by Peter Main
Still clutching the handkerchief to his face, Grimble leaned on the Chief Inspector’s desk with the other hand. He looked at the Bishop with frightened eyes.
“I demand bail,” he said shrilly. “I must have bail. I must have this dealt with. I must see a surgeon at once.”
The desperation in his voice did not move the Chief Inspector. He looked at Grimble with a contempt that nearly went down to the depth of the same emotion in the eyes of Janet Morgan.
“There’s plenty of time to see about that,” he said blandly, “but in the meantime you must realise that you are under arrest and that I can do nothing for you. No doubt the police surgeon will give you a bit of sticking plaster to stick over the cut. If you find that you have been granted bail, to-morrow, you can go and see about it, but until then the matter is outside my hands.”
Grimble put both hands before his eyes and started to weep like a child, ignoring the blood that dripped slowly down on to his light Cheviot suit. Janet Morgan stood beside the door, her arm held by the policeman. She was unmoved by this outburst.
“I always knew, Roland,” she said, putting deep bitterness into the name, “that you were as yellow as a daffodil, but I never thought I would have the pleasure of seeing you make an exhibition of yourself like this. I must thank you for your performance.”
This stung Grimble into standing upright. He glared across at the girl, his expression saying that he would gladly have cut her throat if he had had the chance, but that he was still afraid of her.
The Chief Inspector coughed loudly. He did not seem to have been upset by the little show of violence in his office.
“Grimble,” he said briskly, his voice showing that he had returned to business after his little outing to the seaside resort of Melodrama, “what I would like to know is whether, when you and Morgan went in after holding up the taxi-driver, your aunt was still alive. Did you go in by the front way or the back?”
Grimble was still too shaken by sobs to reply, but Janet Morgan did it for him.
“We had to go in by the front way,” she said, “because Mrs. Rattigan always insisted that Arthur should lock the back door at eleven o’clock and bring her the key, but there was never any risk in going in, for the old woman spent most of her time dozing in that chair, and half the thieves in London could have crept past her without rousing her. I looked in and saw that she was asleep, and so we,” she looked scornfully at the weeping Roland Grimble, “sneaked in past her and went to bed. She didn’t waken.”
“So,” said the Chief Inspector slowly, “she was still alive at that time, was she?”
Janet Morgan thought for a moment. She closed her eyes as if trying to cast a cinematic picture of the scene on her eyelids.
“You know,” she said at length, “I don’t know if she was asleep or if she was dead. I was so used to seeing her lolling in that rocking-chair that I just took it for granted that the old woman was asleep. Annie Aspinall used to set her alarm clock at hourly intervals and she’d get up and peer out to see that all was right, but she’d never have bothered to waken the old girl if she thought she was asleep. As you know, Lottie never went to bed at all. She just used to take scraps of rest in that chair, and when I saw her the next morning, before they moved her, I’d just have thought she was sleeping. I’m sure I don’t know if she was dead when we went in.”
The Chief Inspector seemed to think it was his turn. He sighed.
Roland Grimble’s tear-stained and blood-bestreaked face appeared from behind his hands. He looked across at Janet Morgan.
“She probably killed Aunt Lottie,” he said vehemently, “she knew she’d get something in the old girl’s will. The old girl was fond of her, though God knows why—she’d found her in the gutter and had put her up to walking the streets. She’d do anything for money. She’s as heartless as they make them. She’s utterly ruthless, and she’s got me into this mess. God! I wish I had never met her.”
Chapter 10
Nothing Doing
“WELL,” SAID THE PROFESSOR, digging into the entrails of his pipe with a paper-clip he had snitched from the Chief Inspector’s desk and straightened out, “what d’ye all think o’ that little pantomime?”
Janet Morgan and the bedraggled Roland Grimble had been removed. We were alone with the Chief Inspector. I could see that the old man was dying to perform a post-mortem on the scene which had just taken place.
The Chief Inspector looked sleepily at the old man. His heavy lidded eyes were nearly closed.
“All right, John,” he spoke submissively, “I know you’re dying to tell me what you think.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll give you a few minutes.”
Professor Stubbs snorted indignantly. He is always annoyed when anyone sees right through his transparent pretences and goes straight to the point.
“Bah!” he exploded, “ye’d think that ye’d found out all the flamin’ answers by yerself. Where ’ud ye ha’ bin, let me ask ye, if I hadn’t tumbled to the fact that that girl an’ young man had bin concoctin’ a nice little story to get me friend Carr into trouble? Ye’d probably ha’ bin arrestin’ him an’ makin’ a bigger fool of yerself than ye are by nature. No, no, Reggie, don’t ye try comin’ superior on me now.”
His face took on the benign look which I always associate with a success of any sort. I knew that he was feeling as pleased as a whole Punch and Judy show at the success of his little bit of deduction. I knew, also, that his crowing would make him practically unbearable about the house.
“What I was wonderin’,” the old man’s voice was full of false humility, “was what truth there was in Grimble’s statements about the girl Morgan bein’ to blame for his slippin’ from the straight an’ narrow.”
Chief Inspector Bishop placed his finger-tips together. He pursed his lips and looked excessively judicial.
“I do not think there can be any doubt,” he said slowly,” that the girl was, in fact, the ringleader in the scheme. I’ve met her kind before and I know them. They are as hard as nails, utterly without morals, and completely ruthless in the achievement of their desires. Yes, I think she probably got young Grimble to try the hold-up idea—probably by nagging at him for his lack of money and initiative, and being a fool—that kind of petty crook is always a fool—he fell for it.”
“I must say,” I broke in, “that I think he asked for everything she did to him. What I can’t quite understand is the way in which he broke down at the very thought that she had scarred him. He might have been a girl who has just been scalded and who knows that her face will never be the same again, from the way he behaved.”
“Oh, that,” the Chief Inspector was contemptuous, “that is just what I might have expected from someone like young Grimble. To you or to me he may not have appeared a very attractive specimen, but it was quite obvious from his behaviour and from the way he dressed, that he was as full of vanity as a powder-puff. That again is a common characteristic of the petty crook. He always dresses smartly, rather too smartly, and the feeling that he is wearing good clothes—clothes that are better than those of the people who ride beside him on the buses or in the tube—gives him a sense of superiority which helps justify the inferiority complex which, largely has led him to adopt that kind of life. That sort of petty crook can be as tough as a horse-steak, but the threat that they may lose what little looks they possess breaks them up immediately. Yet get hold of one of the racecourse gangsters who has just been slashed with a razor, a thing he may have done to others scores of times, and you’ll find him so vindictive that he’ll spill enough beans to astonish the firm of Heinz.”
“Uhhuh,” the old man grunted, “ye’re right there, Reggie.” The Chief Inspector, unused to this agreement, bowed politely. “But what I’d like to know is whether there’s any possibility that Grimble was right when he said that Janet Morgan could ha’ committed the murder. Ye see, in clearin’ up these little sidelines, we’ve kinda wandered away from the main problem, which is, Who killed Lottie R
attigan?”
“I can assure you,” the Chief Inspector was mildly pompous, “that I have not been wandering away from that problem. My main trouble now is that we are back where we started. I think we can safely say that Grimble’s accusation against Morgan was pure spite, wrung out of him by the humiliation which he had suffered, and that Grimble himself is not guilty of the murder. This means that we have eliminated two of the principal characters, but it still leaves us an appallingly long list to deal with, even if we say that the murder was committed by one of those living in the hotel and not by some friend or acquaintance who just looked in to kill Mrs. Rattigan and then disappeared into the world again. Personally, I am inclined to wonder whether that is not the answer to the question. Looking at it from the point of view of the murderer, I would say that he would be a fool to tie himself so very obviously to the hotel.”
“Um,” the old man chewed savagely at his pipe, “I can’t say I agree wi’ ye there. If I’d bin committin’ the murder an’ had known that that bright ornament o’ the police force, Chief Inspector Reginald F. Bishop, was to be investigatin’ it, I might very well ha’ thought that he’d follow that argument, an’ that I was probably safer if I was connected wi’ the hotel than I would ha’ bin if I’d bin known as one o’ her cronies who wasn’t there. I suppose y’ve done somethin’ in the way o’ lookin’ up her friends an’ acquaintances, eh?”
“My God, yes,” the Chief Inspector was weary, “the trouble there is that she seems to have known every single person in London. I hadn’t realised that she was, in her way, a sort of institution, and that everyone would know her. I’ve got a list which I’ve been through, time and time again, and I can’t get any satisfaction from it. There is one odd fact, however, which I have noticed. This is that all the major beneficiaries under her will were staying in the hotel at that moment. I have seen several of her previous wills, and as your friend Carr says she seems to have looked upon will-making as a kind of game. Sometimes she left her money to people in America or Australia and then, the very next time, she would leave it all to her servants. Reading these wills, it certainly looks as though Grimble was right when he said the old woman was mad. I think she was as mad as a hatter.”
“Oh, I dunno,” the Professor was argumentative, “if I had the whale o’ a lot o’ cash, I might think o’ amusing meself in the same way. Ye see, the old woman had become a kinda figure an’ she wasn’t able to move around much, in the way she had done when she was young, an’ her will was her only way o’ exercising her desire for power. She could sit back in that rockin’-chair an’ change her will whenever she wanted to an’ every time she changed it she knew that she was bein’ powerful. But to get back to yer case. I suppose that, along wi’ Grimble an’ the girl, we can now exclude Mr. Carr from the list o’ suspects?”
The Chief Inspector shook his head solemnly. I do not know if he was just being contrary for the sake of it, or whether he was trying to get a rise out of the old man.
“I’d like to know a bit more before I can cross Carr off,” he said.
If he was trying to get a rise out of the old man he certainly succeeded. The old man blew up with a noise like the top coming off Vesuvius. He almost spluttered in his fury and indignation. He turned to me.
“D’ye hear that, Max,” he howled, “there’s gratitude for ye. I go out detectin’ an’ I get him the answers which, mind ye, he hadn’t thought o’ himself, an’ I do this to show that the case he’s bin makin’ against Carr is wi’out foundation. An’ what does the dirty dog do? I ask ye? The slab-faced, mutton-headed son o’ a drunken baboon, comes along to me an’ he says, kinda polite, thank’ee for yer help but we still got to hang yer friends. Is that gratitude?”
As I was not forward with much in the way of sympathy, for I could see the Chief Inspector’s point of view, he turned his eyes to the ceiling as if asking help from plaster cherubs and vines. He twisted his face into a grimace which was intended to express the feelings of a very much misunderstood man. Then, as quickly as his wrath had boiled up, it subsided, rather like boiling milk removed from the fire.
“All right, all right,” he grumbled, “ye can have it yer own way. Ye can go on tryin’ to prove that what ain’t the truth is the truth an’ all it’ll do is land ye in the soup, an’ I hope the soup’s plenty hot. Now then, I’ll tell ’ee what I think ye should look at next. I think ye should look at the blinkin’ Bakers. They did kinda nicely from the old girl’s will an’ I think ye might as well look into them. Though, ye know,” his voice was pleasantly conversational, “I’ve got a kinda feelin’ that the will may be the cab aroun’ the naked man walkin’ down the Strand.”
The Chief Inspector looked mildly bewildered by this last remark, as well he might, but he had known the old man for long enough so he did not try to start chasing an obvious wild goose.
“The Bakers,” he said absently. “Oh yes, the Bakers. Well, I think you know as much about them as I do. They might have committed the murder, but then, so might Miss Aspinall, or the cook, or the old waiter. The trouble with this case is that there are too many people with the same motive and that there is nothing to tie any one of them up with it. That, John, was why I felt encouraged when I got the statements made by Grimble and Morgan. I began to feel that I was getting somewhere. How was I to know that as soon as I had the start of a case, you were going to come along and blow it up for me?”
He looked at Professor Stubbs rather pathetically. The old man blew his nose on a gaudy bandana.
“The hell on it,” he said briskly, “I kinda feel I want to go out an’ get stinkin’ drunk. Maybe if I got that way things ’ud come clearer in me mind. The hell on it. I’m goin’ to call on Ben Carr an’ see how he’s gettin’ along. Comin’?”
The Chief Inspector shook his head. He remarked rather pointedly that he was a busy man who had a great deal of work to do, and that he could not afford to get drunk in the middle of the day.
We made our departure. When we got outside I looked at the Bentley and remembered that I wanted to get something from Kew. Any excuse was good enough for me, so I left the old man to his own devices and made off myself, promising to meet him at The Boudoir when I had finished my business.
My business went better than I thought it would, and this meant that my absence was shorter than I had hoped it would be. I must confess that when the old man gets going on murder I often wish I could take a day’s holiday. At the same time, I know that the longer I am away from him on these occasions, the more trouble there is for me to straighten out once I get back.
The bus dropped me at Notting Hill and I walked along to the hotel.
The old man was seated in Lottie Rattigan’s rocking-chair opposite Ben Carr. They were engrossed in throwing dice. I could see that if The Baudoir had been a mad hotel in the days of Lottie Rattigan it had little prospect of achieving sanity under the rule of Mr. Carr.
Playing on the floor at Mr. Carr’s feet was a small girl, of about four years of age. I realised that what she was playing with was a bottle of light ale. Every now and then she unscrewed the stopper and took a swig of the beer.
“Hullo, Max, old cock,” Mr. Carr looked up from the game. “This,” he rootled the child in the ribs with his toe, “is my daughter. Her name is Bong.”
“How do you do,” I said politely, offering the child my hand. She promptly poured a drop of beer into the palm. Mr. Carr looked down disapprovingly.
“Oy,” he called, “oy, Maggie!”
“The woman who came into the room looked less like a woman of the name of Maggie than anyone I have ever seen. She was, I gathered later, a full-blooded gypsy, and her name was not Maggie. Mr. Carr explained to me then the reason for the adoption of the name of Maggie.
“Max, cock,” he said, “women are the devil. The first one I took up with was called Maggie, and so I’ve called them all Maggie. It saves a lot of trouble and complications. If I talk in my sleep I always talk of ‘Maggie,’ so there’s no ha
rm done. See?”
I saw. Maggie looked at the child with disfavour.
“Drinking beer again, Bong?” she said severely. “You know what it does to your bowels.”
“Silly old bowels,” muttered the child, tilting the few remaining drops into her mouth. She threw the bottle at her foster-mother, who caught it adroitly and laid it on the table. She saw that the Professor and Mr. Carr were engaged in playing dice. Her eyes glittered.
“I’m going to join you,” she announced. Mr. Carr looked at her sternly.
“Oh, no, you’re not,” he said, “you don’t play dice with my friends. I’ve got used to being cheated, and I don’t mind it. but it’s a thing that takes some getting used to. Have you made the beds?”
Maggie nodded, and, gathering Bong under one arm, departed. Mr. Ben Carr looked at me. I think he felt that he owed me something in the way of an explanation.
“Lost my maid this morning,” he said, “not that she was much of a maid. Rather one of the amenities of the place. Smart girl, Janet, but not quite smart enough. If she had been she wouldn’t have taken up with Roland. I could have told her he was no good, but maybe she thought she could make something of him. Damned nuisance, too, I suppose I’ll have to do something about their defence. I wonder if I could get hold of that taxi-driver and give him fifty quid to say he’d made a mistake?”
“I wouldn’t, son, if I was you,” said the old man, dryly. “That’s the sort of thin’ that would land you in trouble too, an’ anyhow, it wouldn’t be much use by this time. Yer cousin has bin spillin’ out the contents o’ his heart an’ soul as hard as he can.”
“Bother,” said Mr. Carr, “it would have been easier to bribe the taxi-driver. I always said that Roland was no good. He could never learn when to keep his trap shut and when to open it.”
“What are you doing about the hotel?” I asked. I really wondered if he was proposing to carry the place on.
“Oh,” said Mr. Carr vaguely, “I’m just letting it get ahead with itself. You know, once a place like this gets going the way Aunt Lottie had it going, it doesn’t need much help. Very few people eat here and so all I’ve got to do is to see that there are clean sheets on the beds and something for breakfast. No bother at all. Maggie’ll look after that. She and the kids moved in this morning. I’ve never run a hotel before, but I expect I’ll learn how to do it. Have a drink?”