‘Murder, you reckon,’ said Davies as they climbed back into the car. The dog was surveying the trees.
‘Most foul,’ nodded Mod.
They set off on the journey once more. ‘I trust I will be able to assist in the case of Mr Dulciman,’ mentioned Mod. ‘What a strange name for a start. Literally “a sweet fellow”.’ He glanced craftily towards Davies. ‘What will we do with the fee, the advance?’
‘There won’t be any fee,’ said Davies. ‘Not until it’s cleared up.’
‘No fee?’ echoed Mod aghast.
‘I told Mrs Dulciman on the phone that I’d only undertake the job on that basis.’
‘Expenses …?’
‘Expenses only. She insisted on that. But no solve, no fee.’
Vernon Dulciman’s dentures were placed, as she had described, on the bedside table. Davies found himself involuntarily returning the grimace.
‘I have put them there only for your benefit, Mr Davies,’ said Mrs Dulciman gently. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t have him grinning at me all the time, waking up in the night and being faced with that. It was bad enough when the rest of him was present.’
‘You didn’t like him very much, Mrs Dulciman.’
‘He was a horrible man,’ she said without hesitation. A faint pink flush came to her face. ‘I’m so glad you changed your mind, Mr Davies. Although I would still be happier if you would accept an advance on the fee now.’
Davies shook his head. She led him into the sitting-room. She had a small suite in the hotel, three rooms and a kitchen. The room overlooked the sea.
She motioned him to a rose-patterned armchair. ‘It would be under false pretences,’ Davies told her. ‘I can’t guarantee anything at all. All I can do is try.’
‘Who is that large gentleman with you? I saw you both arrive with your dog.’ She paused and her silvery head moved forward. ‘Your dog is well, I trust?’
‘Far too well at times,’ Davies sighed. ‘He’s just wrecked a perfectly good hot-dog stand.’
‘And the gentleman? Is he your minder? That’s the term isn’t it?’
‘In this case it isn’t,’ smiled Davies. ‘If anything, I mind him. That’s Mod. Mr Modest Lewis. He tries to help.’
‘Ah, your Doctor Watson.’
Davies agreed there were similarities. ‘Can I see the packaging the teeth came in?’ he asked. ‘You did keep it?’
‘Of course. It is a clue!’
She went to a bureau near the door and took out a folded piece of brown paper and a small bow of string. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Exhibit Number One.’
‘Sealing wax,’ frowned Davies looking at the string. ‘You don’t see sealing wax much these days.’
‘You might around here,’ she said. ‘In Bournemouth there is much living in the past, you know.’
He unfolded the brown paper on a Pembroke table, then glanced at her anxiously. ‘Is this all right, using the table?’
‘Of course. Tables are for use. This will still be in excellent condition long after I am gone.’
He returned to spreading the wrapping. ‘Been used before,’ he said. ‘By the look of it. All these creases. Funny to use nice pink sealing wax and scruffy old paper.’ He peered at the address.
‘I’ve tried to recognise the handwriting,’ she put in. ‘It could be disguised of course.’
He grinned and pointed. ‘And look at that. They were going to put a sender’s name. Here they’ve written “sender” but then they realised it would not be a good idea. Force of habit, I suppose.’
‘Or a further tease,’ she suggested.
He nodded. ‘Could be.’ The string was just string as far as he could see. The name and address was in proper ink, no ball-point or felt pen. The writing was bold and curling. ‘Mind if I keep these?’ he inquired.
‘Of course you may. Would you like the teeth as well?’
Davies glanced through the door into the bedroom where he could clearly see the dentures, clamped, gleaming white. ‘Er … no thanks.’ He studied them from a distance. ‘How can you be sure they are Mr Dulciman’s?’ he asked. ‘One set of teeth looks more or less the same as another to me.’
She led him once more into the other room. ‘I am absolutely certain,’ she said firmly. She walked over and picked up the teeth without qualms. Davies felt a shudder. She set them down on the bedside table again, turned the small lamp on them and repeated: ‘I know they are his.’
Picking them up she held them at the level of her nose. Fascinated, Davies watched her. ‘There,’ she said. ‘He was three inches taller than I am. From this level it becomes even more clear to me. I can almost see the rest of his face forming, growing around them, and then the rest of his body.’
‘Were you that close, very often?’ asked Davies.
‘Occasionally we confronted each other,’ she said with a touch of sadness. ‘It had not been an intimate situation for some years.’
‘Well, Mrs Dulciman,’ said Davies, ‘I think that the first move will need to be a full statement, an explanation, of all the circumstances. Background. I will need that.’
‘And when would you like to do that? It’s one of my bridge nights tonight.’
‘You’re very keen.’
‘Very. There are no half-ways with bridge. You can’t take it or leave it. Would you like to come here tomorrow morning, after breakfast, and I’ll tell you all I know about Vernon Dulciman and his disappearance. Bring Mr Lewis with you if you wish.’
‘Good,’ said Davies. ‘He can write it down. He has a sort of shorthand he’s concocted himself.’
‘I shall look forward to it,’ she said. ‘Ten o’clock, say?’
He was about to leave when he decided to ask. ‘Mrs Dulciman, did I see you with a white stick? In the post office last week?’
The pink touch appeared on her cheek again. ‘You certainly did. You are a good detective, Mr Davies.’
‘Thank you. Do you need a white stick? I mean …’
She laughed a silvery laugh. It was a glimpse of what she must have been like when she was young. ‘Good gracious no. My friend Sybil Hargreaves, it’s hers. She was just in front of me in the post office queue. And you were there too? I didn’t see you. She’s registered blind you know. I was only holding it for her while she fumbled with her purse.’
‘It looked a bit odd,’ he said smiling. ‘When you charged off after that chap who had left his change. And you still had the white stick.’
Mrs Dulciman hooted. But not loudly. ‘I remember! So I did. How odd that must have looked!’ She became serious. ‘And how very observant of you. I’m always having to pick up her stick for her. I think I carry it more than she does. She leaves it behind and when she needs it she can’t find the thing.’
He laughed with her and went towards the door. They shook hands, her thin, veined, gentle hand in his, large and firm. ‘I’m so glad you have taken on my little case, Mr Davies,’ she said sincerely. ‘I knew I was right to ask you and I’m even more sure I was right now.’ She smiled. ‘What a clever man you are.’
She was waiting for them on the following morning, the coffee made in a shapely pot, a wisp of steam from the spout caught like a cobweb by the sun streaming through the window from the direction of the sea. She was wearing a light-brown silk dress and a delicate gold necklace. Her eyes were bright behind her glasses from which hung a slim, shining cord. Davies was glad that Mod was wearing a tie, even though his shirt was crumpled. She greeted them genially.
‘Majestic view,’ enthused Mod, going to the window. He spread his arms. ‘The great, long sweep of the sea.’
‘It’s wonderful having it close,’ agreed Mrs Dulciman. ‘Sometimes when the tide is in and the weather is stormy it seems to come right below the window. It is just like being on an ocean liner but without the ups and downs.’
She was interested in Mod’s name: ‘Mussorgsky’s first name was Modest,’ she observed. ‘Were you named after him?’
‘No,
ma’am,’ said Mod. ‘After Tchaikovsky’s brother.’
They sat down. ‘How was the bridge?’ inquired Davies politely. ‘Did you win?’
‘I’m afraid not. My partner’s thoughts appear to have been somewhere else. That’s Mrs Cloudsley-Clive. You may have seen her on the beach hitting bread to the gulls with a tennis racquet.’
Mod’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘Yes, I know,’ Davies said. ‘We’ve conversed. Novel idea really.’
‘She’s full of them, Nola,’ said Mrs Dulciman. ‘When you get on in years people don’t mind you being eccentric. In fact, they rather expect it. It’s one of the small compensations for such things as liver spots.’ She changed the subject quickly. ‘How is Kitty this morning?’
‘Active earlier,’ Davies told her. ‘Flat out now.’
‘He’s in my room and he snores like a grampus,’ said Mod.
Mrs Dulciman put her cup on the low, glass table and said: ‘Now, to business. The whole story.’
Mod took a rolled school exercise book from his pocket and peered doubtfully at the point of the pencil he produced next. He wet the back of his hand and tried it out. ‘Indelible,’ he smiled when he looked up.
‘Some things are,’ observed Mrs Dulciman. ‘Now where shall we start?’
Davies said: ‘We need to establish the basics, Mrs Dulciman. Your husband’s full name was …?’
‘Vernon Algernon Dulciman,’ she recited.
‘His age?’
‘He was sixty-two when he … when he disappeared. That was five years ago.’ She glanced up. ‘Shall I just go on?’ she inquired. ‘It will save you having to ask questions.’
‘Please.’
‘We were married twenty-four years ago, this year, 14 June. In London. Caxton Hall. It used to be very fashionable for weddings then.’ She had been looking at the backs of her hands but now her eyes came up. ‘Not in church because Vernon had been married before,’ she smiled. ‘He had a past.’
‘What was his profession?’
‘He had retired. He decided to finish when he was sixty. That’s when we came down here. We were quite happy until then. It was this place that changed him. Something here.’ She said it quietly and bitterly.
‘And what … was his profession?’
‘Oh, yes, sorry. He was a photographer. Quite well known in London at that time. Society weddings and suchlike, social events, comings-out, Ascot. He was very busy during the season. Vernon Dulciman of Mayfair. Does that ring a bell?’
Davies shook his head and Mod looked intently at his exercise book. Slowly his face came up and he shook his head too.
‘Quite well known,’ she repeated. ‘Not a celebrity in the way that these photographers are today. He believed that his place was behind the camera.’
‘And you were quite happy together in those days.’
She looked thoughtfully sad. ‘Yes, as I told you, it was only when we arrived here that things changed. In London we had a mews house in Kensington, and we had a comfortable life.’
‘What prompted Mr Dulciman to retire? Sixty is not very old for a photographer is it.’
‘Oh, various reasons. There were difficulties over the lease of the studio, the profession changed. There were all these young men starting up, whipper-snappers he called them, and he had some minor heart trouble. He decided he’d had enough.’
‘But you did not buy a house down here or a flat? You lived in this hotel.’
‘This was merely meant to be temporary. We were going to look around for somewhere but property at that time went sky-high. Prices were just silly. Our terms here were most reasonable, mine still are. And, when he changed so much, I suddenly could not see any way forward. It was very odd wondering if you had a future with someone to whom you had been married for years. Very strange indeed. It was still in the back of my mind to look around for somewhere, but that’s where it stayed. And then … poof … he vanished.’
‘Could you describe how he went … as far as you know. Do you remember what happened on the last day he was seen?’
She made a small grimace. ‘I recall it perfectly,’ she said. ‘There had been nothing very exceptional about the day. It was early autumn, September, and the weather was fine. I went to the cinema with a friend in the afternoon. Mrs Freda Gordon, she is one of the ladies in our club that meets here for lunch once a month.’
‘The Bournemouth and Boscombe Widows’ Luncheon Club,’ said Davies.
Mrs Dulciman regarded him with appreciation. ‘Exactly,’ she smiled. ‘Yes, the cinema. Vernon was out the whole day, he often was. He came back in the evening and we had a drink and a sandwich, that’s all. Each of us liked to get through that part as quickly as possible. He always had lunch at the Moonlighters Club or somewhere and in the evening he would only have something light. And I have not had much of an appetite for some years. So the arrangement suited me. We had a snack and watched the television news. Then he went out … out through that door … Mr Davies … and I have not seen him from that moment to this. In the proverbial puff of smoke.’
Davies got up and paced to the window. The day had the sheen of spring but he could see a sharp wind riffling the sea and the loose sand. ‘Then his shoes were found on the beach,’ she said behind him. ‘There was no doubt they were his. Expensive brown shoes. London made. He had worn them for years and he used to have them stitched and repaired when necessary. They were always gleaming. He was a fastidious person.’
‘The remains found at sea?’
‘No one could say for sure,’ she sighed. ‘It would have made life much simpler for me if they could have been identified. I would not be in this limbo now, unable to prove that I am a widow.’
He paused, then asked: ‘Do you have a photograph of your husband?’
As he asked there came a swift knocking at the door and without waiting for an invitation, Mildred’s white, round and urgent face appeared. ‘Pardon me, Mrs Dulciman.’ She transferred her attention to Davies.
‘Dangerous … Mr Davies, your dog is howling.’ Her expression tightened. ‘He’s got the chambermaid in there.’
Davies made for the door with Mod, fumbling with his exercise book, immediately following. Mrs Dulciman said: ‘Oh dear.’
They rushed through the hotel and up two flights of stairs towards Mod’s door. ‘He’s stopped,’ said Mildred with foreboding. ‘I hope he hasn’t … had her.’
Mod was trying to find the key. Davies told him to hurry. He located it, unlocked the door and threw it open. Kitty was sitting on the bed licking the chambermaid’s face. The girl, a rural-looking blonde, sat blushing. ‘Oi think ’e loikes me,’ she said.
Davies left Mod to take Kitty for a walk. He returned to Mrs Dulciman’s room. She called for him to come in. When he entered he found she was standing facing the window and was looking far out to sea as though expecting a ship. ‘The widows used to stare out like this,’ she turned smiling a little wistfully. ‘Waiting for the fishermen who would never return.’
She sat down and smiled quietly. ‘My ship won’t come in now, Mr Davies.’
He took the chair opposite her. ‘Why is it so important?’ he asked firmly. He was glad Mod was not there any longer. ‘Why do you have to know?’
‘I told you that I needed to know, for my own peace of mind. It’s very strange, very strange indeed, not knowing whether or not you are a married woman. I would like to know for certain what happened to my husband. If he went away and is still hiding somewhere I would like to know where and, more importantly perhaps, why he did it.’ She glanced up carefully, almost primly. ‘But you will have ascertained that there is another reason,’ she said.
‘I thought there might be.’
‘Money,’ she said simply. ‘A lot of money. Goodness knows where he got it, Mr Davies, but it transpired that he had a great deal, all unknown to me. It’s tied up in business deposits and I have been refused access to it. Until I can prove that he is dead. Or the statutory seven years have gon
e by and a court can presume he is dead.’
‘If he is not dead and he just vanished to a plan, for whatever reason,’ said Davies, ‘it’s odd that he left so much money behind.’
She nodded. ‘I have thought that too,’ she said. ‘But for all I know he may still be drawing on those assets from wherever he is. His financial arrangements were so complex, a veritable spider’s web, all over the place, London and elsewhere. And I have no means of knowing or finding out. Until he is officially declared dead, all that is forbidden territory to me. I would never be able to find out. Two years from now is a long time to someone of my age.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘A long time and a very short time also, believe me. I must get this matter done. If this money remains where it is and I die in the meantime … and let me not put too fine a point on it, Mr Davies. I am not only elderly, I have an illness. If it’s a race between my illness and my age, then I think the ailment will win.’
Davies said, with the inadequacy of such moments: ‘I am sorry to hear that, Mrs Dulciman. I really am.’
She leaned and touched the back of his hand with her frail fingers. ‘I am sure you are. You are a very kindly man. I knew that from the start.’ A bright look suddenly replaced her introspection. ‘Shall we have a sherry?’ she suggested. ‘It’s almost noon and it will cheer us up.’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘A nice sherry would go down a treat.’
She rose and went to a cabinet, selecting two flimsy and finely engraved glasses. ‘Do you prefer it dry?’
‘Er … oh yes. Dry please.’
‘This is Fonseca seventy-one,’ she said. ‘I hope you like it.’
He took the slender-stemmed glass in the hand that was more accustomed to holding the thick handle of a beer tankard and assured her that he would.
She sat down again, opposite him, and crossed her slight legs, arranging her lace-trimmed dress carefully. She lifted her glass. ‘There,’ she said beaming a little. ‘That’s better.’ They smiled and toasted each other.
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 56