by Bruce, Leo
‘What on earth had those two in common?’
‘Pot,’ replied Mrs Bodmin, bringing out the word as though she was firing it from a pea-shooter. ‘He used to take him his pot which he got from Swindleton. I don’t say they ever talked much together but it might be worth a try.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ remembered Mrs Bodmin. ‘If you were to go round in the morning you’d find him at home. He never goes to the Wheatsheaf on Sunday morning same as all the others because there was some Trouble there. And she goes to church to show off. So you’d get a chance to speak to him.’
‘Thanks. I will. And you will remember all we’ve agreed about Liz, won’t you?’
‘I shall. It’s given me a shock, Mr Deene, which I shan’t get over in a hurry. But you may depend on me doing what I can.’
So next morning after telling Mrs Stick that he wouldn’t be home to lunch, Carolus drove up to the house in which he had interviewed Flo Carver, or Estelle Delafont as she preferred to be called, and hoped he could reach the front door before the friendly neighbour spotted him. But the hope was vain.
‘She’s gone to church,’ said the neighbour. ‘St Thomas’s. She won’t be back yet awhile because Reverend Wilkinson’s preaching this morning and he always goes on for hours, till people’s dinners are all spoilt. He’s lost a lot of the congregation that way and I must say I can’t blame them. I go to Early Service at All Saints and have it over with. Did you want to see her again?’
‘Thank you. Don’t trouble. I wanted to have a word with Mr Delafont if he’s in.’
‘Oh he’s in all right. He’s out the back mowing the lawn, what there is of it. It’s no good ringing because he can’t hear you. Wait till I tell him.’ She raised her voice, facing towards the back of the house. ‘Mr Delafont!’ she screamed. ‘Someone to see you! It’s all right. He’s heard. He’ll be out in a minute.’
And he was, a tall surly-looking West Indian going bald on the top of his head.
‘Yes?’ he said to Carolus.
‘Good-morning, Mr Delafont,’ Carolus tried to sound breezy. ‘Can you spare me a few minutes?’
‘What is it you want?’
Carolus saw that it was going to be hard going and would not be rendered easier by the fact that the kindly neighbour continued to lean out of her window as though, having brought the two men together, she had a right to join in their conversation.
‘Perhaps if I could come inside for a moment?’ suggested Carolus.
‘I don’t see what you want to come inside for,’ said Mr Delafont, but after glancing round he moved aside invitingly. ‘That woman next door wants to know everything,’ he said as if to explain his invitation. ‘Now what is it you want?’
There was nothing for it but to plunge right in.
‘You knew the boy known as Dutch Carver, I believe?’
‘Certainly I did. His mother’s my friend.’
A nice way of putting it, thought Carolus.
‘I’m trying to discover who killed him,’ he said.
Mr Delafont turned hostile.
‘Oh you are, are you? Well don’t come to me, because I didn’t.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting such a thing. But Dutch had some secret information …’
This was worse.
‘Maybe he had and maybe he hadn’t. He never told me about any secret information so it’s no good asking me.’
‘I thought perhaps as you knew the boy you might like to help discover who murdered him,’ said Carolus reproachfully.
‘All I know is I didn’t.’
‘Did he ever mention the little girl Liz Bodmin to you?’
‘That I can’t remember,’ said Mr Delafont too readily.
‘Or any of the skinheads? Gil Bodmin, the little girl’s cousin? Or a boy they called Trimmer?’
‘You can go on giving me names all day and all night and I can’t remember them. So what’s the good of talking?’
It was probably of no use, Carolus agreed, but he persisted.
‘What about the ones with hair like his, Des and Phil? Do either of their names ring a bell?’
A broad grin suddenly stretched across Mr Delafont’s face.
‘Ring it!’ he said. ‘Go on, man! Ring it for all you’re worth and see if that makes any difference. I tell you I don’t know anything about it.’
‘But you know a girl called June?’
Delafont’s face was suddenly clouded with fury.
‘Who says I know any girl? Someone’s been telling you a lot of lies, mister. I don’t know any girl, June, July or September. And now I’ll thank you to get going before Mrs Delafont comes back and finds you here!’
Carolus went.
Chapter Thirteen
As he was climbing into his car a cheery voice called from the pavement.
‘Hullo, there! I’ve been looking for you. I’m Roger Carver!’
Carolus saw a healthy-looking young man of twenty-one or so, conventionally dressed and with hair which represented a compromise between the long tresses of the greasers and the Cromwellian polls of the skinheads. He was smiling and offering a broad hand which Carolus took.
‘You’re investigating the death of my young brother,’ he said. ‘I may be able to tell you something.’
Carolus showed no great enthusiasm. He had a distrust, formed through many past experiences, of those who volunteer information so readily. But he knew better than to refuse it.
‘I was just going to have a drink at the Wheatsheaf,’ Carolus said. ‘Like to come along?’
‘Right,’ said Roger and climbed into Carolus’s car.
‘You know Grimsby, the CID man?’ asked Roger.
A curious kind of name-dropping, Carolus thought, but said, ‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t told him what I know,’ said Roger, perhaps thinking that Carolus would applaud this.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not all that mad on the Law. I intended to keep it for you.’
‘You should have reported anything you know to Grimsby. He’s in charge of the case. I’m just an inquisitive amateur.’
‘I know. That’s why I preferred to tell you.’
They drew up at the Wheatsheaf and found the bar crowded with that peculiar collection which meets in English pubs before lunch on Sunday, the soiled flannels and untidy blazers of the more pretentious gentry who have worn city suits all the week, contrasting with the machine-tailored suits of those who have worked in the open air, while the tweeded wives of the first are the only women present.
‘Let’s sit over there,’ suggested Carolus. He had noticed that Roger was greeted with much friendliness among both sections of the community.
‘O.K.,’ said Roger, voicing the Americanism which Carolus detested most.
With drinks before them they seemed to hesitate on the brink of some remarkable confidence which was about to be broken, but Carolus gave no sign of eagerness to hear its nature. Roger, therefore, it seemed, did not open the conversation.
‘Lot of people seem to come here on Sunday morning,’ Carolus commented.
‘Yes. It’s always like this on Sunday mornings.’
‘I see your father over there,’ said Carolus.
‘I saw him. But we don’t Speak,’ replied Roger.
‘Isn’t that Warton Leng, the organist?’
‘Yes. Church must be finished, then.’
‘You don’t go?’
‘No. I never seem to have taken to it, somehow. The old woman goes. You’ve met her, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Carolus, remembering Estelle Delafont, nee, and to be correct still, Flo Carver.
Then Roger approached slightly nearer to the Subject—or was it the Subject?
‘You’ve also met June Mockett,’ he said almost accusingly.
‘I have. In Swindleton’s office,’ Carolus replied.
‘I wish she wouldn’t go there,’ said Roger pettishly. ‘You see June and
I are going to be married.’
‘Congratulations. But why mustn’t she go to Swindleton’s office? I thought she worked there.’
‘She does. For the present. I want to get her to leave. I don’t like the place. And I don’t like Swindleton. He’s a creep.’
‘I see. She’s a very pretty girl. You’re lucky.’
‘That’s what that stepfather of mine—so-called—tells me. He’d better keep away from June, too.’
‘You mean Mr Delafont?’ asked Carolus innocently.
‘Yes. Honestly, Mr Deene, he’s a nasty piece of work, taking pot all day long. I could never understand what mum sees in him.’
‘Is it his colour you object to?’
‘No. It’s not that. It’s just that he … I don’t know. I can’t stand him.’
‘Well you’ll be leaving home soon, when you get married.’
‘I don’t know when that’ll be. Not till this business about Dutch has been cleared up, anyway.’
‘Why? What has that to do with your getting married?’
Roger’s face clouded.
‘Some people seem to suspect me of having something to do with Dutch’s death.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘None! But you know how beastly suspicious some people are. They don’t know who else to suspect so they suspect me.’ Roger paused, then turned towards Carolus. ‘Do you, Mr Deene?’ he asked.
Carolus answered coolly.
‘Not particularly. I suspect everyone till I have reason not to suspect them. What is it you wanted to tell me?’
‘Oh, that. It may not have anything to do with it. And it’ll look as though I’m trying to put your suspicions on someone else.’
‘But you’re not?’
‘I’ve no reason to. This is all it is. June lives just across the road from the Spook Club. Swindleton owns the house she lives in and several more round there. June’s house is divided up into flats. He lets one of these on the first floor to June and her mother. I tell her it’s because he wants to keep an eye on her, but she won’t admit it. She thinks it’s just kindness. Kindness, mind you! From Swindleton. However there it is and June and I often sit up at the window after her mother’s gone to bed and watch who goes in and comes out of the Spook Club. I tell you, Mr Deene, you’d be surprised. Some of the most so-called respectable people in the town going in to buy pot. My so-called stepfather among them.’
‘Go on. This is interesting.’
‘I’m glad you find it so,’ said Roger bitterly. ‘On the Saturday night on which Dutch disappeared…’
‘How do you mean “disappeared”?’
‘Well he was never seen again, was he? And he was found dead next night. On the Saturday night we sat up there till late. We knew there was something funny going on over at the Spook Club but of course we hadn’t an idea what…’
Carolus interrupted.
‘Stop a minute,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t your friend June a hostess at the Spook Club? How did she come to be free on a Saturday evening?’
Roger grinned.
‘She doesn’t take her duties too seriously,’ he said. ‘That evening, at any rate, she didn’t intend to go there. It must have been not long before midnight when Des and Phil came out together and rode away.’
‘You didn’t see them again that night?’
‘No, but I’ll tell you what we did see. Swindleton came out of the Club about an hour later.’
‘That was around twelve?’
‘So far as I can say. I didn’t keep looking at my watch every five minutes, but near enough it must have been an hour after Des and Phil had left. It was early for him. Dancing usually went on till much later.’
‘You’ve no idea why he packed up early?’
‘No. We were surprised. I said to June, Swindleton’s packing up early tonight. Anyway he came out, got in his car and went off.’
‘Did he lock up?’
‘Must have done. I don’t remember seeing him but he locks up every night.’
‘Is that all you saw?’
‘No. This is the bit I want to tell you. This is what I haven’t told anyone else.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, it must have been about another half hour or so after Swindleton had gone that another motorbike came up. It wasn’t Phil or Des. I know their bikes well. But all the same I recognized who it was. So did June. It was Gil Bodmin.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. It was the biggest surprise of my life. The skinheads never come round to the Spook Club. Never been known to. It’s kind of understood. They go to the Cattle Market and we go to the Spook Club.’
‘So you class yourself as a greaser, if that’s the term?’
‘I don’t class myself as anything. Only that’s what Dutch was and I’ve never had any use for skinheads. I don’t mind admitting that even though I am telling you this about one of them.
‘Anyhow it was Gil. He pulled his bike up on the stand and went round to the back door. We couldn’t see him for a bit then. But we kept watching. I told you we thought there was something funny going on over at the Club and this was the bit that surprised us most. Then all of a sudden we saw Gil coming round the corner as though Satan was after him. He pulled his bike off the stand, jumped on and was away hell for leather down the road.’
‘Can you be sure of one or two things, Roger?’
‘I should think so. I’m not likely to have forgotten that night, am I?’
‘First of all, you are absolutely certain that it was Gil who rode up? I mean with goggles and helmets most of you look the same.’
‘Absolutely certain. He took his helmet off to go round the back.’
‘Then are you equally certain that it was Gil who came back from behind the building?’
‘Certain as the other. I watched him, didn’t I? And June will tell you the same.’
‘And there was no one—please be quite sure about this—there was no one on his pillion, coming or going?’
‘No one. We should have seen, wouldn’t we? He went off alone, same as he’d come.’
‘And that was the last you saw of him? Or of anyone else round the Spook Club that night?’
‘Yes. But after we’d gone to bed—June’s going to marry me, remember—after we were in bed, I can’t tell how long because I’d been asleep, June woke me up. She was sitting up in bed. “Roger, I’m sure I heard a car,” she said. I was sleepy. “What’s so funny about that?” I said, because it’s a fairly busy road and you often hear cars all night. “I was asleep”, I told her.
‘But she went on about it. “It was stopped outside the Spook Club,” she said, “and the engine was kept running.”
‘I asked her what sort of a car, I meant a lorry or a sports car or what. She gave me the sort of bloody silly answer a woman would give. “Just an ordinary car it sounded like.” So I told her to shut up and let me get to sleep. I mean, it could have been anything. Could have been Swindleton coming back to see whether he’d locked up. Or anything. I didn’t think any more about it that night. But afterwards, when I’d heard about Dutch, I wondered whether it had anything to do with it. Do you think it had?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Carolus. It was the literal truth but it might have been called disingenuous for all that. Then he asked, ‘Has your “so-called stepfather” as you refer to him, has he got a car?’
‘No. A motor-bike to go to work with. He works in a factory on the other side of the town. Shares the expense of the bike with a workmate he picks up every morning. Why?’
‘Just wondered,’ said Carolus with annoying vagueness. ‘I’ll have a talk to Gil Bodmin this evening. Ask him what he was doing round the Spook Club that night.’
‘Well, I must run along,’ said Roger. ‘I’m taking June out this afternoon.’
Now, with the latest information which Roger had given him Carolus began to feel that he was approaching the centre of the circle in ever decreasing twirls. Unless s
omething totally unexpected turned up he believed he could give Grimsby enough information to make an arrest within the next day or two,
A nasty little case, he reflected. Full of cruelty and malice and scarcely a gleam of decent behaviour, let alone generosity or decent feeling to compensate for it.
He lunched at an arty restaurant which advertised its inclusion in some good food guide or other but would have made a Frenchman turn green not with envy but with nausea. At eleven o’clock that night, having spent some hours with his notes, he approached the Cattle Market on foot. There was a bell and a peephole in the door and his ringing brought out, framed in the peep-hole, a long anxious face ornamented with a ludicrous moustache.
‘Are you a member?’ the owner of it demanded in a tired but hostile voice.
‘I’ve no wish to come in,’ Carolus replied. ‘I want to ask you if you would be good enough to call out one of your members named Gil Bodmin.’
The anxious face lengthened even more.
‘I’ll see if he’s in the Club. Who shall I tell him wants to see him? He won’t come out for just anybody you know. Are you the Law?’
‘No. But he will come out if you tell him quietly, out of the hearing of any of his friends, that Carolus Deene wants to see him.’
‘Who? What?’
‘It’s a perfectly simple name. Carolus is the Latin for Charles and Deene is quite a common surname.’
‘It sounds a bit fancy. Gil won’t like anything like that. But I’ll try him. You wait here.’
A scowling Gil presently emerged.
‘What the hell do you want?’ he shouted at Carolus in the hearing of the other, then said quietly—‘Wait for me round the corner.’
Carolus could hear him telling the other not to let any more of that sort in.
But presently Gil appeared and offered his hand to Carolus.
‘Wasn’t expecting you,’ he said.
‘Sure of that? What were you doing round the Spook Club on the night Dutch was killed?’
‘I was going to tell you about that.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘See, it’s about this phone call I got that night.’