winston opened the door, he was told to stay where he was. ‘Make a note for when Fred, Whitey and Joe get here. I want to ask ’em about a kid called Noreen Wilks. Been missing for weeks. Might be a brass, I don’t know, but she doesn’t sit at home watching the telly and mending her drawers.’

  They could hear but not see Winston. ‘They don’t wear drawers.’

  ‘A lad who looks like you oughtn’t to know what they wear. Bzzz. Oh – an’ make another note. Russ – you remember him? Well, I want to know what he’s doing now. One of the boys’ll know.’ Buzzy shut the door. ‘You heard that, Doc? Might be some help. Doing my best. Bzzz.’

  ‘Thanks, Buzzy. By the way, who’d be paying Russ to make a nuisance of himself? He must be working for somebody.’

  ‘Anybody who wouldn’t want him to sweat for his money. Other­wise, you’ve got me. I can’t think who. But I’ll ask around. You heard me telling Winston. Bzzz.’

  ‘In a day or two,’ said Dr Salt, rather dreamily, ‘it might get rough.’

  ‘If it does, Doc – let me know – bing-bang. If Russ or anybody just promises you some trouble, tell him from me to expect a punch-up. But it isn’t likely, is it?’

  ‘That’s just what I was going to ask,’ said Maggie.

  ‘It’s extremely likely. Somebody wants me to clear out of Birkden – the sooner the better – simply because I’m asking questions about Noreen Wilks.’ Dr Salt looked at Maggie and then at Buzzy. ‘Somebody doesn’t want any questions about Noreen Wilks. I’m serious, Buzzy. I might have to ask you soon for a little protection—’

  ‘You’ll get it, Doc – pronto.’

  ‘Maggie, do you want to tell Buzzy why you’re here?’

  ‘Yes. Buzzy, my father came to Birkden on Monday – and we don’t know where he is or what he’s doing – and this is so unlike him. I know one thing, though. He asked a friend of hers where Noreen Wilks was.’

  ‘And I think Russ told this girl, Noreen’s friend, to shut up and clear out—’

  ‘And she shot off to Birmingham last night, without telling her mother why she was going or where she was going. I suppose I could tell the police—’

 
; ‘Don’t make me laugh. I’m getting too fat. Bzzz. But I’ll start my boys and girls asking questions – tonight.’

  ‘I saw Superintendent Hurst, yesterday morning, Buzzy, and told him about Noreen Wilks. Do you know Hurst?’

  ‘Known him since he was on the beat. He’s all right, Bob Hurst is, Doc. Wouldn’t plant evidence on you – none of them games. Bzzz. But he hasn’t got to be superintendent by showing his independence, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘What’s the Chief Constable – Colonel Ringwood – like?’

  ‘Well, if they just had kit inspections in the police, he’d be good. As it is, he’s wasted on us, the colonel is. The only thing you couldn’t pinch from under his nose would be his official uniform. Bzzz. You won’t get any action from him unless you turn yourself into a horse. Another drink – Miss Culworth – Doctor?’

  ‘No, thank you, Buzzy.’ She looked at Dr Salt, who was shaking his head and getting out of his chair, which was low and sagging.

  ‘Well, watch it, Doc. Birkden isn’t a very nice town any more. Bzzz. What’s your next move now?’

  ‘I thought we might pay a call at the Fabrics Club. But you know nothing about it, Buzzy.’

  ‘I can tell you one or two things that might help. Bzzz. It’s run by an after-shave-and-talcum nance called Donald Dews. On the company pay sheet as Assistant Personnel Officer. They get away with bloody murder, these big combines. He looks and sounds like a powder-puff twerp, but don’t kid yourself – he’s as wide and crafty as they come. I know that much because a barman up there – Tony – used to work for me, and just after he went he came back once or twice for a natter. Bzzz.’

  ‘That’s all, is it, Buzzy?’

  ‘No, there was something else. I’m trying to remember the name. Might be useful. Tony said the real hard character round there – on the Admin at the works but kept an eye on the Club – was – half a minute – it’s a funny name – son – son?’