Tears spilling over her eyes, the brunette turned.
‘I’ll teach you to do that,’ she screamed.
The blonde had had the foresight to retreat with great speed the moment she had struck her blow. But the steps at the edge of the stage proved too difficult to negotiate with her face kept towards the enemy. She faltered and the brunette was upon her.
‘Stop.’
The mottled-faced Mr Brown flung himself forward.
Just as the brunette’s claws were raised to strike he hurled himself into the gap.
‘Stop. Stop it,’ he yelled.
The two girls manoeuvred to get round him.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’ve asked for it, you dirty little tykes. You’re out. You’re disqualified. Leave the stage.’
Instantly the two embattled viragoes were transformed into scolded children.
‘It was her fault,’ said the brunette.
‘She started it,’ said the blonde.
‘Look, give us another chance,’ the brunette said.
‘Out. Out. I said out.’
But for all the passion Mr Brown succeeded in putting into the words neither of the two girls budged.
What Mr Brown would have done was destined never to be written in the book of fate.
From down below a plaintive voice called up.
‘Hey, am I going to get shots of this lot today or not?’
It was a duly authorized Press photographer.
The effect of his intervention was dramatic. All along the huddled line of beauties backs were straightened, smiles were fixed with a quick lick of the lips for instant kissability and a general breathed prayer of ‘Cheese’, guaranteed to set any and every mouth at its peak of seductiveness.
‘Oh, all right, all right,’ said Mr Brown. ‘But for goodness’ sake be quick about it.’
The photographer, a burly young man with a harsh Scots accent and a hairy tweed jacket, began busily clicking off shots and encouraging the girls to greater and greater efforts with simple badinage.
Peter saw that his opportunity to check on Daisy Stitchford had come. He went up to Mr Brown.
‘Could I have a word with you? From Mr Ironside.’
Mr Brown darted a glance to the right and a glance to the left.
‘What is it?’
‘Quite a simple thing. We’re trying to fix the time the attack took place. Miss Stitchford’s been able to help us to some extent but we’d like to make certain of the times she gave us. Did you happen to notice her here this morning?’
‘Notice her?’ said Mr Brown. ‘Listen, would you notice a ruddy cobra if it was sitting up there fixing you with its beady eye?’
‘Cobra, eh?’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Then tell me something. What time did she go from here round to Mr Pariss’s office?’
‘Go from here? Are you mad? She nipped out early on when someone brought her a letter or something, but she didn’t leave after that.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘No, I’m a liar. She did leave. Once. For a couple of minutes just after quarter past one, it’d be. She may not look it, but she’s human too.’
‘She’d have gone to the toilet near the dressing-room?’ Peter asked.
‘I didn’t follow her,’ Mr Brown said. ‘I’m not that curious.’
‘All right. But did she go out again?’
‘When she might have spotted one of us doing something Teddy Pariss wouldn’t like? Listen, mate, that bloody scorpion wouldn’t pass up a chance like that, not if the place was full of ruddy savages howling for her blood.’
‘What’s this about a scorpion?’
It was the piano-player. The amateur of Civil Defence.
Mr Brown turned to him.
‘I was just telling this chap about our lady friend,’ he said.
‘The honourable Daisy?’
‘The honourable D. He wanted to know if she left us on our own when Teddy turned it in just before dinner-time.’
‘Her? Leave us on our tod? Don’t be silly, mate.’
Peter decided to ignore the note of irreverence. It was apparent that Daisy had been speaking the perfect truth when Ironside had questioned her.
A phenomenon so rare that it deserves some mark of respect.
Peter walked quietly away.
Back behind the stage he found that Superintendent Ironside and Jack had moved back into the little office where Teddy Pariss had met his sad end.
‘Well,’ said the superintendent when Peter presented himself, ‘you’ll be pleased to hear that the doctor felt he couldn’t give us any more information about the body than that it had been killed between half past twelve and half past one. I trust you’ll be a little more precise, if not so scientific.’
Peter told him what he had learnt.
‘Well, then,’ Jack burst out, ‘what did Bert Mullens want to go saying he’d heard her in here for?’
Ironside turned to him with a smile beginning to play round his lips.
‘He didn’t say that, Constable.’
‘But–’
‘What he actually said was that he had heard Pariss talking to her. It’s quite important, you know, to listen to what people say.’
‘Well, all the same,’ Jack said, with muffled aggressiveness, ‘it isn’t much different.’
‘No? It seems to me it’s quite possible for our intelligent Mr Mullens to have heard his late employer talking to someone and to have assumed from the conversation that Miss Stitchford was the silent hearer.’
‘But still, sir,’ Peter said, ‘it doesn’t make a great deal of difference, does it? I mean, we do know that Pariss was talking to someone at quarter past one, so everything was normal then. And even after that June Curtis saw him.’
‘Excellently put, Constable,’ said the superintendent. ‘A really logical exposition. And one which serves to highlight the importance of an immediate interview with Miss Curtis.’
Suddenly he swung on his heel away from Peter and stood looking thoughtfully at Jack.
‘Look, sir, I do know the girl,’ Jack broke out at last. ‘Do you want me to report back to the station?’
‘Ah, no,’ said Ironside, ‘I think that would be a little extreme. We must do our best in other ways to avoid embarrassment.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack.
He looked at Ironside from under lowered eyes.
‘But I think the time has come,’ the superintendent went on in the same leisurely manner, ‘to abandon this business of keeping quiet about the sad event we’re investigating.’
He sat on the corner of the late Teddy’s little temporary desk and smiled.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I find the notion of those girls parading about vaunting their charms is beginning to be rather depressing after all. I think we’ll make our announcement and pack them off until this evening. There are times, even in this day and age, when commercial considerations must take second place.’
He stood up more briskly.
‘Spratt,’ he said, ‘I’ll get you to fetch your Miss Curtis while Lassington and I continue to look for that missing letter. To tell you the truth, I find it rather intriguing.’
‘But, look, sir,’ said Peter, with measurable temerity, ‘it isn’t so important any more to check up on what Miss Stitchford told us. After all, when we checked the times we found she was quite right, and in any case we know the killer couldn’t have got in till after June Curtis had left.’
‘Oh,’ Ironside said, ‘more cogent reasoning. Really, Constable, you’ll have to ration yourself. Especially as flaws are liable to creep in.’
Jack grinned. Peter frowned.
‘Flaws, sir?’ he said.
‘Yes, Constable. Such as assuming that whoever killed Pariss broke in to do it. Because, you know, they did no such thing. Not for one moment.’
9
Peter Lassington looked round the little office where the window was still as pun
ctiliously open as it had been when he had burst in and discovered the body of Teddy Pariss, old Toad-eyes himself. The photographer and the fingerprint team had been careful, too, not to disturb the litter of rifled papers that lay across the red square of carpet and the plundered drawers of the little desk were meticulously open to the exact extent they had been before.
Only Teddy Pariss had left. In a horizontal pose. To be replaced by a soft chalk outline on the thick pile of the carpet.
‘But listen, sir,’ Peter said to the enigmatically smiling Superintendent Ironside, ‘someone certainly broke in here, and they must have been the one who killed Pariss.’
‘The window showed every sign of being forced when I looked at it, sir,’ Jack added.
‘Dear me, did it, indeed? And yet, you know, gentlemen, I find it hard som how to picture the scene. The late Mr Pariss sitting absorbed in the task of emphasizing the sexual aspects of the modern female, shivering a little because he has oddly omitted to switch on his great, big electric fire, and behind him a dark figure scrabbles at the window, forces back the catch with a satisfying click, pushes up the lower frame, clambers in, borrows a paper-knife and prods it into that expensive-looking suiting.’
Jack looked shame-faced. Peter looked very shame-faced.
‘You’re quite right, sir,’ Jack admitted with a rueful grin, ‘it couldn’t possibly have happened like that. Does this mean the break-in was a fake?’
‘Not at all,’ Ironside said in his irritatingly quiet way.
‘How’s that, sir?’ Peter asked with caution.
Ironside looked at him.
‘I thought you were the great logician,’ he said.
‘It’s not working any more, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘It’s perfectly simple, Constable. Someone may have broken in after Pariss was dead. You know, you’re trying to prepare a case that even an ingenious legal gentleman can’t pick holes in. Don’t forget that. That’s our job.’
He glanced round the room.
‘Thank goodness it’s the last time I shall have such a task,’ he said. ‘This time next week I shall be setting up some rabbit cages at a nice little cottage down in Essex. Always provided, that is, that this case is not in the same state of mystery then as it is now.’
‘So I’ll go and tell them out there about Pariss, and then fetch Miss Curtis, sir?’ Jack asked.
‘Yes, do that. Fetch – er – Miss Curtis, if that’s what you call her. And Lassington will help me have another look for that letter. It’s something I’d really like to see.’
Jack went and the superintendent began a slow, methodical search of the square, dusty-floored little office.
‘You say you saw the letter?’ he asked Peter.
‘Yes, sir. I think so, sir.’
Peter sounded a little embarrassed.
‘It was a big envelope, sort of lilac colour, sir.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find then.’
The superintendent fell silent, absorbedly moving from one section of the little room to the next, neatly investigating every cranny, tirelessly turning over each possible hiding-place.
At last he straightened his back.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think we shall have to give up.’
‘Still, sir,’ said Peter, ‘it was only to check if old Miss Stitchford was telling the truth.’
‘Was it really? I have the impression it’s becoming rather more important than that. You see, if Pariss wasn’t murdered by a casual thief, then he was more than likely murdered by someone who knew him. And the fact that a private letter, personally delivered, is missing becomes a distinctly relevant factor.’
Peter came to a decision.
‘I think I can tell you a bit about that letter, sir,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s nice.’
‘It was probably from an old girl, name of Fay Curtis, who keeps a club not far from here. She gassed herself early this morning or late last night, and before she did she sent a note round to Teddy Pariss. As a matter of fact I learnt about it while I was round there and that was what I’d come to see him about.’
The superintendent’s eyebrows gently ascended.
‘Was it, indeed? You were there on duty, I take it?’
‘No, sir. More that I just happened to know her, sir. And –’
‘One moment, Constable. You said the lady was called Curtis?’
‘Yes, sir. Fay Curtis. Owner of Fay’s Place. You may know it, sir.’
‘No, I don’t often go to such haunts.’
‘No, sir. I meant –’
‘Any relation to June Curtis, Constable?’
‘Yes, sir. Mother, sir. As a matter –’
There came a brisk rap on the door. Jack thrust it open.
‘Miss June Curtis, sir,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said the superintendent, ‘come in, Miss Curtis.’
June Curtis entered the little room, still wearing the swim-suit in which she had been rehearsing and carrying her big plastic wrist-disc loosely in one hand. It was immediately obvious that she stood a very good chance of becoming the year’s Miss Valentine.
Like a quality car of some sort her actual size, which was fairly extensive, was tactfully minimized by carefully calculated proportions. She had the finish and something of the well-emphasized but unstrident luxury of, say, a Bentley. Her hair was red, but by no means aggressive. Her face, though full and creamy-textured, did not sacrifice quite everything to achieving an impression of voluptuousness. She appeared to be, as Bert Mullens had so spontaneously remembered, 37 – 24 – 36.
Superintendent Ironside fetched the battered kitchen chair from the corner of the little square room and, giving it a flick over with his hand by way of a dust, placed it in front of the desk. He left Jack to seat June while he went and occupied the place recently vacated by Teddy Pariss, Esq.
He took out a note-book.
‘Now, it’s Miss June Curtis, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ June answered, giving nothing away.
‘Ah, good. And the address? Fay’s Place. Let me see, is that just off Dean Street, or what?’
A hardness crept on to June Curtis’s creamy smooth features.
‘That’s my mother’s address,’ she said. ‘I don’t happen to live there.’
‘Ah, I see. Then your address is what?’
‘Ten Black Horse Street, W.I.’
Superintendent Ironside’s eyebrows rose lazily.
‘That’s Mayfair, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘You can call it that.’
‘A very nice address. The park quite near, isn’t it? That must be very pleasant.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘But expensive, I suppose. That’s the trouble these days: every-where’s so expensive. Why, I recently bought a little cottage down in Essex to wear out the days of my retirement in, and, you know, even that cost a fortune.’
June did not respond. She sat on the shabby old upright chair superbly unconcerned. Back straight, head held nobly, faintly smiling into a far distance.
‘You’re not cold in here?’ Ironside asked with sudden concern. ‘I’m afraid someone switched off the fire. And someone else rather foolishly opened the window. At least I suppose it was someone else.’
‘It is cold,’ June said.
Ironside jumped up.
‘Then we must remedy things,’ he said.
He went across and pulled down the window. Then he stooped and looked at the fire.
‘Hallo,’ he said, ‘switch already on.’
He traced the heavy black wire to the plug and pushed it home. Then he straightened quickly and shot a new question at June.
‘Was the fire on when you saw Mr Pariss here this morning?’
‘The fire? On?’
A frown appeared on June’s smooth forehead. To be quickly chased away. Frown lines are a girl’s worst friend.
‘I’m afraid I don’t happen to remember,’ she
said with a fleck of crossness.
Ironside at once soothed her.
‘My dear young lady, it’s not of the least consequence. Not of the least consequence. I’m rather interested in the fire, I admit. It wasn’t on when we found –’
He paused delicately.
‘When we made our unfortunate discovery earlier on.’
June received the reminder of Teddy Pariss’s demise with calm.
‘But you’ll be anxious to go and change,’ Ironside resumed. ‘No one could want to wear a bathing costume in February. So let me ask you just this: how long were you in here with Mr Pariss?’
Surprisingly June did not answer straight away. Instead it could be seen that, without moving her statuesque pose, she was looking round behind her in the direction of Jack.
‘I’ve been trying to think,’ she said at last. ‘I suppose it was for about ten minutes. Just before half past one. Or perhaps just after quarter past.’
Ironside bent forward to make a note.
‘Quarter of an hour,’ he said. ‘One-fifteen to one-thirty. Perhaps earlier.’
‘No,’ said June. ‘I told you ten minutes.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Ten minutes.’
Ironside carefully crossed out a word of his note and wrote something else.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘And you came to do – Let me see, what did you say?’
‘I didn’t say.’
He smiled.
‘No, of course not. But you were just going to.’
June looked at him with cold eyes above the smooth white of her cheeks.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘I came in to have a chat with Teddy. I knew him a bit, and after all he’s always one of the judges in his own contests. The one who counts.’
‘Is that so now?’ Ironside said. ‘Now, I didn’t know that.’
‘I wouldn’t think you knew much about this sort of thing anyhow.’
‘Well, no, I don’t. It’s a grave disadvantage. In fact, I’m counting on you to enlighten me, Miss Curtis. If you can spare the time. And if it’s not too cold for you.’
He turned to look at the Wurlitzer fire.
Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal Page 9