by John Creasey
‘Where has she been?’ asked Grice, sharply.
‘I don’t know. I do know that she’s sound in wind and limb and very anxious to keep an appointment with—who did you say, Aunt Gloria?’
‘I did not say,’ said Lady Gloria, blandly.
‘With an unknown person,’ completed Rollison. ‘I’m speaking from 25a Green Street – yes, my cousin’s flat. And there’s really no need to worry about my aunt. You do understand that, don’t you? … What’s that?’
Grice said: ‘I asked you whether you were asking me to send someone to follow her.’
‘Of course I am,’ said Rollison, patiently. ‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘About ten minutes.’
‘Oh, I can manage that,’ said Rollison. ‘Any other news?’
As he spoke, he could hear Grice speaking into another mouthpiece, and he knew that in a very few minutes a reliable man would leave Scotland Yard, wait for Lady Gloria as she left the flat, and follow her wherever she went; he was determined to make sure that she did not get lost again. Grice understood his difficulties, and kept him talking; it was at least five minutes before Rollison replaced the receiver. Then he put both hands in his trousers pockets and regarded his aunt with a forbidding frown.
‘The police are not pleased with you,’ he said.
‘I am not interested in the pleasures of the police force,’ said Lady Gloria. ‘And there is no need for you to put on that melodramatic scowl. It leaves me quite unmoved. Any arrangements which I choose to make are entirely my affair.’
‘You astound me,’ exclaimed Rollison. ‘Fifty policemen have been looking for you since eleven o’clock this morning, because we were afraid you might be lying by the roadside, a victim of arsenical poisoning, but it’s no business of theirs. Impertinent rascals! No business of mine, either. But I’ll make it mine, I think. Where did you go?’
‘I do not like your manner, Richard,’ said Lady Gloria.
Rollison laughed: ‘But you helped to bring me back to the happy norm, so you are partly to blame. You ought to mark it up – in red, for preference.’
‘I don’t know what—’ began Lady Gloria, only to stop abruptly.
She had the quickest mind of any woman of Rollison’s acquaintance, and he saw that she had realised at once that he was referring to the envelopes which had been addressed to her in red ink. She opened her lips again, as if to make some comment, then closed them firmly and looked at her watch.
‘I am going,’ she said.
‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’ asked Rollison. ‘And show that all is forgiven?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t say you’ve an engagement for dinner, too,’ said Rollison.
‘Is another engagement necessary before one can refuse an invitation from you?’ she asked coldly.
Lady Gloria said goodbye to Derek, then turned rather pointedly away from him and Rollison. She insisted on walking down the stairs, refusing to allow either of them to accompany her.
Rollison stayed at the window, until he had seen a plainclothes policeman walking along the other side of the street. He smiled with satisfaction.
‘Well, what is this all about?’ Derek asked.
Rollison mixed himself a drink, and waited for Derek to do the same. Then he lifted his glass.
‘Here’s to Old Glory, bless her heart!’
‘She’s all right,’ said Derek, almost grudgingly, ‘but she’s far too interested in my affairs.’
‘She’s too interested in everyone’s affairs,’ said Rollison. ‘She was the real cause of the party last night.’
‘Do you know why she wanted it?’ asked Derek, in no way surprised.
‘No,’ said Rollison, but that was not true; he could guess the real reason behind Old Glory’s anxiety to force the party upon him; so far she had told him only part of the truth.
‘Well, I know what it was,’ said Derek. ‘She imagined she could mend matters between Katrina and me.’
‘Oh,’ said Rollison, blankly. ‘Trouble? I am sorry.’
Derek frowned, bringing his dark eyebrows close together.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’
‘I had no idea at all until the party night,’ said Rollison, truthfully, ‘and then I heard only a murmur from Aunt Mattie. It’s impossible to believe what she tells you. A ten-minute tiff would be a life-wrecking quarrel to her.’ He proffered cigarettes, but Derek waved them away, saying that he always smoked a pipe.
‘Always?’ asked Rollison, casually.
‘Yes.’ Derek did not see Rollison’s glance towards the cigarette ash.
‘If you hadn’t been locked in, you’d have had to wait for me,’ Derek went on. ‘I’ve been out since early morning.’
‘Has Katrina been in?’ asked Rollison.
Derek said sharply: ‘She no longer lives here.’
‘Oh,’ said Rollison. ‘Sorry.’
If neither Katrina nor Derek had smoked cigarettes in the flat, who had? Rollison found it easy to understand, now, why he had been shut in the lift. Some unauthorised person had been in the flat, and a third party, watching below, had seen him arrive and acted quickly to delay him. Derek appeared to suspect nothing.
‘Old Glory has many good points,’ Rollison went on, ‘but I wish she wouldn’t interfere. She thought I was under the weather and made her effort through me, taking the occasion as an excuse, you know.’ He was smiling, as if secretly amused, for he was trying to manoeuvre Derek into confiding in him. He did not think it would be easy, for Derek was notoriously a secretive individual where his private affairs were concerned. He had already snapped at mention of Katrina.
‘Were you under the weather?’ Derek asked.
Rollison finished his drink and put his glass down with a bang.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was making a fool of myself. Haven’t you heard about that? I thought it was a family legend by now.’
Derek said awkwardly: ‘I did hear a rumour about someone who lost her memory—’
‘I thought something would have reached you,’ said Rollison, a little defiantly. ‘For a family whose members ignore one another for three hundred and sixty-four days in the year, we’re surprisingly well-supplied with information about one another. Though you and I are on the outer fringes, of course. Most of them avoid me as they would the plague.’
‘Well, you have been somewhat in the public eye,’ said Derek, beginning to react as Rollison hoped he would.
‘There have been things to do and I have done them,’ said Rollison, leaning back and nursing his knees. ‘The family disapproved – so what? Reflections tell me that most of the family isn’t worth a tinker’s curse, though there are bright exceptions.’ He looked up with a sudden grin. ‘Have you been among the many who have disapproved of me?’
Derek said slowly: ‘Well, I haven’t exactly disapproved. I couldn’t see what took you down into the East End so much, but I had a sneaking admiration for—’
‘Oh, lord! Cut that out!’
‘Well, it’s true,’ said Derek, and added with a flicker of amusement: ‘It must be the eternal boy in me. Of course, I haven’t been in England much.’
‘Foreign service has its drawbacks,’ said Rollison.
‘I prefer being abroad,’ said Derek, quickly. ‘I’m waiting to be posted again. I can’t stand this climate, I never could. Mind you, I like being here for a month or two, and while I’m away I’m always hankering after a good old English downpour, but—’ He broke off, spread his hands out towards an imaginary fire, and sat down in the easy chair. He leaned forward, looking into the fireplace, and was silent for some minutes. Rollison did not disturb him. He now felt reasonably certain that the story would soon be told, and in his mind Katrina’s words to Old Glo
ry were running with surprising vividness. ‘But what am I to do if Derek will behave like this?’ And Old Glory had replied: ‘Make him see reason.’
So they blamed Derek for whatever had happened.
Derek said abruptly: ‘I don’t see why I should unburden myself to you, Rolly, you’ve got more than enough on your mind as it is, but I feel so infernally alone here. Most of the family look on me as the freak from wildest Borneo, and when I brought Katrina back, that was the last straw.’ His eyes were narrowed, but Rollison thought that they were filled with pain. ‘That wouldn’t have mattered a damn had things gone on all right.’
Rollison made a sympathetic murmur.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Derek said, fiercely, ‘it’s quite beyond me. Katrina, of all people—’
Rollison said nothing.
Derek went on: ‘Of course, no one else has an inkling. As far as they know, I’ve cooled off Katrina. That’s why Old Glory is championing her. Old Glory probably thinks that my travelling has affected my head, but—damn it, Rolly, what else could I do? What would you do if your wife went off one morning without saying a word, stayed away three days, and then came back and wouldn’t give any explanation?’
He expected some response, and Rollison murmured: ‘That’s difficult, isn’t it?’
‘Difficult! It was bad enough the first time. The second time we had a flaming row. The third time I told her she needn’t come back. She didn’t. It’s finished. How she got in touch with Old Glory, I don’t know.’
‘She was with Old Glory this morning,’ said Rollison. ‘They came in from the street while I was locked in the lift.’
Derek started. ‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t believe it!’
‘Well, I didn’t see her,’ admitted Rollison, ‘but I did hear her, and hers isn’t a voice which one would easily forget. As soon as you came on the scene, she made off. You cut her last night, didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t cut her,’ said Derek, sharply. ‘The moment I saw her I left, that’s all. I don’t think she saw me.’
‘Oh,’ said Rollison. ‘That’s difficult, of course. Haven’t you any idea where she went on her visits?’
‘None at all.’
‘No evidence for suspecting—’ Rollison paused, for this was dangerous ground.
Derek growled: ‘I’ve suspected everything. As for evidence – well, she has been seen about with one or two men. I—er—I kept my eyes open,’ he added, colouring slightly, ‘and I had one or two inquiries made—’
‘Could you be more precise?’ asked Rollison, gently.
Derek’s face went a darker shade.
‘Well, I employed a detective agency.’
‘What agency?’
‘The Gordon Inquiry Bureau,’ Derek told him. ‘I know it all sounds rather childish, but—why, what’s the matter?’ He looked startled at Rollison’s change of expression.
‘The Gordon was a bad choice,’ Rollison told him. ‘It specialises in one thing, divorce, and it isn’t very good. Still, you weren’t to know that.’
‘A friend recommended me,’ said Derek. He stood up and stepped to the window, and Rollison could easily guess the state of his mind. He was so desperately in love with Katrina and so bitterly disappointed in her. ‘Anyhow, I got one or two reports, and then I took the agency off the case,’ growled Derek.
‘Did you know the men concerned?’ asked Rollison.
‘Not personally. One was a good-looking, bearded fellow, named Lorne. The other was a smaller man, with a big nose. Gordon’s said they couldn’t find out who he was. I can’t imagine either of them appealing to Katrina, but she undoubtedly saw them both each time she went away. It’s a pretty miserable story, isn’t it? Go on, tell me that you think I’m a suspicious fool.’
Rollison said: ‘I think you’ve behaved pretty well, old chap, and that’s not blarney. Extreme provocation and all that. But I can’t help feeling that if you had employed someone other than the Gordon Agency, you might not have taken quite so much for granted. You see, they can’t think about anything but divorce and the situations leading to divorce. No matter what story you told them, they would assume you were looking for evidence.’
Derek said nothing.
‘Now there is one odd thing,’ declared Rollison, getting up and moving about the room. ‘Lorne was at the party last night.’
‘What?’
‘So was the little man with the hooked nose,’ said Rollison, ‘and I do not believe they would have been there had the circumstances been what you imagine. There’s much more in this than meets the eye. There is also the matter of the arsenic.’
‘I read something about that in the papers,’ said Derek, ‘but I don’t pay much attention to newspapers these days.’
‘Who does?’ asked Rollison, lightly.
‘Well, what do you think is happening?’ asked Derek.
He was standing with his back to the window and watching Rollison closely. Rollison was quite sure that new hope had sprung into his mind. There was an eagerness which Derek tried hard to repress, even a hint of excitement, as if he were clutching at a straw, convinced that it was something more solid.
‘I’m not even going to guess,’ said Rollison, ‘but if it’s all right with you, I am going to try to find out.’
Derek said: ‘Look here, you won’t make a lot of publicity for me about this, will you?’
‘Not if it can be avoided,’ said Rollison.
‘Can’t you promise better than that?’
‘Not yet,’ Rollison told him.
Derek demurred, but without much spirit, obviously he was glad and grateful to find Rollison interested.
Rollison would have gone into more detail had he not felt sure that Derek was completely obsessed by his own personal troubles. He would not be able to look at anything detachedly, and this situation needed a detached mind.
‘Have you had lunch?’ Derek asked, abruptly.
‘No.’
‘Neither have I. Let’s go out.’
They went to a small restaurant nearby and lunched well. On parting, Derek’s hand shot out in a vice-like grip as he muttered some incoherent words of thanks before walking rapidly away. Rollison watched him disappear, and then followed slowly in his wake. Derek turned into Green Street; so did another man, a rather shabby individual whose shoes wanted heeling. Derek entered the house, but the other man stayed outside, walking rather aimlessly up and down, as if he were looking for a particular address and could not find it.
‘Now that is curious,’ Rollison murmured aloud.
Near the end of the road was a telephone kiosk, and he went to it and put a call through to his flat.
‘This is the Hon. Richard Rollison’s residence,’ said Jolly, in a deep voice.
‘Outside Mr Derek Morral’s house at 25a Green Street,’ said Rollison, ‘there is a man of medium height, wearing a soiled grey suit, a bowler, and with down-at-heel shoes. I think he’s following Mr Morral. Pick him up quickly, Jolly.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Jolly, his voice a mixture of resignation and eagerness. ‘I will leave at once.’
Jolly arrived, by taxi, at the corner of Green Street exactly a quarter-of-an-hour later. Rollison was still near the telephone kiosk, and the shabby man was still lurking near the houses. Rollison now had no doubt that he was there to watch Derek.
Jolly caught Rollison’s eye, but made no sign. Rollison took a taxi, and went immediately to Scotland Yard.
The officials on duty recognised him, and he did not have to go through the formality of making out a form and having his name sent up to Grice. Two or three inspectors whom he knew stopped him in the passages, and made rather pointed remarks about his long period of absence. One suggested that the arsenic
story was an imaginary one, designed to bring the Toff into the limelight again. To all these pleasantries Rollison returned an amiable smile, until at last he reached Grice’s room. It was a large corner room, with two windows, and Grice had a huge flat-topped desk, kept in scrupulous order. At a lesser desk, set at a respectful distance, was an Inspector named Hill, who half-rose from his seat and then dropped down again.
Grice got up and pushed a chair towards Rollison.
‘Welcome to the returning stranger,’ he said.
‘Can we forget that crack?’ asked Rollison, wearily. ‘I think – I can’t go further than that yet – but I think we’ve a really puzzling job on our hands, Bill.’
‘Good!’
‘I don’t know why my Aunt Gloria decided to stay away for the night, but I think she spent it with Katrina Morral,’ Rollison went on. ‘That’s the best I can do about that one. However, there are others things of note …’
He repeated Derek’s story, and Grice showed a quickening interest. At the mention of the name ‘Lorne’ he scribbled a line on a slip of paper and handed it to Hill, who immediately lifted the telephone and spoke in a low voice, so as not to interrupt Rollison. By the time the story was finished, Hill was looking round at Grice, who asked him: ‘Do we know this man Lorne?’
‘No,’ said Hill, ‘there’s no such name on the records. Shall I telephone Gordon’s?’
‘I think I’d like to visit Gordon’s myself,’ said Rollison. ‘No action – just a mission of inquiry.’
‘Well, I can’t stop you,’ said Grice. ‘What do you really make of the situation, Rolly?’
Rollison said: ‘I don’t make anything of it yet. I only see a series of some peculiar facts. One, the unexplained jaunts of my cousin Katrina. Two, the fact that Derek is being watched. Three, the fact that two men with whom Katrina has been known to associate gate-crashed the party last night. Four, while they were there the arsenic was stolen and dropped into the ice-cream. Five, someone was in Derek’s flat and steps were taken to keep me from going there too promptly.’