The Chelsea Murders

by Lionel Davidson

  He wondered if Steve had got through to the old man, or if there’d been some mess-up; if perhaps Steve was still being followed without knowing it. He knew he was being followed himself; two of the pigs out there, at back and front.

  At midnight he had a stand-up row with Albert, after doing the Ansafone orders; the chef, hopping imperiously on his short leg, abruptly ordering him to be there at nine sharp in the morning to help prepare the gourmet special. Georges had to come down to the bar and make peace with a cognac all round; but Artie was still smouldering when he left.

  Thursday was not a late night at the restaurant. It was before one when he left; the two pigs still in attendance, of course.

  *

  On Friday morning, Artie thought Albert could screw himself, and he didn’t turn up till ten. He found the chef in the downstairs store-room, fairly dancing with rage. However, his late arrival seemed to be no part of it. Albert was waving a letter. He had managed to pick his way through a portion of it, but could scarcely believe what he read.

  Artie read it for him. The letter was from the Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, and addressed to Mr Albert A. Marigny. It said Albert, being a driver of a vehicle, had unlawfully caused such vehicle to be parked contrary to Regulation 6 of Section 46 of the Road Traffic Act, and in addition he hadn’t produced his driving licence.

  Albert nearly blew his mind. He said of course he hadn’t produced the licence. It had been in his wallet which had been stolen, together with his jacket, from this same car. Were they all mad in this arse-hole of a country?

  Artie told him there must have been a mix-up with the licence, but they’d get him for the parking offence.

  ‘What offence? I showed the imbecile where the car was parked!’ Albert screamed. ‘He didn’t know it was parked there.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done,’ Artie said. ‘You should have moved it first.’

  Albert very nearly had a seizure. He said it was a country full of madmen. He was the victim of a robbery! They wanted to prosecute him for not having what had been stolen from him. It wasn’t the only thing that had been stolen. His second-best cleaver was nowhere to be found, the past few days. It was a nation of thieves and imbeciles. And by God, he’d make a stink. Oh, what a stink he’d make! They thought it normal to go about stealing people’s wallets and cleavers?

  ‘Okay, pipe down for Christ’s sake!’ Artie said anxiously. Georges had arrived, and Marc. He could hear them, above. ‘We’ll fix this, Albert, don’t worry.’

  He promised to go with Albert to the police station on Sunday morning, the first free time they had, and calmed him down. But it was a morning of disasters, the next one rendering Albert practically paralytic.

  The under-chef was having trouble with the electric beater, which Albert looked at for him – to receive a shock that bounced him nearly in the sink.

  It took a stiff treble cognac to restore him to speech, and when he got it back he threatened to leave the benighted country within the week. In the end Artie fixing the beater. His varied experience included a smattering of electrics, and he quickly saw that the insulation had broken down, the earth faulty.

  The gourmet lunch ended well enough, with handshakes and congratulations all round; but not till four, as Artie had foreseen. He took off like a whirlwind via taxi, bus and tube (pigs sticking close) and managed equipment-hire, film stock and costumiers.

  He was back by six. He could scarcely bother to eat, but he sat with the rest and made the motions. He knew he was showing strain, and tried not to. He had a lot on his mind.

  All evening he remained like a piano wire, taking the orders and serving the orders; as far as possible staying out of Albert’s way.

  Friday night was late. It was almost two before he was driven home; pigs still there and sticking tight.

  Well, tough titty, Artie thought.

  But for them, not him. He actually managed a weary smile.

  Things were okay with him.

  28

  ‘BIFFY,’ Mooney said.

  ‘Biffy? Biffy what?’

  ‘I know it sounds silly, but I can’t remember his other name. He just told me this address, and I didn’t know if he’d taken it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think he’s called Biffy,’ the old lady said, in some perplexity. She was standing on the doorstep in her carpet slippers. ‘His name’s Mr Walker. A retired bus inspector, very nice man. He was the one who got the room from the advert.’

  ‘Oh, no, that wouldn’t be Biffy. Never mind,’ Mooney said, ‘and sorry to have troubled you. I’ll just try elsewhere.’

  She returned to her bike, and crossed that one off the list. She wasn’t doing so marvellously. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had chewed off nineteen calls (some of them to be revisited: landladies out); and Saturday morning so far had eliminated only another four. It took far longer than expected, and there were still over twenty to go. She saw she wouldn’t be doing many today. Still, it could be any one of them.

  Next on the list was Mulhouse Street, so she pedalled off to it. It was a nasty morning, damp and raw.

  Mulhouse Street, when found, was such a clapped-out disaster area, she almost gave it away. But then she had another think. Disaster areas might be exactly what this customer wanted. All the right qualities on offer: anonymity, incuriosity, tolerance of all peccadilloes short of downright lunacy. She tooled slowly along it, looking for number 56.

  Number 56 was almost falling down.

  Four barely decipherable names adjoined bell-pushes on the rotting door frame. From her list she saw that the landlady’s was Cummings, and after much peering pressed the one most nearly approximating to it.

  A few minutes, and another ring, later, the door opened, and a most terrible slut, dead drunk, hung on to it, in her dressing-gown.

  ‘What you want?’ she said.

  ‘You were advertising a room,’ Mooney said, reeling back at the smell, ‘in the Gazette, a couple of weeks ago. I wondered if it was still available.’

  ‘No. Went,’ the slut said, closing the door.

  ‘Hang on. A friend of mine didn’t take it, did he?’

  ‘What name?’

  ‘Biffy.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Same routine. Same result. The one who’d taken this one was an elderly widower from Lots Road power station; and God help him, Mooney thought.

  The day hadn’t begun well. And she had an idea it wasn’t the kind that just naturally got better as it went on.

  It had started raining again, into the bargain.

  *

  At Lucan Place the day had started very well.

  ‘Many thanks, Inspector. Much obliged to you,’ Warton said, and hung up, face wreathed in smiles, one finger tapping his huge snout. ‘Amsterdam. It’s sit-downs as does it, Summers. Proved it time and again. Third sit-down, and they got it out of her.’

  The police at Leyden (Sonje Groot’s home town) had got it out of her mother. After two unsuccessful sessions, she had finally dredged up a recollection of a girl her daughter had sometimes spoken of; she thought she had been at art school with her in Amsterdam. The Amsterdam police had promptly interviewed everyone they could find from Grooters’s old class, and they now thought they had identified the girl.

  ‘Introverted young woman. Apparently left the school same time as this poor girl. Went to Munich. Name, Heemskerk – Nellie. They’re in touch with the German police. We’d better do the same.’

  ‘Okay, sir.’ Summers took the slip of paper.

  ‘How are the landladies?’

  ‘Coming on.’ All of them who had given telephone numbers in their ads had been contacted and called on. The story in the local papers had pulled in three; checked out and all okay. ‘Nothing in yet from the box numbers, sir. Still, hardly time yet. I’m sure something will come up there. Good letter.’

  ‘Ng.’ Warton was sure of it, too. It was a careful letter, sent from various names and addresses, stamped addressed envelope encl
osed for landladies’ kind attention in informing the undersigned if room still available; together with cheque for £5 deposit. Most would reply, drawing the addresses, which could then be visited. Those who didn’t would either bank or swap the cheque (easily traceable) or tear it up. Few would tear it up. And these, give it a week, could be got at officially through the newspaper advertisement departments.

  Warton didn’t think it would go a week. He thought he would have his man within the week. In that week he wanted no calls on newspaper advertisement departments; did not want their news departments alerted; did not want this cunning and dangerous young bastard tipped off in any way what they were up to.

  They were up to many things, on a broad front, and he looked with satisfaction at the detailed reports of Artie’s movements of yesterday. He’d moved around a lot, but not a single moment had gone unreported. Even the time he’d spent in a public lavatory was detailed: four and a half minutes exactly.

  ‘Let him try and send his granny a birthday card, even, and we’ll know where he posted it. Last of these messages, anyway, Summers. I’m very satisfied with this.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Summers said, gratified. ‘I’ll pass it on.’

  ‘Okay. Get that telexed off to Munich, then.’

  Summers was turning to do this when there was a tap on the door, and one of the Incident Room clerks looked in.

  ‘L.E.B. on the phone, sir,’ he said a bit puzzled. ‘They want –’

  ‘Who?’ Warton said.

  ‘London Electricity Board – Sloane Street branch. They’ve got an envelope for us. They want to know whether to post it or –’

  ‘What do you mean, an envelope?’

  ‘Addressed to us. Inside one addressed to them. They want –’

  ‘Get it. Right away,’ Warton said. ‘Both envelopes. Immediately.’

  Twenty minutes later he had both.

  The outer one, marked Urgent was addressed to L.E.B.,147 Sloane Street, S.W.3. It was addressed with one of the L.E.B.’s own printed tabs. The inner one, unopened, was addressed to Murder HQ, Chelsea Police Station.

  He and Summers looked silently at them.

  ‘That cunning young sod,’ Warton said, ‘has thought up a new wriggle. He left this somewhere. Could have been a bus, tube, anything. Someone posted it for him. Well, I’m damned.’

  The contents were new, too.

  The interior envelope was not the familiar kind; nor was the paper or type style.

  There was no type style. It was done in ball-point, in wriggly capitals to disguise the hand, on a bit of blank space in a torn-off newspaper advertisement.

  Hoppity-hoppity,

  Hoppity-hoppity,

  Hoppity-hoppity,

  Hop.

  They were so stunned they just gazed at it.

  ‘He might even have done it,’ Summers said, ‘in that lavatory.’

  Warton blankly reached for the Oxford. Hoppity.

  Christopher Robin goes

  Hoppity, hoppity,

  Hoppity, hoppity, hop.

  Whenever I tell him

  Politely to stop it, he

  Says he can’t possibly stop.

  ‘Hoppity’.

  A. A. Milne.

  ‘A.A.M.,’ Warton said at last. ‘Well, get the cards.’

  In many planning sessions already, they had established that all messages received so far related to people known to Artie – or at least to some mutual connection: Germaine Roberts, Mrs Honey,. Ogden Wu, Sonje Groot. There were cards on all these now.

  There were no cards initialled A.A.M. The nearest was Mooney, whose forenames were Mary Angelica.

  ‘Couldn’t have made a mistake, could he?’ Summers said.

  ‘First, if so.’

  They tackled it from another angle.

  The previous messages had incorporated, however deviously, the mode of attack, or its intention. Germaine had been found in a river ‘at even’; Honey had received a ‘stolen kiss’; Wu had been positioned to ‘dance upon air’; and the planned confusion over W. S. Groot constituted a ‘bah! to you’.

  They considered what they had got here.

  Hoppity-hop.

  ‘Someone with a limp?’ Summers suggested.

  ‘Possible … Why can’t he possibly stop?’

  ‘Shoved under a bus, train?’

  ‘No. Dealing here with something to be done at a distance. Won’t do it personally – he can’t. Got him covered every inch of the way. Needs someone or something to do it for him. Remote control, like the bloody letter. Hop. Hopping. Jumping. Jerking.’

  ‘Poisoning?’ Summers said.

  ‘Could be. Poison, electrocution, booby-trap, something like that. Get the covering envelope out to the Press, anyway. Might raise whoever posted it. Also get me the C.C.,’ said Warton gloomily. ‘At home. Won’t be working today.’

  *

  Others were working, however. Mr Albert A. Marigny was. He worried about Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court as he worked, and at the antiquated equipment of the restaurant, and at everything else that was wrong with the place. This abominable country, he thought, would be the end of him.

  29

  ARTIE was still tired when he woke just before noon on Sunday. He didn’t bother shaving, or even washing. He just brushed his teeth and put the kettle on, and picked up the newspapers from outside the door.

  They had a photo of an envelope addressed to the L.E.B. The police were anxious that anyone who’d picked it up and posted it should contact Scotland Yard.

  Not Lucan Place.

  Scotland Yard.

  There didn’t seem to be a connection between the envelope and Lucan Place. Artie drank his coffee, and went carefully through every page of the papers to see if there was any mention of a connection. But there wasn’t.

  H’m.

  He had another cup of coffee and thought about Albert and the visit to the police station this morning. He didn’t plan to see Albert this morning. He had a look out of the back window. He couldn’t see too well over the scraggly bit of garden or the fence at the rear, but he knew a pig would be there; also at the front.

  No. No Albert this morning.

  Albert would be hopping mad by now, of course. Well. Patience.

  Artie smoked carefully through two cigarettes. A lot of things had to be dovetailed in today, and he didn’t feel he had the energy. He had been driving himself too hard. He wondered if he should go on Speed again, but decided against it. When he needed the energy, it would come.

  He had Shaft at nine o’clock, with Steve; also Frank. Steve hadn’t bought his ideas on Frank. Well, tough titty. It was a question of playing it by ear.

  His meal-times had become screwed-up lately. His whole life had become screwed-up. He decided to combine breakfast and lunch and to make it a big one. The next meal after that would be uncertain, anyway.

  He made himself a panful of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes; followed it with half a can of peaches and two more cups of coffee, and then cleared up and got down to his figures.

  He did this for a couple of hours, and then called the chick who did the typing for him, and went round to see her. He went to bed with her for an hour, and when he got up called Georges. He had planned to call him from here and not his own place.

  This part was going to be tough, he knew. The only other person with a key was Albert, who opened up the restaurant in the morning, and he couldn’t call Albert. Georges didn’t like parting with his key. On the other hand, he knew Georges rested all Sunday and didn’t like going out.

  It took a few minutes of persuasion, but Georges, after all, owed him a favour, so he knew he would win if he pushed it. He pushed pretty hard and won.

  He took off for Georges’s flat in Ebury Street, and got the key, faithfully promising to re-lock carefully and return it within half an hour. Then he grabbed a cab and went to the restaurant.

  The place stank from the food and the stale cigar smoke of the previous night. The ki
tchen stank, and so did the downstairs bar and the store-room. There was a little hovel off the store-room, the changing room required by law for everyone who handled food. Albert came in here, first thing.

  Artie did what he had come to do, and then gave himself a big cognac. He ate a few dinner mints to mask the cognac, and inside ten minutes was on his way back to Georges with the key.

  It was dark now, and he went home and switched the lights on and drew the curtains. He had work to do with the script, and he tried to settle to it; but found he couldn’t. He was nervy and restless. He knew the pigs had followed him. It couldn’t do them any good, but he was conscious of the pressure. When Steve called him at seven, he almost jumped for joy.

  Steve had called to suggest that instead of meeting at Shaft, it would be better if they could talk first at his own place to finalize matters before getting into a hassle with the chief poof.

  ‘You mean – now?’ Artie said.

  ‘Well, the stuff’s all over the floor now.’ Steve sounded tired. But he said, ‘Yeah, why not? It’s giving me a headache, anyway. You’ll be here – what, half-past seven? I’ll raise Frank, then.’

  Artie was glad to be on the move again. His own company, the flat, were giving him the jitters. He caught a bus at Putney Bridge and bussed back up the New King’s Road, and made it at Steve’s just about by half-past seven.

  He saw that Steve was jaded; and the stuff was still all over the floor, scrawled-over script pages and bits of lighting diagrams. He’d been running the film through again, and the room was warm with the weary old celluloid smell that they both knew so well.

  ‘I couldn’t raise Frank. We’ll have to meet him there, then. Christ, you haven’t got an aspirin, have you?’

  ‘I’ve got some Speed.’

  ‘Stuff that. Artie – this film is one big heap of crap, I tell you.’

  ‘You’re just tired with it. Is that arm playing you up?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Steve said.