Black Eye (A Johnny Black Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  ‘No, I mean it could be your first client. And important, too, by the size of his car. Come and have a look. I spotted it just now from my own window. Wow! I just had to come and tell you.’

  Before I went to look, I knew precisely what I was going to see. However, Babs was the kind of girl you couldn’t disappoint.

  I peered down.

  ‘See?’ she went on. ‘He’s probably on his way up here now.’ She went to straighten my old Triptonian tie. I held my hand to my collar.

  ‘Too late,’ I said. ‘He’s been up.’

  She looked as disappointed as Alice would have been with a solid looking glass.

  ‘You mean ... he’s been ... and gone?’

  ‘No, just been,’ I smiled.

  She frowned. At least, I think she did. Her bubbly blond curls hid most of her less than generous forehead. Then she looked slowly round the room. I’d have been an utter cad to have teased her any further.

  ‘The “he” is me, Babs. Me. Johnny Black.’

  ‘“He” is you?’

  ‘Me.’ I put a hand on her shoulder. The crêpe de Chine of her dress was charged with static. I removed my hand from her shoulder.

  ‘It’s not a client’s car, more’s the pity. It’s my car, Babs. I picked it up yesterday.’

  She looked at me in complete disbelief, as if I’d said I was the Duke of Windsor. I sat her down in my chair.

  ‘You ... own ... that ... car?’

  ‘I ... own ... that ... car,’ I repeated. ‘Least, I own about half of it. The rest I’m paying off in ...’

  I did not bother to finish the sentence, but switched to others that explained how I had come to own such a large streamlined two-passenger overture to bankruptcy.

  ‘Wow!’ was all I got when I had finished. More than I deserved, I guess.

  ‘Don’t get any wrong ideas, Babs,’ I felt I had to say. ‘I can’t afford a car like that. Or any car really. It’s just that an Austin Chummy doesn’t exactly impress clients. The clients I haven’t got.’

  She got up from my chair and stood by me. She was almost a foot shorter than my six feet one and I felt a trifle embarrassed.

  ‘You’ll get clients, Johnny, just you wait and see.’

  ‘I’m waiting,’ I grinned, ‘but not seeing too much.’

  ‘I had better get back, otherwise Mr Ling will get mad again.’

  I stood aside for her. ‘Mustn’t annoy Mr Ling.’

  ‘No. I don’t mind so much for me. But I don’t want him to ...’ She hesitated so I helped her.

  ‘... throw me out because I’m too disruptive?’

  She nodded sheepishly. ‘I like Black Eye having its office here. You don’t know how boring it is working for Mr Ling. All I do all day is type invoices, answer the phone and pack and unpack those silly novelties he imports from Hong Kong. The tin ones cut your fingers, the celluloid ones often smell something awful. So having you here, a real detective and all — well,’ she blushed, ‘well, it brightens up the day a bit.’

  She made for the door, then looked back.

  ‘Don’t forget, if you want any typing done or phones answered while you’re out on a case ...’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ I smiled. ‘When I’ve got a case to go out on.’

  ‘Yes, well ...’ She bumped into the door knob, then let herself out.

  I went back and looked out the window, just in time to see a rag-and-bone man’s horse relieving itself as it passed my La Salle.

  The rest of the morning was a long drawn out yawn, unless you deem the Guernsey freighter leaving harbour of scintillating interest. At this rate, Bobby Briggs would be having his La Salle back in double quick tempo.

  I cursed the Torbay Express. The tiny advertisement I had placed in the current issue had not even pulled a single tinkle on the old telephone or caused a rattle of my letterbox. Surely somebody somewhere needed somebody to look into something for some reason sometime. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe Torquay, Torbay, nay the whole of South Devon was too law-abiding and caring, courteous and careful ever to need the services of someone like me. Maybe I should have opened Black Eye in London’s Dockland or in a Birmingham back street, or even in the sinful suburbia of Croydon, where I was born, raised and almost mined.

  But glorious Devon was where I wanted to live and breathe. My love affair had begun upon my father’s death, when my mother had packed me off to be articled to her brother, my uncle’s, accountancy business, which was then situated in Torquay — her widow’s income being insufficient for me to be incarcerated further at my minor public school of Tripton. And though I speedily grew to hate everything to do with the plodding pulse of accountancy and those who practised the profession, I did find enormous satisfaction in my geographical surroundings and took every opportunity to be out and about in them, rather than in the pokey office. So much so, my uncle constantly had to remind me of the dreaded ‘articles’ by which I was bound; which, to me, seemed the most indefinite of articles and not to be taken too seriously, as my main duties seemed to be as delivery and tea boy extraordinary. I survived for just eighteen months before I turned it all in for a Colonial alternative in Kenya’s Happy Valley — sufficient time for the British Riviera to have chosen me as its own.

  With no calls, by lunchtime I knew the contents of that week’s Aeroplane magazine backwards, forwards, downwards and upwards. And every soaring photograph seemed to rub salt in the wound of the loss of my pilot’s licence. I had just tossed the issue into the bucket I used as my waste-paper basket when, glory be, the phone rang. I took the receiver off the hook with a quivering hand and had to hold onto the daffodil-shaped body of the instrument to steady myself.

  I needn’t have sweated. It was only Bobby Briggs, asking how I liked the La Salle now I’d got it home. I reassured him that I was still a satisfied, if penniless, customer, then asked him in turn about the Frazer-Nash he had gone to see.

  ‘Got it, Johnny. Goes like a bird. Ruddy noisy one, mind you, but a bird all the same.’

  ‘Good. Remember not to wear a scarf when you’re at the wheel, won’t you?’

  He gave a guttural guffaw.

  ‘Don’t remind me, old son. Still, mustn’t grumble. That’s the reason I got it for more or less a song. That Seagrave fella wasn’t ’alf keen to unload it. Accepted my first ruddy offer. Still, can’t blame him, can you?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘I bet Isadora Duncan’s friend got shot of his Bugatti quickly too.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  I instantly regretted my reference.

  ‘Oh nothing. It’s just that it’s not the first time someone has been strangled by her scarf catching in the chain drive of a car. They brought up the previous case at the Seagrave inquest. Didn’t you read about it?’

  ‘Suppose I did. Some high-falutin’ dancer, wasn’t she? No better than she should have been, wouldn’t wonder. Did the dance of the veils, didn’t she?’

  ‘Something like that. Anyway, so you like the car?’

  ‘Sure thing. Chain drive and all. I reckon I can run it for a year and still sell it for more than I had to cough up for it. Ship it to London. The name Seagrave on the log book won’t mean so much there.’ He cleared his throat and I suddenly realised that it was most unlike old Bobby Briggs to bother to ring up just about one of his sales. He was more the kind of car shark who changed his address and telephone number every time he conned another customer.

  I interrupted his phlegm clearance. ‘Out with it, Bobby. You haven’t rung me just to find if I’m still cock-a-hoop about the La Salle, have you?’

  ‘Er, well ... not exactly.’

  ‘So what is “exactly”? Let me guess. You want to cash in some of your Black Eye credit. That it?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, er, yes,’ he conceded.

  I laughed. ‘You want me to sleep nights with those wolves you call Alsatians in case they miss a prowler?’

  ‘Come off it, Johnny. You said I could have a bit of your time, didn’
t you? Part of the deal, it was.’

  His normal gravel voice became face powder soft. ‘It’s my wife, Johnny. I — er, think I may have a bit of a problem with her, like.’ My heart sank. That my first case should be free and on account was bad enough, but for it to be a sordid marital fidelity enquiry was the last straw. I prayed fervently before my next question.

  ‘What kind of a problem, Bobby?’

  Someone up there did not like me, for the scrap dealer replied, ‘I’ve reason to believe she may be seeing some other ruddy fella. I can’t follow her around myself, now can I? Wondered if you might like to work off some of what you owe me — say, for a couple of weeks.’

  I sighed — but out of range of the phone’s mouthpiece.

  ‘All right, Bobby. Tell me where you live and I’ll see what I can do. It’s probably nothing, you know.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway ...’ he cleared his throat once more, ‘glad you still like the La Salle. She won’t let you down.’

  Now it was my turn to clear my throat. And I took down his address and his wife’s description, with a somewhat heavy Conway-Stewart. It was a hell of a way to open up the files of the Black Eye Detective Agency. My only consolation was that I wasn’t the hero of my cinematic imagination — William Powell in the Thin Man series. For I had, as yet, no Myrna Loy to wag her beautiful but disapproving head at me.

  *

  ‘Stick’em up!’

  I dropped my door key. I’d never get used to it.

  ‘Stick’em up. Drop’em,’ the raucous voice commanded.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ I growled. ‘I don’t need you after a hard day watching a lady who did nothing but hang her washing out.’

  Still, I only had myself to blame. After all, I’d taught him every word he knew.

  In my temper, I hit my head against a beam as I made my way through my small sitting-room to the even smaller kitchen.

  Groucho — that’s my parrot — fell back on the clichés he had been taught before I’d bought him, some eighteen months back: ‘Pretty Polly,’ and ‘Who’s a pretty boy, then?’ — the last being a damn fool phrase as an old girlfriend of mine, who was adept at sexing everything, had concluded that Groucho was actually a girl.

  I lit the oil stove to brew myself some tea, then flopped down in one of my junk shop easy chairs near the sitting-room grate. I felt a hundred years old instead of twenty-seven. For four days now I had been watching a woman who seemed to do nothing but walk down to the local store and back, drub her washing on a washboard in an outside scullery, hang it out, take it in, chat to the milkman, pat the milkman’s horse, hob-nob over the fence with her balloon-faced neighbour (who had to be at least twenty stone in her non-stockinged feet) and iron endlessly in her front room.

  The rest of her domestic activities were not visible from outside the house, but unless she had got some Don Juan held captive under a bed, in a wardrobe or in a broom cupboard (all places I would have thought Bobby Briggs might have checked before ringing me) she seemed as faithful as the day is long. At least, so far. I still had ten days of my credit to go, but Mrs Briggs just didn’t really look the part of a cuckolding siren. Like her husband, she was built like a bulldog and the way she took it out on her washing sent shivers down my spine. Maybe, if she ever met her lover, it was only on visiting days at St Dunstan’s.

  The kettle duly boiled and I made some tea, a far cry from the extra Dry Martini I am sure William Powell would have downed after a hard day’s sleuthing. But in the present parlous state of my finances, I could hardly afford even Lyons’ cheapest tea. As I put the cup to my lips, Groucho shrieked out, as yet another loose piece of hairy plaster fell onto his cage. This was a fairly familiar occurrence in my cottage. Not just downstairs, but everywhere. I often wake up at night, plastered, so to speak. That’s what comes of shelling out only twenty pounds more for my home than I had for my new car. Still, as the house agent so fervently pointed out to me, ‘This cottage, Mr Black, is full of potential.’ He omitted to add that it was also full of rot, wet and dry, death-watch beetles, competitive woodworm, degenerative plaster, spiders as big as Hispano-Suizas and rats in what was left of the thatch.

  I bought it because: (a) it was dirt cheap (quite literally) and all my winnings on the Grand National would allow, considering I still had to buy a car to impress my clients; (b) it was actually charming — if you didn’t have to live in it, that is. All exposed beams and rickety windows like you see in the cartoon films they show when the cinema organist has disappeared down again into the bowels of the auditorium; (c) it was in an equally charming area near Dartington, only half a gallon’s drive from the room I rented from Mr Ling in Torquay (used to be about a sixth of a gallon’s ride in the Chummy); (d) the house agent had been right. It was full of potential. Now the only problem was whether I was too — and could make enough money to spare a little for the renovations and extensions I planned and the acre of land allowed.

  Just as I opened Groucho’s cage to prevent him swallowing the length of horse hair he had pecked out of his plaster shower, we were both startled by the unmistakable ‘da-da’ of Colonel Bogey being played on a set of car horns. I looked across to the window. Behind the cream bulk of my La Salle on the track was now the slippery blue of a Bugatti 57 — the nearest you can get to a Grand Prix car that the law will allow on His Majesty’s highways.

  Hair retrieved, I went to the front door and opened it. The familiar sight of the white leather flying suit and goggles did me a power of good and the problem of Mrs Briggs and Black Eye faded at the sight of this dazzling figure. With a boyish leap, my visitor was out of the doorless cockpit and striding up the muddy track that served as a path.

  ‘So this is the Black hideaway, old boy.’

  He doffed his goggles and extended a powerful hand. I shook it. He pointed to the La Salle.

  ‘Got visitors, old boy?’ He winked. ‘Can always call back later, you know, when she’s vamoosed.’

  I grinned. ‘No, PC, would you believe that’s my car?’

  He pulled a face. But the Honourable Peter Courtenay (known to all his closest chums as PC) is so damned clean cut and debonair looking that even when he pulls a face, he’s still handsomer than ninety-nine per cent of the male population. Isn’t quite fair, is it? Silver spoon. Title. Oodles of spondulicks. Motor racing stable. Lap record at Brooklands. House in Belgrave Square, mansion and estates near Staverton, not far up the road from my cottage. And a girlfriend, Prissy Wagstaff, who makes the likes of Margaret Lockwood, Sally Gray and Valerie Hobson seem like kitchen maids.

  ‘Your car? That La Salle?’ he queried, then clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You’ve had another win on the races.’

  I ushered him indoors. ‘No, that’s not the gamble I’ve taken.’

  The beams in my sitting-room made his six feet four frame droop like a heron at feeding time. He looked round the room, as I took his leather gear from him.

  ‘Nice and cosy,’ he said. ‘Not like my draughty halls. They strike cold even if the sun’s cracking the hedges.’

  ‘Trade you half my cosiness for half your draught ridden space,’ I grinned, as I cleared some back issues of Flight and Aeroplane off the only other chair. He sat down and his long legs almost reached into the kitchen. Before I could offer him anything, he had pulled a silver monogrammed hip flask from his jacket pocket.

  ‘Got any glasses?’

  I went to the old walnut sideboard my mother had given me, when she had moved to a smaller house after father’s death. I took out two of my four glasses and soon the Scotch was burning my throat beautifully.

  ‘Old times,’ he beamed, raising his glass.

  ‘Old times,’ I repeated.

  ‘Miss’em, you know,’ he said.

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Not the same at Brooklands without you around.’

  ‘Nice of you to say so,’ I said, ‘but I wasn’t much use to your racing team really. I was no mechanic, as you well knew. It was goo
d of you to give me a job at all — certainly tided me over a bad patch.’

  ‘Any friend of Prissy’s is a friend of mine, old boy. Miss your friendly face around.’

  I think I blushed. ‘Was with you under a year, you know.’

  He kicked my foot. ‘Seemed like a lifetime,’ he laughed, then poured us both the last from his flask. ‘Don’t worry. Got more in the Bug.’

  I was intrigued as to why he had called on me so unexpectedly. PC projected the image of a playboy, but in reality, was anything but. He organised his life with the immaculate precision with which he drove his racing ERA. What chances he took were always calculated to the nth degree.

  ‘Down here for the weekend?’ I tried.

  ‘Not really. Got to go back in the morning. Trying out Bira’s ERA. Want to see what makes the crafty Prince faster round the tight banking.’

  ‘So you came all the way down to Devon just to see my tumbledown home? I’m honoured.’

  ‘Glad I did,’ he smirked. ‘Could never have imagined it.’ He drained his glass at a gulp and went on, ‘By the way, how’s your new venture going — Black Eye?’

  I parried. ‘Oh, early days yet.’

  ‘Not snowed under?’

  ‘Wrong time of year.’

  He pointed out the window.

  ‘Bet your clients are impressed by the La Salle.’

  ‘All of them are,’ I smiled. ‘That’s why I lashed out. Can’t afford it really.’

  ‘Nice job.’

  ‘Nice job.’

  Now ensued one of those silences that dares the first one to break it. I broke it.

  ‘Come on, PC, why’ve you really motored two hundred and fifty miles to see me? You’ve got something on your mind, haven’t you?’ He folded his legs up and leaned forward.

  ‘Not my mind, old chap. Someone else’s, to be honest. Someone you know.’

  I shrugged. ‘Can’t think ...’

  ‘Lady. Good sport. Lives near here. Soft spot for you.’

  ‘Leggy? Lovely? And I taught her to fly?’ I added.

  ‘Very same, old boy. The gorgeous Tracy.’

  This time I leaned forward.