THE GAUDY SHADOWS

by John Brunner

  “You’re very kind, Mr—?”

  “Walker.”

  “Yes. Well, perhaps we shall see each other again. Good afternoon!”

  The girl gave a mechanical smile and matched her lumbering employer step for step out of the mews.

  Laird watched until they turned the corner, then came to an abrupt decision and hurried up the stairs of number sixteen. The door at the top was locked; he pounded on it.

  Shortly Polly opened it, her eyes red as though from crying. Before she had a chance to speak, he rapped, “I have to use a phone, quickly!”

  Mutely she stepped back and let him by. Falling into a chair, he tugged out his membership card for the Lizzie Borden club and dialled the number marked on it.

  “Look, I have to get hold of Bitchy urgently. Do you have—?”

  “A home phone number?” the tinny voice said in his ear. “We haven’t got one. As far as I know Bitchy has never given it to anybody, not even us.”

  “God damn!” Laird said furiously.

  “I could take a message for later this evening, if you like…?”

  “No, don’t bother,” he sighed, and cradled the phone. It would be far better to call in person.

  “Bitchy Legree?” Polly said after a pause.

  Laird gave a start. “And what might you know about Bitchy, for heaven’s sake?”

  “There was a record here.” Polly drew her lips together in a thin prim line. “I listened to some of it. At first I couldn’t believe my ears. In the end I threw it in the dustbin.”

  That figures.

  Laird sighed and took out a cigarette. He said, “I guess I wouldn’t expect you to approve of Bitchy… Does the name Tileman mean anything to you, though?” It was a slim chance, but any chance at all was worth taking.

  “Tileman? Well, there was a piece of paper the police sent me which had the name Tileman on it.”

  “You don’t say!” Laird straightened in his chair. “What do you know about him?”

  “Just that.”

  “Anything else on the paper?”

  “A telephone number, I think.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “No, I didn’t bring it with me from Scotland.”

  “Ah, shit,” Laird said with feeling.

  “Mr Walker!” Polly’s cheeks flamed. “I—”

  “I know, you don’t approve of swearing. Also”—Laird’s tone became savage—“you didn’t approve of your brother in spite of him paying for your education and I’m beginning to wonder whether you resent his not dying tidily in a proper hospital so there wouldn’t have been all these complications! Sorry to bother you.” He cantilevered his long body upright. “But—oh damn!” Putting his hand wearily to his forehead. “I didn’t mean to sound off like that. It’s just… Well, hell! Here I am, a foreigner, and here you are, never been to London before, and there are all those slobs like Hines and Medea and a gang of them and I think they love the idea of Sammy being dead because now they can help themselves to what he made for himself by his own guts and initiative. Right or wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Polly whispered. She sounded frightened.

  “Nor do I. But that’s what I think about them all, and it’s up to them to prove me wrong… Are you going to be here for another day or two?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I’ll let you know if I learn anything. But I won’t promise that you’ll like it very much.”

  FOURTEEN

  There was a message waiting for him when he reached his hotel: a Miss Cade had called twice and left her number. He thanked the clerk, asked for a bottle of Old Bushmills and a supply of ice, and went to his room to think over what he had learned today.

  When the whiskey arrived, he poured a generous slug of it on the rocks, lit a cigarette, and reached for the phone.

  Shortly, a soft voice said hullo.

  “Courcy? Laird Walker.”

  “Oh, splendid! I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to reach you. Look—” A sudden dead halt; when she resumed, her tone was much less positive.

  “Well, I don’t know if this is silly, but I got the impression, listening to you at the Lizzie Borden last night, that you feel the way I do about Sammy’s death.”

  “Which is how?”

  “Goodness, you were a friend of his!”

  “For a short while, and two years ago,” Laird said cautiously. He was still in two minds about this girl with the corn-coloured hair and the forget-me-not eyes.

  “Well, I was—uh—keeping company with him for three whole months before he died. Almost a record. And I just don’t believe he fell down dead.”

  “Do you believe the other theories you were handing out last night?”

  “Goodness, they don’t seem any more ridiculous than the official story, do they?”

  Laird chuckled. “I guess not. But some of them were so full of holes even Alec could spot the flaws in them.”

  She gave an answering giggle. “Poor Alec! He is a bit of a drip, isn’t he? But—damn! It’s no use trying to talk about it on the phone. Are you busy this evening?”

  “Not specially.”

  “I’m supposed to have another date with Alec, but I’d be glad to break it.” A tongue-clicking noise; Laird could picture the sketch for a frown which accompanied it. “Have you been to the Centipede?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A discothèque in Soho. It’s quite fun. And there’s a quiet corner where we could sit and talk. Have you got a car?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Do you mind being driven by a girl? Because if not I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “Sounds like a great idea. About what time?”

  “Ah… Better give me a chance to fob off Alec! A bit before nine, is that okay?”

  “Fine,” Laird said, and cradled the phone.

  So Courcy had been keeping company with Sammy for three months, had she? In that case she couldn’t possibly be either shallow or silly. Sammy had been too impatient, and too good at getting replacements, to put up with a dim-witted dolly.

  That meant she was even higher on the list of people he needed to talk to than he’d thought.

  “Miss Cade for you, sir,” the phone announced.

  “Thanks, I’ll be right down.”

  Laird gave a final glance at his rust-coloured sharkskin jacket and slim hound’s-tooth slacks and headed for the door. Courcy was awaiting him in the foyer, trying to ignore the pop-eyed staring of the reception clerk. It was another hot evening and she had dressed for the weather in a near-translucent shift exactly the colour of her lightly-tanned skin, ending at least six inches above her knees. Laird gave her a long searching look, under which she began to fidget.

  “Is something wrong?” she demanded.

  “Hell, no! I was just wondering what happened to this town to make things so right.”

  She looked briefly bewildered, then laughed. “I like you!” she exclaimed. “That’s the sort of thing Sammy was good at saying. Come on—let’s get moving before Charlie there busts a gut.” She scowled at the reception clerk. “Anybody’d think he’d never seen a girl before.”

  “Maybe he’s never seen so much of one,” Laird said, and took her arm.

  Parked outside under the disapproving gaze of the hotel’s doorman there stood a bright red Triumph Spitfire with the top down. Courcy unlocked its driver’s door.

  “You’ll have to shove the seat back, I think,” she warned. “There’s a bit more of you than cars like this were meant for!”

  Laird complied, folding himself tidily, and she gunned the engine and took off into the traffic. The maze of streets they followed was complicated by one-way routings to the point where he gave up trying to work out where she was taking him. He sat glancing at store windows and other cars, suddenly very much aware that he’d been in London forty-eight hours and done none of the things he’d promised himself except look up Sammy Logan.

  The sign outside the Centip
ede was so discreet he almost failed to realise when they reached it. Clearly it wasn’t meant for casual visitors. Courcy braked the car before a dark entrance-way and blipped her horn. A man wearing what looked at first glance like a Guards uniform, but with badges and decorations that no Guards battalion would have recognised, appeared and gave her a broad smile.

  “Evening, Miss Cade! Want me to lose that thing for you?”

  “Yes, please, but remember where you put it, won’t you? Come on, Laird.”

  Jumping out, leaving the keys in the dash, Courcy led him into the club. The opening of the outside door allowed him to hear a faint sound of music—a recent Stones number. They passed along a passage and opened a second door leading down to a basement. The moment that door swung back the music was devastating. Plunging ahead of him, Courcy yelled to people scattered over a large expanse of floor planted with small red tables like mushrooms and cushioned stools: “Hi, Harry—Max—Luise—Ingrid—!”

  More slowly, Laird came down taking in the scene. In the far corner, close to a bar behind which stood a bored-looking young man with his hair in an immaculate pageboy cut to his nape, there were two waist-high platforms on which a Scandinavian blonde and a West Indian girl, both slim, both beautiful, were writhing to the music. There were about a dozen people at the tables or dancing in the middle of the room. On the walls were an improbable assortment of decorations: a good abstract, a polystyrene bas-relief, a couple of African masks.

  Escaping her friends, Courcy led him to the furthest corner where a padded bench was set into the wall under a man-size blowup of a frame from Barbarella with two bright red palm-prints superimposed on the heroine’s bare bosom. “This seat’s always empty early in the evening,” she muttered. “Those pseuds want to be in the middle so they can be noticed! Sit down and what’ll you have?”

  “Let me—”

  “Uh-uh. We don’t believe in rich visiting Americans any longer. You can buy the next one. What is it?”

  “Irish on the rocks, I guess… Thought you said there was a quiet corner?”

  “Same difference.” Courcy twisted around on the seat, her skirt rising almost to the fold of her thighs. She was wearing panties the same colour as the minidress, but Laird was prepared to bet there wasn’t a bra. “You can shout your head off here and nobody can eavesdrop.”

  I guess that makes a kind of sense. Laird crowded up to her on the narrow bench. Their drinks delivered, he said, “Was this one of Sammy’s hangouts?”

  “Thinking of asking around?” she countered. “Wouldn’t do you any good. There’s a girl over there that he had for a while, but he said she was a bore and ditched her.”

  “Did you know many of his—ah—old flames?”

  She gave a tinkly laugh. “At least half a dozen. Sammy never made a secret of them and most of them were sort of pleased to have been involved with him, if you see what I mean.”

  “Consumer’s seal of approval?”

  “Don’t be cynical. It makes you sound jealous and I’m sure you haven’t any reason to be.” And with an instant reversion to seriousness: “Anyhow, nobody you met in a place like this could tell you much about Sammy that you didn’t already know.”

  “Can you?”

  “Certainly. For example, I suppose you think Sammy was a wealthy playboy living on dividends and never doing a stroke of work.”

  Laird turned that over in his mind. At length he said, “Well, I did have the impression he’d decided to spend the rest of his life enjoying his fortune. Am I wrong?”

  “Wrong as you could be. Goodness knows why Sammy was secretive about the other half of his life—maybe because so many of these pseuds were born with silver spoons and at heart he was kind of embarrassed by his…”

  “Plebeian origins?”

  “Christ, that’s exactly the word I was after.” Courcy sipped at her drink; she had a Pernod and the strong smell of it was wafting to Laird’s nostrils. “Plebeian—right!”

  “So how is it you know different?” Laird demanded. “The way gossip floats around this town, any of his steady girls could have put the news on the grapevine.” The vivid image of Bitchy crossed his mind, and he made a mental note to call the Lizzie Borden club from here at the time their star was due to arrive.

  “He didn’t tell me himself. I found out by accident. I think that was what made me like him as much as I did. You know, after he died, I was seriously thinking of selling one of the papers a story about ‘My Secret Life with Sammy Logan’?”

  “A lot of people did,” Laird said sourly.

  “But I didn’t,” Courcy said. “It wouldn’t have been fair. Do you see what I mean?”

  Laird looked her square in the face. He said after a pause, “I think I like you too, Courcy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what was this accident?”

  “Well…” She studied the cloudy liquid in her glass. “I have this trust thing, you see, where I can’t spend the money I inherited until I’m twenty-one. It’s a good idea really, I suppose, though it’s a nuisance sometimes. And one day I went to see the broker who looks after my investments for me and Sammy was there. I didn’t know we used the same broker, but he’s one of the best in London so I suppose it wasn’t very surprising. And I heard them discussing some things which I asked him about afterwards and he did tell me though he was awfully reluctant.

  “What he did with all this money of his, you see, wasn’t just to put it into the market and live off the profit. He and Barnaby—that’s my broker, Barnaby Skelton—were directors of a company lending money to people wanting to found their own businesses. I forget what it’s called, but you see advertisements for it in the papers all the time.

  “What it does is, it puts up capital to form a company with either Sammy or Barnaby on the board, so that they can take their share of the profits as directors’ fees instead of dividends.”

  “This saves taxes or something, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Earned income instead of unearned.”

  I ought to see this guy Skelton, Laird told himself. Aloud, he said, “But Sammy can’t have devoted much of his time to this, surely.”

  “That’s just it,” Courcy insisted. “He did. He took a real personal interest in the companies he helped to launch. Oh, he left the ordinary commercial ones to Barnaby, but he liked the ones where some bright young man was starting out on his own. He took me to a couple of them: an art-gallery in Manchester, where my family come from, a restaurant down in Brighton. And I think another.”

  “Helping people in the spot he was once in himself—full of ideas without any money to make them come true?”

  “I suppose that must have had a lot to do with it.”

  A whole new picture of his dead friend was emerging in Laird’s mind. He thought of Polly’s comment about knowing a different person from the brother she remembered, and felt a shiver track down his spine. How many more Sammy Logans was he going to run across?

  “Could you let me have your broker’s address?” he asked. “I think I’d like to call on him.”

  “Number 9 Leg of Mutton Lane. It’s in the City.”

  An address like that ought to be easy enough to remember. Laird checked his watch; it was just after ten. He stood up.

  “Excuse me just a second. I have to make a call. Will you have another while I’m gone?”

  “Sure, same again.”

  The phone-booth, luckily, was sound-proofed—there was a Beatles disc on the player now and the walls seemed to be trembling under the blast of noise. With it ghostly-faint in the background, he heard Bitchy’s de-sexed tones in the earpiece.

  “Bitchy? Laird Walker.”

  “Tell me more,” Bitchy purred. “Tell me, for example, what you found out at the Brankside.”

  “Christ, how did you know I’d been there today?”

  “My dear!” A jingling noise as though Bitchy were already in full gear complete with enormous ear-rings and had tossed ba
ck the night’s ridiculous nylon tresses. “I’m the one person in London who really knows what’s going on. I don’t even have to say beware of imitations because anyone who tries to copy me is so lousy!”

  A chuckle. “Never mind telling me about your trip to the Brankside, though. I knew all about Sammy’s trouble, of course.”

  “Did you now?”

  “All about it, my dear. I told you Sammy was in on my secret. Wasn’t it fair for me to be in on his?”

  “Since you’re so knowledgeable”—Laird fished for a cigarette one-handed—“you can tell me about a man called Emmerich Tileman.”

  “Tileman?”

  “That’s right. Come now, you’re not going to let me down!”

  “I don’t recognise the name, but names are easy enough to change. Give me a few details.”

  “His card says he’s a doctor, though I don’t know what of. Address in Chelsea. He’s German by origin. Drives a Bentley convertible—or rather, has a girl to drive it. His personal assistant, I guess. He came to Sammy’s place today asking after the Jensen and said something about having done business with Sammy.”

  “Okay.” Bitchy’s tone was businesslike. “I’ll see what I can turn up. You’re staying at the Hurstmonceaux, aren’t you?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “Not really.” Another chuckle. “Bye!”

  When Laird returned to the main room he found Courcy chatting with a group of friends. The place was much fuller and even noisier. He muttered an acknowledgment to the introductions Courcy made, promptly forgot the names again, and tucked himself into the corner of the bench to think as best he could against the distraction of the music.

  A conclusion was itching at the back of his mind. It took a while to formulate, but when he did sort it out he was annoyed with his own short-sightedness. It ought to have been obvious all along.

  A guy with Sammy’s drive… you wouldn’t expect him to be satisfied by a footloose playboy’s life. There had to be something underneath to use up the residue of impetus which had carried him from a Scottish scrapyard to a mews in Mayfair. So he liked to fly and drive fast cars and chase women. That wasn’t enough. Of course there had to be something else!