“I ... I don’t understand,” she said finally.
Not that Sir Harry was in the least put off by that.
“Don’t you bother your head about the details,” he said. “Just leave all that to me.”
He was cutting himself another cigar as he was speaking. One of his big ones this time. He had a large cabinet, practically a chest-of-drawers, just beside him. And the cigar was certainly one of the very largest that Marcia had ever seen. As she looked, she realized that, in the sheer art of living, all the other men she had ever known were no better than amateurs. Whereas Sir Harry was a professional. From those beautiful, skin-tight shoes of his, right up to the neatly-cut white wings of hair on either side of the bald part, he exuded the authentic aura of well-preserved expensive maleness. Whatever it was that he wanted her to do, Marcia supposed that the sensible thing would be to do it.
“Of course, you’ll need some pocket-money,” he said suddenly. “No fun being without it. Better leave that side to me, too.”
“Thank you,” Marcia answered.
“And you’d better not go back there,” Sir Harry went on. “Only cause a scene. Just lie low for a bit. Till it all calms down.”
There was a pause.
“Till all what—?” Marcia began.
But Sir Harry was not listening. He had jumped up and gone over to pick up The Times. He went rapidly through the paper and then found what he wanted.
“That’s it,” he said. “Solves everything. Why not have a breakdown?”
The fears, the forebodings, began to return to Marcia’s mind. She allowed herself the nearest thing to a frown that would not cause permanent wrinkles on her forehead.
“A breakdown?” she asked.
Sir Harry gave a little laugh.
“Not a bad one,” he said. “You’ll get over it. An ocean cruise is what you want. Something to put you on your feet again. What about three weeks in Bermuda?”
Marcia was so much behind him by now that she did not even attempt to catch up.
“It ... sounds divine,” was all she said.
“O.K., then,” Sir Harry said. “That’s settled. I’ll send the tickets round to you. And the hotel. Fix you up in a good one. Everything paid for. And a bit over,” he added, with a wink. “Quite a nice little bit. More than you’re expecting.”
“Thank you,” Marcia said, dropping her eyes from his while she was speaking.
“In the meantime,” he went on, “just keep away from Bond Street. Don’t answer the phone. Be out if anyone calls. And return any presents. Make a clean break. And you won’t regret it.”
“Shan’t I?” Marcia asked helplessly.
She was confused. Really confused by now. But what a wonderful man. So rich in experience of the world. And in the other way, too. Really rich, rich. It had been like living in another world just being with him. So different from his son. She could see how silly it was ever to have imagined that she was in love with Mr. Rammell. It hadn’t been love at all. It had been pity. The pity of a truly loving woman who recognizes when a man is in need of someone. But nothing permanent could ever have been built on such a foundation. It was fatal. The kind of love that all too easily turns into contempt. With Sir Harry, on the other hand, it was sheer admiration that she felt. She admitted quite frankly that he was her superior. Would be ready to worship openly at his feet for ever ...
Sir Harry was already on the phone to Mrs. Rammell.
“Just as I told you,” he was saying. “That’s the end of that. Took it very well after I’d explained everything. Saw how hopeless it was. You can go on now just as though nothing’d happened. She’ll be out of the country before he knows about it. Just the way I wanted it. Purely private. No scandal. Nothing in the papers.”
Chapter Fourty-three
1
By five-thirty there was still no Mr. Bloot. No reply from Artillery Mansions. And no reply from Hetty’s little shop. That was what decided Mr. Privett to go round to Finsbury Park and find out for himself.
And it was Chick who opened the door to Mr. Privett when he got there. At least, half-opened, that is. He stood there, as no more than a thin strip of a man with his horseshoe braces showing, and peered suspiciously out into the narrow hallway.
“She’s not in,” he said.
But Mr. Privett had no intention of being simply brushed off like that.
“It’s not Hetty I want,” he said firmly. “It’s Gus.”
Chick kept his shoulder up against the door. Even closed it ever so slightly.
“Not in either,” he told him.
“Has ... has he been in?” Mr. Privett asked.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You ... you mean you haven’t seen him?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
Mr. Privett paused.
“Did he come back here last night?”
But Chick did not seem inclined to prolong the conversation.
“How should I know?” he replied. “I don’t live here, do I?”
It was this that made Mr. Privett put the direct question that he had been trying to avoid.
“Then what are you doing here now?” he asked.
“Comforting Hetty,” Chick told him.
And that was all. Before Mr. Privett could answer, he had shut the door in his face.
For a moment, Mr. Privett stood where he was. His hand went out towards the door. And then he checked himself. He had no wish to cause a scene. No more ringing. Or kicking at the panels of the door. Nothing like that. But he was already determined on his course of action. That was why he left so hurriedly. And, as soon as he reached the corner of Tregunter Road, he saw what he was looking for. A policeman. He went straight up to him, his voice trembling a little as he put his question.
“Could you tell me the way to the Police Station, please?” he asked. “I want to report a missing person.”
The policeman wasn’t exactly the one that Mr. Privett would have chosen if there had been time to look around properly. Too young. And inexperienced. He knew where the station was. But he was doubtful about the procedure for missing persons. Seemed to think that forty-eight hours had to elapse before the police would do anything. And, even after forty-eight hours, he did not seem to know exactly what.
But Mr. Privett was all ready to see to that. When they heard his story they’d do something all right. And then Chick would have to open the door.
It was the thought of what the police would find when Chick opened it, that terrified Mr. Privett. He had read of murders in Finsbury Park before. Mr. Bloot wasn’t by any means the fighting kind. Too much of a gentleman. Wouldn’t raise a hand to defend himself even if Hetty suddenly attacked him. And with Chick there, too! Mr. Privett knew that violence was in Chick’s line. Two against one, and Mr. Bloot wouldn’t even have stood a chance ...
That was why Mr. Privett was so surprised when he reached the station to see Hetty herself coming out. And she made no attempt to avoid him. Nor did she have the air of a woman who has just been grilled. Questioned. Put through it. On the contrary, she was open. Forthcoming. And defiant.
“Well,” she demanded, “what have you done with him?”
“I ... I came round ...” Mr. Privett began.
But Hetty was away again. Practically accusing him.
“If you think you can hide him from me, you’re wrong,” she said. “I’ll find him all right, don’t you worry. And he’s going to get a piece of my mind when I see him. Going off like that all because of nothing.”
“D’you call his budgies nothing?” Mr. Privett asked.
Immediately Hetty rounded on him again.
“So he told you, did he?” Hetty asked. “That means you have seen him.”
“Not since last night,” Mr. Privett told her.
“What time?”
“About half past ten. He said he was on his way round to you.”
“Oh, was he indeed?” Hetty replied. “That was nice of hi
m.” She paused for a moment, pondering on the significance of what she had just heard. And when she did speak it was obvious that the piece of information had deeply upset her.
“And next time you see him you can tell him to stay away, so far as I’m concerned,” she said. “Running round the corner to tell somebody I’d let his blasted budgies out. I might have known it’d be you.”
“He was very upset,” Mr. Privett told her.
But Hetty was not prepared to listen.
“He’ll be even more upset when he finds out what’s coming to him,” she went on. “Biggest mistake I ever made was marrying him. You can tell him that, too. He’s just a big lazy sponger, that’s all he is. I can get on better without him.”
“Then why did you come round to the police station, if you don’t want to find him?” Mr. Privett asked.
“Because I want to put myself in the right,” she answered. “If he’s lost his memory or something, that’s his affair. He’d better find it again. I don’t want my name in the papers just because of him.”
Mr. Privett took a deep breath. Then he braced himself and faced up to her.
“I think you’re being very cruel,” he said. “For all you know, he ... he might be dead.”
“Well, he can’t be dead enough to suit me,” Hetty replied. “You can tell him that, too, when you see him. And with my compliments.”
It struck Mr. Privett after he had left her that he had never met any other woman whom he hated so much. It wasn’t that she was bad looking. Just not his type. Too full. Too big-boned. But he was ready to concede that she was handsome. And even in her present distress she had not let herself go. She was wearing her big fur wrap. And a new hat that Mr. Privett hadn’t seen before. No, it was nothing to do with appearances. It was what she had said about Mr. Bloot. Even if she hadn’t killed him yet, he certainly wouldn’t put it past her now. She was a hard and horrifying human being ...
Or just common, as Mrs. Privett contended.
“How he could ever have thought of marrying her, I don’t know,” she said when Mr. Privett described the conversation. “I knew the first time I met her. Saw it at a glance. Common as dirt, that’s what she is. He must have been out of his senses. Good riddance, I say.”
“If he’s still alive,” Mr. Privett reminded her.
But Mrs. Privett was not inclined towards the gloomy view.
“Can you imagine Gus—?” she began, and then stopped herself. It wasn’t so much that she was callous about it herself. Nothing like that. But she did know Mr. Bloot pretty well. Had shouldered his troubles before this. And she had never known him to be exactly the impetuous kind.
But what had really stopped her was the time. That little jaunt to Finsbury Park had made Mr. Privett more than an hour late already. And, if they were planning to eat anything at all that evening, they might as well have it now before it was completely ruined.
The suspense, the awful feeling of not knowing what had happened, was too much for Mr. Privett. He refused to go to bed. Said that he would rather sit up all night just in case Mr. Bloot turned up suddenly and needed him. Then, Mrs. Privett pointed out that they’d heard him at the front door every other time he’d come, hadn’t they? And Mr. Privett went reluctantly upstairs. But not to sleep. He lay first on his back with his hands folded under his head. Then he tried his right side. Then his left. Next he sat up, pulling all the bedclothes off Mrs. Privett. Then he tried lying on his back again. And finally he went downstairs to make himself some tea. That really woke him up. It was nearly three in the morning before he finally dozed off. And then only to dream of stabbings and suicide, bodies flung into wayside ditches or dropped overboard and left drifting pathetically out to sea ...
He was in poor shape next morning. And the ride by Underground was poignant in the extreme. Everything all round him seemed so heartlessly normal. He didn’t know what he had expected. But not this. He felt somehow that because of Mr. Bloot’s disappearance the whole of London Transport should have been sombre and subdued. Either that, or talking of nothing else.
It was not, indeed, until he had actually reached Rammell’s that there was any sign of awareness of what had happened. Then it all came on him in a rush. The doorkeeper was on the look out when he got there. Actually standing at the foot of the stairs waiting.
“Mr. Preece has been asking for you,” he said. “Straight away.”
Mr. Privett’s heart gave a bump. This was it. They’d found the corpse. Either that, or Rammell’s wanted him to take over the main foyer again.
And when he reached Mr. Preece’s room he could tell that it was more than the front hall that was bothering him. Mr. Preece looked so pale and bloodless. And anxious. He was sitting there, tight-lipped, with his hands clasped on the blotter in front of him. In the easy-chairs on the other side of the desk two large, calm men were sitting.
Mr. Privett knew them at once for police officers. He had never seen police officers before, when not in uniform. At least, not to recognize them. But he supposed that it was uniform of a kind that they were wearing. The senior one, who had iron-grey hair cut rather short and parted low at the side, was wearing a blue suit and a blue overcoat. And the younger one, whose hair was inclined to be wavy, had on a sports coat and flannels and a grey, belted raincoat with one of those extra storm flaps to it. Mr. Privett felt his sick feeling come over him again. It was because the thought suddenly came to him that all over London there were other men, in pairs—one in blue cheviot, the other in grey gaberdine—out hunting Gus down at this very moment.
Mr. Preece got up as he entered.
“Ah, Mr. Privett,” he said thankfully. “So you’ve got here. You know about Mr. Bloot, of course. Being missing, I mean.”
“Oh, yes, sir. I know about that. I wondered if you’d heard anything.”
He paused, aware that two other lots of eyes were looking at him.
Mr. Preece squeezed the fingers of his two hands more closely together.
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “But these two gentlemen are here to help us find him. They’re police officers.”
Mr. Privett turned and faced them.
“Good morning,” he said politely.
The grey-haired one leant forward.
“Good morning, Mr. Privett,” he began, and stopped again almost immediately. “It is Mr. Privett, isn’t it?”
Mr. Privett swallowed hard for a moment.
“That’s right,” he said. “Alfred Privett, 26 Fewkes Road, North-West ...”
But the policeman didn’t seem interested in all that. At least not for the moment.
“Do sit down, won’t you?” he asked. “I only want to ask a few questions to see if you can be of any help to us.”
“Be of assistance you mean?” Mr. Privett repeated dully.
The awful fear suddenly crossed his mind that perhaps they suspected him. Indeed, now that he had thought of it he didn’t see how they could avoid it. They were bound to suspect everyone who had ever known poor Mr. Bloot. He could tell that they were sizing him up as he stood there. Seeing if he were the kind of man who would know about disposing of bodies and that kind of thing.
The inspector pushed a chair forward.
“When did you last see Mr. Bloot?” he asked.
Mr. Privett hesitated. He realized the dangers of giving false information. But he realized also how it might appear if he were the last person to have seen Mr. Bloot alive. He could practically feel the chill of the handcuffs closing round his wrists.
“The night before last,” he replied without looking up.
“And where would that be?” the inspector continued.
He had a quiet, naturally friendly-sounding voice. It was ideal for prompting.
“At home,” Mr. Privett told him.
“At Artillery Mansions, you mean?”
“No, sir. At my home. Number 26. Mrs. Privett’ll remember. She heard him.”
The inspector held out a large silver case with an i
nscription of some kind inside the lid.
“Cigarette?” he asked.
Mr. Privett shook his head.
“I don’t smoke, thank you, sir.”
The inspector snapped his case shut again. He realized that he would have to reassure this nervous little man in some other way.
“Don’t you worry about what other people heard,” he said. “We can do all the checking up afterwards. Just you take things easy and tell us everything you can remember. What time was it?”
“About ... about ten-thirty.”
“What did he come round for?”
“Just for a cup of tea. Same as usual.”
“And did you give him one?”
Mr. Privett shook his head. This was where it was beginning to get difficult. He had already lied to Mrs. Privett, and now he had to make sure that it was the same lie that he was telling to the inspector.
“No, sir. He’d just had one.”
“So he just dropped in to say good night?”
“Yes, sir. That’s all it was.”
“And how did he seem?”
“He was all right.”
“Not upset about anything?”
Mr. Privett was finding it physically difficult to speak.
“Yes, he was,” he said at last. “Very. It was on account of his budgies. You see, she’d let ’em out. That is, Mrs. Bloot had. On purpose. He told me.”
“Was that all?”
“Well, it was enough, wasn’t it? He was very much attached to those budgies. They were like ... like children to him.”
“And she let them fly away? It was deliberate, you say?”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Now why would she do a thing like that?”
“I just can’t imagine,” Mr. Privett replied. “Really I can’t. Not unless she wanted to hurt him.”
“Why would she want to do that?”
Mr. Privett shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not married to her,” he said.
“You and Mr. Bloot are old friends, aren’t you?” the inspector went on.
“He’s my oldest friend,” Mr. Privett said proudly.
“And would you call his second marriage a happy one?”
Bond Street Story Page 42