by Joyce Porter
Chapter Ten
The Hon. Con would have hesitated to classify Mr Stark-Denoon as half-witted but she found him remarkably slow on the up-take. It took him several minutes to grasp the purpose of her visit and then he reacted with an unflattering lack of interest.
‘Rodney Burberry? But, ’e’s dead. Took the h’easy way out, the ’orrible little coward.’
‘It is precisely because he is dead that I am here,’ said the Hon. Con, employing the voice she used for speaking to small children. ‘I have reason to believe that he did not commit suicide.’
‘Didn’t commit suicide?’ Mr Stark-Denoon rolled his eyes in a most disturbing manner. ‘’Ere, are you trying to h’insult me? ’Course he croaked himself. I drove ’im to it, didn’t I?’
‘No, you didn’t! The Hon. Con made up her mind not to stand for any of that kind of nonsense. If Mr Stark-Denoon was cultivating a guilt complex he could find somebody else to air it on. ‘Rodney Burberry was murdered and I’ve come to you because I want to get all the information I can about him. In your capacity as his probation officer you must know all about his background – his family relationships, his friends, his hobbies, his …’
‘Cor strike a light!’ said Mr Stark-Denoon with a very unpleasant sniff. ‘ Well, h’if that’s what you’re after, h’I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong blooming shop.’
‘But I understood that probation officers were supposed …’
‘Book learning!’ snorted Mr Stark-Denoon. ‘Theory! Load of old ’orse droppings! H’I’m a practical man, h’I am. Lifetime’s h’experience,’ he muttered and opened one of his desk drawers. ‘H’I could’ve sworn I had some fags in ’ ere.’ He pulled out two more drawers. ‘Rot them miserable young curs! Nick anything that’s not nailed down.’ He started patting hopelessly at his pockets. ‘You got h’any, lady?’
‘I don’t smoke,’ said the Hon. Con.
‘Well, h’I do.’ Mr Stark-Denoon rose to his feet, drew himself up to his full height and threw back his head.
‘Boy!’
Almost instantaneously the door flew open and one of the youths from the waiting room appeared. He froze rigidly at attention with his thumbs down the seam of his trousers.
Mr Stark-Denoon inspected him sourly. ‘Got h’any fags, lad?’
The youth stared fixedly at a point just above Mr Stark-Denoon’s head. ‘No, sir!’
‘You h’are,’ said Mr Stark-Denoon without a hint of passion or anger, ‘a putrefying, blackguardly, lecherous, guzzling liar and, h’if I ’ ave to come over there and find ’ em for myself, you h’are going to be dead sorry your misbegotten father h’ever ’ ad it off with your misbegotten mother. ’And ’em over!’
‘Yes, sir!’ The boy produced a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket and placed them gingerly on the edge of Mr Stark-Denoon’s desk.
Mr Stark-Denoon pursed his lips in disgust. ‘ Ho, well, I suppose they’ll ’ave to do,’ he grumbled as he picked the packet up, ‘but I h’advise you to change to h’Embassy in future. I’m saving the coupons.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The boy turned to leave the room but Mr Stark-Denoon stopped him. ‘Matches?’
‘I’ve only got a lighter, sir.’
‘My ’eart bleeds for you!’ Mr Stark-Denoon held out a huge hand ‘Ta! And now, ’op it!’
The door closed and Mr Stark-Denoon dropped back heavily into his chair. With a great deal of clumsy fumbling he managed to extract a cigarette and light it. ‘See what h’I mean, ma’am?’ he asked the Hon. Con through a paroxysm of coughing. ‘Jesus!’ He regarded the cigarette with suspicion. ‘It tastes like a blooming reefer! Ho, well’ – he sucked in another lungful of smoke – ‘I’ve survived worse during the war. Camel dung it was as often as not in the desert. Still’ – he hoisted his feet on to the desk – ‘ you get the h’idea, don’t you?’
‘I think so,’ said the Hon. Con icily.
‘Always ’it ’ em where it ’urts,’ Mr Stark-Denoon advised her with a coarse chuckle. ‘Below the belt!’
The Hon. Con gave him a look.
Mr Stark-Denoon caught it and hastened to assure her that his remark was to be taken in a financial rather than an anatomical sense. ‘You can tell ’em to stop smoking till you’re blue h’in the face and they just thumb their noses at you,’ he rumbled, ‘but, h’if you confiscate their fags, it’s as good h’as taking the money h’out of their pockets. They don’t like that.’
‘I don’t suppose they do.’ The Hon. Con was regarding Mr Stark-Denoon with patent distaste. All men were disgusting, of course, but this particular specimen was even more revolting than most. She must be very careful. One heedless move and the slovenly brute could be on her in a flash! Heaven only knew what he might do should his animal instincts be roused. The Hon. Con knew only too well that a lowering of the conversational tone frequently preceded some form of indecent assault. Admittedly nobody so far had ever tried any funny business with her – but there was always the first time. She began to regret that she had not brought her umbrella with her. Or even borrowed Miss Jones’s hat pin. As a rule she was happy to rely on a well directed left hook to protect her honour, but Mr Stark-Denoon looked a mite too big and strong to be felled by one blow, however crisp.
The object of her concern emerged from another fit of coughing only slightly redder in the face than he had been before. ‘Devils h’incarnate,’ he informed her aggressively, ‘that’s what these kids h’are. I don’t ’ave to see their mothers and fathers to know that. Broken ’omes? Load of crap! I come from a broken ’ ome myself and it ’asn’t ’andicapped me, ’as it? H’original sin, that’s what’s the matter with ’em and I don’t care who ’ears me say so. It’s my job to give ’em a new h’outlook on life – h’and I do. One step h’out of line and I drop on ’em like’ – he smacked his lips as he savoured the idea – ‘the wrath of God, h’if you’ll pardon the h’expression.’
The Hon. Con made a determined effort to get the interview back on the right lines. ‘So you don’t know anything about Rodney Burberry’s background?’
‘Not a bloody thing!’ snickered Mr Stark-Denoon. ‘But I knew plenty about ’im, the stinking little wart. Ho, I was up to all ’is tricks, all right! After twenty-five years running glass-houses in the h’army, you can’t pull the wool h’over my h’eyes.’ He gazed sorrowfully at the Hon. Con. ‘H’I was quite looking forward to reforming young Mack the Fork, you know. Thought ’ ee’d give me more of a run for my money than some of these h’other lady-like punks they send me.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘H’unfortunately, it didn’t work h’out like that.’
‘Oh?’
‘The first time ’ee came in ’ere after they’d let ’im out of Borstal, he gave me a bit of lip so I ’ad to sort ’im out.’ Mr Stark-Denoon’s eyes blurred over and his voice sank to a low croon. ‘ Black and blue h’all over, ’ee was. You should ’ave seen ’im. ’Ardly ’ad the strength to put ’is clothes on when I’d finished with ’im. After that, though’ – he gave a deep sigh – ‘h’all the fight seemed to go out of ’im. Week after week and ’ee never really gave me a h’excuse for piling into ’im. I’m not a machine, you know,’ he declared almost tearfully. ‘ I don’t get no pleasure out of thrashing a lad h’unless I can get myself worked up h’about it first. ’ Course,’ he slumped back moodily in his chair once more, ‘I blame that Kama Sutra lot. I reckon they h’advised ’im to keep ’ is nose clean. Too damned fly by ’alf, that mob.’
The Hon. Con made a gallant attempt to join in. ‘ I believe it was somebody from the Kama Sutra who told Rodney to take a job.’ she said.
Mr Stark-Denoon nodded his head glumly. ‘H’I shouldn’t be surprised. It was h’all a big disappointment for me, h’anyhow. I really thought h’I’d ’ad it where that boy was concerned.’ He lapsed into a prolonged silence.
The Hon. Con sought desperately for something to say while a tiny trickle of saliva ran out of Mr Stark-Denoon’s mouth and do
wn his chin. Oh, horrors – was he going to have a fit or something? Should she try to leave? Or would that merely make him determined to detain her and force her to heavens-knows-what against her will? The Hon. Con’s fears were beginning to get out of hand – but she knew what she meant, by jingo!
‘Still, nobody’s perfect, h’are they?’ asked Mr Stark-Denoon suddenly. ‘H’I bided my time, h’I did, and sure enough, h’I nabbed ’im!’
‘Really?’ The Hon. Con erased a polite smile just in time. God knows to what passionate excesses a polite smile might not have roused him!
‘Booze,’ said Mr Stark-Denoon.
‘Booze?’
‘The ’ard stuff, too. Caught ’im buying a bottle of whisky. That’s against h’all the regulations, you know. Probationers aren’t h’allowed to consume h’intoxicating liquors, on or off the premises. Ho, I really got the goods on Master Burberry that time! Caught ’im red-’ anded.’
‘Oh, this was the incident at Nuttall’s Wine Store, was it?’
‘Nuttall’s Wine Store?’ Mr Stark-Denoon looked surprised. ‘What’s Nuttall’s got to do with h’it? I h’always go to Fletcher’s.’
The Hon. Con forgot all about Mr Stark-Denoon as a potential sex maniac. ‘Do you mean you caught Rodney buying whisky at Fletcher’s the grocers?’
‘That’s right. I h’always go to Fletcher’s. I’ve got to do my drinking at ’ ome these days. Too damned risky going out after dark. One or two h’I could deal with, but when there’s a blooming gang of ’em …’ He drew his fingers eloquently across his throat. ‘They got one of my so-called colleagues a couple of months h’ago and you h’ought to ’ave seen ’is face when they’d finished with ’im. Sickening, it was. One h’eye …’
‘Quite’ said the Hon. Con quickly. ‘Well, never mind about that now. Let’s get this other business clear. A couple of days before he died Rodney bought a bottle of Rabbie Burns Scotch whisky from Nuttall’s Wine Store. Everybody has been assuming that it was from this bottle that he drank the poison. But now you’re saying that you caught him buying another bottle of whisky from Fletcher’s. When was this?’
Mr Stark-Denoon closed his eyes. ‘Well,’ he said,’ h’it’d be the last Friday in the month, wouldn’t it?’
There was a calendar on the wall. The Hon. Con brushed aside the unfortunate fact that it was embellished by a provocatively posed and completely naked young woman. She had more important things to worry about than the shameful degradation of the female sex. She flicked through the monthly sheets. ‘The last Friday, eh?’
‘That’s the day I get my h’Army pension and h’I call in at Fletcher’s when I’ve been to the bank. H’I treat myself to a drop of rum, h’as a rule.’
The Hon. Con looked up accusingly from the calendar. ‘Why, that’s nearly a fortnight before Rodney was killed and a good ten days before he bought the bottle at Nuttall’s.’
Mr Stark-Denoon contented himself with a non-committal blink.
‘You don’t know what brand of whisky it was that Rodney bought at your shop, do you?’ demanded the Hon. Con.
‘Course I do! H’I don’t do things by ’alves, I’ll have you know. You see’ – a look of low cunning appeared on his face – ‘h’I’d spotted young Burberry but young Burberry ’adn’t spotted me. I decided to confront ’im with ’is ’ einous crime when he came along to see me for ’is ’regular weekly session. Well, h’I was going to ’ave a bit of fun with ’im, see? So, when he’d cleared h’out of the way, I went into Fletcher’s and got h’all the dope. Be prepared, that’s my motto. I was a great h’admirer of the late Lord Baden-Powell. Pity there h’isn’t a few more gentlemen like ’im kicking around these days.’ Mr Stark-Denoon’s florid features creased in bewilderment. ‘What the ’ ell was I talking about?’ he asked.
‘The brand of whisky that Rodney Burberry bought from Fletcher’s on the last Friday of the month!’ snapped the Hon. Con. ‘Oh, come along, man! Pull yourself together!’
‘They want to get rid of me,’ moaned Mr Stark-Denoon, gazing blankly round his office. ‘One slip and h’I’ll be signing on at the Labour again. It’s not fair, h’is it? Not with my record and h’everything.’
‘The whisky!’ insisted the Hon. Con, who never wallowed in self pity herself and didn’t see why anybody else should. ‘ What brand was it?’
‘Rabbie Burns, of course,’ said Mr Stark-Denoon, getting an unexpected grip on things again. ‘H’I remember that because h’I rather fancy a drop of the h’old Rabbie Bums myself, where h’I’m offered one. And’ – he jerked his head emphatically in the Hon. Con’s direction – ‘ h’it wasn’t Mack the Fork’s first purchase, h’either. Ho, dear me, no! The young mongrel’d been in a couple of times before h’and bought a bottle of Rabbie Burns both times. Mrs Fletcher remembered ’im quite well. Got a photographic memory, that woman. I always tell ’er she should ’ave been on the stage doing one of those …’
The Hon. Con was no longer listening. For the first time, she realized, she had discovered something that nobody else knew. Once the police had found out that Rodney had bought one bottle of whisky at Nuttall’s Wine Store, they hadn’t bothered to look any further. It was only thanks to her own intrepid investigations that the Hon. Con had unearthed no less than – she calculated rapidly – three other bottles of the same sort of whisky and all purchased by Rodney. The Hon. Con frowned. This seemed rather odd. Heavy drinking was not the kind of vice one associated with teenagers. For one thing, at over three pounds a bottle, they could hardly afford it. Surely a boy like Rodney, only just out of Borstal, couldn’t possibly be earning enough money to go around buying whisky right, left and centre?
She cut into Mr Stark-Denoon’s ramblings about Mrs Fletcher and her hypothetic stage career. ‘Where was Rodney getting the money from to buy all this whisky?’
‘Search me. Probably doing a bit of thieving h’on the side. Most of ’ em do. Snitch the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, given ’alf a chance.’
‘But you tackled Rodney about all this when he came to see you?’
‘I’ll say h’I did!’ Mr Stark-Denoon tittered happily to himself. ‘Ho, I tackled ’ im, h’all right! I’m not one to shirk my duty.’
‘Well, what did he have to say about it?’
Mr Stark-Denoon puckered up his lips rather sullenly. ‘ Some cock and bull story. I don’t remember h’exactly. It all ’appened a long time h’ago.’
‘Rubbish!’ The Hon. Con wasn’t going to stand for that. ‘It happened hardly any time ago at all – and you’ve managed to recall everthing else in considerable detail.’
Mr Stark-Denoon ran his tongue over his lips. ‘ Well,’ he admitted cautiously, ‘h’I got myself h’a bit worked up, you see. I’d treated myself to this new strap – a lovely one h’it was with a big gold buckle. And, then, ’ee turned up wearing a black leather jacket and …’ Mr Stark-Denoon shivered and the trickle of saliva began sliding down his chin again. ‘Black leather! H’I don’t know what h’it is about black leather but h’it brings me h’out in a right muck sweat.’ He stared unseeingly at the Hon. Con. ‘H’even thinking about h’it does.’
Although preoccupied with much more important matters, the Hon. Con couldn’t help feeling that there was something definitely odd about Mr Stark-Denoon. He certainly wasn’t a gentleman, in spite of his double-barrelled name, and this business of dribbling and going off into some sort of trance was somewhat unnerving. She’d just have to take a firm line and show him that she wasn’t going to tolerate any nonsense.
‘But you confronted him with the facts, didn’t you?’
‘Eh? Ho, yes, I must ’ave.’
‘Well, what did he say? Did he just admit it or did he try and make some excuse?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Stark-Denoon, loosening his collar.
‘Oh, have another cigarette and pull yourself together!’ barked the Hon. Con crossly.
Without protest Mr Stark-Denoon quelled his trembling hands and lit a ciga
rette. ‘ Yes, well ’ee did say something,’ he admitted. ‘Said ’ ee wasn’t buying the stuff for ’imself, I think. Yes, something like that, ’ee said. Claimed the chap ’ ee worked for ’ad sent ’im out to get it or something. Lying, of course. H’I could see that. Got me really worked h’up, that did.’
Under the horrified gaze of the Hon. Con, Mr Stark-Denoon forthwith clasped both hands round his throat and appeared to be attempting to throttle himself. Off hand the Hon. Con couldn’t think of a better way for him to go, but she hadn’t quite finished with him as yet. Shouting seemed to have no effect on him at all. Thoroughly exasperated, she opened the door into the waiting room and despatched one of the boys for some water. Although the Hon. Con had had a glassful in mind, the boy returned with a bucket.
‘I should chuck it over him, if I was you, missus,’ the lad advised her. ‘That’s what the other narks do when he goes off like this. Brings the lousy bastard round quicker’n anything.’
The Hon. Con dismissed the boy and then, not without considerable pleasure, took his advice. In a couple of minutes Mr Stark-Denoon was back to as near normal as he was ever likely to be. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that his head and shoulders were sopping wet and there was a large pool of water on his desk, he picked up the conversation.
‘That’s ’ow I know Mack the Fork committed suicide,’ he said happily and removed the sodden cigarette from his mouth. ‘Ee realized I’d got ’is measure, see? It must’ave broken ’im completely. ’Ee knew I’d be ’ounding ’im for the rest of ’is natural, so ’ee just put a h’end to h’it all. Shame, really. H’I don’t like losing a client like that. H’it made me quite upset at the time, thinking of h’all the sessions we wouldn’t be ’aving together and that lovely new strap with the gold buckle and everything …’