Death with Blue Ribbon

by Bruce, Leo

  ‘I’m incurably inquisitive.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did. I met Tony.’

  ‘Antoine? But he lives in the village, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Wife and two children. But I saw him.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘No. My friend was dropping me down the road a few yards. I was just going to get out of his old barrow after we’d sat talking there for a bit…’

  ‘With the lights of the car off?’

  ‘Yes. But he switched them on for me to get out and I saw Tony coming towards us. I told my friend to switch off again and stayed there till he had passed. He must have been going home. He probably thought we were a couple having a go in the car. He didn’t look into the car as he passed.’

  ‘How do you get on with Antoine?’

  ‘He’s all right. Bit of an old sourpuss. He thinks he ought to own the place with Rolland. They were partners once and Tony’s a good cook. Knows more than Rolland will ever know.’

  ‘Were you surprised to see him coming away from the hotel at that time?’

  ‘Not all that surprised. Now and again he has a game of poker with Stefan and Molt. That’s if Stefan’s not boozed up.’

  ‘They both live in the men’s quarters?’

  ‘Yea. Molt’s left his wife. She doesn’t know where he is. Molt’s not his real name.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You hear things in a pub like this. She’s looking for him and he’s scared because he owes god knows what maintenance. Stefan’s wife’s left him, and gone off with a Belgian. So they both live as bachelors.’

  ‘You think all three were playing poker that night?’

  ‘Not my business, but that’s what I thought at the time.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t really think any different. Only it seems funny the old girl kicked it that night.’

  ‘Hilariously funny.’

  ‘You know what I mean. When I got indoors there wasn’t a sound. I suppose they were all asleep. There was no light under any of the doors anyway. I dropped off at once.’

  ‘There’s one other thing …’

  ‘Haven’t you asked me enough?’ said Dave with affected weariness.

  ‘Have you seen anyone else talking to the man who complained about food poisoning? Either when he first came or when he returned on the night of Imogen Marvell’s death?’

  Dave looked at him with wide open eyes.

  ‘No. I haven’t. Did anyone talk to him?’

  It sounded frank and convincing.

  ‘Thanks for your information,’ Carolus said.

  ‘Thanks for the drink, Carolus,’ Dave grinned. ‘I hope you catch ‘em.’

  When he had gone Carolus sat for a time in the one armchair provided and thought deeply. The makings of an interesting but ugly possibility was beginning to form in his mind. After ten minutes he rang the bell.

  Ali, one of the North Africans, appeared.

  ‘Still on duty?’ Carolus asked him.

  ‘No. Finished,’ he said smiling.

  ‘Then you can sit down and talk to me. I want to ask you a few questions.’

  Unlike the English whom he had interrogated Ali questioned neither his right nor his motive in asking questions but sat obediently in a chair and waited.

  ‘You are Moroccan?’

  ‘Yes. My brother is Algerian.’

  ‘How?’

  Ali shrugged. ‘He is born in Algeria. His father and mother Algerian.

  ‘But he is your brother?’

  ‘We are brothers. We work together two years now.’

  Metaphorically brothers, Carolus noted.

  ‘You like working here?’

  ‘Yes.’ But it might just as well have been ‘No’ for all the information it gave.

  ‘And Abdul?’

  ‘He wants his wife here. From Algeria.’

  Enough of preliminaries, Carolus thought.

  ‘Ali, you were serving dinner on the night Miss Marvell was taken ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you notice two men who sat at a table near hers?’

  It was obvious that the short answer was ‘Yes’ but that was not Ali’s way.

  ‘One thin and tall?’

  ‘Yes. Fairly thin.’

  ‘One more heavy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I saw them. They had been here before.’

  ‘A few days earlier?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You did not speak to them?’

  ‘To one, I did. I remembered him. I worked long time in London night club. The VIP. He came there.’

  ‘What was he called?’

  ‘I don’t know a name. All called him Maxie.’

  ‘Not Jimmie?’

  ‘No. Maxie.’

  ‘What did he say when you recognised him?’

  ‘He don’t say anything. He no remember me.’

  ‘Did you see him alone when he was here?’

  ‘Just a minute, I see him without the other one. I said, “Hullo, Mr Maxie”. He say a bad word. “——off”, he say. So I don’t speak any more to him.’

  ‘What about the man who was taken ill at table?’

  ‘Very noisy,’ reflected Ali.

  ‘Had you ever seen him before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he speak to you at all while he was here?’

  ‘Only at the table. For a salad.’

  ‘I see. Now you remember the night Miss Marvell died?’

  ‘I don’t remember nothing. I don’t see nothing.’

  ‘Where did you go when you finished work that night?’

  ‘I go sleep.’

  The lie was not necessarily ill-intentioned. It was a matter of instinctively taking cover.

  ‘At once? When you finished work?’

  ‘I sleep.’

  ‘Abdul too?’

  ‘He sleep. He sleep more than me.’

  ‘You didn’t go out in a car?’

  ‘What you talking about? What car you mean?’

  ‘With Dave Paton and his friend? To a dance at Netterly?’

  Ali’s recovery was magnificent.

  ‘Why not I go to a dance? Work all finished.’

  ‘No reason at all. I just asked.’

  ‘Certainly I go to a dance. Abdul too. I like dancing. I dance very good.’

  ‘When did it finish?’

  ‘I don’t know. My watch broken.’

  ‘Did you leave with Abdul?’

  Ali had become cautious.

  ‘Leave where?’

  ‘The dance.’

  ‘Yes. With Abdul.’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘There was no car,’ said Ali, playing for time.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we started walking home. We were walking all night. It was bloody damn cold.’

  ‘What time did you get back?’

  ‘In time for work.’

  ‘It took you a long time. Netterly’s only four miles away.’

  ‘We lose our way. We are in the dark. No light. No people. In the country, in the night. We walk and walk. Abdul say one way, I say another way. We bloody damn walked all night till we found the way home.’

  It could be true, Carolus reflected. He gave Ali a pound note and dismissed him. For the first time he locked his bedroom door that night.

  Ten

  It appeared that the solicitor who had drawn Imogen’s will was expected back from a continental holiday and the incongruous people who had been about her at her death had decided to remain at the Fleur-de-Lys until they had learned the contents of that important document.

  Carolus had observed them at meals and thought what a very odd trio they made, Dudley Smithers as unruffled as before, Miss Trudge weepy and vague, and Grace Marvell severely matter-of-fact and curt with both of them.

  Meanwhile he wanted an interview, which he foresaw as difficult, with the assistant chef, Tom Bridger. This jolly charact
er, all smiles and good nature to outward appearance, certainly had information which would clear at least a bit of the problem but it would be very difficult to make him part with it. On the whole he believed that a mixture of menace and bluff, with a certain amount of bonhomie, the technique so often used with success by the police, might be most effective.

  He arranged the mise en scène with some care, borrowing Rolland’s office for the purpose and sending for Bridger at ten o’clock in the morning as though he had some super-policial authority. He invited him to sit down, offered him a cigarette, met his good-humoured smile with a stiff one of his own, then opened broadside.

  ‘You know some offices with a flat above them on the first and second floors of Gaitskell Mansions, Attlee Avenue, Bayswater,’ Carolus stated rather than enquired.

  He watched Bridger’s face and saw the smile disappear as though it had been switched off at the main. But Bridger remained silent.

  ‘The offices are in the name of Montreith,’ added Carolus, as though to assist Bridger’s memory.

  Still an uncomfortable, not to say tense, silence.

  ‘Why, I wonder, did you try to make it appear that Dave Paton was the local representative by sending him out to speak to the man who had complained of food poisoning. You told Paton he was a restaurant proprietor. Remember?’

  Still no verbal reaction but Bridger was not a good actor.

  ‘It would have been far wiser to try to implicate Ali who had known the so-called Rivers as Maxie at a night club called the VIP. That might have worked.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Bridger at last.

  ‘Then there was your interesting conversation with this same man, who calls himself Mandeville. You must remember that. In the Spinning Wheel Cafe. You went there by appointment.’

  ‘I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,’ repeated Bridger.

  ‘No? Then I’ll tell you. I’m talking about murder. Extortion, violence, blackmail as well, but more particularly murder, in which you are involved. Enough altogether to send you down for thirty years. What about a drink?’

  Bridger nodded.

  ‘It’s best to come to the point, I always think,’ said Carolus when he had ordered by telephone two large whiskies. ‘We can waste so much time going round it.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Bridger.

  ‘Just a very inquisitive individual who is not very impressed with a firm trying to work the American protection racket in England. The island’s too small and the penalties too great. Tell me, Bridger, did you get into this of your own accord or are you a victim too?’

  ‘I don’t know what…’

  ‘Now don’t say that again because it simply isn’t true. You know exactly what I’m talking about. What you didn’t know until now is that you’re for it. In a big way. The train robber sentences will be nothing to what your crowd’s going to get.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’

  ‘No? Up to you, of course. You’ve told me all I really want to know.’

  ‘I haven’t said a word!’ For the first time Bridger showed real and immediate alarm. A nebulous thirty years’ sentence was nothing, it seemed, to the dangers of having spoken.

  ‘You’ll have to convince your friends of that. They will wonder, inevitably, how I know all I do—about you and about them.’

  Bridger looked up with relief when Abdul brought the drinks Carolus had ordered and swallowed his greedily.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re between the devil and the deep blue sea. But the devil can’t win this time and the deep blue sea is wide and full of possibilities for the future. The future may be remote in your case, but there is a future.’

  Suddenly Bridger looked at Carolus keenly and said, ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Carolus. ‘If you mean to keep you out of this thing, not for a moment. When I’ve got all my facts straight I’m going to make a report. I happen to dislike blackmail almost as much as murder. You can only trust me not to let your friends know where I got the information you’re about to give me. On that you can have my word.’

  ‘What information?’ asked Bridger desperately.

  ‘Bits and pieces here and there. To fill in the gaps.’

  ‘I don’t know much.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you do. Not enough to get you off if you give Queen’s Evidence. But enough to save your life, probably. That wouldn’t be worth much if your friends thought you had been chatting me up, would it?’

  The question was rhetorical. Bridger knew that it did not need an answer.

  ‘I’m afraid this is your only chance to decide. Things like this can’t be left in the air. You can talk to me now. I shan’t be available again. The mills will start grinding after this.’

  ‘If I tell you what you want to know, will you do what you can for me when…’

  ‘When the whole thing blows up? I make no promise at all. It depends on how much you are involved. There has been at least one murder here.’

  ‘I haven’t had a penny out of it.’

  ‘You will, Bridger. You will. Unless things develop more quickly than I imagine.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘First of all, how you got into this.’

  Bridger swallowed.

  ‘I was minding my own business. Doing my job. Then all of a sudden I got a phone call. About three weeks ago. Someone asked me if I’d be free to take over the kitchens of a new restaurant being opened. I was to be chef at nearly twice what I’m earning now. The man telephoning me said I was to meet him at the Red Horse at Netterly on my evening off. So I went and found it was Rivers and Razor Gray.’

  Carolus nodded. This was the sort of thing he expected.

  ‘Nothing more was said about the restaurant,’ went on Bridger. ‘They asked me if I would join in a little joke they were playing on Rolland.’

  ‘A joke?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what they said. When Imogen Marvell came down on her annual visit. All I had to do was put a few drops of something in her food. Fish, it worked best with. It was just a simple emetic, they said.’

  ‘What were they to pay you for that?’

  ‘A hundred nicker.’

  ‘Rather an expensive joke.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘But you agreed?’

  ‘Not straight away. They said let’s go to another pub. Rivers was laughing. It seemed all right and I got in the car. Before I knew where I was we were going into those Gaitskell Mansions you mentioned. I noticed the name but I didn’t know till you told me where they were.’

  Once started Bridger seemed glad to get the story off his chest.

  ‘There seemed to be a lot of them there. Ugly-looking crowd. They introduced me to one man sitting at a desk. I suppose he was the boss.’

  ‘Montreith?’

  ‘That’s what they called him.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Pale, pasty-looking. About forty-five. Cold, nasty eyes. Rivers was laughing. “He doesn’t know whether he wants to join in our little joke,” he said. Montreith didn’t laugh. He just looked at me and said, “Show him our friend in the next room.” They did. There was a fellow lying on the floor stripped off. He’d had the worst beating-up I’ve ever seen. Eyes closed right up. He was holding his stomach and groaning but only half-conscious, I thought. Terrible sight.’

  ‘So you agreed?’

  ‘What else could I do? But I tell you what I did when I got back here. I tried a couple of drops of the stuff on myself. I wasn’t going to poison anyone right out. All it did was to make me sick as a dog.’

  ‘Have another drink?’ suggested Carolus.

  With the first faint smile he had given since Carolus had begun questioning, Bridger said he thought he would.

  ‘I soon realised what they were after. Protection money from Rolland. Rivers told me in the end when he’d made sure I was with them. They work it on big restaurants an
d clubs and places. Several of them go and raise hell one way or another if they’re not paid off. But with famous restaurants they work this food poisoning lark. At least they’re prepared to. Most of them pay up.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Rivers told me.’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘Yes. He mentioned the Old Cygnet Inn.’

  ‘Good gracious.’

  The Old Cygnet attempted to emulate the Cheddar Cheese, or Simpson’s, or Scott’s, serving very English food mostly to American visitors to London.

  ‘And the Tourterelle.’

  ‘They’re certainly enterprising. You mean to say those pay?’

  ‘What else can they do? Montreith must be making enormous money. He’s clever. It’s wonderful cover, being a solicitor. All sorts going to his office. He’s known for arranging the defence of criminals. The thing’s on a big scale. Once I was in with them there was no getting out. I had to do what they said.’

  ‘What do you know about Mandeville?’

  ‘I should say he’s kept for the kind of job he did here. Probably he’s straight, on the outside. Got a correct address and that.’

  ‘Did you fix his food?’

  ‘No. There was no need. He did it himself.’

  ‘But Imogen Marvell?’

  ‘Yes. In the scampi.’

  ‘It was indirectly the cause of her death.’

  ‘I wasn’t to know that. I gave her an emetic, that’s all.’

  ‘And you’ve been told to do nothing more?’

  ‘Not yet, but I shall be, for certain. They’ll close this place if Rolland doesn’t pay. Then they’ll get me a job somewhere else. There’s no getting away.’

  ‘Unless they’re broken.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do it. It’s a powerful organisation.’

  ‘I think something can be managed,’ said Carolus quietly. ‘But there are one or two more questions I should like to ask you.’

  ‘Well. I’ve gone so far. You may as well know the lot,’ said Bridger, a suggestion of his customary good humour returning.

  ‘For instance, about those premises in Gaitskell Mansions. Could they have been a normal solicitor’s offices?’

  ‘Not when I saw them late at night. Not with that crowd standing about. But in the daytime I suppose they could.’

  ‘And the other room you went into?’

  ‘It’s a funny thing but as I remember it there was no window. Of course I was chiefly noticing the poor chap on the floor. But that’s the impression I got.’