Homicide House

by Zenith Brown

  “No. And it was fixed in neatly behind the bricks to seal him in. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d not stood here with old Pegott while he laid the brick so he didn’t have a look behind.”

  “I expect if he had done, he’d have joined Winship, and she’d have finished the brick work herself.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Inspector Carson bent down and picked up a dried black flake of the old canvas. “Too bad about this—if it was worth £10,000. The heat from the flue in winter and the damp in summer were too much for it, I expect.” He let the fragment fall to the floor. “Well, I hope old Pulham’s looking down on us. He’d like this.”

  Bull crossed over to Number 4. Miss Caroline Winship’s room was closed, the door locked. Hope could live there again. It lived already in the sitting room of the flat where Mrs. Winship and Sidney Copeland were, and where Mary Winship waited for Dan McGrath.

  He stopped last in Miss Myrtle Grimstead’s office.

  “I’m certainly glad I went upstairs, Inspector,” Miss Grimstead was saying briskly. “I never believed Mrs. Winship was quite so seedy as she looked.”

  It was the most flagrant knowledge after the event, but what of that, Bull thought.

  “And I shouldn’t have gone up, Inspector, and insisted on ringing Mr. Copeland, as I did when I saw how very seedy she really was then, if I’d not heard scratching and hammering. I never suspected it was that Dalrymple-Hughes putting bolts on my newly decorated woodwork. I never would have thought Caroline Winship was not ringing the doctor on purpose. I thought she was too unstrung at her sister’s distress. And I didn’t find out what the noise I’d heard was, until I looked about again that night. I’m afraid I gave Mary and Mr. McGrath quite a turn, but I found out what had made the noise.”

  Miss Grimstead was managerially efficient and crisp about the whole thing.

  “I shall report it to the Estate Managers,” she said. “I think the Winships should be held responsible for the damage done. And I shall also request them for permission to require Mr. Pinkerton to find other lodgings. He’s a great trial to me, Inspector Bull. Besides a loss of revenue. Do you realize he’s inveigled them into permitting Mr. McGrath to live here without charge as long as he’s in London ? And with Mary all crocked up, heaven knows how long that will be. A week? Two weeks? Who can tell? When I inquired of Mr. Copeland after lunch, he as much as told me it was none of my business.”

  Inspector Bull, a patient and also a kindly man, chewed at the end of his tawny mustache.

  “Well, Miss Grimstead,” he said placidly, moving toward the door. “If it hadn’t been for Mr. Pinkerton, there might have been more trouble.”

  He smiled faintly, inwardly, and shook his head a little, thinking about it, and recalling that it was Pinkerton’s remembering Miss Caroline Winship had called him “Mr. Pilkington” that had tilted the whole puzzle into place in his mind. It was Pilkington Crescent where Pegott’s father the stonemason had lived.

  “We should give him full marks for that.”

  Miss Grimstead raised her brows briefly.

  “And another thing,” Bull said. “I shouldn’t give him away, and I’m telling you this in confidence, ma’am. But I shouldn’t try to put him out of this house, if I were you. He owns it. He’s the Pinkerton of Pinkerton Estates Ltd.”

  He opened the door. “Good day, ma’am,” he said mildly. “I expect you’ll not have any more trouble now for a bit. I hope not. Good-bye.”

  It was not often that Miss Grimstead was at a complete loss. She stared speechless, now, at the door that had closed behind the large cinnamon-brown figure of the inspector from New Scotland Yard. Miss Grimstead had been standing behind her desk. She now said “My God!” and sank down into her chair, still staring at the door. Suddenly she raised her hand and put it over her mouth.

  “Pinkerton,” she whispered. “Pinkerton of Pinkerton Estates Ltd.” Rich. A bachelor. Not a bachelor, a widower. Widowers were simpler than bachelors. Every woman knew that.

  With an unsteady hand Miss Grimstead reached down, unlocked and pulled open her lowest desk drawer. She took out the bottle of her restorative, a trifle of gin kept medicinally for emergencies—though never yet for one like this—poured a couple of inches into the glass she also kept there, and swallowed it no heel taps. She replaced the bottle and glass, closed the drawer and locked it again. After a few moments of meditation she reached out and pressed the bell for Sarah the maid.

  When the girl came, Miss Grimstead was herself again, brisk and managerial and efficient, with two bright roses blooming in her cheeks—brighter than usual, actually, as Miss Grimstead customarily took a little water with her restorative.

  “Sarah,” she said. “We’re going to move dear Mr. Pinkerton into Mr. Dalrymple-Hughes’s flat. I think he’ll be more comfy there.”

  It was her former favorite’s flat. Off with the old, on with the new, Miss Grimstead thought to herself a little groggily. “And Sarah, don’t forget to put a hot water bottle in his bed at night, dear. Gentlemen like to be warm and cozy. And clean towels twice a week, Sarah. I’ll speak to the new valet. We mustn’t keep Mr. Pinkerton waiting for his breakfast. And the lamb’s kidney we saved for Colonel Mayhew—I’m sure Mr. Pinkerton would enjoy that, grilled on a nice piece of hot toast.”

  Sarah backed out of the door, “Cor! Dear Mr. Pinkerton. Ain’t ’e goin’ to be surprised.” She set out on an open run to the kitchen to tell the staff.

  Miss Grimstead, after further meditation, broke a hard and fast rule: she took a second drop of restorative. She then took the bill she had already started to make out for Mr. McGrath in the box room. She picked up her pen and dipped it in the pot of red ink on the desk in front of her. There was a small item of five pounds surcharge and service fees over and above the basic charge. She crossed it out. Then she thought again, crumpled the paper in her hand and dropped it in the trash basket.

  “And isn’t Mr. McGrath going to be surprised!” she thought. “He thinks Mr. Pinkerton is pathetic.”

  What was it Mr. McGrath had said to her about Mr. Pinkerton ? She tried to remember.

  “He’s one sweet little guy,” he had said.

  “Well!” said Miss Grimstead. She sat smiling to herself. It was axiomatic, in any bright lexicon, that no lonely widower could successfully resist the blandishments of good food in his stomach and a hot water bottle in his bed. To say nothing of charm. Miss Grimstead pulled the silken thread, sweet with honey, from her mind’s alert cocoon. A spider might have hers elsewhere, but one could hardly speak so of the manageress of Number 4 Godolphin Square. Miss Grimstead started deftly weaving her happy web.

  Mr. Evan Pinkerton sat breathless and enchanted beside Daniel McGrath at the cinema in the Edgware Road, enthralled by Hollywood and love among the Americans.