‘That’s anatomy,’ protested Davies mildly. ‘And don’t keep insulting my professional ability. Or do you want a fight? Fists?’ He doubled his big fists and swayed uncertainly.
‘No. Not now. We’re nearly there anyway.’
He nodded ahead to the North-West London Citizen office, in its converted house in the High Street. It had a bayed shop window full of photographs, pinned grinning civic dignitaries, unnoteworthy amateur opera singers and triumphant school prizewinners. The newspaper’s photographer was under a standing instruction to include as many people as possible in every photograph he took, since more people would want to see themselves in the paper, thus sending up or, at least, keeping up, the circulation. The photographer, a man who understood orders – if focuses were occasionally a mystery – once missed a vivid picture of a smash-and-grab raider escaping with his loot. He had failed to press the button because he felt there were not enough people about to make it worthwhile.
‘He lives upstairs then,’ said Mod, meaning Mr Chrust, the editor and proprietor. ‘Let’s hope he’s not deaf.’
Mr Chrust was not. They had scarcely finished their fourth ring on the front door bell when the windows above them became squares of light. The curtains of both squares were pulled away and both sashes went up. Two middle-aged women, both wearing mop caps, looked out. Even from the ground level Davies could see that each potato face bore a resemblance to the other. ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ he called up. ‘Is Mr Chrust at home?’
‘Who wants him?’ they inquired together.
‘Police,’ Mod replied for Davies. Then, not wishing to be accused of impersonating an officer, he pointed at Davies and added: ‘That’s him.’
Both heads went in as if pulled by the same string and the voices could be heard encouraging Mr Chrust to get from his bed because he was wanted by the police. Mr Chrust apparently took some time to be convinced or to be dressed because the two doughy faces again appeared at the windows and looked down on Davies and Mod for a full two minutes before Mr Chrust appeared. Then, like obedient handmaidens, they vanished, leaving him to conduct the dialogue from the sill.
‘Mr Davies, isn’t it?’ he said peering down on Dangerous. ‘It’s really a police inquiry then?’
‘It is, Mr Chrust,’ confirmed Davies, not very firmly for he was beginning to regret the venture. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you and … er Mrs Chrust.’
‘We aren’t disturbed, we aren’t disturbed,’ Mr Chrust replied ambiguously. He was a peanut of a man, with short bristles protruding from his face and otherwise bald head like the airy white fluff of a dandelion clock. ‘I’ll just be down.’
Through the fanlight of the front door they saw a procession of shadows follow a fitful light down the stair. Then the bulb in the hallway went on and the door was opened. Mr Chrust stood there in a dressing gown across the front of which a Chinese dragon snarled. With him were the two ladies in woolly dressing gowns and mop caps.
‘Mrs Chrust passed away last February,’ said Mr Chrust hurriedly once they were inside. He seemed to want no misunderstanding. ‘These are her sisters. It’s a very big flat, upstairs you know. They look after my wants.’
Davies nodded to the twin moons of Mr Chrust’s firmament. It occurred to him that the editor might think that the visit was in connection with immorality charges so he hastened to ask if they could look at the newspaper files for 1951. Mr Chrust beamed with patent relief and the bristles danced blithely on his face.
‘If you just show us where they are,’ said Davies, ‘we’ll just take a quick peep and be off. It was most urgent, you understand. Please go back to your bed … beds.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Mr Chrust agreeably. He began to push the nightdressed ladies up the stairs like a lean sheepdog nudging fat ewes towards an upland meadow. He turned after they had waddled away from the landing. ‘I don’t want to pry, Mr Davies,’ he whispered. ‘Not into police inquiries. But naturally, we of the press like to know what’s going on, under our very noses as it were. Perhaps, when you are free to do so, you will drop a hint of it in my ear.’
‘With pleasure, Mr Chrust,’ answered Davies. The drink was still loitering around him. ‘Now you go off to bed before you get lonely … well, cold. Goodnight, Mr Chrust. We’ll close the door when we leave.’
‘Please do,’ nodded Mr Chrust, backing up the stairs. ‘The sisters get nervous.’
He went up the staircase and the excited noises of the ladies, which had been filling the upper part of the building like the chattering of fat pigeons in a loft, were stilled. Davies and Mod counted three separate twangings of springs. Mod raised his eyebrows and said: ‘I bet he’s got a story he wouldn’t print in his paper.’ Davies hushed him and ran his unsteady finger along the bound years of the newspaper fixed into shelves along the wall of the back office.
It stopped accurately on 1951 and he and Mod pulled the great cardboard slab out between them and eased it on to a table. A new excitement was added to the qualms of the drink. His fingers fumbled and Mod helped him to fold sheaves of pages until they arrived at the date of the week they were seeking.
Carefully Davies turned the front page. Celia Norris’s young, faded face, the likeness aged with the paper, looked out of the page. The narrative took up a modest six inches of print under the heading ‘Local girl missing’. Davies read it carefully again. There was nothing new he could see.
‘It’s the same cutting as we have in our files,’ he protested to Mod, who remained standing back. ‘What’s it you can see?’
‘It’s not the cutting,’ insisted Mod, still withdrawn behind him. ‘It’s the page. Look at the little morsel in the last column. At the bottom.’ Davies did. It said unarrestingly: ‘Policeman’s Farewell’. Beneath it sat three dull paragraphs describing the retirement of an apparently popular policeman, Sergeant David Morris and a farewell function held for him at the local Sturgeon Rooms.
‘All right, so they had a farewell drink for a retiring copper. So what? It often happens.’
‘But murders don’t – not on the same night,’ pointed out Mod hoarsely. ‘It was the same night, Dangerous.’
‘Yes. Yes, all right then. But …’
‘There’s a picture on page three,’ said Mod relentlessly, enjoying himself in the chilly light of the little room.
Davies turned the page and looked at the picture. A group of policemen, pictured at the farewell to Sergeant D. Morris, said the caption. Above the photograph was the heading: ‘Cheers, say Policemen’ and below it a panel of names of the officers who raised their glasses for the cameraman and for posterity.
‘All right,’ said Davies. ‘But I still don’t see …’
‘Read the names,’ said Mod. ‘Go on, read them!’
Davies read them. Two names made him swallow so hard he had a fit of coughing. ‘P.C. James Dudley and P.C. Frederick Fennell,’ he said eventually. After a silence, he added: ‘And they were supposed to be in the patrol car in the High Street when she vanished.’
‘But they weren’t, were they?’ said Mod.
‘I’ve seen the duty slips and reports they signed,’ said Davies. ‘And they were drinking with the boys. They lied for a start.’
‘And nobody noticed the lie,’ said Mod. ‘Or nobody cared to notice.’
An apologetic shadow appeared on the stairs. It was Mr Chrust. ‘How are you getting on, gentlemen?’ he inquired. ‘Making some headway? I’m afraid the ladies are so excited they can’t get back to sleep.’
‘We’re just off, thank you Mr Chrust,’ said Davies, his thoughts miles, years, away from his voice. ‘Just going.’
He and Mod folded the file and heaved it up into its slot on the shelf like a piece of masonry. Mr Chrust walked over and, shining his lantern-torch along the bindings, pedantically made sure that the years still ran as ordained. ‘We sleep above history here, Mr Davies,’ he smiled fulffily.
‘You certainly do,’ agreed Davies, his mind still on what he had s
een. They had reached the outside door. ‘Thank you very much,’ he called back. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you. Goodnight.’
To his astonishment further ‘goodnights’ came from above and he looked up to see the two plump ladies girlishly framed in the upstairs windows, the sashes thrust up.
Their progress home towards ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens, was hung with guilt, slowing their steps and causing them to dawdle at street corners more than was justified by the damp blanket of drink that still loosely enwrapped them. Neither mentioned the horse until they reached the final right-angle, the turn that would take them into Furtman Gardens and a view of whatever there was to be seen. Then Mod leaned back against a privet hedge, causing its dust to fall like pollen, and shook a cowardly head. ‘Dangerous,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t go any further. I’m afraid to look.’
Davies tried to hold on to the hedge as one would lean against a wall but his hand kept sticking into the prickly twigs. He found he could stand upright without aid, however, and, pleased by this improvement, he confronted Mod.
‘We’re going home,’ he ordered sternly. ‘We’re both going home. We’ve got to face this together, Mod. After all we’ve got an alibi and if I turn up and you don’t they’ll be sure to think you did it by yourself.’
Mod nodded miserably, acknowledging the logic. ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep buying me drinks, Dangerous,’ he mumbled. ‘If you didn’t buy them I wouldn’t be able to drink them. Aw, Christ, come on then. Let’s face the foe.’
There was a fire engine, a police car, a horse ambulance and the rag-and-bone man’s cart outside the house of Mrs Fulljames. Each was toting a red or blue revolving light, even the rag-and-bone man’s cart which had no navigation or warning appliances of its own and had borrowed a spare revolving blue light from the sympathetic attendant of the horse ambulance. From the distant end of the street they could see the crowd gathered and individual shadows moving with the various emergency lights bleeding and bleeping above them. It looked, at that distance, like a modest but busy fairground.
Davies and Mod approached to within a few yards with seemly caution. The horse, looking elated, was being led by its owner to the shafts of the cart. It blinked at the revolving light but otherwise went quietly. The horse ambulance attendant was unemotionally inspecting a kicked door on his vehicle, the front door of ‘Bali Hi’ was also bereft of its lower panels. Firemen were washing down the path, possibly feeling that since they had been summoned they ought to contribute something. All around were the faces of police and people, trying not to laugh.
The front room bay window on the first floor was open and backed with orange light. Mrs Fulljames, Doris at her side, stood in impressive silhouette as though she were about to jump or make a speech. With unerring aim she spotted the loitering Mod and Davies as soon as they came to the penumbral verge of the incident.
‘Did you put that horse in my house?’ she bawled hysterically. ‘Did you two do it?’
Their faces, innocence and amazement fighting for possession, elevated themselves to the voice. She gave them no time to deny or even reply. ‘There’s shit everywhere!’ she howled. ‘Every bloody where.’
Some people in the crowd, neighbours who had to keep the peace with Mrs Fulljames, turned away and hid because they were laughing too much. ‘Up the passage, on the stairs, in the front room!’ she continued. ‘Shit!’ The very force of her bellow seemed to draw her forward and people below cried a warning, possibly fearing for themselves as much as her. ‘Better get the jumping sheet,’ Davies said to an enthralled fireman. ‘I think she’ll topple over any minute.’
Doris even from the window saw the brief conversation. ‘Are you listening to Mrs Fulljames?’ she shouted. ‘Do you care? That thing has smashed the sideboard in the front room. Antique that was. Antique!’
‘Belonged to Mr Fulljames, I bet,’ whispered Davies to the speechless fireman.
‘That belonged to Mr Fulljames,’ screamed Doris obediently. ‘The late Mr Fulljames.’
Mrs Fulljames, somewhat ungraciously, pushed Doris violently back into the room and then leaned out menacingly. She looked like Mussolini pressing a point. ‘Mr Davies, Mr Lewis,’ she demanded. ‘Did you get that horse in here? Did you? I want to know.’
‘Mrs Fulljames,’ shouted Davies mildly. ‘You are making a scene. I have been out on police inquiries of a serious nature and Mr Lewis has been accompanying me.’
His landlady clamped her mouth angrily and then pulled down the window with a sound almost as loud. Davies’s fellow policeman, having seen the horse between the shafts and taken its name and that of its owner, now returned. ‘This is where you live is it, Dangerous?’ inquired a young officer. Davies nodded, still looking up at the finality of the slammed window.
‘Seems a nice cosy little place,’ murmured the policeman. ‘Bit on the quiet side, but cosy.’
‘Nothing ever happens,’ shrugged Davies. He turned to Mod. ‘We’d better go in and see if we’ve still got beds. Goodnight, officer,’ he added formally.
‘Goodnight, Dangerous. I’ll be glad when we’ve finished tonight. We’ve already had two bloody hooligans pulling down the drainpipe at the pub.’
Thirteen
Mrs Edwina Fennell lived in a dying caravan anchored at the centre of a muddy field, ten miles from the streets and the industry her husband had patrolled as a policeman on occasions when he was not in bed with the lady palmist who lived and foresaw the future in the High Street.
‘She’s over there,’ pointed out the farm man from whom Davies had asked directions. He indicated, with a dungy finger, the caravan across the soggy field. ‘It’ll be a bit damp underfoot, but it’s a good job you didn’t come in the real winter. Sometimes she gets cut off altogether.’
Davies commenced to sludge across the field. Sometimes the cowpats seemed firmer than the surrounding earth. He had a quick recollection of walking into the front hall of ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens, early on that same morning, after the horse had been taken away. He winced partly from the thought and partly at the spasm of a mean wind which was searching the open land. It was a flat and unpoetic place, no hills, few trees, just muddy fields holding up a muddy sky. He was glad of his faithful overcoat, bravely opposing the cut and buffet of the wind. He looked up and saw he was still only half way to Mrs Fennell’s caravan, wheelless and listing listlessly, like some sorry shipwrecked raft.
In such circumstances he was surprised to see an illuminated door chime affixed to the peeling door of the caravan. He pushed it and released a globular melody not inferior to that which had heralded his entrance to the council penthouse of Ena Lind. It was necessary to stand in the morass of the field while he awaited a response, for there was no step. The caravan had subsided so far into the field, however, that Edwina Fennell, when she opened the door, was on almost the same level. ‘Sorry I was a long time,’ she sniffled. ‘I get so fed up with people coming and ringing the bell.’
Bemused, Davies quickly looked around to see if he had missed a city on his journey. But the field remained disconsolate all about. ‘Yes,’ he replied carefully. ‘It’s a bit of a drag to have to keep answering the door. I hope I won’t keep you long. I’m Detective Constable Davies. I’m at your husband’s old station.’
‘Oh that,’ she said, as though it were of only remote interest. ‘Well he’s not here. Not any more.’
‘I see,’ said Davies. She remained resolutely in the small entrance, thin arms folded over a pallid pinafore. ‘I wanted to have a word with you as well, Mrs Fennell. Do you … could I possibly come in? I think I’m sort of sinking here. The water is getting through into my shoes.’
‘Wipe your feet then,’ she said dully, backing away from the entrance. He stepped out of the chilly mud, each foot emitting a reluctant sucking sound as he pulled it clear. Within the doorway the floor was covered by a piece of coconut matting. He thought he would destroy it if he wiped his shoes so, mumbling as one performing a rite, he took them of
f and left them in the field, walking into the interior in stockinged feet.
There was little difference in the temperature in the caravan to that of the outside. It was cold and cloying, the fittings damaged and the plastic furniture unkempt. There was an unlit oil lamp and a hand-wound gramophone with a pile of old-fashioned records. They had a damp sheen on them. Mrs Fennell had been occupied in cutting a great careful pile of sandwiches assembled from a sizeable joint of cold beef and three long sliced loaves of bread.
She was a rejected-looking woman in her sixties. Her sunken eyes seemed incapable of rising to look at him. She went behind the barricade of sandwiches and began to butter some bread. ‘It gets very muddy out there sometimes,’ she said absently. To his surprise she emitted a cackling laugh. ‘Sometimes I think I hear the bell and I think it must be one of my million lovers at the door. But when I go they’ve vanished and I think they must have sunk down in the mud.’
‘Yes, it’s a trifle damp,’ said Davies awkwardly. He wondered if his shoes would still be there when he went out. He nodded towards her sandwiches. ‘Looks like a picnic,’ he said.
‘Foxes’,’ she replied. ‘I cut them up every day for the foxes. They come around after dark and sit and wait. They’re so handsome. And it didn’t seem right, dignified if you see what I mean, to just chuck bits of food out to them, so I do it properly, in sandwiches and they each have their own plates. You should see them eating. It’s a lovely sight when it’s a full moon.’
Davies sincerely said he could imagine it was. He half hoped she might offer him a sandwich for himself, but the thought obviously never came to her. ‘What did you want then?’ she prompted. ‘What did you want with Fred Fennell?’
He knew that when a woman called her husband by both Christian and surname he was not in any kind of favour. ‘Well, just a few memories of his police days, really,’ he said. ‘I’m checking on something that happened a long time ago and I thought I might pick his brains.’
‘There’s not a lot to pick,’ she sniffed bluntly. ‘He’s lost all his brains. He’s in the looney house, Mr Davies. The mental hospital. St Austin’s at Bedford.’
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 16