Requiem for a Dummy

by David Stuart Davies

  I had to have this out with him. No investigator can work effectively if his client is keeping details from him. And I was certain that there was even more that I should know. Mr Carter had better cough up or, before he knew it, he could end up on a stone slab in the morgue. The more I thought about Carter, the more I came to realize that he was the dummy, the figment, the wooden-headed front man, and the sniping, nasty, unscrupulous Charlie Dokes was really my client.

  I could see that fixed grin, the baleful gorgon eyes darting feverishly from side to side and that champing shiny mouth that snapped noisily as it opened and closed. That was the real Raymond Carter. The man who handled him was merely an empty husk.

  It was late afternoon when I arrived back in London. I incarcerated myself in a foul-smelling telephone box outside the station and called Carter. The phone rang for an eternity before it was answered, or rather before the receiver was lifted at the other end. But no one spoke. I had the image of a white-faced Raymond Carter holding the receiver tentatively to his ear in fearful anticipation of another death threat. Having learned what I had about him, I was very tempted to adopt the voice of Charlie Dokes and meet his expectations. It would have given me the greatest pleasure to make him squirm. I grinned at the thought. However, common sense won the day.

  ‘Mr Carter, it’s John Hawke,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ came the reply. The relief in the voice was tangible.

  ‘I think we need to speak soon.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Have there been any developments in the case?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘It can wait until we meet.’

  ‘Very well, if you insist.’ His timidity had been sloughed off now and I could hear the assertiveness growing in his voice. ‘I have things to tell you also. I think I’m being followed. The devil seems to know where I am, where I go, what I do.’

  ‘I’ll come over to your flat now.’

  ‘No, I’ll be setting off for the theatre in half an hour. Come to the Palladium and see me in my dressing-room around six this evening. I’ll tell the stage doorkeeper to expect you.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said, and put the phone down.

  Time for a drink to fortify me, I thought, as I heaved open the recalcitrant door of the phone box. My usual haunt, The Velvet Cage wasn’t too far a slog to Argyll Street, home of the Palladium, I reckoned. I’d call in there and treat myself to a slug of whisky before facing the demon ventriloquist.

  An hour later fortified by two slugs of whisky – one always leads to another – I made my way past the entrance to the Palladium, and turned left down Great Marlborough Street to the stage door. I knew this part of London well, having tramped the streets hereabouts on numerous investigations, mainly petty affairs involving infidelity or unpaid debts, the bread and butter employment of a glamorous private eye.

  The stage doorkeeper looked just like George Robey. It could well have been George Robey down on his luck. There he was, the Prime Minister of Mirth with two thick eyebrows which appeared as though they had been drawn on his face by a broad piece of charcoal; these were accompanied by two red spots of colour on his cheeks and a couple of twinkling beady eyes which gazed at me with undisguised animosity. I had obviously interrupted his quiet time with a bottle of stout and a sports paper.

  ‘Artistes only round here, mate. Shove off.’

  Charm personified.

  ‘I’ve come to see Raymond Carter. I’m expected. The name is Hawke.’

  Mr Robey gazed at me as though I were a German paratrooper who had just dropped in. He did so while chewing something unidentifiable in a vigorous fashion.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ he said at last, his eyes returning to his paper.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied adopting his tone and attitude. ‘Now are you going to give me directions, or do I have a word with my good friend Arnold Phillips?’ I had noted the name of the manager above the main entrance to the theatre as I’d passed. The mention of his employer did the trick. Robey put his bottle down, flashed me an awkward smile and leaned forward and pointed down the corridor. ‘Down there to the end, turn left, up the stairs and you’ll find Mr Carter’s name on one of the dressing-rooms.’

  I raised my hat. ‘Most kind,’ I said, with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

  *

  Raymond Carter, dressed in a voluminous towelling robe, admitted me to his dressing-room without a word of greeting.

  ‘I got the impression from your phone call that you’d made some progress. Is that right?’ he asked, somewhat petulantly, after he had sat down at the make-up mirror to finish getting himself ready for the show. Charlie Dokes was sitting on a stool at the side of the tale, his baleful eyes gazing at me with what seemed spiteful malice.

  ‘I think so,’ I replied vaguely, sitting down on the only vacant chair in the room.

  ‘Well…?’ said Carter with a trace of irritation in his voice. He turned to me, his face shiny with greasepaint, full of anticipation.

  ‘Today I went to visit an old friend of yours: Cyril Sarony.’

  Carter’s face darkened. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘A little background detail,’ I said evenly.

  Carter gave a scornful laugh and returned to his make-up. ‘Oh he’d give you that all right. You’ll need to take a few sacks of salt with anything he told you. He’s a bitter old man who never got over the fact that I left his failing act to go on my own over twenty years ago. He was a second-rate talent with a third-rate act.’

  ‘You didn’t just leave the act though, did you? There was the little matter of a wife and child as well. You left them, too.’

  ‘If you believe Sarony I did. Sally was an alcoholic and a neurotic. She left me, disappeared, and then within months she had committed suicide.’

  ‘And the child?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to him. I tried to find him but … I couldn’t. I think Sally’s mother took him away. But I’m not sure. I know I tried to find out where she’d gone but she had vanished.’

  It was smooth and rehearsed, but he was lying. I was sure of it. Just as I was sure that Cyril Sarony had told me the truth. Carter had been glad to be rid of the burden of old wife and new child. They were baggage not wanted on his journey.

  ‘Don’t you think it still haunts me: the fact that I lost a son? But it was all a long time ago. There’s no point in raking over old coals. This has nothing to do with the matter I’m employing you to investigate.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Someone hates you, Carter. Someone hates you enough to kill in order to make your life difficult. And in time he’ll come for you. Now he has a damned good reason for this and I believe you know the reason.’

  Behind the sheen of make-up, Carter’s face fought to find the appropriate expression with which to respond to my accusation. In the end, he settled for a frustrated glare. ‘I never said I’d led a blameless life. To survive in show-business you’ve got to be a bit ruthless from time to time, but I swear there’s no one … no one I can think of who would actually … want to kill me.’

  ‘I think you are being naïve. Or perhaps you want me to believe you are naïve.’

  ‘That’s nonsense.’

  ‘There must be someone … someone connected with the radio show whom you have upset in some way, in some mightily significant way, that has prompted them to take some drastic action.’

  Carter shook his head. ‘There’s no one, I—’ He froze mid sentence, his eyes flickering erratically.

  ‘Oh, yes there is,’ I said softly, sitting back and taking out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Why don’t you tell me? Telling the truth can be quite uplifting, you know.’

  He shook his head a little as though he was a mite confused. ‘I’m not sure. It’s just a thought that’s all.’

  ‘Well, share the thought, Mr Carter.’ I lit up a cigarette and waited.
/>   ‘Percy Goodall, the announcer on the show. I first worked with him on Variety Fanfare about eighteen months ago before I had my own show. I just had a regular guest spot. We got on quite well at first.’

  ‘And then…?’ I knew there had to be an ‘and then’.

  Carter avoided my gaze. ‘I had a bit of a thing with his wife.’

  Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought. ‘I think you’ll have to be more precise. You mean you had an affair with her.’

  Carter nodded. ‘An affair sounds rather grand and serious. I slept with her a couple of times.’

  ‘If I were her husband I’d probably regard that as rather grand and serious. I think you’d better tell me the whole story.’

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell. Her name was Gloria. I was introduced to her at the end of a Variety Fanfare series party. She is a good ten years younger than Goodall. A small, pretty brunette with a very nice figure. She had worked in Bourne & Hollingsworth when they’d first met. I reckon she was impressed that an important person like a posh radio announcer had taken an interest in her. She was a little stage struck, if you know what I mean.’

  I knew what he meant.

  ‘And she was even more impressed when a rising radio star paid her attention.’

  Carter couldn’t help himself: he smiled at the memory. ‘She was all over me at the party … and Goodall didn’t seem to mind. Well, he didn’t show it, at least. Then a couple of weeks later we bumped into each other in the Strand. I took her for a drink and things just developed from there. You can hardly say I seduced her. She was as eager as I was.’

  ‘How very nice for you. I suppose you never stopped to think that you were leading the girl into adultery.’

  ‘Not really. I’m not sure I was the leader. It was a joint venture, if you like.’ He shrugged casually. ‘Anyway the whole thing only lasted a few weeks.’

  ‘Goodall found out.’

  ‘Well, yes he did, because the silly bitch told him. She thought she was in love with me. Wanted to divorce him and marry me. She had delusions of being the wife of the famous radio star Raymond Carter.’

  ‘So you dumped her.’

  ‘I certainly did. She was OK in bed, but that was it. There was not a lot going on upstairs.’ He illustrated the point by tapping his temple with right forefinger.

  Now here I was seeing the real Raymond Carter for the first time: arrogant, self-seeking and unscrupulous. The model as described by Cyril Sarony. He was happy to take someone’s wife to bed with him for self-gratification but once she began to get serious he abandoned her – ruining two lives for his own pleasure.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Goodall came to see me and begged me to stop seeing Gloria. He’d been drinking and was maudlin and pitiable. I told him that I had already said my goodbyes and I wanted nothing more to do with the stupid cow. Then he tried to take a swing at me, but he was too drunk to do it. Next thing I knew he was crying his eyes out. I got him a taxi and bundled him off home.’

  ‘How very considerate of you. Where is Gloria now?’

  ‘You’d better ask Goodall. She left him a few weeks later. I expect she’s back behind a counter at Bourne & Hollingsworth.’

  ‘What’s your relationship with Percy Goodall like at the moment?’

  ‘Professional. He’s the announcer on my show. I’m the star. We don’t talk unless it’s about some aspect of the script. It’s all very civilized.’

  ‘Any more skeletons in your cupboard that I should know about?’

  ‘I don’t regard this incident as one of my skeletons. It’s just something that happened. As I said, Gloria was as eager for it as I was.’

  Nicely expressed, I thought. I wondered if the sentiment appeased Goodall.

  ‘However, if you are thinking that Percy Goodall is the fellow who’s been threatening me and who murdered Arthur Keating, I reckon you’re barking up the wrong tree. He hasn’t the nerve or the guts.’

  ‘Maybe, but hatred, concentrated hatred, built up over time, can prompt a man to do many things that under normal circumstances he wouldn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t see him that night, blubbering in front of me. He’s a spineless individual.’

  I let the matter lie. ‘You said you had some news for me.’

  His face darkened. ‘Yes, I have. It seems that the murderer knows my movements. He must be following me. I went round to Evelyn Munro’s flat this morning and he telephoned me there. That’s the second time he’s done that. The first could have been pure luck on his part … but … Well, he must be watching me. Watching and waiting.’

  ‘He used Charlie Dokes’s voice?’

  ‘Yes. It was the same kind of banter. The only way he could have known that I was at Evie’s … was if he’d followed me.’

  ‘Who else knew you’d be there?’

  ‘No one … well, except my manager, Larry Milligan.’

  ‘Your relationship with Miss Munro … is not strictly professional?’

  ‘I take her out now and then.’

  I can spot a euphemism like that from a mile off, so I cut to the chase. ‘You’re sleeping with her?’

  Carter did not reply in words, but his expression gave me the answer. So, another piece of information that had been denied me. The flame of indignation billowed and roared within me. My gut reaction was to throw in the towel now. What was the point of trying to protect my client and discover the identity of the person who was threatening to kill him, if said client was determined to keep me in the dark about key pieces of information relating to his past and present private life? On top of this, I was beginning to dislike Mr Raymond Carter intensely. But common sense overruled these defeatist thoughts. If I turned down all cases in which I didn’t care for the character of my client, I wouldn’t get much employment. Apart from that I was caught up in this affair and I had become determined to get to the bottom of it.

  ‘Has she any old flame, someone from a past relationship who might have a gripe against you for taking his place with Miss Munro?’

  ‘None that I know of. There have been boyfriends in the past, I guess, but as far as I’m aware nothing serious.’

  ‘Are you sure there is nothing else you have forgotten to tell me?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing that’s relevant,’ he snapped back.

  ‘Let me be the judge of whether it’s relevant or not.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I didn’t know whether to believe the slimy toad, but I reckon that’s the best answer I was going to get. Before I could reply, there was a sharp rap at the door and then it burst open and a young man breezed in, grinning.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had company,’ he said, his voice tinged with mid-Atlantic tones.

  ‘I think our business is done for the moment,’ I said, eyeing up the young man.

  ‘This is Al Warren, my scriptwriter,’ said Carter. ‘Al, this is an old friend of mine, John Hawke.’ The lie slipped out with ease.

  ‘Hi there, John, pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ I said shaking his hand.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got a few new gags for the opening spot in the second half, Ray.’ He brandished a couple of sheets of paper. ‘I thought it was getting a bit dull. You could try them out tonight and see how they go.’

  Carter took the sheets without looking at them. ‘Yes, I will. I agree that spot is not getting as many laughs as it should.’

  It was time for me to go. I clamped on my hat and made my way to the door.

  ‘I’d better let you finish getting ready,’ I said, glancing at my watch. ‘It’s only thirty minutes to curtain up.’

  ‘Don’t let me drive you away,’ said the young man, smiling.

  ‘No, no. I’ve got to go. Our business is done for now. But I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Carter, throwing me a meaningful glance.

  ‘By the way can you arrange for two seats in the stalls for tomorrow night’s performan
ce?’

  Carter seemed a little surprised by my request and then, with a faint smile playing about his lips, he glanced over to Charlie Dokes. ‘Seems like you’ve got a couple of new fans, eh, Charlie.’

  ‘That’s no surprise to me,’ replied the inanimate dummy. ‘Enjoy the show, Mr Hawke. The tickets’ll be waiting at the box office for you.’

  A few minutes later I was out on the street again glad to be breathing in the fresh, untainted, cold night air. I felt that it was cleansing my mind and body from the contaminations of the last thirty minutes or so; from the slippery ambivalent nature of my client, a man to whom a lie came so easily to the tongue, and the crazy world he inhabited in which wooden dolls spoke to you and even threatened murder. It was good to be rubbing shoulders with anonymous humanity, to be part of the real world again. I felt my body relax as I made my way back to the office and to what I thought would be an early night. But fate had other plans in store for me.

  SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  I headed for Prior’s Court, my office, my home and my haven where I could shut out the naughty world for a while. However, when I was less than half a mile away, I suddenly felt in need of another drink to ease my passage into sleep and so, as I passed a scruffy little pub called the Lord Nelson, the noise from within and the smell of ale that lingered on the pavement outside the door lured me inside. Once within its boozy, smoky clutches, the establishment didn’t release me until I’d downed a couple of pints of cheap bitter.

  I resumed my journey home now less sober and less steady on my feet, but feeling a lot happier. The night was invigoratingly cold and a pale half-moon watched over the city providing a meagre light by which to navigate my route. The streets were very quiet: there were hardly any pedestrians about and just a couple of vehicles purred past me in the gloom, their shaded headlights carving a little amber pathway in the darkness. By the time I was approaching Hawke Towers, I had left humanity behind. I was alone, the only person left on the planet, clip-clopping his unsteady way along the empty street to home and what I hoped would be a refreshing night’s sleep. I had managed to squirrel away all thoughts of the Carter case until the morning and I felt relaxed and at ease.