Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal

by H. R. F. Keating

  He looked over again at the bouncy divan and smirked.

  Peter smiled.

  There are people who demand ingratiation. And usually get it.

  But Peter’s tribute to this universal law was wasted. Teddy Pariss had turned his back. He was leaning forward grunting at the big electric fire.

  ‘Damned thing,’ he muttered. ‘Even this has gone wrong now. What a bloody place. You come here for a couple of days just to see the Miss Valentines off properly, and what happens? They mess up every damned thing.’

  Peter looked at the huge glossy front of the fire. His eye ran along the thick black flex to the plug.

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t switched on at the wall,’ he suggested.

  There was a certain satisfaction in thinking that anything as glossy as the big fire was at the mercy of human error.

  Teddy Pariss swivelled his plump figure round to the wall plug.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  He bent down farther and fiddled. Peter tipped Fay Curtis’s letter another quarter of an inch under the silver tray with its battery of well-sharpened pencils.

  Teddy straightened up.

  ‘You’re wrong there, lad,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t the switch at all. Time-plug. Got a time-plug on it. Hate coming into a bloody cold room. But I fixed it to switch on too late. Thought I wouldn’t be coming in here till after lunch.’

  He uncorked the whisky bottle and poured a liberal tot into one of the glasses. He let the top of the bottle hover over the second glass.

  ‘You interested in that letter then?’ he said.

  And Peter Lassington’s pink and white face – which always made him look at least five years younger than his twenty-seven summers – flushed all over.

  Teddy Pariss set down the whisky bottle without having poured out the second glass.

  ‘Saw you hiding it behind your back the moment I came in,’ he said. ‘Wanted to get a look at it, did you?’

  Peter glanced down at the desk in front of him.

  ‘Come on, lad, pass it over,’ Teddy said. ‘It’s there under the tray, where you pushed it when I turned to look at that bloody fire.’

  There was only one thing for Peter to do.

  He reached forward, pulled out the big lilac envelope and handed it to Teddy.

  Teddy looked at it. He turned it every way round in his podgy fingers.

  ‘Old Fay Curtis by the writing,’ he said. ‘Haven’t heard a word from her for years. But I’d know her fist anywhere.’

  He shot a quick glance at Peter.

  ‘You know her, don’t you?’

  ‘Why should I know her?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why you should know her, lad. Because you’re a copper and you’re stationed in this area. Fay keeps a club somewhere round here. You know her.’

  Only then did he let his cold toad gaze leave Peter’s still flushed face.

  He reached into the silver tray and extracted from amongst the well-sharpened pencils the paperknife with the gold handle, the handle in the form of a lusciously-curved naked girl.

  He flicked another glance at Peter Lassington, standing like a great lemon in front of the shabby makeshift desk.

  Slowly he worked the sharp tip of the girl paperknife under the well-gummed flap of Fay’s big envelope. Peter watched the thin blade slowly bulge up the paper.

  It ripped along inch by inch. When the whole top of the envelope was slit Teddy Pariss put the knife carefully back in its nest of neat pencils.

  Once more he looked at Peter.

  And with happy slowness he teased the big folded piece of lilac paper out of the envelope. Peter could see the sheet was covered on both sides with Fay’s writing. But it would not take many words in that sprawling, badly formed hand to fill a single side.

  Teddy Pariss dropped the big envelope on to the solid blotter.

  He unfolded the big sheet.

  He looked straight up at Peter. He nodded dismissal. Curt and unquestionable.

  As Peter wearily pushed a crooked drawing-pin into Teddy Pariss’s ‘Keep Out’ notice he heard a door shut quickly farther along the corridor.

  He glanced sharply round.

  And found himself looking straight at a completely undressed girl.

  He gaped at her. She, standing as stock-still as he, gaped back.

  After a little he realized that he knew her. She was one of the beauties, the one who had raised Teddy Pariss’s especial ire by not being very sure about the order numbers come in after five. Number Seven. She was Number Seven. The girl with the curly black hair and the plumpish figure.

  They stood looking at each other for perhaps twenty seconds, though it seemed longer. The girl’s face – her wide, wide eyes, her Cupid’s bow mouth, the curls of springy black hair – seemed slowly to be impressing itself on Peter Lassington’s brain. She must be young. Not more than seventeen, probably less. Probably sixteen.

  Then, in a flash, she turned, leapt back into the manager’s office and slammed the door. As Peter hurried up he heard a key turned feverishly in the lock.

  A wild outburst of massed giggles followed, coming not from behind the locked door but from round the corner of the passage. Peter took a pace or two forward to see what was happening.

  A sight nearly as astonishing as the naked girl met his eyes. Bert Mullens, the lugubrious stage-door keeper, was standing in his glass-walled box surrounded by a tribe of girls only slightly more clothed than the apparition of a moment before.

  The giggling was coming from them. And Peter realized why almost at once. From where they were standing, surrounding the sombre Bert Mullens in a welter of limbs and bodies and bobbing heads, they must have seen their naked colleague and have guessed the reason for her sudden gasp and hasty flight.

  Peter marched up to them.

  ‘Here, Bert,’ he said, ‘what’s going on? I saw a stark naked girl just now.’

  The giggles rose to a pitch of wild squeaking.

  But Bert Mullens was unexpectedly alarmed.

  ‘Where?’ he shouted. ‘Where? Is that one of ‘em got away?’

  He looked wildly from side to side.

  ‘I’m responsible, you know,’ he said. ‘Responsible for ‘em all.’

  Glaring balefully about, he began trying to count heads – blonde heads, dark heads, red heads, long hair, short hair, curly hair, straight hair, hair piled up high, hair sweeping down low.

  He groaned in cold despair.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘I think there’s one missing. But I can’t be sure.’

  He looked beyond the seething mass of soft limbs to Peter Lassington.

  ‘You know what they do?’ he said. ‘They change their hair styles. One moment you remember there’s three beehives, and then all of a sudden there’s only two. I can’t keep track of ‘em.’

  He pushed his pale, fishy eyes at the face of the girl nearest to him.

  ‘One of you’s gone, hasn’t she?’ he demanded.

  The giggles, which had been simmering gently, boiled rapturously over again.

  A blonde beehive – for the time being – grabbed Bert’s arm.

  ‘She’s in the judges’ room,’ she squeaked. ‘She ran in there and she’s locked the door.’

  ‘Yes,’ said a red-head, ‘and she’s absolutely –’

  Giggles intervened.

  ‘You’ve got a naked girl in the judges’ room,’ Peter Lassington said curtly.

  Bert groaned again.

  He pushed his way through the gaggle of partly dressed bodies and went up to the door which the little plump dark-haired girl had locked. He tried it.

  ‘Stuck fast all right,’ he said. ‘Wish we’d had the lock off this one like we had the locks off all the rest.’

  He knocked thunderously at the closed door.

  No answer.

  ‘Lindylou.’ ‘Come on, Lindylou.’ ‘We know you’re there, Lindylou.’

  The girls behind Bert began chorusing happily away.

  ‘Oh, Lindyl
ou Twelvetrees,’ Bert said dolefully, as if worst fears were being realized. ‘I might of known. They’re all really only bloody children, but she’s stupid with it. Come out. Come out.’

  He banged on the door with both fists together in a gust of utter fury.

  ‘Come out, come out, or I’ll. . .’

  ‘What’ll you do, Bert?’

  The voice in the flock of twitterers behind was unidentifiable.

  In the new outburst of giggles that the suggestion aroused Bert Mullens turned to Peter.

  ‘It’s gone one o’clock. It’s my lunch-time,’ he said. ‘You’re a policeman, do something.’

  ‘Coo, a copper.’

  The girls turned their attention to Peter like a flock of starlings alighting on a new perch. Bert Mullens hurried back to his box, looked despairingly at the big clock hanging just inside and the neat sandwich tin on the ledge underneath and went to stick his head out of the door leading to the street. Reluctantly he came back to the scene of activity.

  ‘Thought it was more Teds trying to get in,’ he said to Peter. ‘I tell you I’ve had everything today. Boys, newspapermen, advertising people, I don’t know what. Even that nasty old man with the filthy books round the corner is hanging about now. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.’

  But this outburst only had the effect of shifting the beauty queens’ volatile attention once more.

  ‘Poor old Bert.’ ‘Here, I’ll give you a kiss, Bertie.’ ‘Never mind, love, we’ll be gone tonight, then you can have your own girl round.’

  Very quietly Peter Lassington walked away along the broad passage, past Bert’s box and out into the street. Behind him he heard a renewed assault on the locked door of the judges’ room. He breathed a long sigh of relief.

  4

  Peter Lassington arrived back at his flat soaked once again by the steady, dutiful, sternly British rain.

  As his wife heard his key in the door she called out something he did not entirely hear.

  ‘What is it? What’s that?’ he shouted as he peeled off his sodden gloves and humped the rain-heavy mackintosh from his back.

  The news. You missed the news.’

  ‘What news, in heaven’s name?’

  ‘The one o’clock news on the wireless, dear. It’s just this second finished.’

  ‘So what? Do you think I care if some ruddy politician has said something rude about some other ruddy politician?’

  Mary came out to the door of the sitting-room. At once she saw his coat dripping where he had hung it. She bustled up, hooked each damp shoulder dexterously on to a separate gay little peg and began jerking out the coat’s heavy folds.

  He watched her for a little.

  ‘Oh, leave the damned thing, can’t you?’ he said.

  ‘You men. You’re all alike. You’d have no clothes left in a month if I let you.’

  ‘I managed perfectly well once. Thank you.’

  She turned from fussing over the sodden sleeves.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ she asked. ‘You’re not generally such a bear.’

  ‘Nothing’s got into me.’

  ‘I dare say you want your dinner. It’s ready to dish.’

  ‘I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘Well, well. That’s a change anyhow. Usually you’re hanging about the kitchen like nobody’s business on days when you’re not on duty till late.’

  ‘Well, I’m not hanging about today.’

  Mary tossed her neat head.

  ‘I got some scrag mutton and did it up with butter-beans,’ she said. ‘It smells lovely, and it was ever so reasonable.’

  Peter grunted and walked into the sitting-room.

  ‘What was so important anyhow?’ he asked.

  ‘Important?’

  ‘Yes, what was so important?’

  Mary came and stood in the doorway looking at him.

  ‘I never said anything about “important”.’

  He wheeled round.

  ‘Just like a woman. Shouts out about important news on the wireless before you’ve hardly set foot in the place, and then when you ask her what it is two seconds later she’s no idea she said anything.’

  Mary laughed.

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘It was just that the news ended with a bit about the Miss Valentine contest round at the Star Bowl ballroom.’

  ‘What? What about it?’

  ‘Now, now. No need to get so excited. All those bathing beauties. I’m not sure I ought to tell you.’

  Peter Lassington stood looking at the neatly arranged row of ornaments on the mantelpiece. He took a long, deep breath.

  ‘What did it say on the news about the Miss Valentine show?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it was only a bit. Just a sort of laugh to end up with, as it’s Valentine’s Day.’

  Peter turned round.

  ‘Well, what was the bit?’

  ‘Oh, just that the contest was on tonight and how many entries there had been and everything. I thought you’d be interested because you said something about it the other day.’

  ‘No need to make such a fuss about it,’ Peter said.

  He flopped into his chair by the little glow of the electric fire.

  Mary put her two hands on her hips and looked down at him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to come for your dinner?’ she said.

  For a moment he sat glowering. Then he heaved himself up and lumbered into the kitchen.

  He was still pushing the butter-beans round on his plate when the telephone rang. He made no attempt to get up and answer it. Mary, who had done full justice to her own cooking, went quickly into the sitting-room.

  ‘For you,’ she called.

  Peter jerked back his chair and came to take the receiver. He listened for a moment and then banged the receiver back and ran out into the little hall.

  ‘Trouble, love,’ he shouted. ‘Someone doing the office at the Star Bowl. I’m going round. Won’t take two minutes. Ring the station sergeant.’

  And his heavy feet were clattering down the stairs.

  As he ran through the still crowded streets, past gloomy pubs, garish sandwich bars, tiny clothes-filled cleaners’ shops and window-crammed chemists, he forced his arms into the sleeves of his heavily damp mackintosh. He had still not got the buttons done up when he reached the Star Bowl stage door.

  Bert Mullens was busy boiling a big kettle on the gas in his box.

  ‘Did you ring?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Ring? Me? You mean the phone?’

  ‘Yes. Was it you who rang?’

  Bert looked at him blankly.

  ‘Someone rang me and said somebody was doing the safe here,’ Peter barked. ‘You’d better show me where it is.’

  ‘The safe? Well, I suppose they mean the one in the manager’s office.’

  ‘Is there another one?’

  ‘Well, no. Not really. No, I suppose there isn’t.’

  Peter looked at him with fury.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he shouted.

  ‘But what about the girls? I shouldn’t leave my post.’

  ‘Damn your post. Come on.’

  Shaking his head sadly from side to side, Bert set off along the broad corridor towards the manager’s office, temporarily fallen from grace into a judges’ room.

  ‘You got the girl out who locked herself in?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Oh, she come in the end,’ Bert said grumpily.

  He stood aside to let Peter go in first.

  There were certainly no obvious signs that a break-in had taken place. The room was in good order. All along the big judges’ table sheets of raw pink blotting paper were ranged in line. Pushed into a corner, the manager’s desk had its drawers all safely locked. The two big windows were firmly closed.

  Peter hurried over and examined them. The bottom halves were of frosted glass but the tops were clear, if dirty. He looked out. The windows were fairly far from the ground but not so high as to make it impossible for most people to scramble up and g
et in. They looked out on to a little alley, a dead end running up beside the ballroom building.

  Peter opened one of the windows and stuck his head out. The alley was empty. On the side opposite there were no windows but two pairs of blank doors. One of them had the name of a big restaurant painted across in solid ungraceful black letters. Opposite, in a corner formed by a slight projection of the Star Bowl building there was a cluster of dustbins, each again marked with the restaurant’s name. It appeared to be a concern much worried about maintaining its rights in all its property.

  It would have been possible, but unlikely, for someone to hide in one of the bins and emerge to break into the ballroom. The projecting part of the building would give some cover even in a busy West End lunch-time. But no doubt the restaurant was much too jealous of its rights to permit anybody to occupy its bins, even temporarily.

  Peter pulled his head back in. He rubbed his hand over his newly wetted hair.

  ‘Looks as if I got a wrong tip, unless I was too quick,’ he said.

  Bert Mullens grunted.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the safe all the same,’ Peter said.

  He went up to the heavy safe set in the wall, incongruously beside a full-length mirror in an ornate gilt frame. He peered quickly but carefully at the black japanned surface round the lock. But there was not the least sign of anything resembling a fresh scratch.

  He straightened up.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be off, then,’ said Bert promptly.

  ‘No. Wait.’

  Bert looked at him without much interest.

  ‘What about the office next door?’ Peter said, ‘It is next door, isn’t it? Mr Pariss’s office?’

  ‘There ain’t no safe there.’

  ‘I know there isn’t. But the villains may not. They may think because it’s where Mr Pariss hangs out it’s where the money’s kept.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Bert muttered. ‘But I can’t go in there.’

  ‘Can’t – Why not?’

  ‘He’s gone and put his “Keep Out” notice up. It’s more than my job’s worth to go barging in there.’

  ‘I know he’s got the notice up. He asked me to put it there. But this is urgent.’

  Bert backed away a few paces. His fish-like face set in a look of purest obstinacy, a thing of art.

  ‘I’m not going in.’