Murder by Matchlight

by E. C. R. Lorac

  ii

  After he left the stout and talkative Mr. Mason, Macdonald called in at the local police station before he returned north of the river. Here he obtained further information about the destruction of Dulverton Place and the shelter to which many of the inhabitants had been directed as the fire made their own homes untenable. He also inspected a list of the names of those killed and those missing, believed to be killed. Amongst the latter, the name Timothy O’Farrel occurred. Enquiry about the bombing of the shelter elicited just those facts which Macdonald had assumed for himself from grim experience in Rescue Squads. The shelter was divided into compartments: the section struck by high explosive was at the north end of the structure, and here the destruction had been complete. Identification of remains rested on assumption. In the middle section of the shelter a few persons had survived: at the south end the majority had been brought out alive. All that could be learnt about Timothy O’Farrel was that a silver identity disc bearing his name had been found among the debris as well as a cigarette case containing a card bearing the same name but no address. Both these relics had been found in that part of the shelter where the victims had been damaged beyond hope of recognition. One of the constables in the station during Macdonald’s visit had been on duty on the night when the shelter was destroyed, and he talked with Macdonald about it. The latter put forward the theory he had deduced from his morning’s inquiry.

  “It looks as though a man whom we will call O’Farrel was in the shelter when it was hit. O’Farrel seized the chance of losing his own identity and taking that of another man. In other words he managed to get hold of John Ward’s Identity Card and left his own disc and cigarette case behind. I take it you had several casualities who couldn’t be identified?”

  “Yes. There were several bodies in the Mortuary which nobody recognised—and for the rest, there was an unknown number who couldn’t have been recognised. Nobody knows—you know what it’s like when such ‘incidents ‘happen, sir.”

  “Yes,” replied Macdonald laconically. “I know.”

  iii

  Macdonald drove back over Westminster Bridge pondering on such facts as he had collected. There seemed little room for doubt that John Ward’s Identity Card had been acquired by the Irishman in some such manner as Macdonald had guessed. The man known to Alf Mason as John Ward of Dulverton Place had never been seen again after the bombing: neither had a man of that name asked for a new Identity Card at the office which issued these documents after the bombing. The man who had lived at Belfort Grove carried the Identity Card once issued to John Ward of Dulverton Place, and the man of Belfort Grove had been an Irishman in the opinion of those who had heard him speak. In addition was the fact that Stanley Claydon, in describing the telephone conversation which had caused him to go to Regents Park, had said that the man who telephoned had called himself Tim.

  There was no proof at all that ‘Tim’ who had been murdered in Regents Park was identical with Timothy O’Farrel whose identity disc had been found in a bombed shelter in South London—but there was a possibility that the two were identical. In any case, it seemed obvious that “Tim” had taken an opportunity of changing his identity by using another man’s Registration Card, and no man goes to the trouble of changing his name and concealing his original identity without a very good reason for doing so.

  It was getting on for mid-day when Macdonald arrived back at Belfort Grove. He had guessed—rightly—that the inhabitants of that house would not be early risers, and his mid-day visit was judiciously timed to catch those he wished to interview before they went out to lunch and the business of the day. To theatrical folk the morning hours are spent in resting and in a leisurely toilet before the real business of the day. Macdonald made his first call on Mr. and Mrs. Rameses—the pair who had been described by Miss Willing as conjurers and illusionists. They lived in the flat on the first floor and the door was opened by a plump highly coloured lady dressed in a puce-coloured, wadded silk dressing-gown and jade green mules garnished with dispirited ostrich tips. Macdonald had much ado to keep his eyes from studying the intricacies of her hair curling arrangements, for the coils and adjustments and spring-like contrivances reminded him of a dismembered wireless set.

  “Be blowed! I thought you were the milkman,” she explained. “Didn’t see his van in the street, did you? Half a pint between two, and lucky if you get that. Awful, isn’t it? Sorry. Come in, do. Was it the gas meter ?”

  Macdonald explained that it wasn’t the gas meter, raising his voice in competition with the strains of a gramophone issuing from an open door just behind him.

  “Scotland Yard! My! how wizard. You come in and talk to Birdie: he’s just finishing his daily dozen. Has to practice every morning to keep up to the mark: just let him finish the record. You watch—he’s a wonder Birdie is.”

  She gave Macdonald a friendly push and he stepped inside the door of the gramophone room and stood watching. A tall stout man clad in trousers and a shirt with rolled up sleeves stood on the hearthrug, executing a swaying movement in rhythm to the blare of the gramophone record: around and above his head a surprising number of objects were being kept in the air: two plates, a tumbler, a teddy bear, a beer bottle and a ping-pong ball were thrown up in rhythmic succession as though supported by jets of water from a fountain: Birdie’s enormous pink hands weaved a dexterous pattern as he panted out the rhythm like a Yorke-Trotter baby. “Taffy—tiff a—teffy,” he grunted, “taffy—tiffa—teffy . . .” It was not until the gramophone shrieked its final bar that Birdie fielded his miscellaneous selection and laid them down on the table beside him, executing an elaborate bow on the final beat.

  “Snappy, isn’t it?” demanded the lady at Macdonald’s elbow and the latter replied politely “Very snappy indeed,” as Birdie turned and studied the visitor with melancholy dark eyes.

  “Not what I call first-class work. Common, not to say undignified,” said Birdie mournfully. “All they ask these days. Something to make them titter. What can I do for you, sir?”

  The man’s voice astonished Macdonald. It was a beautiful voice, very deep and quiet, and might have done credit to a don. For the next moment or two there was an elaboration of introductions, during which Mrs. Rameses introduced herseli to Macdonald, and Macdonald to her husband, while both apologised for the state of the room. It was inded as chaotic as any room Macdonald had ever seen: it contained all Mr. Rameses’ stock in trade as well as all Mrs. Rameses’ costumes, and in addition was a carpenter’s bench where the raw material of further “illusions” was being shaped. After a moment or two of vociferous explanation from Mrs. Rameses, Birdie seized her firmly by the shoulders and put her outside the door. “You leave this to me, lady bird,” he said in his profound bass and closed the door. “Now then, what about it?” he asked Macdonald. “There’s a chair to sit on by the window. I’m not bats by the way. I’m a hard working bloke with my living to earn.”

  “So am I,” replied Macdonald equably. “I am in charge of the investigation into the death of a Mr. John Ward who lived upstairs.”

  “Rather you than me. Seems a waste of a good man’s time,” said Mr. Rameses. “No use pretending we can help you. We can’t. Johnnie Ward sometimes tried to cadge a drink off me and once cadged a fiver from my missis. Once. Not twice. Told him it wouldn’t wash. He understood.” He stood with his back to the mantelpiece and studied Macdonald with his melancholy dark eyes. “Lots of his type about. Some of’em in the Black Market. Some in gaol. Some being kept by silly women. No use to anyone. Why fuss?”

  “The man was murdered. That’s why,” replied Macdonald. “It’s the man who murdered him we want. Can you tell me anything at ah that would help ?”

  The other went through a complicated series of manœuvres with a ping-pong ball which seemed to run round and round his bare arm like a mechanical toy.

  “No. Nothing,” he repeated. “Who was he? Do you know? Certainly I don’t know. He was an Irishman, probably of good family and cert
ainly of good education. He understood good clothes—even though his own were threadbare: knew how to behave; knew how to speak. Funny for me to be telling you this—but I know what I’m talking about.”

  “I realise that,” replied Macdonald. “D’you mind telling me what your own name is ?”

  Again that slow scrutiny of the frowning dark eyes. “My own name is Richard Nightingale. I ran away from school and got in with a circus. Then I did conjuring. Travelled all round the world. Not a bad life. I’ve seen things—and I’m not boasting when I say I’ve worked for my living. “This”—and he indicated the ping-pong ball which now appeared from inside his open shirt collar—“isn’t as easy as it looks. It may be piffling, but it means work—honest sweat. Johnnie Ward didn’t believe in work. He believed in living easy and letting other folks foot the bill.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Know ? Didn’t I tell you I’d earned my living in a circus? I soon learnt to recognise the chap who left you to pay for the drinks. I once took Johnny Ward by the ear and put him outside this door when he was trying to sell my missis a pair of silk stockings. ‘That’s where you belong’ I told him. ‘Outside. Got that?’ He went. He’d got a grain of sense somewhere.”

  “I should say you have several grains of sense, Mr. Rameses—so will you tell me what you were doing between eight and nine o’clock last night?”

  “I don’t need to—but I will, to save you bother. You go and ask the manager of the Surrey Met. He doesn’t pay me good money for not doing the show I contracted for.”

  From the empty air Mr. Rameses collected three billiard balls and a stuffed canary in rapid succession. “Sorry to bore you with this tripe,” he said, “but it’s my practice time. The only way to keep in training is to respect your practice time. If I’d wanted to kill Johnnie Ward—which I didn’t—I shouldn’t have done it in a way that would have brought Scotland Yard to my door next morning. Oh, no. If I’d done it, no one would have been any the wiser. I may be a clown, but I’m an efficient clown. I’m afraid you’ll have to try somewhere else.”

  “I’ve no doubt I shall have to try a variety of places,” rejoined Macdonald. “When did you see him last?”

  “Yesterday morning . . . on the pavement there . . . about ten o’clock. He went out early for once in a way.”

  “When did you speak to him last?”

  “Sunday night. At the front door. He began ‘Could you by any chance . . .’ and I cut in ‘No. I couldn’t. Not by any chance. Ever.’ ” For a moment Mr. Rameses stood still and faced Macdonald squarely. “It’s just waste of time, Inspector—your time and mine. I haven’t said ten words to Ward in ten weeks, and my missis hasn’t either. I told her not to. No use for him. I don’t know how he lived and I don’t know how he died, and I don’t want to know.”

  “But I’ve got to find out,” said Macdonald. “I don’t want to waste your time, any more than my own, but I’ve got to find out every single thing I can about John Ward. You lived in the same house with him. You may know more about him than you realise.”

  Mr. Rameses leaned on the mantelshelf and spoke deliberately: “I’ll tell you everything I know—and it won’t take long. I first saw Ward last May. He cadged acquaintance in the front hall. I didn’t like him. Can’t stand Irishmen anyway. Don’t trust’em. He’s been in this flat three times: first time he tried to sell me a bottle of whisky. I’m a teetotaller. Next time he got a fiver out of my missis. I told her not to do it again. Third time he wanted to sell stockings. I told him to git. I don’t know any of his friends, any of his business or anything else about him. That’s the lot.”

  “I shall have to ask your wife the same questions.”

  “Right oh. Go outside and yell. She’ll come. I’m not interfering.”

  Mr. Rameses went up to Macdonald and picked a grotesque furry spider off his coat—it measured an inch across and ticked like a clock. “Pardon me,” said the conjurer mournfully. “It’s like this,” he added earnestly. “I’m not unwilling to help. I like you. You’re a decent chap and you look sensible, but I just don’t know the first thing about that blighter except that he was a parasite—lived on other people’s stupidity. I knew that because I’ve seen so many of his sort. Whoever killed him did quite a useful job. That’s all.”

  Macdonald laughed. He couldn’t help it. The deep solemn voice coupled to the man’s grotesque appearance and preposterously skilful hands made a combination which was irresistibly comic.

  “Right you are,” replied the C.I.D. man. “I’ll leave you to your labours.”

  “You just give her a shout,” replied Mr. Rameses. “She’ll be in the kitchen. I warn you, she likes talking. She’ll talk from now to doomsday. Non-stop. Wonderful gift.”

  Macdonald did as the conjurer suggested: he walked into the passage and called, “Mrs. Rameses.”

  “Here in the kitchen: come right in, I’m just beating a batter and it’ll go flat if I stop and then it’ll be a pancake and Birdie can’t abide pancakes. Dried eggs and synthetic milk and imaginary lemons. Awful isn’t it?—but what I say is . . .”

  Macdonald at length checked the torrent, or at least guided it in the desired direction. Mrs. Rameses was perfectly willing to talk about Johnnie Ward, but the sum total of her evidence was identical with that of her husband, so far as their acqaintance with Ward was concerned. The facts she produced were so precisely the same as her husband’s that Macdonald suspected she had listened to the conjurer’s statement in the adjoining room. The only divergence was that Mrs. Rameses, like Miss Willing, had been impressed by the Irishman’s charm.

  “Boy, he was a peach—the loveliest eyes he’d got, and the manners of a king, but there, he was just one of those slackers—you know, not a worker like me and my Birdie.”

  All the time she talked she went on beating the batter in a pudding basin held on her knees, and Macdonald wondered if she and her husband were ever still: he also wondered uneasily if a snake or a frog would suddenly pop out of the batter and make faces at him.

  iv

  It was a relief to Macdonald when he at last got out of the Rameses’ flat and stood in the little lobby contemplating his next call.

  The first floor flats were inhabited by Mr. James Carringford and Miss Odette Grey, and just as he reached the door of B flat it was opened by a tall, thin elderly man who looked at Macdonald with enquiring eyes.

  “Are you wanting anybody?” he inquired.

  “Mr. Carringford ? I am an Inspector from Scotland Yard.”

  “Right. Come in. Case of Johnnie Ward? Poor old chap . . . an amusing fellow, what I call a natural wit . . . come along in, not that I can help you I’m afraid.”

  The room into which Macdonald was ushered was a pleasant, tidy room with long windows facing the street. It was well furnished and had a sober comfortable aspect. There were large easy chairs, a number of bookcases and some good etchings on the walls. It presented such a contrast to the flat downstairs that Macdonald felt he had stepped into another world. Carringford was a man about sixty Macdonald guessed, with very white hair and deep set eyes—a lawyerly looking fellow in his neat dark suit—a very sober looking tenant in comparison with those other inhabitants of this melancholy house. He asked Macdonald to be seated and then said:

  “What can I do for you, Inspector?”

  “I am inquiring into the death of a man about whom I can find out nothing at all,” said Macdonald. “It’s possible that relatives or friends may appear later to enlighten us, but at the moment we can find nothing to indicate who deceased was or anything about him. My only course at present is to interrogate his neighbours.”

  “And I’m afraid his neighbours won’t be very helpful—at least this one won’t,” replied Carringford. “I knew Ward casually: I doubt very much if his name was Ward, and I’m quite sure the various stories he’s told me of his origin were untrue, because he was always contradicting himself—but I enjoyed his company. He was a wit—undoubtedly an educa
ted man and originally a well-bred one, and he had that quality which, for want of a better name, we call charm. Incidentally, I am employed in an advisory capacity by the Superb Film Company: I vet their historical sets—as far as they’ll allow me—and I’m always ready to pick up information. Ward was undoubtedly an Irishman—southern Irish—and he knew a lot about the history of his country. That happened to emerge one evening when we got arguing about Sinn Fein: Ward knew the history of every act of oppression perpetrated by the English against the Irish. But that’s not going to help you, I am afraid.”

  “Every item of information may help me,” replied Macdonald. “Miss Willing, who lives upstairs, told me that Ward said he had been wounded during the Black and Tan period.”

  “ ‘The trouble,’ ” quoted Carringford, with a half smile. “Ward always called the Easter Rebellion ‘the trouble.’ Yes. I should think that was probably true. He was a typical rebel—authority was always wrong in his eyes. He maintained some contact with his friends in Ireland, that I know through some unguarded remark he let slip in my hearing—and I shan’t be at all surprised if his sudden end was connected with his compatriots.”

  “Could you enlarge on that, sir?” inquired Macdonald, who was beginning to get interested in his companion.

  Carringford shrugged his shoulders, and the slight movement made Macdonald realise the immobility of the man. Carringford had ben sitting absolutely still—a striking contrast to the perpetual-motion habits of Mr. and Mrs. Rameses.

  “I don’t want to mislead you by laying claim to information I do not possess, Inspector. All that I can tell you about Ward is in the nature of conjecture. You see, he was a liar. He didn’t lie for utilitarian ends, he lied simply because he had a slipshod lazy mind, an able mind gone to seed. He said whatever was the easiest to say at the moment. Stop me if I’m wasting your time,”