At eleven-thirty a friend of Sarah’s named Joyce Lane came round. Joyce lived farther down the mews. She was an actress of sorts, but not a very successful one, and for the last couple of years she had been living with an East End pop singer named James James, who enjoyed knocking her about when he was drunk. This morning she was sporting a black eye.
Sarah gave her coffee, and they talked about the affair in Hyde Park. Sarah said she didn’t care whether or not it was bad for her image. Then they moved on to Joyce’s problems. She got no sympathy from Sarah who said, as she had often said before, that Joyce must like being knocked about as much as James James liked hitting her. If she didn’t like it, what stopped her from leaving?
‘But, darling, why should I leave? It’s my flat. And if I turned him out, God knows what he’d do to me.’
‘You need someone to look after you.’
‘What do you think I am, a tart trying to find a ponce?’
‘Nothing to do with being a tart. Suppose I asked Harry Claber to have a word with your East Ender, you’d have no trouble afterwards.’
‘But James might get hurt.’
‘Not if he behaved himself. If he didn’t, Harry would have him roughed up a little.’
‘James would never stand for it. He’d leave me.’
‘I thought that was what you wanted. You just said you didn’t dare to turn him out. All right, I’m saying I can get it done for you if you really want it.’ Joyce looked at her in a woebegone manner. Her black eye made her look ridiculous. Sarah went on triumphantly. ‘But you see you don’t. Just as I said, you like it. Okay, but don’t complain.’
‘I didn’t know you were so close to Claber. I mean, to ask him to do something like that.’
‘No problem. Harry says do it, and it’s done.’
‘I’d be frightened.’
Sarah stretched her long body, and curled her legs beneath her. Even in this position the effect she produced was that of hardness and hostility, as though she was a beautiful coiled spring. ‘It’s a change. I get bored with acting.’
‘Nothing frightens you,’ Joyce said worshipfully.
‘Harry’s been asking me to live with him.’
‘Are you going to?’
‘I might try it. He’d want me to stop acting, but I don’t know that I’d mind. Actors are all queers and nuts. You should have seen Sher’s face last night. I almost felt sorry for him.’ She showed her fine teeth in a smile.
‘Of course I can do it.’
‘I don’t know what makes me think so.’ Harry bent over the table, head low over cue. He cut a red in, brought his ball round the table for position on the blue. They were in the Youth Club.
‘Lovely shot,’ Shorty was marking. He was also eating potato crisps. A fragment sprayed out as he spoke.
‘Keep your food to yourself.’ Harry took the blue, then yellow, green, brown. ‘You want three snookers. You’ll have Shorty with you. Think the two of you can deal with him?’
‘I said yes.’ Hugh Drummond knew that he was a better player than Harry, so why did he always lose? He played a delicate shot on the blue, leaving it on the edge of a pocket, and putting his white ball behind the black, a perfect snooker.
‘Lovely shot,’ Shorty said again.
‘That picture’s gone back. You made me look a right fool.’
‘You said you didn’t lose any money.’ Drummond made one of his indecisive gestures and said, as though it were something original, ‘It’s money makes the wheels go round.’
‘I don’t like it when I’m made to look a fool. That Devenish, he’s–’ He gave up trying to say what Devenish was, and went on. ‘In the next couple of days. Any time, any place. Shouldn’t be no trouble. If you have trouble, you take what’s coming to you.’ He sighted down his cue, played away from the black off two cushions, hit the blue and knocked it into the pocket.
Drummond racked his cue. ‘Better to be lucky than clever, they say.’
‘That wasn’t luck,’ Claber said coldly. He put away his own cue carefully in its case. ‘I want him cut.’
Shorty said, ‘He’s an actor.’
‘Right. The next part he plays, he can be the monster.’
Two-thirty in the afternoon. Down in the street it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you. It was extremely cold, and the cold made the fog appear to freeze in the air, so that you felt it might be touched by putting out a hand. It made the eyes smart a little, and dirtied the nostrils. Yet Sher, as he walked the half-mile to the Athletic Club, found pleasure in it. From a few yards’ distance people appeared so much softened in outline that it was possible to believe they were figures from the past. When they came close their footsteps sounded more tentative than usual, and even their appearances seemed to have changed. The cars and buses purred rather than roared through the streets. Many were using dipped headlights, and the fog made these headlights look like orange or yellow flowers.
In the club he tapped away at the punching bag, did some work on the parallel bars and a little skipping, chatted to Riverboat. A feeling of frustration oppressed him, almost a physical ache, and it was not dispelled by the athletic activity. Returning to Baker Street and looking round the rooms, he was depressed to see the unmade bed and the unwashed dishes. Val had always refused any help, saying that she could perfectly well manage on her own. He tidied up ineffectually, and thought that he must put up a notice on a newsagent’s board for a woman to come in and clean, something that seemed to him humiliating. It occurred to him that he was missing Val. Was he also jealous, upset by her affair with Willie? If so, the feeling was unconscious. His chief reaction was a reluctance to speak to Willie, or even to think about him. He was not aware of jealousy. He considered the idea of telephoning Val at Greenwich, but decided against it. What would he have to say?
There was another reason for the ache. In a situation like this, where a case had come to a full stop, Sherlock Holmes often responded by initiating action which brought the criminal out into the open, but how could that be done here? If an advertisement were put into what used to be called the agony column of the papers, how could one be sure that it would be read by the right person, as it invariably was in Holmes’ time? He spoke to the telephone supervisor and lifted his ban on calls, but the machine stayed silent. Then he wandered round the rooms, picking up bits of the Holmesian past that seemed to mock his own ineffectiveness. And always in the pit of his stomach there remained that ache which said that he was in possession of some information that would be helpful if he made a proper mental connection. Was it linked with what Devenish had told him about the Poles’ mysterious accident? What kind of accident was it in which nobody was reported hurt? He considered this question, without result.
When the telephone rang he snatched at it, hoping for a possible answer. The call was from the features editor of the Enquirer, who invited him to make his own comments on the Karate Killings, saying that they were anxious that he should put his side of the case. The journalist’s voice, dripping with syrup, angered him, and he broke in on it.
‘Two actors, people who are supposed to be my colleagues, set a deliberate trap to make me look foolish, and you have made yourselves part of it. Such behaviour is typical of the gutter press in any time, the yellow press as we used to call it. I never replied to the yellow press, and I shall not write in it now.’
The syrup drained away from the voice at the other end. ‘The yellow press? Do you mean you were around and refusing to write for it back in the nineties? Do you mean you’re Sherlock Holmes?’
He put down the receiver without answering. Why had he mentioned the ‘yellow press’, what had made him use that ancient phrase? When the telephone rang again he picked it up, expecting it to be the Enquirer.
A voice as dry as cardboard said, ‘Sheridan Haynes? J O Dryne here.’
He had been told about Dryne by O’Malley and by Willie. Perhaps this was a chance to talk about the series? He began to do so, bu
t was cut short.
‘I had already told Lowinsky that this would be the final series, but that we would complete the last two episodes in spite of the viewing figures. Did he pass on that information?’
‘No, but I’d like the chance of talking to you about this personally.’
‘There would be no point I rang to say that in view of your behaviour in continuing with what you call your investigation against the company’s wishes, and especially after what happened last night, the final episodes will not be made.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Oh yes, we can, Mr Haynes. You will find a clause in your contract which operates if your activities are of such a character as to affect unfavourably any programme in which you may have been contracted to appear. We shall be invoking that clause.’
‘I shall fight it. I shall talk to my agent. To my lawyer.’
‘Do so by all means,’ the voice said, dryly triumphant. ‘You would have been well advised to talk to them before.’
When he put down the telephone he felt dizzy, as though he were about to faint. Willie had tried to prepare him for this being the last series, and so had Val, but he had refused to accept the words he heard. Now he felt as if his life was over. He had thought a few minutes ago that the Sherlockian relics mocked him, but still they had retained their meaning and value as part of a shadow play which he brought to life every week on the TV screen. They had been reality for him, rather than studio properties. Now they might as well be thrown away.
At just about this time Devenish was reading about Sher in the Banner’s morgue. The New Scotland Yard check had drawn blank. He had never been in trouble with the police, and his prints were not on file. The material in the morgue was another matter. The morgue is the department where files are kept for everybody who might conceivably be worth an obituary. The Banner morgue was unusually comprehensive, and it contained some interesting material about Haynes.
Most of it related to the years since he had become famous as Sherlock Holmes. Devenish skimmed quickly over the stuff about his likeness to Holmes, his ideas about Conan Doyle’s character, his opinions on acting. He read with more care the dislike Haynes had often expressed for the car as a symbol of the rush and stress of modern life. Then he came to an account of Haynes’ activities in the case of Lisa Hayward.
Lisa Hayward had been six years old, the daughter of one of the Haynes’ neighbours in Weybridge. She had been knocked down one day by a van driven by a local butcher named Pygge, and had died of her injuries. The evidence at the inquest showed that the little girl had run out into the road, and that Pygge had not been able to avoid her, but there was a conflict of opinion about the speed at which he had been driving. He estimated it himself at fifteen miles an hour. Haynes and another witness, who had been in the road but a little way from the accident, thought it was over forty, but a third witness gave evidence that Pygge could not possibly have avoided the little girl. The verdict was misadventure, and the coroner stressed that parents should impress on small children the need for care in crossing the road.
That was the end of the case, but it was the beginning of Haynes’ activities. He said that the verdict was a scandal, and organised a protest against it, combined with a move to ostracise Pygge. The protest fizzled out, but the ostracism proved very effective. The fact that a butcher, and a butcher named Pygge, had killed a child even though accidentally, left a feeling in many minds that he was somehow dealing in human flesh. This was encouraged by placards with slogans like ‘Don’t Buy Offal From Pygge’ and ‘Pygge Is a Butcher’, carried by Haynes and other local residents as they walked past his shop. Pygge threatened legal action, but instead sold his shop and left the district.
All this had happened ten years earlier, long before Sheridan Haynes began to play Sherlock. It was interesting, although you couldn’t say more than that. The file was in reverse chronological order, and Devenish skipped quickly through the snippets about plays in which Haynes had appeared during his early career. Then, right at the end of the file, he found something which surprised him.
It was an account of the court martial of Sergeant Instructor S Haynes, of the 8th Blankshires. The accounts were of wartime brevity, but the case had received some attention because of its unusual nature. Haynes had been an instructor in physical training, which included unarmed combat. He took several groups for this, and in one of them, a draft almost ready for overseas, was a man named Macrae. During an unarmed combat session Haynes had thrown Macrae heavily. Macrae fractured his skull in the fall, and died in hospital. Haynes was then charged with manslaughter.
At the court martial two men gave evidence that Haynes had it in for Macrae, and picked on him at every opportunity. On the other hand Macrae had a bad record, was known as a troublemaker, and had been heard saying to Haynes that a good kick in the balls followed by eye gouging would make your ordinary unarmed combat fighter look silly. Accounts of what had actually happened at the training session conflicted. It was said that Macrae had tried to carry out his precepts, going for the instructor’s eyes and bringing up his knee at the same time. Others had seen only that Haynes moved quickly behind Macrae, got an arm round his throat in a stranglehold, and then threw him very heavily. There was medical evidence to say that Macrae’s skull was unusually thin. Haynes had been acquitted.
Devenish left the Banner office in a thoughtful mood. Back at the Yard he told Brewster what he had found out. The sergeant didn’t think much of it. He still favoured Harry Claber, or somebody Claber had hired. Devenish agreed that it was all circumstantial, but thought that it would do no harm to put a man on to Haynes. It was what he’d suggested to Haynes himself only a day or two ago. DC Lovesey got the assignment.
A little earlier in the afternoon Harry Claber had been talking on the telephone to Sarah.
‘Hi there. You got any spare time tonight?’ She was not deceived by the tone. Harry was casual only when something was important to him. He went on. ‘Got Lord St Claremont coming to the Club. Going to buy a few chips, then I’m giving a little supper party afterwards. He’ll be there. Thought you’d like to come.’
Lord St Claremont was the oldest son of the Duke of Drongan (which people pronounced Drone). He was well known as a playboy and gambler, and his father was an important man in the Tory Party.
‘Flying high.’
‘Got one or two interesting people to meet him.’ He named them, a City financier, the editress of a women’s magazine, a couple of others. ‘Want to come? Get to the club around half ten, it’ll be in time. Thing is I can’t pick you up, got to go to a meeting of the South London Boys’ Clubs committee. They made me chairman, so I can’t duck out, and afterwards they expect me to give them a drink, push the boat out a bit.’
‘Important man.’
‘You like to take the piss out of me, don’t you? I like it too. You’ll come?’
‘I’ll come.’
His voice, always cheerful, became brighter yet. She recognised that brightness as a warning note of trouble. ‘Your friend’s been taking the piss too, or trying to. Know who I mean, Sherlock Holmes? He’s given me some trouble. I didn’t like that so much.’
‘Bad luck.’ Sarah never sympathised with anybody, not even herself. ‘Basil and I caused a bit of trouble for him last night.’
‘I seen it. Good for you, smart girl. But I’m going to do some thing about it, teach him a lesson.’ The threatening note in his voice was something she very much enjoyed. ‘See you half ten then, or round about. And I tell you something.’ She half-expected a declaration of love, but he said, ‘I got to have a hostess, know what I mean? All right?’
She said yes. Later she reflected that Harry’s crudity, which for her was his chief charm, would soon pall. She also, to her surprise, found herself thinking about the cat she had run over, hearing again the faint miaow, feeling the body stiffen in her hands. The image of a helpless thing destroyed stayed with her. But what else could she have done?
&
nbsp; At three o’clock the fog was thicker. Traffic slowed down further. Baker Street was a solid mass of cars right up to Portman Square. At the top of Portman Street there was hopeless confusion, as cars going along Oxford Street clashed with those trying to turn right from Portman Street. Johnson gave up booking cars at meters, and lent a hand to Betty Brade, who was trying to create some kind of orderly flow. Their service was not appreciated. It was difficult for cars to see the wardens, and Betty got into a prolonged altercation with one motorist who pulled up just a couple of yards in front of her. Cars behind the motorist hooted, heads were stuck out of windows. Johnson went over to make peace, but as soon as he left his traffic line the cars moved forward and created another jam. They were due off at half past three, but worked on until almost four o’clock, when two policemen on motor bikes turned up and took over. Johnson made his way to Marble Arch underground. In three quarters of an hour he would be home, and Emmy would have tea ready. After tea he would ring up Mr Haynes. Johnson never thought of Sher as anything but Mr Haynes.
‘My darling.’ Willie’s embrace was as warm as ever, she was enclosed in his atmosphere of masculinity and aftershave. ‘My darling, come in. Let me take your case. Did you have an in-credibly disgusting journey?’
‘Incredibly disgusting. It took me more than an hour from Greenwich. The fog’s getting thicker.’
‘Poor Val.’ She looked at him suspiciously. Willie was most sympathetic when he was preparing you for something unpleasant. This tenderness, as of a doctor being indulgent before breaking the news of a terminal illness, was ominous. She lighted a cigarette, and sat on the sofa where they had often made love. Willie perched himself on the arm of it and looked at her quizzically, indulgently, sorrowfully.
‘Well?’ Willie continued to look. ‘Here I am. It’s what you’ve always said you wanted, for us to live together.’
‘But of course. I remember that day in the garden at Weybridge, the first time you came here. Everything, I remember everything. This is what I have always wanted. It is as you say.’
A Three Pipe Problem Page 18