Black Eye (A Johnny Black Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  ‘They might. It’s pretty fast, you know.’

  He grabbed me by the front of my shirt.

  ‘Don’t get funny with me, Mr Black. I know your little game. You’re trying to stir up dirt about me, aren’t you? And I can guess who is employing you to do so.’ He started to push me with his fist.

  It was then that Tracy, bless her, tapped him on the shoulder.

  He looked around sharply, but she adroitly side-stepped. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist it. I cut down on his grasping hand with my right, then prodded forward with my left. His feet slipped on a patch of wet on the platform, and one more prod and he fell backwards into the water with an almighty splash, much to the intrigued onlookers’ amusement.

  Tracy, ever gallant, extended a hand to help him back onto the platform, but he shunned her generosity and made rather a meal of clambering out on his own.

  ‘You’ll pay for this, Black. You’ll pay for everything.’

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘What have I done, Mr Seagrave?’

  He looked down at his sodden and dripping clothes, then shook himself like a dog. Susan Prendergast ran to his side.

  ‘You know what you’ve done, only too well. And I suppose today you were going to try to tip a little of your poison into Susan’s ear.’ ‘He didn’t say anything really, Michael. Please don’t quarrel. Especially in front of all these people. He mainly talked about ...’

  I suddenly recoiled as I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked round and into a ginger moustache. With all the brouhaha, I had completely forgotten about him.

  ‘Want me to take care of Mr Black for you, Michael? You know, whilst you get yourself dried off and all that.’

  Seagrave glowered. ‘No, thank you, Tom.’ The glower turned to an empty smile. ‘As Susan says, we don’t really want to upset the guests any further with our, er, differences of opinion.’

  He turned back to me. ‘However, I will say this, Mr Black. If I get any more evidence of your meddling in my affairs, I shall inform the police and my lawyer of your activities. Meanwhile, I will have a word with the owners of this hotel to see that you are never allowed to visit here again.’

  He frowned at Tracy’s laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Seagrave, but you forget I’ve been a witness to this whole affair.’ She extended her arm towards the other still avidly interested guests. ‘As have these ladies and gentlemen here. We all saw who was the initial aggressor and it was not Mr Black.’

  He was about to retort, when Tracy added, ‘Hang on, Mr Seagrave, let me ask you a question. How well do you know the owners of this hotel?’

  His rapid blinking stood in for an answer.

  ‘I thought so,’ Tracy grinned. ‘Well, I should warn you that I know them very well and my family have known their family for many years now. So I would advise you to proceed cautiously. For who knows? It might be you who ends up being blackballed, so to speak, and not Johnny here. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  With an almost imperceptible bow of the head, Tracy took my hand and we moved off through the still gawping onlookers.

  ‘Do you really know the owners that well?’ I whispered.

  ‘No. But we make a great team, don’t we?’ she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, then added in a gangster’s-moll style accent, ‘Me, I maka with de mouth. You, you maka with de fists.’

  I laughed out loud. For, drat it, there was no doubt she’d hit the old nail on the head.

  For the second time running, we missed out on eating at the hotel. For neither of us much felt like sitting at a table with Seagrave, either in earshot or eyeline. So we apologetically cancelled and took our custom to the diminutive Pilchard Inn, an old smugglers’ retreat that lies at the end of the hotel’s drive and the only other building on the tiny island. There we bought a bottle of wine and some bread and cheese, which we then took outside to enjoy whilst we sat on the sea wall.

  Tracy pointed out across the bay below us.

  ‘Ginger moustache didn’t stay long, did he? Can’t have had time for more than one drink before he left.’

  ‘Worried about the aircraft and tides, I expect. Either that or he’s not such a chum of Seagrave’s to be asked to stay to lunch.’

  ‘Hired hand only?’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But would he send just a hired hand to enquire at scrapyards about the Frazer-Nash? I would doubt it, somehow.’

  I poured us both a glass of wine and rested the bottle against the wall, out of the sun.

  ‘It’s a pity Seagrave came on the scene so soon. I was just starting to get on well with our Susan.’

  I tore off a hunk of my bread. ‘Yes, the whole morning has hardly gone to plan, has it? But I suppose we do have some sort of silver lining — we’ve now put a name to our scrapyard visitor, Mr Tom Dawlish. So when I get back, I’ll make a few calls and find out which of the two aerial advertising companies around here employs him. I would like to know, for instance, how long he has worked for them and a little bit about his background.’

  ‘Think he may have had something to do with the death of Seagrave’s wife?’

  I shook my head. ‘Probably not. But he may well have had something to do with Daphne Phipps’ disappearance.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, if our worst suspicions prove right and the girl was blackmailing Seagrave for some reason and has been killed to keep her silent, then why has no body turned up yet?’

  Tracy put down her glass.

  ‘Because no one, as yet, is looking for a body. She hasn’t been missing long enough yet.’

  ‘Maybe. And perhaps she’s been buried in some remote place somewhere. Devon is hardly over-populated and a body might not be discovered for years, even centuries.’ I looked across at her, squinting in the midday sun. ‘But the sight of that seaplane has opened up another possibility in my mind.’

  ‘Oh, hell’s bells, Johnny, you don’t mean —?’

  ‘I do. A weighted body dumped in mid-English Channel from the Fox Moth would probably never be found — except by fishes.’

  She put down her hunk of cheese and grimaced.

  ‘Thank you so much for spoiling what little lunch we’re grabbing.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be,’ she sighed. ‘Because you may be dead right.’ Smiling, she added, ‘Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a funny line.’

  ‘Nothing is funny in this case, Tracy — except funny peculiar, that is. Sometimes, I feel the more we discover, the less we really know. My nightmare is that the whole affair may end with no one being able to prove anything specific about anybody.’

  ‘What you might call, a dead-end,’ Tracy laughed. Her impish grin lifted me right out of my self-pity, which was, no doubt, just her intention, bless her cotton socks.

  Eleven

  He smiled and put his hands to his ears, as a General Aircraft Monospar roared overhead, its Popjoy engines at full chat.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Black, my office is hardly soundproof.’

  ‘That all right, Mr Withers, the sound of aircraft is the stuff of life to me,’ I smiled across at the manager of Skytrail Advertising, to which company, based at Haldon near Teignmouth, I had traced Tom Dawlish.

  ‘Before I answer how long Tom has worked with us,’ the manager resumed, ‘could I ask why you would be interested?’

  I glanced quickly at Tracy, whose tanned legs I could see were clearly indicating Mr Withers had other interests than aviation.

  ‘I’m an ex-flier myself and I’m preparing a register of pilots in the West Country, with their backgrounds and qualifications and so on, which could be of some use to people like yourself — responsible men in aircraft and aerodrome management.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, in that case, couldn’t you approach Mr Dawlish direct?’

  Tracy, good girl, recrossed her legs and smiled enticingly.

  ‘Mr Black likes to talk to employers first, to get their evaluation of their pilots. Yo
u see, the proposed register will only contain the names of those with a proven track record of safe, sound airmanship.’

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  ‘A splendid aim, Miss Spencer-King. Not every pilot is a good one, I’m afraid. However, Mr Dawlish is not amongst their number. He has, so far, given me no cause for complaint at all.’

  He smiled. ‘He perhaps has an over-fondness for that seaplane of ours. He did once use it without prior permission but that’s the only slight blot on a pretty perfect copybook.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear he’s a good pilot. But back to his experience. How long has he been with you?’

  ‘About a year, I suppose. He joined us at the beginning of last summer, when one of our pilots, poor lad, came in too low over those trees at the end of the drome. Wrote off a Miles Hawk and almost himself. Tom towed sky signs most of the summer and did charter work and tuition during the winter. Now of course, he’s mainly back on sky signs, when the seaplane is not being chartered by someone or other. He’s proved our best pilot on water by far. So the Moth is almost his private preserve.’

  I waited for a Percival Gull, I could see through the window, to land, then asked, ‘Do you know where Mr Dawlish worked before?’

  ‘As I recall, he came from a charter firm based in Croydon. Before that, he worked in France. Out of Nice or Marseilles, I forget which one. Is that enough for your register, Mr Black?’

  ‘For the time being, I guess so,’ I smiled.

  ‘Would you like me to ask Mr Dawlish to get in touch with you? Or perhaps, some of my other pilots? I have three I could name who —’

  Tracy and I rose from our chairs, as if tied together.

  ‘That’s very kind, Mr Withers,’ Tracy beamed. ‘But we’ll have to make that some other time.’ She tapped her platinum watch. ‘Mr Black and I have another appointment before our day is done.’

  He rose from behind his cluttered desk and almost knocked over a pile of old Flight magazines stacked in a corner.

  ‘Well, you know where to find me, Miss King,’ a ready blush spreading across his podgy features.

  Tracy glanced wryly at me. ‘We know where to find you, Mr Withers,’ and the emphasis was heavily on the plural ‘we’.

  *

  Tracy had to leave soon after we got back to my cottage.

  ‘There’s a Birthday Ball over at Dartmouth. Mother and father are going, so little daughter has to trot along in attendance,’ she had told me. ‘Can be back some time Sunday, if you want me.’

  What could I say, as her delicious lips met mine, but a scarcely audible ‘Yes’?

  So there I was an hour later, listening to the news on the wireless and trying to silence Groucho long enough to hear about a new convict escape from Dartmoor Prison, when the phone rang. It was Tubby Trouncer with a distinctly disturbing request. Would I contemplate treading the boards again that evening — like in an hour and a quarter — because one of his actors had not turned up all day and another had flu?

  ‘Only small part, old chap. About six lines in Act Three. I’d do it myself, but I’m already standing in for the chap with flu.’

  I suddenly had an awful presentiment.

  ‘The actor who hasn’t turned up wouldn’t be Henry Swindon, would it?’

  ‘How did you know, me darling? Have you put a jinx on the fellow?’

  I didn’t explain. ‘I can learn the lines all right, maybe, but what about the movements?’

  ‘Show you when you arrive, old bean. Simple as all get out. You follow a girl in Act One, just stand by the library door in Act Two and follow another girl in Act Three. Thanks a bundle, old chap. Don’t be late, will you? Curtain up at seven thirty.’

  With that he was gone.

  Five minutes later, so was I, breaking the odd speed restriction in the La Salle. No actor worth his salt misses a curtain. And no private eye worth his Cerebos misses an opportunity to make some instant enquiries into the disappearance of a major ‘dramatis persona’.

  *

  By the time I came off stage, bewildered and perspiring like the proverbial pig, I had experienced the clearest of reminders of why I had so willingly given up being a Thespian. One, I was too petrified ever to be truly relaxed in front of a live audience and two, I didn’t have enough talent to act my way out of a paper bag.

  Tubby Trouncer praised my stand-in performance to the skies, but for purely selfish reasons. He wanted me to repeat the terrifying role the next afternoon and evening, if Henry Swindon still had not turned up and the flu hadn’t flown. I was totally non-committal, not because I didn’t want to help my old friend out, but because Henry Swindon’s disappearance had added a whole new dramatic dimension to the Seagrave case a dimension that might call for more urgent action than parading about on a Torquay stage. What poor Tubby couldn’t know was that my acceptance in the first place, for the one night, was more selfish than selfless and as accommodating for yours truly as for him.

  But my first probings amongst the case proved fruitless. No one could even hazard a guess as to where Henry Swindon might have gone, nor why on earth he should risk his job with the company to miss both rehearsals that day and the evening performance. Everyone seemed to agree that whatever his other shortcomings might be, Swindon was a true trouper and not one to go AWOL without warning.

  All I really discovered from them was where he lived — in a tiny boarding house in Babbacombe — and that he hadn’t taken the Trojan because one of the other actors had the car for a couple of days. I asked Tubby Trouncer while he was praising me to the skies whether he had been in touch with the boarding house. He replied that he had and all they knew was that Swindon had gone out the previous evening fairly late and they had not seen hide nor hair of him since. On further probing, I gathered that fairly late meant around ten, a fairly late hour for an evening stroll, not that Henry Swindon looked the evening stroll type.

  I hid my worst worries from Tubby, for he had enough of his own without my adding mine. But he twigged that something was up, nevertheless.

  ‘Don’t think anything — anything nasty — has happened to Henry, do you, old love? I mean, like falling off a cliff in the dark or ... something to do with the case you’re working on, perhaps. Do tell me, if there’s something I should know. I mean, that Daphne what’s-her-name girlfriend of his hasn’t been found yet, has she?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, but don’t get all het up yet. It may all just be a curious coincidence, the two of them vanishing without a word. Who knows, they may have gone off somewhere together, mightn’t they?’

  Tubby’s beady eyes brightened. ‘They might just have, at that.’ He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Must love and leave you now, old bean, got things to do. Scene shifting wasn’t up to scratch tonight, did you notice?’

  After he had gone, I wandered wearily back to the ‘boys’ communal dressing-room. By now, only one of the cast was left and he had already removed his make-up and was donning his normal clothes.

  ‘Wasn’t so bad after all, was it?’ he smiled.

  I sat down in front of the big bulb framed mirror that had to serve four of the cast and opened my cleansing cream.

  ‘Bet it was from where the audience was sitting,’ I chuckled.

  He finished putting on his sports jacket and sat down on a stool just up from me.

  ‘Don’t run yourself down so. You were all right, you were. Tubby was quaking in his shoes until you said you would stand in. Funny of old Henry to let him down.’

  I started to remove my pretty standard five and nine make-up.

  ‘Tell me something, Terry,’ I said. ‘Have you noticed anything — well, strange about Henry recently? Anything that might help explain his absence today?’

  He furrowed his young brow and though the gesture was sincere, somehow looked the very essence of a juvenile lead acting worried.

  ‘Well, he’s been het up about the police coming round and all that.’

  ‘And all that, including
my visits, no doubt,’ I grinned.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. Henry sort of felt he was being got at. You know, suspected of somehow causing that girl’s vanishing trick.’

  I continued smearing away at my face with cotton wool.

  ‘Yes, I gathered that. But you haven’t notice anything else? I mean like any changes in him or in his habits?’ Then I added quickly, ‘Or a sudden flush of money?’

  The actor almost fell off his stool with laughter.

  ‘Henry, come into money? You must be joking. He’s one of those chaps who will always be next to broke, the way he lavishes what little he’s got on booze and lady friends.’

  ‘So no changes?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Can’t say there have been. Unless you call getting interested in cars, a change.’

  I finished wiping my face with a towel. ‘Interested in cars? What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s like this. Henry has never shown any real enthusiasm for motor-cars, at all. He only bought shares in that old Trojan so that he had something to cart his girlfriends around in. What he knows about what makes them go can be written on the back of a Penny Black.’

  I turned to him. ‘So what’s the change?’

  ‘Recently, he’s taken to talking about them a good bit. Not just ordinary motors, mind you.’ He took a packet of Players out of his pocket and offered me one. I turned it down. He lit up himself, then slipped the cigarette card out of the packet. It showed an ultra-modern Cord Sportsman convertible.

  ‘See this card? Well, Players are running a second series of motorcars right along now and the other day I had a British sports car card that he took a fancy to, so I gave it to him. The next thing I knew, he brought in a sales catalogue for the car that he had specially sent off for. I laughed like a drain, for the price was out of this world. Around six hundred and fifty pounds, as I remember.’ He pointed to the Cord car. ‘And the car wasn’t even modern like this one looks. It appeared distinctly old-fashioned to me. Even had the gear and brake levers outside, would you believe?’