‘And I apologize for laughing at you.’
‘Then we are even.’
This time she flashed me a genuine smile. I luxuriated in the warmth of it.
‘So, how may I help you? You are wanting a mask of some kind?’
‘It’s information, really,’ I said, pulling the Charlie Dokes mask from the innards of my tattered coat. ‘I believe this was made here.’ I passed it to her.
She gave it a cursory glance. ‘Oh, yes, I remember it well. It was made to look like the doll from the radio show. I was given a photograph to work from.’
‘Could you tell me who asked you to make the mask?’
For the first time, Maxine Summers’ sweet face lost its smile. ‘Oh, dear no. I cannot betray a customer’s confidence.’
I leaned on the counter and lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘This is very important, miss. I am a private detective working on an important case. It’s a matter of life and death.’ I passed her one of my cards which she read very carefully, her lovely features registering the change from surprise to uncertainty.
‘I don’t know …’ she said shaking her head slightly.
‘It’s just the name I want. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t vital to the investigation.’
She hesitated further, but I knew that she was weakening. It was time to add a little pressure. ‘I only want the name. There’s no real harm in that, is there? It’s either tell me, or I’m afraid I’ll have to go to the police and you wouldn’t want that, would you? Great big coppers clumping up and down your premises. Looks bad for business too,’ I added. I was not particularly proud of this particular turn of the screw, but I had to be prepared to upset the pretty Maxine in order to get the name.
And from the change in her expression, I could see that indeed I had upset the pretty Maxine. ‘Very well,’ she said coldly and then disappeared into the back of the shop, leaving behind the faint lingering smell of her perfume. She returned a few moments later with a small ledger which she consulted, holding the pages away from me so that I could not see them.
‘The customer who bought the mask was a man called Carter. Raymond Carter.’
My mouth gaped a little. What the hell was going on here? I just stopped myself from asking Maxine if she was sure, if she had given me the correct name. But of course she must have – even though it didn’t make sense. Why would Carter buy such a mask and – more particularly – was it really him who wore it last night in order to attack me? My mind juggled with these thoughts while I repeated the name to Maxine to make sure that I really heard correctly: ‘Raymond Carter.’
She nodded and closed the ledger.
‘Well, thank you, Miss Summers. I really appreciate your help.’
‘Will that be all?’ she asked sharply, sending an Arctic breeze in my direction. There were no smiles now. She looked stern and disappointed and, of course, I knew why. I had bullied and threatened her into doing something she didn’t want to do, something that was against her principles and now she hated me for it. And I hated myself too.
I couldn’t think of anything to say or do that would make her think better of me, this shabby one-eyed man with a ragged coat and bullying manner. And I wanted her to think better of me. Desperately so.
‘Could I buy you lunch … as a thank you for helping me?’ I said suddenly. Where that came from I had no idea. My lusting subconscious had temporarily taken over my brain and tongue and acted on impulse. Normally I would have been too shy to make such a suggestion to a young, attractive woman.
She looked aghast at the very idea of it. There was no hesitation in her reply. ‘No,’ she snapped disdainfully, her eyes flaring with anger.
I tried a little harder. ‘Please. I feel awful about putting you on the spot like this, but it is terribly important. I’d like to … express my gratitude.’
The gates remained closed. ‘Thank you, Mr Hawke, but I really do not want to take lunch with you. To be honest, you are the last person on earth with whom I should wish to take lunch. Goodbye.’
I have never been quite sure where the phrase ‘a flea in my ear’ originated, although I know what it means and on this occasion I experienced the sensation first hand. In fact, if it is possible the delightfully gamine Maxine gave me several fleas in my ear with her fierce and flinty rejection of my offer of lunch.
‘I’m sorry. I hate dining alone,’ I said.
‘And you must do that so often,’ she replied, her eyes narrowing with sarcasm.
‘Keep my card. You never know when you might need a detective.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Hawke.’
Within moments I was back out on to the streets in the cold November wind but strangely it was less chilly than the inside of Masks Unlimited.
TWENTY
* * *
Al Warren stood in the open doorway of Larry Milligan’s outer office and skilfully tossed his trilby across the room so that it landed neatly on the hat rack.
‘And for my encore …’ he cried, bowing from the waist down.
Madge Dailey, Milligan’s secretary, a large blonde-haired lady who wore a permanent world-weary expression, looked up from her desk with indifference. She gave Warren a brief raise of the eyebrow which eloquently informed him that she had seen the trick before and that she wished that he wouldn’t perform it every time he came to the office.
Warren took no notice of her silent censure. ‘Is he in?’ he asked cheerfully.
The eyebrow went up again. ‘He’s here and that’s why I am. Even though it’s Saturday. He’s got me typing up some complicated contract.’
‘Good, I need to see him.’
‘Ah. Ah!’ She held up her hand to halt his progress across the room towards the door of Milligan’s office. ‘You can’t just barge in. I’ll announce you.’ With a nimbleness that defied her substantial bulk – Warren reckoned at least sixteen stone – Madge Dailey sprang to her feet, squeezed her ample figure round the end of the desk and made her way to Milligan’s door where she tapped gently before opening it. Popping her head round the door she said, ‘Al Warren is here to see you.’
Warren heard Milligan emit a low moan of irritation.
‘Charming,’ observed Warren quietly to himself, before announcing loudly, ‘it’s quite important, Your Highness.’
‘Come on in,’ came the reply.
Warren smiled broadly at Madge and entered Milligan’s office. It was a small room but elegantly decorated. The walls were filled with photographs of Milligan’s past and present clients. On his desk was a large framed picture of Raymond Carter and Charlie Dokes. The doll was in the foreground, dominating the photograph, its shiny face peering out into the world with that unnerving fixed grin which Warren thought gave the features a look of arrogant malevolence.
One other photograph caught Milligan’s eye. It was lying casually on Milligan’s desk. It was a picture of Evelyn Munro.
‘I can only spare you a few minutes,’ said Milligan, before Warren had a chance to sit down.
‘I reckon five minutes will suffice – from my side of things anyway.’
Milligan frowned. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s about Raymond.’
The frown deepened. ‘What now?’
‘I think he’s cracking up.’
‘He’s a little tense I grant you and he has good reason to be. He’s getting death threats – from his blasted dummy for Christ’s sake. And on top of that he’s the main suspect for a murder. He’s allowed to be a bit wobbly.’
Warren’s face darkened. ‘He’s more than a bit wobbly. You should have seen him last night. He lost it a couple of times on the stage. Dried completely. And afterwards, he was knocking back the booze in his dressing-room like there was no tomorrow. I reckon that private detective – the guy with the eye-patch – had spooked him somewhat. He’d seen him before the show. Ray is getting really paranoid. If he gives in to his fears, it could ruin his career completely. You know how fickle the public are.’
>
‘They make you; they break you.’ Milligan glanced at the pictures around the room. Some, stars a few years ago, were now forgotten names.
‘Yeah,’ said Warren, following Milligan’s gaze. ‘I popped round to his flat this morning because I was concerned about him. He opened the door looking like death – ideal casting for the Phantom of the Opera. He was still fully dressed and reeking of alcohol. He hadn’t been to bed at all. Reckoned he had expected a call from the killer and had waited up for him. That is not a bit wobbly – that’s nuts, mister.’
Milligan sighed heavily. ‘And what I am supposed to do about it? It’s a rhetorical question, Al. I know that as his manager he’s my responsibility, but I’ve been here before with other acts. Some of them seem to have an inbuilt self-destruct button. Certainly Raymond’s having a tough time, but a stronger more self-contained fellow could cope with it. But he … well, it looks like he’s deliberately steering himself towards the rocks. If that’s the case neither you, nor I, nor all the bleeding king’s horses and all the king’s men can stop him.’
‘We’ve got to try.’
‘Oh, sure, we’ve got to try and we will. I will and I’m sure you will but in the end …’ He left the rest of his thought unspoken.
Both men lapsed into silence for a moment.
‘You don’t think he actually killed old Arthur, do you?’ Warren said at length.
Milligan narrowed his eyes and appeared to chew his lip for a moment before replying. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But then again, I don’t know for certain. It’s my experience that all vents have a screw loose. It comes from making a living talking to yourself. They form a very strange relationship with that lump of wood they have on their knee. It makes having normal relationships difficult. I knew one vent who treated the dummy like his own son. He even set a place for him at the dinner table. It totally spooked his children. When he died he was buried with the doll in the coffin as he’d requested in his will.’
‘Now that is weird.’
‘They’re all weird. I’ve seen some vents who have almost been taken over by their dolls. One fellow I was interested in signing insisted that his bloody dummy did all the negotiating. When you take on a vent act you take on the man himself and the dummy as well. Split personality. That’s what they’ve got: living out the other side of their character through their doll. Half human – half dummy. I reckon with some of them it wouldn’t take much to tip the balance and then the dummy becomes the dominant one. The one who controls the other. Maybe Raymond Carter fits into that category.’
The two men looked at each other for a moment, their faces stern masks, hiding their unspoken thoughts.
At length Milligan sighed and broke the spell. ‘Look Al, I appreciate you coming round to let me know how things are. I’ll pop round to the Palladium this afternoon before the matinee and check on our friend. We’ll just have to keep monitoring the situation and hope that this crazy chap who keeps phoning him up loses interest or gets caught.’
‘I’m with you on that,’ said Warren, rising from the chair. ‘I just thought you’d like to know how things were. We need to protect our interests as best as we can.’
‘I don’t suppose that you have any notion who might be behind these threats? Someone who’s really got it in for Raymond?’
Warren looked as though he was about to come out with a glib one-liner but then at the last minute changed his mind and just shook his head. ‘Raymond isn’t the most popular guy on the planet, but I can’t think of anyone who hates him enough to drive him batty.’
‘And yet there is someone.’
Both men fell silent for a moment as they contemplated this truth.
‘Anyway,’ said Milligan breezily, snapping out of his reflective mood, ‘as I said, I am rather busy, Al.’ He began shepherding the writer towards the door and then he stopped abruptly and looked Warren straight in the eyes. ‘You know that if everything goes horribly wrong for Ray, you’ll be all right, don’t you? There’s dozens of comics would give their right arm to have you writing for them.’
‘That’s all I need: a one-armed comedian.’ Al grinned weakly and left.
Raymond Carter sat on the sofa in his sitting-room and gazed across the room at Charlie Dokes. Carter’s face was pale and drawn with dark semi-circles under the eyes bearing witness to his lack of sleep. He held a mug of coffee in his hands. It was now nearly cold and he had barely touched it. He felt too weary to drink. In fact he felt too weary for almost anything.
‘Things are starting to unravel, Charlie,’ he said quietly.
‘You’re telling me,’ the doll replied without moving its lips.
‘No, I’m telling me, I suppose.’
‘Never mind, old boy, you’ve still got your old Charlie. The star of the show. For the time being, that is. I reckon there are other vents out there who’d be more than happy to take on a lively prospect like me if you fail. You see it’s you who are going down the plughole, old boy, not me. You see, Ray, my friend, I don’t really need you. Charlie Dokes will survive, even if you don’t. Now, if you want my advice—’
‘No, I don’t want your advice. Shut up! Shut up!’ Carter cried wildly, his body shaking with anger.
‘Temper, temper. That will never do. Remember, I’m the boss in this outfit and what I say goes.’
‘Leave me alone,’ bellowed Carter, ruffling his hair savagely as though trying to exorcise a demon from beneath his scalp. As he did so he spilt some coffee. He ignored the damp patch on his trousers and slumped back on the sofa and closed his eyes desperate for his tired body and aching brain to be overtaken by sleep.
TWENTY-ONE
* * *
With some effort, I cast thoughts of the delicious Maxine Summers from my mind and pondered about the mask that lodged snugly inside my ventilated overcoat. If it really was Raymond Carter who had ordered Maxine to make the mask and if it was Raymond Carter who had worn it to attack me last night, then I was not only dealing with a lunatic, but it could be that for the first time in my career as a detective, my client turned out to be the murderer. However, those two big ‘ifs’ meant I had to find out more before I could reach a definite conclusion. It was highly unlikely that Carter would buy a mask using his own name. I could have cleared up that little problem by asking Maxine to describe her client, the Raymond Carter who ordered the mask bringing with him a picture of Charlie Dokes, but I knew she would have refused. After all, I’d had to bully her just to get the name.
On leaving Maxine’s shop I made my way to Benny’s café. On the way I called in at a little shop in Croxford Court, just off the lower end of Charing Cross Road. The establishment called ‘Danny’s’ sold second-hand clothes and for certain customers it was just a matter of handing over a suitable amount of cash – no clothes coupons were required. Danny was a diminutive, red-faced Irishman who’d been a successful jockey in a past life. I had done him a little favour once upon a time, oiling the wheels for his divorce by spying on his missus while she was fraternizing with a burly sailor. I knew he’d do me a good deal on a nice second-hand coat. And he did.
‘You look the bee’s knees in that, my boy,’ he said, as I examined myself in the long mirror in his shop. It was nice – a thick, dark-brown herringbone overcoat which fitted perfectly. But it was priced at nine guineas. When I saw the tag, I cringed.
‘Ouch,’ I said.
‘Oh, come now, Johnny. Don’t give me the sob story. A successful chap like yourself can afford it. You won’t find a finer coat in London for the money.’
I reckoned he was right about the price, but it was still more than I was happy to pay.
‘How about seven quid and I’ll tell everyone where I bought it.’
‘Are you sure you’ve not kissed the Blarney stone yourself?’ he laughed. ‘Go on with you, you rascal. Call it seven pounds and ten shillin’s and we got a deal.’
Five minutes later I was back out on the street in my new
posh overcoat while my old ventilated version was languishing in the dustbin behind Danny’s shop.
Saturday lunchtime was a quiet time for Benny. His regulars, the folk who worked in the offices and businesses nearby who filled the café during the week, were absent. When I entered there were only about half-a-dozen customers in the place and Benny was leaning on the counter staring into space, deep in thought. He greeted me with a smile.
‘Johnny, how nice to see you,’ he said.
‘Well, I suppose it’s always nice to see a customer.’
‘Precisely.’ His grin broadened. Then he gave me the once over. ‘You come into some money? That’s a nice bit of schmutter, my boy,’ he said running his fingers along the lapel of my new coat.
‘You like?’
‘Very smart. You’ll get a lady now.’
It was Benny’s mission in life to see me married.
‘I need a little help,’ I said, changing the subject.
‘Takings have not been so good this month.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t need a loan; I need some medical treatment.’
That really caught his attention. I explained about my injuries, without giving the full details of how I received them. Although Benny was aware that in my line of work, the odd cut and blow to the head were occupational hazards, it did not stop him clucking round me like a mother hen and a very Jewish mother hen at that. He put his head round the kitchen door and asked Doris ‘to keep an eye on things while I turn doctor for a while.’
Doris was happy to oblige and knew her boss well enough not to ask him to explain himself. Benny led me upstairs to his little flat and pulled a large first-aid box from the sideboard. I slipped off my jacket, rolled up my sleeve and removed my ham-fisted dressing to expose the wound.
On seeing it, Benny gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘Ooh, that’s a nasty gash,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to clean it first.’ He disappeared into his bathroom and returned with a damp cloth which he used to cleanse the wound before treating it with antiseptic cream and dressing it with a clean bandage.
Requiem for a Dummy Page 14