by Jack Mann
“One moment,” Gees arrested him. “I’m not going to gratify your obvious wish by tearing up this cheque and flinging the pieces in your face, Mr. Hunter. I’m going to cash it, first thing to-morrow morning, since it’s payable at Ludlow and not crossed. And—I—am—going—to finish—this case!” he ended slowly and emphatically.
“The case is finished—closed,” Hunter said coldly. “Don’t try to scare me with melodramatics, because it can’t be done. Get back to London, to your mumps or murders, whichever you prefer. You are no longer wanted here.”
“I’m damned if I will!” Gees exclaimed heatedly.
But that was after Hunter had gone, and he addressed the closed door of the room with the apostrophe.
CHAPTER X
NOT ILLEGAL
GEES POINTED AT THE PLATE BEFORE HIM, next morning. It contained three kidneys—that is, six halves, each on a little round of toast—and was garnished by four large sausages, pushed perilously out by the kidney toasts to the edge of the plate. Nicholas Churchill looked down at the pointing finger, anxiously.
“It’s a change from the eggs and bacon breakfast, certainly,”
Gees told him, “but surely you don’t think any one man could wrap himself round more than half that and even stagger away from the table?”
“A man must eeat, sir,” Nicholas replied gravely, and apparently without complete comprehension. “T’ missus got a nice cowd ham—happen tha’d like a slice to foller them pickin’s.”
“Happen I would not,” Gees said hastily. “Don’t think of it!”
“I got to take care o’ thee, sir,” Nicholas told him. “T’ whole parish got it that curin’ Miss Norris wur thy doin’, an’ th’art a gradely chap, aside o’ that. What’ll tha like f’r thy dinner, now?”
“For the love of Mike don’t talk to me about dinner with these pickings in front of me!” Gees expostulated. “Anything you like—or Mrs. Churchill likes, and I know it’ll be good. Oh, any letters for me?”
“Noan, sir. Else, I’d a browt ’em.”
He retired, and left Gees to the pickings, as he called them. Also to ruminate over the speed with which news spreads in a village. Evidently the maid at the rectory, or somebody at Cosham’s—
sour-faced Mrs. Cosham, perhaps—could give a chameleon points and a beating over length of tongue. Norris’s visit to the inn the preceding night had doubtless been observed and reported; Norris himself, though, was not the sort to let fall so much as one word, Gees felt sure.
Miss Brandon’s report, he told himself hopefully, would come in later in the day. With only one day in which to collect the information he wanted, she had worked at the actual collecting as long as possible, and had been late in getting her screed typed and sent off. Meanwhile, a nice little drive in the soft sunshine of late spring that had replaced yesterday’s weeping clouds and oppressive gloom. He turned the car out from the stable—the hens had not gone near it, as far as he could see, though Nicholas Churchill found an egg under where it had been standing, later—and headed for Ludlow. Arrived there, he found the bank branch on which the cheque was drawn, endorsed it, and presented it. The cashier scrutinised it and the presenter in a doubtful way which made Gees realise that he could not look as honest as he thought he did, and eventually the man went off to consult with the manager. That gentleman accepted Gees’ driving licence as proof of identity after being offered a free trunk call to London with a view to proving it, and the money was paid over. Possibly Hunter rang the bank later with a view to stopping payment: over that, Gees never learned anything. He had got the money, and was as determined as ever to earn it to the full. He tucked the pleasantly-rustling notes away and drove back to Denlandham.
There, at the inn, he wrote his cheque for fifty pounds, payable to Arthur Perivale, and with it a little note in which he asked Perivale to accept it and devote it to whatever cause he thought worthy, “and you know where charity begins. Mere money is no reward for the service you rendered, and there is no possible reward among corruptible things. That you, like many of your cloth, have heavy personal responsibilities is easy to see. Let me feel that I have the honour, in this very slight way, of helping to lighten them.” So he ended his note, and pocketed it just in time to receive from Nicholas a registered express package which had been browt by a young chap wi’ a moty-bike. Alone again, Gees opened it with keen anticipation, and read the writer’s covering communication before turning to the report itself.
DEAR MR. GREEN,
I had no idea one had to waste such an awful amount of time over an inquiry of this sort. I know I have had the whole time since you rang me till now to devote to it, but seem to myself to have nothing at all to report. However, all my activities, or rather their results, are detailed in the enclosed statement and I will report again at the end of Monday’s work. Will keep at it over the week-end too, as closely as possible. All good wishes, Sincerely yours,
EVE MADELEINE BRANDON.
P.S. I am abstracting my week’s salary, without overtime, from the petty cash.
“Don’t blame you, Eve Madeleine,” Gees observed, “but now what have we? A cure for turnip-fly, or a pig with a mathematical mind?”
He opened out the sheets of single-spaced typing which comprised her report, and began reading—
ISABELLA CURTIS,
alias ISABELLA CARTER,
Correct Address:
224A, Upper Gloucester Place, N. 1.
The above address no longer holds good, nor has it done so since September of last year. I will take the Times police reports first, in regard to the raid on the Peppered Pig night-club. The woman’s name was taken, with those of thirty-one other frequenters of the club, as Isabella Carter, of 108, Carvalho Road, Bayswater. There is no such road in Bayswater. In giving evidence at the trial, Inspector Horace Tott stated that the woman’s real name and address were discovered through the painstaking keenness of P.C. G. Green, who took part in the raid and on whose acumen and general ability as a police officer, as displayed in this case, the presiding magistrate commented very favourably.
“Which, of course, put Tott’s back up,” Gees observed to himself. “Now take your tongue out of your cheek, my jewel, and tell me something I’m really honing to know. Fine and costs—yes. Get to the meat.”
224, Upper Gloucester Place, is a divided house, the separate tenancies being lettered upward as A, B, C, and D. The basement, a fifth tenancy by a sort of caretaker charwoman, is not lettered. A, the ground floor—two rooms, and probably combined kitchen and bath, I estimated it—is occupied by “Madame Stephanie, Clairvoyante.” I rang the bell, which was answered by Madame herself. In the late fifties or early sixties, very untidy as to clothes and hair and not too clean, and speaks broken English interlarded with French phrases—uses “ze” and “zis” for “the” and “this,” more often than not, though not always. She showed me into the front room, and I noticed old-fashioned communicating doors, closed then, between it and the back room. It was very shabbily furnished, and the cretonne on the two armchairs and settee was disgracefully dirty, while I think the carpet had not been swept for a week. Madame asked which client of hers had recommended me, and I told her a Mrs. Smith—Mrs. Amelia Smith—on the spur of the moment. She said she knew ze lady, but where was her card or ze written recommendation. Which finished me, for I had nothing of the kind, of course. Then she said that she only accepted ze new clients on ze written recommendation of ze client she already knew. She could see I was gentille, but she must make ze rule, to be safe. Would I come again wiz ze written recommendation?
And thus she turned me out, but not before I had sighted a cabinet photograph, in one of those bevelled-edge plain glass frames, of a dark and very beautiful girl probably about my own age, signed in the lower left hand corner in purple ink that had faded a good deal—“Love, Darling,” in one diagonal line, and under it—“Belle.” Nothing else in the room that appeared to me worth noting for rep
ort.
“Oh, darling Eve Madeleine!” Gees murmured softly, “I’d kiss you, only I know you’d give notice on the spot, and the perfect secretary doesn’t grow on every potato tree.”
He read on—
A sight of the basement tenant, and I went home to change my clothes. Returned to interview her, suitably made-up. ’Ad ’eard there was a job as ’ousemaid at number 224, interviewed ladies on every blinkin’ floor, an’ couldn’t ’ear nuthin’ about it. Did she think it was spoof, an’ blimey, I ’adn’t ’arf got a thirst, I ’adn’t.
My outfit must have been convincing, for she fell for it like a lamb. There wasn’t no ’ousemaid wanted in that ’ouse, she knew, and as for the thirst, she hadn’t got a drop in the place. I owned to my last month’s wages, and a nice little present from the gentleman for bein’ nice to him—though she was a ’oly terror, an’ that was reely why I ’ad to leave—and, it being then about opening time, we migrated for further confidences—on my part, at first—to the private bar of the Rose and Crown, I think it was called, on the corner. Not a corner, but the—they are always on or round the corner, I have observed. And the scandalous character, or lack of one, I gave your secretary in her role of discharged housemaid before I left that old harridan will not bear thinking about. Quite impenitent, too, and hoping for a nice gentleman and an unobservant lady in my next place.
And number 224 seemed an odd sort of ’ouse, I thought.
The harridan’s tipple was gin and peppermint, which is filthy!
No other word for it, in my opinion. I reverted to Guinness, and she observed that they all went for that, at my age, with no regard at all for their figgers. “Make yer fat, it do, ducky.” As for the ’ouse, it was just like any other, bricks an’ mortar. The people was like others, some good, some bad, an’ some stopped, an’ some didn’t, either owin’ rent or not, accordin’ to luck. Now there was a gent which ’ad the first floor, B. it was, when she first come there. Eighteen year, it must be since he left. No, it wasn’t, it was only seventeen. Wait a bit, though ...
She was wearily discursive, and I had to listen to the story of the gent, who was no gentleman. I got her down to the ground floor and to the queer-lookin’ old lady which ’ad arnsered the door to me there, and it was about the time of the fifth gin and peppermint, or it may have been the sixth. No, it wasn’t—it was the seventh. Am I being too discursive?
“Eve Madeleine,” Gees answered the query, “you’re being photographic and I can see it all. Oh, keep it up, girl—keep it up!”
Well, maybe the old lady did look a bit queer when you first took a dekko over her marketplace (phrase hers, and quite beyond me, though I hazard that marketplace is rhyming slang for face) but you soon got useter her, an’ she reely was clever the way she told fortunes. She had told the harridan there was unexpected money coming to her—“an’ strike me pink, ducky, if Noah’s Ark didn’t come in first at thirty-three to one next day, an’ me with a bob on it only because I see the name jest as I was buyin’ my sister’s youngest a Noah’s ark in a toy shop. Lovely kid ’e is, too, an’ clever. Well, clever ain’t the word! ’E can add up, an’ substract, an’ fair turn you dizzy, an’ ’im only five! But where was I? Yes. Thirty-three to one—whatcher think o’ that, now, ducky!” (Bear up, Mr. Green, this is but a microscopic sample of what I had to endure.) And so back to the point, and another gin and peppermint. She had a wonderful capacity, and the stuff took no effect—yet! Except that “ducky” became “ducks,” and I bore it bravely.
The old lady (to resume) had been there years, an’ there useter be a young lady in A. too, but she’d gorn, now. How many years? Well, nine or ten, an’ p’raps more’n that, even. Ten, though, because young Sid, her sister’s fourth what died, was born after they come there, an’ he’d been ten last birthday, if he’d lived. So it must be more’n ten. Wonderful child, he was, an’ you could see he wasn’t long for this world only to look at him. Why, he ...
Back to the point again, and I more careful in doling out the gins and peps, for she was becoming argumentative and difficult. Yes, the young lady. Real smart, she was, bit of a highflyer. Useter get called for by real gentlemen an’ took out evenin’s, an’ dressed lovely, she did. Up to the nines, whatever she had on, an’ undies too, right down to (blacked out by censor). You see a lot, livin’ in a basement. I giggled applause, and got her back to the point yet once more—and another gin and pep!
“Then how the devil did you manage to leave enough in the petty cash for your salary?” Gees inquired. “That’s ten at the least, and I know you had to make a show of keeping level on Guinnesses.”
Again he resumed reading—
The old lady didn’t never say she was the young one’s mother, and her name was really Stephanie, because the harridan had got a look at her rent book once an’ seen it—Madame Lucille
Stephanie, it was. An’ the young one was Curtis—Miss Belle Curtis. Most of the gentlemen called her Miss Curtis, an’ one or two called her just Belle, only sometimes she choked ’em off for doin’ of it. (My harridan was well away and keeping to the point splendidly, now.) An’ there was one, not young, he wasn’t, an’ gettin’ stout, but a rich man you could see as soon as you lamped his fizzog (nearly beyond me, but not quite) which always called her Belle. An’ last summer—no, last autumn, it would be—they must of got married, because they’d come back there twice an’ stayed some days each time, an’ she never useter let him come an’ stay there before that, only call to take her out. She’d left for good some time in August, my harridan believed, only to go to the seaside for a holiday, an’ she never come back except them twice with him, an’ it’d be once in November or December—before Christmas, it was, because (more abstruse calculations are indicated by that “because,” and I will spare you them) an’ the next time in February. My harridan knew about that eggsactly because they come on Valtin’s Day (easily translatable) an’ stayed six days. Six nights, that was, because they was mostly out all day, though it was weather fit to put mittens on a horse’s ears. Yes, six nights, beginnin’ Valtin’s Day. Not the night before, but the night of Valtin’s Day itself.
The old lady’d seemed rather upset when the young one didn’t come back after sayin’ she was only goin’ to the seaside, so it looked like the young one was her daughter, though they was always rowin’ an’ squabblin’ when they was both there. The names was different, you got to own—Curtis ain’t nuthin’ like Stephanie, is it, ducks? But maybe the old one got seduced by a earl or somebody when she was younger, an’ you gotter excuse me, ducks, because I got to go an’ be sick. Must be the ’eat. It was the thirteenth gin and pep, I feel sure. Thirteen is always unlucky. I fled, and came straight down to the office to write this from such few scrappy notes as I was able to take, not staying to change or anything. I can smell my own breath, and there is no pleasure in doing it. I could hardly see myself in a mirror just now—the mirror in my office—for shuddering. And I have sipped Guinness till I feel like emulating the harridan’s exit just before my flight from a bright lad who suggested “the pictures for a start, me little rosebud.” If he hadn’t gone away when I told him, I’d have breathed at him.
And that’s all for my very first day as lady detective. I trust you may find something useful in it. Will report again on Monday next.
“Useful?” Gees said, and folded the report and put it away in his pocket almost reverentially. “You’re the world’s greatest treasure, Eve Madeleine, and heaven save me from ever falling in love with you! Because I want to go on dictating to you, not have you dictate to me.”
He sought Nicholas Churchill, and found him polishing glasses in the bar in the absence of customers. Churchill took down a pint tankard.
“Put it back,” Gees counselled. “It’s too early, yet. All I want is to ask you a few questions about the place. That very charming lady I saw at the rectory must be Mr. Perivale’s second wife, surely.”
“Aye, she’s that,” Nich
olas agreed—about the second marriage part of it, obviously, but possibly not about her charm. 108