Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Miss Frankland, have you a photograph of your sister without a hat?’

  ‘Only rather old ones,’ Sybil answered. ‘That’s the only one she has had taken for some time. Why?’

  ‘I wanted to know, I wanted to know,’ Mitchell answered twice over, and still he kept his eyes fixed with the same strange intensity on the picture in the paper. He said presently: ‘Miss Frankland, has your sister changed her way of doing her hair lately?’

  Sybil shook her head, looking a little as if she thought Mitchell had gone suddenly mad. Ferris seemed almost as bewildered. He was looking alternately at the photograph and at Mitchell, as if unable to understand either. Curtis said with some impatience,

  ‘What on earth does it matter about the way she did her hair?’

  ‘Why, it matters this much, Mr Curtis, sir,’ Mitchell answered, turning away as if the paper had no longer any interest for him, ‘I was thinking I should have to ask you to come along with us, I was thinking I should have to charge you in face of what you’ve told us. But if it’s true Mrs Curtis has always done her hair that way – why, then, I think you’re cleared, unless of course fresh evidence turns up. But at present I don’t think I need trouble you any more. Come along, Ferris.’

  And the Inspector looked an utterly and hopelessly bewildered man till they were outside the house, when just as they were getting into the car he cried suddenly,

  ‘My God, I see it now – why, if you hadn’t noticed that, sir, Curtis might have hanged.’ He added presently, ‘Plain enough once you do notice it – even a description of that photo would be enough for a smart man to see at once what it meant.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alarm Given

  The art dealer’s establishment in Deal Street, a turning off Piccadilly, now owned by Maurice Keene, had been founded by his father a good many years previously. After existing in somewhat precarious fashion during the pre-war and war periods, it had suddenly blossomed into huge success during that boom when people believed that peace and prosperity were synonyms. For a time all that was necessary to sell a picture was to have a sufficient stock in hand, and during that period the profits had been very large. Unfortunately, the elder Mr Keene, a little over-excited, imagining these were conditions that would last, much under the influence of what psycho-analysts would probably call a ‘victory complex’, had invested practically all those profits, almost all his working capital, indeed, in more pictures, of which nearly all, now that slump had replaced boom, remained in the cellars, insured at a figure far above present-day values. The famous Rembrandt, for example, for which it will be remembered the elder Keene, shortly before his death, gave a large sum at Christie’s, and concerning the authenticity of which a sharp discussion raged for a time in the columns of the art journals, still remained on the hands of his son, in spite of the fact that a South American millionaire had once paid a deposit on it. Even so, that square yard of painted canvas represented a capital of seven thousand lying idle.

  ‘I’d like to burn the lot,’ Keene had once said viciously to that rare bird, a customer, who, as it chanced, was Mr Esmond Bryan, the head of the Leadeane Sun Bathing establishment.

  One of the sun-bathers, an artist by profession, who had read paragraphs in the papers about Parisian artists exchanging their work by barter for such mundane things as groceries, cutlets, and clothes, had offered Mr Bryan two or three landscapes as payment for his subscription to the Society of Sun Believers of Leadeane Grange, and for suitable bodily refreshment needed during his visits there – for the Leadeane Grange restaurant was famous among those who put food high in the list of the many, many things needing reform. Mr Bryan, by no means devoid of business instincts, even though it was said he carried on his establishment at a loss, had called at Deal Street, to ascertain the value of the proffered works. Keene’s bitter and perhaps exaggerated comment had been that he had two large cellars crammed with better work by better-known men, and that work of the quality offered could only be got rid of by giving it away with a pound of tea or else by waiting till the fifth of November, when no doubt material for bonfires would be in demand.

  ‘Burning, that’s all that quality of work is good for in these times,’ he repeated, but all the same Mr Bryan, undismayed, made a small purchase, announced his intention of accepting the two pictures offered him as payment for a year’s subscription to the Sun Believers, and, in addition, for a shilling’s worth of carrot tea and minced potato peel, or of such other vitamin-crammed, blood-purifying, vitality-giving foods as might be on sale in the Grange restaurant, on each visit that the artist made during the year.

  Before leaving, Mr Bryan suggested that Keene would do well to pay a visit to the Grange, declaring that he would very likely find fresh clients among the sun-bathers, all of whom, Mr Bryan asserted with fervour, were devotees of beauty, fanatics of all true art and loveliness, and some of them even provided with that vulgarity of superfluous cash so convenient in his vulgar world. But this invitation, though it had been accepted, had so far had no result in the way of sales, though it had increased Keene’s appreciation of such things as roast beef and pork chops.

  Indeed, customers seemed to be growing every day rarer birds at the Deal Street establishment. On this morning of the day following the tragedy of the Leadeane Road, not one had crossed its threshold. The only visitors had been hopeful artists – tautology, all artists are either hopeful or dead – eager to add a few more to the innumerable canvases stacked in every corner of cellar and shop, various travellers and pedlars, one or two undisguised beggars, and a fashionable young lady selling tickets for a forthcoming charity ball and hinting not obscurely that the custom of herself and of her numerous wealthy and important friends would in the future bear an exact ratio to the number of tickets now purchased.

  But as it happened the manager Keene now employed was a fashionable young lady herself, Helen Duncan by name, fully capable of dealing with other fashionable young ladies and today routing the invader with great loss. The salary Miss Duncan received hardly paid for her gloves and cigarettes, but the work provided her with an excuse for being away from a home she appreciated all the more for seeing so little of it. She was quite a good business woman – or would have been had there been any business to transact – really knew something about art and of the commercial as apart from the artistic value of pictures, took a genuine interest in the work; and if she considered herself entitled to take a day or a morning or afternoon off, whenever she felt like it or some attraction offered, that was really but a trifling drawback, especially in these times when there was so little to do. Besides, she was always considerate about this, and when a cocktail party, a visit to a matinee, an afternoon at bridge, claimed her, she was always careful to let Keene know, so that he might have time to cancel any engagement he had made likely to take him out at the same time. She had the additional merit of getting on rather well with the different errand boys, who were now in swift succession the only other employees at Deal Street, and indeed would often be able to get them to stay quite a long time, as much as five or six months sometimes. Also she smoked cigarettes continuously, and she regarded her employer with a lofty and patronizing contempt he resented deeply but dared not show for fear she departed. In her eyes he was a lower middle-class trading person, to whom it was as natural for her to give orders as to the footman at home. But indeed they had a kind of natural instinct for rubbing each other up the wrong way, though they found each other so useful there was at present no prospect either of his rebelling against her domineering ways or of her terminating her connexion with the business. Indeed, more than once she had hinted she would be willing to buy him out, though at a figure which it would have been unduly flattering to describe as a bargain basement price.

  ‘When I feel like making you a present of the business, I’ll let you know,’ he had answered loweringly, and she had smiled rather maddeningly as she lighted a fresh cigarette and thought to herself that very likely some day soon
the liquidator would be willing to consider an offer even smaller. ‘And I’ll thank you,’ he added, making a grab at the waste-paper basket into which she had tossed her match, ‘to be a bit more careful, or you’ll have the whole place on fire, and I don’t happen to want to be burnt out just yet, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘Rot,’ she retorted, ‘don’t talk silly, that match was out all right.’

  ‘It’s out now,’ he told her; ‘it was alight when you threw it in there.’

  ‘Liar,’ she retorted simply.

  ‘If the insurance company knew about you,’ he snapped angrily, ‘they would double the premium – Lord knows, it’s high enough as it is.’

  ‘I don’t see why you don’t cut it,’ she remarked. ‘You carry too much by half.’

  ‘Too little, you mean,’ he answered, ‘so long as that Rembrandt’s down there.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never seen it,’ she observed. ‘I don’t see why you go on keeping it nailed up like that.’

  ‘Because it’s sold if it isn’t paid for,’ he replied. ‘I told you that before – the money may be paid and delivery claimed at any moment. That was a condition of the sale, and I’m not going to lose the chance either.’

  She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. That Rembrandt had become almost legendary. Personally she doubted sometimes its very existence, certainly its authenticity. As long as she had been there it had reposed in its case, elaborately fastened up, ready for delivery to some South American, who had arranged to purchase it, and paid a deposit on it, but had never either claimed the picture or paid the rest of the purchase money. Still, if the transaction were cancelled apparently two-thirds of the deposit would have to be returned, which would not be convenient, and certainly no other purchaser was in sight for the moment, so the painting, genuine or not, remained in its carefully packed case, waiting to be claimed.

  Keene went off then to see some prospective, Miss Duncan suspected mythical, customer in the city, and as he went the latest errand boy, who had been listening with much interest to this fresh passage of arms, and who was passionately on the side of Miss Duncan, put out his tongue at him. Keene saw the gesture in a mirror, but suppressed his natural instinct to turn and box the cheeky youngster’s ears. For one thing errand boys are hard to get and harder to keep, and for another it might be useful some day to have a witness to this little conversation.

  He took a bus to the City, and getting down near the Bank walked on towards the Tower, turning presently into Howland Yard, where stood some dozen or so of old-fashioned, rather tumble-down houses, most of them badly in need of paint and repair. There was no way out, the only entry being that by which Keene had come in, and all the houses, except one or two which were empty, were in the occupation of various business firms. Number Seven, about half-way down on the left from the entrance, was occupied by ‘Business Furs, Ltd’, as a large and shining brass plate proclaimed. On the ground floor were the offices, and a large waiting-room where an occasional favoured client might sometimes be permitted to buy a coat at ‘warehouse price’ instead of at ‘West End price’ – though it had happened that after the completion of the purchase the new owner of the fur coat was a little inclined to wonder which of these was the higher, or on which side lay the difference. But such sales were comparatively rare, for the business was essentially wholesale. The basement was let off to a neighbouring wireless set manufacturer for storage purposes, and on the upper floors were kept the furs that formed, declared young Mr Horace Hunter, managing director, founder, and apparently almost sole shareholder in the concern, the finest collection in London.

  He could – and did – for example boast of eight or ten coats, mink or Russian sable, of such fine quality that by themselves they were insured for six thousand pounds.

  ‘Under-insured at that,’ Hunter would say sometimes, though admitting that during the continuance of the present slump it might be hard to find purchasers. ‘But once things turn the corner,’ he was accustomed to add, ‘as they must sooner or later, because slumps don’t last for ever, then they’ll fetch double.’

  There were two big packing cases of blue fox furs as well, also insured for a large sum, and also being held for a better market, and a good deal more of valuable stock. Hunter, in fact, had started in rather a big way at the time when the post-war boom was at its height, and when, since all the world was making money, all the world’s wife wanted – and got – the most expensive furs possible. But almost as soon as the business got well under way, the slump arrived. For a time, Hunter admitted, bankruptcy had threatened, for expensive furs had become almost as difficult to sell as pictures. But now, taking advantage of an opportunity that, said Keene ruefully, came no picture dealer’s way, he claimed to have turned even the slump to advantage by a large purchase of lower grade furs at a figure so low his re-sale of them at bargain prices had yet shown a very satisfactory profit. Indeed, he used to tell his friends he was seriously thinking of starting clubs in working-class districts on the principle of ‘Pay a shilling a week and choose your own fur coat’.

  ‘Though, mind you,’ he would add earnestly, ‘the really good furs, the mink, the ermine, the true Persian lamb, the blue fox, and so on, like those I have upstairs waiting for better times, will always command their price. The charlady may have her ponyskin to keep her warm, the shop girl may go to work in her musquash, but the rich woman will still want her thousand-guinea mink – I’ve more than one of that kind upstairs.’

  No more than Keene did Hunter employ a large staff, for in spite of his sales of cheaper grade skins he had been obliged to cut down expenses. There were two or three women whose job it was to look after the stored furs, a manager, a typist, and the inevitable, transitory office boy. In appearance Hunter was a youngish man of middle size, round, plump, with dark hair and eyes, a small toothbrush moustache and generally indeterminate features above a chin that slipped oddly away to a point. Today he was alone on the ground floor, for his manager was upstairs, seeing to some rearrangement of the stock, the typist was out, and the office boy had gone on some errand or another to a furrier five minutes’ walk away and so was not likely to be back for another hour or two. He was busy with accounts which in more prosperous times it would have been the duty of the cashier to keep, and these accounts he was scowling over as if he did not find them too satisfactory. His scowl did not lessen when he looked up as Keene appeared, entering by the open door as one who was familiar there.

  ‘What are you so early for?’ he demanded. ‘What’s the idea? The less you come around in daylight the better.’

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ Keene answered. He sat down uninvited and took out a cigarette, but put it back unlighted in its case. ‘Seen about the murder?’ he asked.

  What about it?’ Hunter asked. ‘Your girl’s sister, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sybil’s sister,’ Keene repeated. ‘She hated me,’ he said, ‘she wanted to break it off. I expect she would in time if she had lived, but now she’s dead.’

  ‘You’re nervy,’ Hunter said. ‘Better have a whisky.’

  He rose to move towards a cupboard in the wall, but Keene said almost violently,

  ‘No, sit down,’ and then more quietly as Hunter stared at him, ‘You were at Leadeane yesterday?’

  ‘So were you,’ Hunter said. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Jo was coming from the Grange when it happened,’ Keene said.

  ‘So the paper says,’ Hunter agreed. ‘I left before she did, though. I was talking to a chap in the City at the time she was seen leaving there.’

  ‘An alibi, eh?’ Keene sneered.

  ‘If you like,’ Hunter answered. ‘What’s the matter with you? When did you leave?’

  ‘About as soon as she got there,’ Keene answered. ‘I saw her and I didn’t much want her to see me. I told Bryan I would put off my sun bath till another time, and I cleared back to town.’

  ‘Another alibi, eh?’ Hunter repeated with another sneer.


  ‘Do you know she’s been prowling about this place several times lately?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say – she’s been here more than once. I saw her myself, and Curtis saw her, too.’

  Hunter looked disturbed, afraid.

  ‘What did she want? Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Wasn’t there someone here last week trying to buy a Persian lamb coat, had a letter of introduction, couldn’t quite make up her mind, asked if she might come again?’

  ‘Yes. I believe so. Why? I didn’t see her myself. I was out. What about it?’

  ‘That was her, that was Jo,’ Keene said.

  ‘My God,’ Hunter muttered below his breath. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked again.

  ‘I saw her yesterday morning after I left here. She didn’t see me. I was on a bus. I wondered what she wanted. I didn’t like it. I knew she hated me, I knew she wanted to get Sybil away. I got off the bus and followed. She didn’t see me, but Curtis did; his works are close by, you know, and all round here he has customers he calls on. Perhaps he had seen me before. I think when he saw me, and saw I was following Jo, he got it into his cracked silly head there was something up, that we were meeting on the sly, and he got into one of his jealous fits. I made certain that Jo was really coming here, and afterwards I rang your people up and they said she had been here before and had been talking a lot at large – they didn’t know what she wanted, but they didn’t think it was a fur coat. Now she’s been murdered,’ he concluded abruptly.