The Dust and the Heat

by Michael Gilbert

  Victor Mallinson thought that it was one of the rougher tricks of fate that he should have been given Mr Crake for a partner, but he was sensible enough to realize that he needed him. They complemented each other. He thought of himself as an artist, a creator of beauty. He got an aesthetic pleasure out of an exquisitely conceived scent in a beautiful bottle, and he knew that the same bottle represented to Mr Crake a sum of shillings and pence in raw materials and direct cost, plus overheads, plus advertising, plus retailers’ return. It was a necessary discipline. Nevertheless, there were moments when he wondered whether it was worth it; a sordid grubbing after money, and anxiety about profit margins and dividends.

  “I see he’s advertising for a secretary,” said Mr Crake, thoughtfully.

  “Applicants for the post of Secretary to the Managing Director,” said the neatly printed notice, “should obtain a card from the guichet on arrival. The number of the card will indicate the order in which you will be interviewed, and will avoid waste of your time and ours. Thank you.”

  The tall girl with the auburn hair read the notice and walked over to collect her card, which was handed out to her by a man with the look of a retired NCO. He seemed to have some difficulty in finding it, and she stood patiently in front of the window, the bright light showing up the tiny, almost invisible freckles behind her clear skin.

  When she got her card she saw that the number was fifteen. There were twelve girls in the room. That meant that it was the second interview that was going on now. If they took five minutes each, she was in for an hour’s wait at least. She took out a cigarette. No one else was smoking. So what? She lit it and cast an eye over the field. Half of them were upper-crust girls, debs or near it, probably quite inefficient, and out for the job on their looks. Two or three of the others were older women, probably highly efficient, but not the popular idea of a managing director’s personal secretary. The most formidable was the neat girl nearest to the inner door. Good-looking enough to attract a wolf whistle and cool enough to freeze it, encased in a transparent outer skin of self-possession.

  The inner door opened, a flustered blonde came out, and the neat young lady went in. Five minutes passed. Then seven. This one must be making a hit. Ten. The auburn-haired girl was contemplating a second cigarette when the inner door opened again. This time it was the NCO type who had given them their cards. He said, “I am sorry to inform you ladies that the post has been filled. If you will hand me back your cards please, one at a time, I will refund you your expenses.”

  Auburn hair thought that she wouldn’t bother. She had come in her own car anyway.

  4

  If Oliver wanted to speak to Chrissie he telephoned her at two o’clock. He knew he would find her at home, finishing the elaborate luncheon she cooked for herself as a way of filling in the morning.

  He said, “I’ve got to go up to town for a meeting with our advertisers. It looks like going on late.”

  “It will be better, then, if you stay at your flat.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “How is Miss Snooty getting on?”

  “Miss Doughty is getting on very well. She hopes that you are too.”

  “Give Miss Snooty my best compliments,” said Chrissie, “and tell her from me she can go jump in the lake.”

  “I’ll tell her,” said Oliver. He rang off and said to Miss Doughty, who was sitting impassively on the other side of the desk, “You seem to have put my wife’s back up. How come?”

  “I imagine that it was because I told her you were busy when she rang up yesterday afternoon during your board meeting.”

  “I see,” said Oliver. “Perhaps that wasn’t very wise.”

  “You said that no calls were to be put through to the board-room.”

  “True,” said Oliver, “but wives are exceptions to every rule.”

  “Very well,” said Miss Doughty, “I’ll make a note of that.”

  “If someone made an improper suggestion to you, I believe you’d simply say ‘I’ll make a note of that’.”

  “If someone made an improper suggestion to me,” said Miss Doughty, “I should send for the police. Before you go up to London, you said you ought to deal with this letter from the bank about the fixed deposits.”

  “Mr Nicholson can deal with that. He understands fixed deposits.”

  “Very well. Then there’s a letter from the War Office asking if you can handle the Mepacrin contract for the army in Malaya.”

  “That’s Mr Blackett’s pigeon.”

  “If you say so. Only seeing that their letter is a personal one from Major-General Ferguson, I should have thought the answer ought to come from you, as Chairman, not from one of his own recent subordinates.”

  Oliver looked out of the corner of his eye at Miss Doughty, and said, “You might have something there. Incidentally, how did you know that Brigadier Blackett had been working under General Ferguson?”

  “He mentioned it when he saw the letter.”

  “I see,” said Oliver. “What other chores have you got for me?”

  Miss Doughty consulted her book and said, “There’s a staffing problem in the London office that wants your personal attention. The papers are in that docket in the in-tray. The auditors raised a number of queries which will need dealing with. I’ve got their letter here. You asked me to make some notes for you for your talk to the Pharmaceutical Trades club. They’re in that blue folder. And there’s a long report from your new security man, Mr Bolus. Suspected industrial espionage in the laboratory.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Which of them are you going to tackle first?”

  “Actually,” said Oliver, “I’m going to have a drink. If anyone rings up you can tell them I’m in conference. With the President of the Pharmaceutical Trades Club.”

  Challen said to Dumbo that afternoon, “She won’t last long.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s too efficient.”

  “It’s time he had someone to keep him in order,” said Dumbo. “He can’t just play at it. We’re a big outfit now.”

  When Quinn & Nicholson opened its London office in High Holborn, a flat had been found about a quarter of a mile away, in Lamb’s Conduit Street. The flat was taken in the name of the Company, and the rent featured in the accounts as a business expense (accommodation for directors and senior executives). In fact, it was Oliver’s flat. It had been contract furnished and bore as much resemblance to a home as any suite in a hotel. The only unusual piece of furniture was a sizeable safe, which had been hauled up to the flat with considerable difficulty and installed in the master bedroom. Oliver kept the whisky in it.

  He reached the flat at six o’clock that evening, had a word with the wife of the hall porter who looked after the flat for him and cooked his breakfast and whose name, by one of those coincidences which occur only in real life, was Mrs Porter, and went up to bath and change out of his office clothes and into a flannel suit. He was distressed to note that the trousers, which had been made for him less than a year before, were now uncomfortably tight round the waist. He slit the stitches at the back of the band with a razor blade, had a second drink, selected a shirt and tie with care, had a third drink, finished dressing and went out.

  A light drizzle was falling, almost a mist. Oliver spotted a taxi cruising down Theobald’s Road from the direction of Gray’s Inn and waved his umbrella imperiously. As the taxi swerved in towards the pavement, he heard footsteps running.

  “Brett’s Club,” said Oliver.

  “Excuse me!”

  “Hold on a moment. This young man seems to want something.”

  “An awful liberty,” said the young man, “but if you’re going towards the West End could I share your cab? They’re frightfully scarce in these parts.”

  “I can take you as far as St Martin’s Lane,” said Oliver. “Get in.”

  “That’s lovely. The Coliseum is what I want. What a bit of luck!”

  Oliver was trying t
o place him. He was a good-looking boy, with fair hair and a very slightly effeminate face. The speech was pseudo upper-class with its “frightfully” and its “lovely”, but the accent (was it cockney or was it a foreigner who had learned his English from a cockney family?) peeped through like the lead in a snide half-crown.

  “Coliseum?” said Oliver. “Do I gather that you’re late for the show? Or are you, perhaps, taking part in it?”

  The boy flashed him a smile. “‘Perhaps’ is right,” he said. “I’m chorus. If they find they’re short, they phone round the agencies to see who they can get to fill up with.”

  “And they got you?”

  “That’s right,” said the boy. He had begun to search through the pockets of his jacket.

  “Have you lost something?”

  “I haven’t actually lost anything, but I dressed in such a terrible hurry when I got the phone call from my agent, I must have left my wallet in my other suit.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m paying for the taxi.”

  “I was thinking about getting back. If I knew anyone in the show I could borrow from them, but I don’t.”

  “You don’t know me,” said Oliver.

  “That’s perfectly true,” said the boy, blushing prettily as he said it.

  “All right,” said Oliver. “I’ve bought it. I’ll stake you a pound. That should buy your supper and get you home to bed.”

  “I hope you don’t think I did this on purpose – just to borrow money, I mean.”

  “I think you’ve got a big future on the stage,” said Oliver.

  “No, really. I mean it. And I’ll pay you back. Here’s one of my cards. It’s my stage name, but that’s my address at the bottom. If you’ll let me know where to send it.”

  He sounded so sincere that Oliver was almost convinced. He spelt out his name and address and the boy wrote it down on the back of an envelope.

  “Here we are,” said Oliver. “Cut down the back there and you’ll find yourself in St Martin’s Lane. Good luck with the show.”

  “Goodnight, and thanks frightfully,” said the boy. Oliver made his way up the seven worn, semicircular steps which led to the swing doors of Brett’s Club. To belong to Brett’s Club was something. It was not the oldest club in London, and by no means the most expensive, but for reasons which were far from plain, it was very difficult to get into. It was not primarily political like the Carlton, or Bohemian like the Savage. It had been founded in the early nineteenth century in a fit of bad temper by a Duke who had been refused permission to entertain a troupe of clowns at the Athenaeum, and it had retained a tenuous but persistent connection with the stage, although you were as likely to see a High Court judge as a theatrical knight at a long centre table. Oliver had been proposed for membership by Jacob Naumann and seconded by a very ancient and very notable military friend of his father’s. He had had to wait nearly a year for his turn to come up, and could still recall the thrill of pleasure he had felt when he had learned of his election.

  As he walked upstairs to the bar he was trying to answer two questions. Why, if “Maurice Merrivale”, which was the name printed in tasteful 24-point Palace Script in the centre of the card, had really left his wallet in his other suit, did he have his cards on him at all? That was a difficult one, but the second was even more puzzling.

  Mr Merrivale’s home address, printed in 8-point Gill Sans in the bottom left-hand corner, was 72(a) Baxendale Road, Fulham. But if he lived in Fulham and had just at that moment rushed out in response to a telephone call from his agent, how had he managed to be at the corner of Lamb’s Conduit Street in Holborn?

  Oliver thought about this for a bit and decided that he ought to make a telephone call. Then he went to the bar, where he found Victor Mallinson. Mallinson had become a member about a year after Oliver, who had been amused to see that he described himself in the Candidates’ Book as ‘a collector’.

  Mallinson said, “If you haven’t got to hurry home after dinner, would you care for a game of bridge? I’ve got a guest coming along. He’s a Frenchman actually.”

  “I’d like that,” said Oliver. “We’ll get Naumann to make up a four.”

  Mallinson’s friend had proved to be a small, quiet, grey-haired man, with a name which sounded like Semolina. There was no suggestion, Oliver noticed, that they should cut for partners. Mallinson played with the Frenchman against Naumann and himself. They had played five rubbers. One had ended more or less level. Oliver and Naumann had lost the other four, two of them quite heavily. At the Club stakes of ten shillings a hundred with one-pound corners, this had not been disastrous, but when the game finally broke up at one o’clock, Oliver found himself paying out nearly thirty pounds for his evening’s entertainment. The drizzle had cleared now and the stars were showing. Oliver decided to walk home through Covent Garden, already beginning to stir into life as the first lorries rumbled in from the country, up the deserted length of Kingsway and Southampton Row and a right turn into Theobald’s Road. As he walked he was trying to work out just how it had happened.

  The cards had not run too badly. Old Jacob was a steady performer. Mallinson was one of the new school of educated bridge players who read every book and article that was written about the game, and had the latest conventions at his fingertips. Oliver himself played almost entirely by ear and would have backed himself against Mallinson six days out of seven. The Frenchman? Come to think of it, of course, it was the Frenchman who had made the difference. The turning point of the second rubber had been a small slam in hearts which Oliver had doubled and which had, against all the odds, been made. How? When he got home he would write the cards down and work it out. Bridge problems were very like business problems. If you reduced them to simple terms and looked at them steadily, you could usually see a way through them or round them.

  A black shape rocketed out of a shop basement and streaked across the road with a yowl, with a second black shape in pursuit. Oliver grinned to himself. If men and women were as open as cats about their lusts, what a lot of trouble everyone would be saved, and, incidentally, what a lot of damn silly books and plays wouldn’t get themselves written.

  A car was parked with sidelights on against the kerb opposite the entrance to his block of flats. He was fitting his key into the lock when he heard the car door open, and looked round. It was a big, square man with a big square face.

  “Mr Nugent?”

  “That’s right,” said Oliver. He shifted his weight on his feet ready to fight or run. Running would be the safer option. The man was three classes above him in weight and looked as if he knew how to handle himself.

  “Do you mind if we go up to your flat for a moment?” He put one hand inside his raincoat and pulled out a black leather case. Oliver studied the warrant card carefully. It was embossed with the Royal Arms and appeared to identify the stranger as Detective Sergeant (First Class) Warriner G attached to Q Division of the Metropolitan Police.

  Oliver walked over to the car and said to the driver, “Do you mind if I look at yours too?”

  “All right, Sergeant?”

  “Certainly. Show him your driving licence and Bunny Club Card if he wants to see them.”

  “All right,” said Oliver. “You can come along up.”

  Sergeant Warriner looked even larger indoors than he had in the street. He removed his hat, revealing a guardsman haircut, sat down on the hard chair beside the table, and said “No” to a drink.

  Oliver wandered across to the sideboard, decanted two inches of brandy into a glass and added some ginger ale from an opened bottle. He thought, from the gleam in the Sergeant’s eye, that he might have joined him if pressed.

  “Tell me all about it,” he said.

  “Well, sir, it’s like this. One of our men from West End Central picked up a nail–”

  “A–?”

  “A male prostitute – outside Piccadilly Underground this evening. He was soliciting for custom, and making a nuisance of himself generally.’’
/>   “Unpleasant,” said Oliver.

  “There’s a lot of it about.”

  “Do you know, that’s what my doctor always says. Last time I went to see him I told him I was pregnant, and he said it quite automatically – please go on.”

  Sergeant Warriner was staring at him with a baffled expression. “Did you say you’d been pregnant?”

  “I was pulling his leg,” said Oliver. “Please go on with your story. We’d just got to this young man soliciting in Piccadilly. What happened next?”

  “Well, sir, he was taken back to West End Central and invited to turn out his pockets. In his wallet we discovered a scrap of paper–”

  “He’d found his wallet by then, had he?”

  “What’s that?” said the Sergeant. He sounded exactly like a foxhound picking up the first real nip of scent on a frosty morning.

  “I’m assuming that the young man we’re talking about is called Maurice Merrivale – that’s his nom de guerre – I don’t think anyone could really be called that, do you?”

  “Then you do know this man, sir?”

  From a view to a chase.

  “Oh certainly.”

  From a chase to a kill.

  “And have you known him for very long, sir?”

  “I have known him,” said Oliver, “approximately six hours longer than I have known you, Sergeant. He cadged a lift in my taxi this evening and conned a pound out of me. We exchanged addresses on the assumption, which I never had much faith in, that he might get round to repaying it.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “You don’t sound happy.”

  “In a voluntary statement he made after his arrest, he asserted that he had known you for three or four months.”

  “When you say known me, you mean, I suppose, in the way of business?”

  “Yes, sir. That was the implication. He mentioned visits to this flat.”