He staggered into the tiny cluttered sitting-room and switched on the table lamp but nothing happened. The room remained in darkness.
‘You keep late hours, don’t you, Arthur?’ A high, piping voice came from the shadows.
Arthur shook his head rapidly. He couldn’t be sure he’d heard it. Was it the drink fooling him? There were times in the past when he’d heard voices conjured up by the alcohol. Was it happening again? But those teasing cadences … he knew them so well.
‘You’ve been on the booze again tonight, Arthur. That’s how you view the world, isn’t it, Arthur? Through the bottom of a glass.’
No, he was not imagining it. The voice was in the room. And he recognized that voice.
It belonged to that damned doll. That Charlie Dokes.
‘What the hell do you want?’ Keating cried angrily, throwing his arms wide, an action that unsteadied him and he stumbled backwards into a table.
‘What do I want? I want you, Arthur. Or more precisely, I want you to die.’
Keating peered into the darkness. He could just make out the vague shape of a man and that blasted dummy.
‘You can’t frighten me, Carter. I’m not leaving that show.’
The man shape moved, the outline blurring in the shadows.
‘That’s what you think,’ said the high, piping voice. ‘You’ve dropped your chestnuts in the fire for the last time.’ Keating was suddenly aware that someone was very close to him. He could hear them breathing and then he felt two hands grasp him around the neck and press with great force and ferocity against his windpipe. He tried to scream but he could not.
‘Say ’night, ’night, Arthur. Sweet dreams.’
Keating could neither move nor struggle. His mouth opened and closed noiselessly as saliva seeped out of one corner and trailed down his chin. In a fierce and frightening moment of revelation cutting through the haze of alcohol around his brain, Arthur Keating realized that he was actually going to die and there was nothing he could do about it. The life was being squeezed out of him. His vision began to fog and falter while his body grew limp. Just before Arthur Keating slipped into the sleep of death, he fell forward. The last thing he saw was the shiny, cruel, implacable face of Charlie Dokes, its mouth open in a static grin.
SIX
* * *
The ringing telephone broke the intense silence of Raymond Carter’s bedroom. Like the shriek of some ferocious banshee it shattered his dreamless slumbers, dragging him into unwilling consciousness. For some moments he lay on his back and stared into the unrelieved blackness that seemed to press in on him while the cogs in his brain slowly cranked into action. Then instinctively he reached out like a blind man feeling for the switch of the lamp on his bedside table.
All the while the telephone screamed for attention.
He turned on the lamp and the room formed itself like a mirage around him. Subconsciously, he noted that the alarm clock indicated that it was just past 2 a.m. Still in a post-sleep, zombie-like state, he dragged the receiver to his ear.
‘Hello,’ he mumbled.
‘Hello there, my dear Raymond. So sorry to wake you up.’
Icy fear stabbed his heart and in an instant all vestiges of sleep vanished from his brain. Now he was fully awake, alert and frightened. It was that voice again. That whining, insinuating, threatingly creepy voice. It was his voice. His voice as Charlie Dokes. His doll was speaking to him. Carter felt incapable of reply. He just sat there resting on the pillows, the telephone clamped to his ear, like a man in a trance. What he wanted to do was to slam the receiver down and cut the demon off, but he knew he couldn’t. He knew he had to wait, to listen, to hear what the voice had to say. To hear what Charlie had to say.
‘You’re not very chatty this evening,’ the caller said at length. ‘Cat got your tongue, eh? What a purrfect excuse.’
‘Who are you?’
The voice laughed. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that, do you, Raymond? It’s your little friend, Charlie.’
‘What the hell do you want with me?’
‘I’ve brought you a present.’
The words did not make sense. ‘Present?’ he muttered mechanically, his mind frozen with fear.
‘A gift from me to you. Out of the kindness of my wooden heart. If you go to your front door you’ll find my present to you waiting on the doorstep. Special delivery. I hope you enjoy it.’
‘What…?’ Carter began, but the telephone went dead, a deep burring sound filling the sudden silence. Slowly, he replaced the receiver, a great sense of unease swamping all other emotions. It was like some kind of nightmare, but he knew that he was awake. This was no frightening dream. This was real. He would have loved to have ignored the call, switched out the light and settled down under the blankets. But he knew he just couldn’t. He had to find out if there was ‘a present’ on the doorstep. And what the nature of this gift was.
Full of apprehension, he threw back the covers, slipped out of bed and struggled into his dressing-gown. With the movements of a somnambulist he made his way through the house to the front door. Nervously, he unlocked and opened it, allowing the harsh cold November air to waft into the hallway. He shivered violently. And pulled the dressing-gown around him more tightly. Stepping on to the porch, he stared out into the darkness with no idea what to expect. His gaze eventually fell upon a dark shape on the ground just beyond the doorstep. At first he thought it was a large sack, but as he crouched down to examine it, he gave a gagging cry of horror. This was no sack. The object before him was a body. It was curled up tightly in a foetal shape, the head obscured within the folds of a large tweed overcoat. It was the body of a man. This was his present: the special delivery.
Without really knowing what he was doing, Carter leaned forward and gently pulled back the lapels of the coat in order to expose the face. Two dull, pig-like eyes, motionless in death, stared up at him, while the fleshy mouth was agape in a silent scream.
Raymond Carter was now paralyzed with fear. His body froze as he crouched over the corpse, staring uncomprehendingly at the dead face before him. It was a face that he recognized.
A face that he knew.
It was the face of Arthur Keating.
SEVEN
* * *
Despite the strangeness of my occupation and the unusual hours that I’m sometimes forced to keep, I’m rarely telephoned in the middle of the night by a distraught client. They tend to harass me during the daytime only. And I can say with great certainty that I’d never been called up in the wee small hours by an hysterical ventriloquist ranting on about finding a corpse on his doorstep. Not that is until the night Raymond Carter phoned. It took me some time to calm him down sufficiently to get any kind of coherent story out of him. He was jabbering on, the words ill-connected with sense. Eventually, I managed to elicit a brief, staccato telegram-like version of events. The warning voice had called again saying that he had left a gift for him which had turned out to be a dead body dumped on his doorstep. It was Arthur Keating, one of the performers on his radio show, the man whom he had tried to have removed from said radio show. It didn’t need a Sherlock Holmes to appreciate the implications of this very dodgy situation.
‘I’ll come over straight away,’ I said, stifling a yawn. Well, what else could I say? This was looking more and more like a case for the police, but Carter was still my client and as such it was my duty to do my best for him. And I had a living to earn!
I dragged on some clothes, washed the sleep from my eye and set out for Bentley Mews. It was 3 a.m. The streets were damp and cold but despite the war, there were always some pedestrians around the city no matter what time of night or the season – lonely silhouettes who passed you by in the gloom. Shift workers wending their way to or from their work; soldiers, sailors and airmen on leave determined to squeeze every ounce of pleasure out of their limited time in the city – and maybe their limited time on earth; girls on the game hoping for one last trick before heading for their own
bed and a proper undisturbed sleep; and the pampered rich to whom the war was but a mere irritation, emerging from the various drinking clubs that had proliferated since 1939 in cellars and private houses, to make their way home to their well feathered nests.
And thankfully there was always the odd solitary cab trawling the streets for trade. I managed to grab one of these motorized ghosts at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road and within fifteen minutes of leaving Hawke Towers I was ringing the bell of Raymond Carter’s mews house. He’d obviously moved the corpse indoors as I’d suggested and there were certainly no bloodstains or any other signs to indicate that a dead body had lain on his doorstep.
The chimes had barely stopped bing-bonging before the door was wrenched open and an ashen-faced Raymond Carter dragged me indoors without a word. There on the hallway floor was the offending article: the unwanted corpse.
He was lying on his back, his vacant eyes staring sightless at the ceiling. The mouth was agape and a swollen purple tongue peered tentatively from the aperture. Kneeling down, I examined this unwelcome guest. He was a short, stout chap of around sixty and had been dead for some time. His skin was cold to the touch and rigor mortis was setting in. There were no wounds to the body that I could see apart from severe bruising around the neck which would suggest that the fellow had been strangled. There was little else to be detected by the naked eye. It was, as I’d thought, a job for the police. I had already considered the possibility that Carter himself could be the killer and that this was an elaborate set up, involving me as an unsuspecting participant, to give him some kind of alibi. However, I had rejected it – for the moment at least. It was too contrived and unnecessary. If Carter had wanted to get rid of Arthur Keating why do it in such a melodramatic fashion? I know he was in show business, but that would be a step too far. Having a dead man planted on your premises is certainly not the way to deflect suspicion. And why involve a private detective, increasing the chance of being found out? I wasn’t sure how good an actor my client was, but he seemed genuinely terrified and distraught by events. He stood by me as I examined the body, white-faced, clutching a tumbler of whisky which remained untouched, and shivering as though he was in the throes of a severe attack of double pneumonia.
I took Carter through to the sitting-room, sat him down, instructed him to take a large gulp of the whisky to help settle his nerves and then tell me in detail exactly what had happened that night. He obeyed my instructions to the letter, reciting in dry emotionless tones the events that led up to him telephoning me, although I have to admit I was none the wiser after he’d finished. There was nothing in what he told me that came within a hundred miles of what we professionals call ‘a clue’. However, what was clear was that whoever was making these threats against Carter had cranked the dial up several notches. This was no longer a matter of harassment or even blackmail. Cold-blooded murder is in the red zone at the top of the dial.
After finishing his account, my client flopped back in his chair and stared at me, waiting, I expect, for words of comfort, wisdom and explanation. I could not oblige. I knew there was only one course of action now and it was one that Carter feared.
‘I’m afraid I shall have to call the police, Mr Carter …’
He opened his mouth to object but I held up my hand to stop him.
‘If I don’t I could be accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice. But apart from that, how would it look if you didn’t tell the cops about a dead body in your house? And the body of a man you have issues with. A big fat finger with the word guilty stamped on it would eventually come around pointing in your direction. It could well be that the murderer himself will tip off the police if you try to sweep things under the carpet. You are innocent so don’t act guilty. Although things may get tricky for a while, in the end you have nothing to fear.’
‘To be accused of murder. That’s what I have to fear.’ Now Carter became animated. Slapping the whisky tumbler down on the floor, he rose and began pacing up and down. ‘Can’t you see how even the suspicion of this could ruin me? Can’t you see the headlines: Well-known Entertainer on Murder Charge?’
I could see the headlines.
It would seem that this is exactly what our mystery voice wanted. He was not only chipping away at Carter’s sanity but his fame and fortune as well. It was an expertly calculated and executed plan.
‘It need not be as bad as you suggest. If you had intended to kill Keating, you would hardly leave his corpse at your house and then ask a private detective around to examine it.’ I didn’t fully believe my own words. I knew that in many cases the police jumped to convenient and obvious conclusions whether they were the right ones or not. There was a war on after all and domestic crime needed to be cleaned up quickly and efficiently.
Carter dropped back down in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I know that you’re right … but … it’s all so unfair.’
I’m sure Arthur Keating would agree with you, I thought. But I kept that one to myself.
I glanced at my wristwatch. It was just coming up to 4 a.m. Still very early but really we couldn’t wait for daylight before I made the call to Scotland Yard. Then I had an idea. They do bump into me now and then.
I told Carter to get dressed while I made a phone call. With a mooching reluctance he vanished into his bedroom and I took a few moments to take a more detailed observation of my surroundings. Pressed into choosing one word to describe the nature of Carter’s little mews place, I would have plumped for ‘opulent’ as the most appropriate adjective. The sitting-room was filled with expensive and stylish items, ultra modern sofas and sideboard, a gleaming drinks trolley, the latest oak-encased radiogram and what looked like a couple of ancient and valuable oil paintings. These were trappings of success, which were all down to the little wooden doll which sat amidst the splendour like a small god. I brushed away a small pang of jealousy and set about my task.
As I crossed to the telephone I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of rousing my friend Detective Inspector David Llewellyn from his beauty sleep. Well, it was the unfortunate lot this night: Carter had been dragged from his slumbers; as a consequence so had I and now it was the turn of Inspector Llewellyn, whom I knew was not at his charming Welsh best in the early hours.
The phone was answered after the third ring.
‘Llewellyn,’ barked a grumpy and groggy voice.
‘Hawke,’ I responded in kind. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘Johnny, is that you?’
‘It’s me.’
‘Yes, you did bloody wake me. Are you mad, man? Have you any idea what time it is?’
‘Certainly. It’s 4 a.m.’
‘Is this some kind of weird joke, Johnny, because I warn you I am not in the mood.’
‘It’s no joke, I promise. I need your help.’
David groaned. ‘What kind of scrape have you got yourself into now?’
‘It’s to do with a client. I need to report a murder.’
‘Well, why don’t you ring the duty desk at the Yard?’
‘Because I want you to handle it. I need some sensitive hands on this one.’
‘Flattery doesn’t work on me at this time of the bloody morning,’ he snapped back.
‘Honestly, David, this is a bit tricky …’
‘It always is with you, boyo’. He sighed heavily. ‘Look, ring me back in five minutes. Give me time to grab a fag and a cuppa. Then I can take the call downstairs. There’s no point in my wife having her night’s sleep ruined as well as me.’
I did as he asked and when we spoke again, David sounded more alert and less tetchy.
‘Right, tell me the story from the beginning,’ he said.
I complied with his instructions and he listened without interruptions.
‘Bloody hell, you pick your clients don’t you?’ he announced, with a bleak chuckle when I’d finished.
‘Can you help? I want to keep tabs on this case. I don’t think my
client had anything to do with Arthur Keating’s death and I’d like this affair to be kept from the papers for the time being at least.’
‘Listen, Johnny, neither you nor I are King Canute. We can’t keep the tide of the Press at bay. Something will sneak out. It always does. After all, this Keating character is a performer on the radio. He’s not Joe Soap round the corner. He will be missed. Questions will be asked and answers will be found – not necessarily the ones you want. All I can say is that I’ll do what I can … within the bounds of my official capacity. I know you think Carter is innocent, but I don’t know that, do I? I have to treat this murder as I would any other.’
‘I understand. I appreciate your help though.’
‘Hey, you don’t think he’s putting the blame on Charlie Dokes, do you?’ David gave a throaty chuckle.
In a sense I suppose he was.
‘What now?’
‘Stay where you are. Make sure your fellow does not tamper with any evidence and I’ll be with you shortly. It will give me great pleasure to drag Sergeant Sunderland from his slumbers to bring him along with a couple of uniformed fellows for an initial look around before we get the body taken away to the Yard for an autopsy.’
While I’d been on the phone, Raymond Carter had dressed and covered the dead body up with a sheet.
‘What now?’ he asked, his pale face drawn and haunted.
‘We wait for the police,’ I said wearily, lighting up a cigarette.
EIGHT
* * *
Requiem for a Dummy Page 5