I shrugged my shoulders gracefully. “No harm in trying. How many are there here, by the way?”
“Exactly eighty,” he said. “You wouldn’t think it, sir, but there are, and they’re not cubby holes at that.”
That was the end of Yeovil Street for me. There certainly had been something fishy and a bet was a bet, especially when made with one’s self. But as I walked back I decided on my new itinerary. A personal call in Fleet Street, I thought, and then to Soho and the pawnshop. All very simple, or wasn’t it? It wasn’t.
“Young feller-me-lad,” I told myself, “you’ve got to watch your step. You can go into that pawnshop and collect the ring, but how much farther will that get you?”
I stopped where I was and looked at the palm of my hand as if the ring were in it. How far would that have got me? Not an inch. All I could do was to insert another notice—“Goods in my possession,” or something like that, and then wait for the writer of the letter to make the next move. But that wasn’t according to my book. I wanted a description of Markovitch, and I’d have liked to know if a platinum wrist-watch and a platinum cigarette-case had also been pawned. I wanted action, in fact. The correspondence method of carrying on the case looked hopeless from the point of view of a man who had only ten days’ further leave left in town.
And how was I to get the information I wanted? I hadn’t the least idea but it did seem to me that I might have a better hope of both bluff and bribery if I changed my mufti for uniform. So I altered my course for the flat again, and when I had changed I took a taxi for Fleet Street, for the morning was getting along.
The notice was handed in for the Personal Column and would appear, I was assured, in the next morning’s issue. The taxi had waited and I finally paid it off at Piccadilly Circus. Then I reconnoitred, and when I’d located the pawnshop I went to a little place nearby for a coffee and a think. What I decided was to let action wait on event. On me I had my B.2606—the Army Identity Card—which might serve for bluff, and the wad of notes which might be useful as persuaders.
The pawnshop was a dingy one, even for a dingy street, though the rare sun did give it colour. In the windows were genuine rubbish and faked objets de vertu, and there was also a grilled window behind which were pieces of jewellery whose value I had no time to assess. The place was empty when I went in, pawn-ticket in hand. Though I’m blind as a bat without them, I’d taken off my glasses at the very last moment, and it was not till I’d had occasion to put them on again that I had a good look at the man who came up to me behind the counter. He was about fifty, rather shabby, certainly Jewish, and as wide-awake as they make them.
I cast a long look round the shop; a look suspicious and official. I hoped that would get me somewhere; and then at his, “Yes, sir?” I gave him a quiet look too.
“You Mr. Cowan?” I said.
“No, sir, I’m the manager. What is it you want?”
I put on my glasses and then counted out the notes, with a five-pound note for charges, and gave him the ticket.
“You have a ring of mine, I think?”
He gave me a quick look, then went off to somewhere at the far end of the counter. When he came back there was no fuss or bother. I signed for the ring as Ivan Markovitch and that was that. Then I gave another mysterious look round the shop. Next I produced my wallet and let him have a surreptitious look at my B.2606.
“I’d like to ask you a simple question or two,” I said “If you want my bona fides, here they are.”
I flourished the card under his nose, so that he could see it, photograph, official stamp and all.
“Just imagine,” I said, and smiled craftily, “that I’m a Security Officer and making a confidential enquiry or two. And giving you my word that everything’s strictly between you and me?”
I had taken out the wad of fivers and had put them carelessly in the tunic pocket.
“Depends what the questions are,” he said, and shot me another look. “We aren’t supposed to answer questions.”
“In a court of law you are,” I said. “But you and I don’t want that. Besides, I don’t want to know very much. Just a description of the real Ivan Markovitch—the one who pawned the ring.”
He shook his head, though with a definite regret as I fingered the fiver.
“Sorry, sir, but it can’t be done. You ought to know the Law about that. Besides, Mr. Cowan handled that.”
I found another fiver and then put the rest carefully back in the breast pocket of my tunic.
“Think again,” I said. “Or do I have to go and see Mr. Cowan?”
He shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms, but his eyes never left those two fivers. When at last they did, it was to have a quick look round. His voice lowered.
“You’re sure this won’t get me into any trouble?”
“I give you my honest-to-God word,” I said, and fingered the notes. “These notes aren’t marked,” I added. “Look at them for yourself.”
He was motioning mysteriously, and I made my way round the counter to a kind of office.
“I’ll tell you about Markovitch,” he said. “But even if you offered me a hundred quid I wouldn’t tell you any more. Not that I’ve got anything to be afraid of.”
“I never suggested it,” I said, and waited.
“He’s a Russian refugee,” he said. “Connected with the Embassy, so he said. We’ve done a little business with him once or twice before. Jewellery belonging to himself, and his pals; you know how it is with those Russians.”
“I know,” I said helpfully. “Living from month to month on what they have to pawn. But what’s he actually like?”
“Tall,” he said. “Not as tall as you. About six foot, I’d say. A short black beard. Speaks fairly good English.”
“Age?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Over fifty. About my age perhaps. You never can tell with those foreigners.”
“Any other distinguishing features?”
“He wears glasses,” he said. “Looks a gent too.”
“No scars, disfigurements, or anything?”
He shook his head, then remembered something. “Only that he’s got hair on the back of his hands. Thick hair. Like some people have on their chests.”
I held out the fivers, then appeared to change my mind.
“You’ve earned your money,” I said. “Maybe some time you’ll be willing to earn some more, on the same terms. But just a little assurance first. I’ve promised all this is strictly between you and me. It is—on one condition; that you’ve given me the straight dope. If I find this description, for instance, isn’t genuine, then I take back what I’ve promised.”
He swore by all that was holy that it was genuine, so I paid up. I also thanked him and told him he needn’t worry. I thought of giving him my flat number, in case Markovitch called again, and then I thought better of it. A matter of a minute and I was outside again, and strolling back towards Piccadilly Circus.
As I turned into Coventry Street a taxi drew up to the pavement ahead of me. Who should get out but Hamson and we almost collided.
“Hallo,” I said, “where have you sprung from?”
“The inquest,” he told me.
“Of course,” I said. “What happened?”
“The usual,” he said. “Suicide in a moment of mental aberration, or words to that effect.” Then he was giving me a shrewd look. “Would that have been your verdict?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “God forbid that I should judge anyone, let alone poor Worrack. But the funeral. Any subscriptions wanted for flowers or anything?”
He shook his head. “Poor old Peter wouldn’t have wanted any fuss. But what about having lunch with me now?”
“Can’t be done,” I said. “Got an appointment with a bloke in about ten minutes. Been fooling around this morning,” I added with what I hoped was insouciance. “Been grubbing round the Soho antique shops.”
“Didn’t know you were a collector,” he said. “Get any
thing worth having?”
“Not really,” I said. “Just one odd bit of jewellery.”
“You must show it to me some time,” he said. “I won’t keep you now. Ring me up when you’re free for lunch. I’m always in till ten in the morning.”
I said I would, and we parted. Of one thing I was sure, that that reference to Soho and jewellery had left him stone cold. Unless I was the world’s worst judge, it was not he, then, who was my new employer. Then I thought of something else, and circled round the Circus again. Down below I waited for an empty telephone kiosk and then rang Bill Ellice. Not that I had many hopes of finding him in; but he was.
“Hallo, Bill,” I said. “Major Travers speaking.”
“Oh, hallo, sir.”
“Tell me, in the very strictest confidence, if since you rang me last any new business has come your way.”
“Funny thing but it has! You mean I’ve got to thank you for it, sir?”
“Forget it,” I said. “That’s the last thing I want to talk about. But not very much in your line, is it?”
“Don’t know, sir,” he said. “Some of that divorce stuff can be pretty good. This one looks that way.”
“Glad to hear it,” I told him. “Good luck to you, Bill. Keep all this under your hat.”
Well, that made Hamson out to be genuine enough. In fact I thought I’d been rather a fool to put him on my list at all. But I didn’t do any more speculating, for I was suddenly feeling most damnably hungry. As I made my way to a place I knew, I all at once realised that I ought to do something about that ring and my employer. Maybe I ought to hurry to the Telegraph office and have my insertion altered.
READY. Accept your offer. Goods now in my possession.
T.
That, I thought, would meet the case. Then I changed my mind. Why rush my hurdles? Better by far let READY make the next move.
After lunch I went to a movie; one of those French pictures that are stimulating and provocative, and well out of the Hollywood rut. It was rather late for tea when I came out, but I dropped into a handy tea-shop for a cup before going on to the library. As I thought about the picture I’d seen I realised that another of my theories had gone west.
Jean, the French bar-tender, had been the corner-stone of a very pretty theory, and round him was to have been built—had I gone on with the original case—some possible solution of the disappearance of Georgina Morbent. Jean, I had thought, was the driver of the car that called for her after dark at the Richmond Hotel. It was a silly theory from the beginning, as I now knew, and the only reason, perhaps, why I had been taken with it was the idea that Georgina must have given Jean his job at the club and therefore knew him well enough to take him into her confidence.
But since the visit to the pawnshop it seemed reasonable to think that the driver of that car had been the elusive Markovitch. Was there such a person, I wondered. A dark beard can be faked and so can a foreign accent. But height could not, and when I cast about in my mind for someone of the height of Markovitch, I knew that both Molde and Hamson would fit the bill.
Then I had to smile at myself. I’d made up my mind to let things happen to me, through that notice in the paper, and I wasn’t going to rush my hurdles, and yet there I was, theorising again when every theory I’d already produced in that case had been a waste of time. That theory, for instance, that Georgina had been alive, and that it was she who was listening behind the door in Worrack’s room that first morning I met him. She couldn’t be alive, I now told myself, for if she’d have thought as much of Worrack as he’d hinted that she did, then would she have kept out of the way when she knew he was dead? Or didn’t she know he was dead?
There I was again, and so to keep my mind off things I gulped down the rest of my tea, paid my bill, and went off in the direction of the library, for if I was going to spend a domestic evening I’d need something to read. As I made my way along Regent Street I happened to glance in a jeweller’s window. It was a firm with whom I’d done a little business in the past, so on the spur of the moment I walked in. An elderly man who knew me, but whose name I’d forgotten, came over to attend to me.
There was no one there but we two, so I took the ring from the fob pocket of my slacks and asked him if he’d give me a very rough idea of its value. He took one of those little spy glasses from his waistcoat pocket and squinted at the stone. Then he checked up more closely against a strong light.
“A very nice ring, sir,” he said. “Very nice indeed. I suppose you don’t want to sell it?”
I said I didn’t. I also saw that he had been wary enough to suggest that before putting on a price. Then he said it was worth £250. Possibly more. High-class stuff had gone up enormously in value.
“How much do I owe you?” I asked him.
“Nothing at all, sir. It’s a pleasure.”
I thanked him and put the ring carefully back.
“Just give me a bit of private information,” I said. “You know me, but suppose I’d taken this ring into a pawnshop where they didn’t know me. Would it have been the duty of the pawnbroker to insist on enquiries before accepting it? Or even to have reported it to the police?”
He smiled rather dryly. “Depends on the pawnbroker, sir. I’d say that not one in fifty would have refused it, unless of course the person who tried to pawn it couldn’t reasonably have owned anything so valuable.”
That again was that, and it didn’t tell me very much, except that Markovitch might have got far more money for that ring if he’d played his cards rather differently. From that it was easy to deduce that he couldn’t play them differently. He had had to put himself at the mercy of the pawnbroker because any other method of raising money on the ring would have been too dangerous.
Theorising again, you see, and in full blast, but though I was aware of it, I couldn’t stop myself. The train of thought was too attractive. For instance, did Markovitch expect to redeem the ring later and then make its value when things were less dangerous? Was the pawnbroker, in other words, merely a handy custodian? If so, why had Markovitch been such a careless fool as to lose the ticket? Or was it Markovitch—a fake Markovitch—who had sent me the ticket? Because it was too dangerous for him to get the ring out of pawn? That was it, I thought excitedly. I was merely an errand boy. I’d done Markovitch’s dirty work for him, and he’d find some means of getting me to hand over the ring without his having to betray his identity. And, I told myself, I was damned if I was going to permit that. The ring, I believed was Georgina’s. I could prove it, if occasion arose, by a confidential call on her sister, and no fake Markovitch or any other person was going to have that ring without giving me a good, sufficient and clean-out-in-the-open reason.
I stopped theorising then, not because I’d come to a cul-de-sac but for quite the opposite reason. A promising vista lay ahead and it was I who held the cards and had to play them rightly. Masterly inactivity, that must be the policy. READY must make all the moves and I’d make the counter-moves. A long business perhaps, and yet I didn’t know. Inside a week, with any luck, I ought to force his hand. Unlike the importunate widow who wearied by her much asking, I’d drive READY frantic by being dumb.
Frank readily agreed to send a Telegraph up each morning with my breakfast and I promised to bring it down in under an hour, when I came through on my usual walk. I’d have preferred one of my own, but Frank said it just couldn’t be done.
When the paper came the following morning I found that notice of mine at the head of the Personal Column, and that was all for the moment, because I couldn’t expect any sort of reply till the next day’s issue. So, in strict compliance with my overnight resolve, I set about planning my day. A long stroll in Hyde Park, I thought, just to see how things were looking there, for with the marvellous weather we’d been having, crocuses should be out and there might even be early daffodils. Then lunch at my club, where I’d been a stranger for months, and after that and a yarn with any old acquaintances there might be about, I’d plan
the rest of the day.
It was just after half-past ten when I was handing Frank back the Telegraph. He said I needn’t have hurried, for it belonged to a Mrs. Somebody who never woke till midday. Then he said it was a pretty horrible business about that head.
“What head?” I said.
“That woman’s head that was found,” he said. “They reckon the police have got a clue, though.”
Frank loves murders and divorces, and before I could dodge him he had found me a newspaper of the baser sort.
“There it is, sir. Much the same as was in the papers last night.”
SEVERED HEAD OF WOMAN
DRAMATIC DISCOVERY IN LONDON PARK
Those were the headlines. I ran a casual eye over the rest without actually seeing a word.
“Pretty ghastly, as you say,” I remarked, handing the paper back.
“I hope they find the one what did it,” Frank told me grimly. “Red hair, they reckoned, she’d got, so that ought to make it a bit easy.”
I was just moving off, but that stopped me in my tracks. But I didn’t like to ask for the paper again, so as soon as I got outside I was looking round for a taxi. I was lucky enough to get one, and in ten minutes I was at my club.
Papers of all sorts were there, and I found one with the discovery spread on the front page. This is what I read:
A dramatic and horrible discovery was made yesterday morning by Mr. James Gullage, a park-keeper in Hyde Park. Under a seat near Spouter’s Corner he found a parcel and when he opened it he was horrified to find the severed head of a woman. A policeman happened to be in sight and Mr. Gullage immediately called him. It is understood that the police have a highly important clue and sensational developments are expected. (See below.)
Below was an interview with Mr. Gullage, but chiefly padding, for he had obviously had the matter taken out of his hands by the policeman. He did say, however, that the head was that of a “lady” and that she had the most beautiful red hair; what, in words certainly faked by the reporter was “the most silky and striking auburn I have ever come across.”
The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 13