At five in the afternoon, I was the only male in the place, apart from one or two of the children. The waitresses moved about quickly, negotiating the swinging doors to the kitchen with ease, carrying trays with arrangements of cups and teapots and little plates, and dodging past each other with admirable footwork, especially considering the shoes they had to wear.
“I am so sorry I’m late,” said Sally, putting her bag down by the table. “There was such a scrum at the bus stop I had to let two buses go before I could get on.”
Sally was a very different woman to the thin, pale creature of a few months past. She had filled out a little, and her complexion was quite rosy. Her hair seemed different though I could not say how. She sat up straighter too, and looked around her with something like authority instead of timidity.
“Two teas and two fruit scones,” she told a passing waitress, who mouthed Yes, Miss without stopping. “And aren’t you the fine one—you look like a business tycoon.”
I was wearing my good suit for the occasion, the one handmade by my Chinese tailor, as I did not want to appear scruffy. Sally’s outfit was a plain brown dress but not unfashionable as far as I could tell.
“I must say,” I started out, “how very much I appreciate your helping me. It was a great deal to ask, and at such short notice—”
“Give over. It got me away from the nuns.”
Sally had been living at the Virgo Fidelis convent and doing menial work to pay for her keep, a position that had been secured for her by my mentor, Arthur Renville. Sally had suffered a nervous breakdown, which had necessitated the move. The reason for that breakdown was an encounter with what I can only call a grotesque undead being. That had been at the very start of the Roslyn D’Onston affair. I had interviewed her on the matter with Mr Yang, and she had provided some valuable clues that led to the resolution of the case.
I dropped by on a subsequent occasion to let her know the final outcome of that case. I had hoped that knowing it was over would ease her nightmares, and Sally had been fulsomely grateful to hear that the dead would henceforward stay dead. After that, she had recovered greatly and had reached the stage of looking for new employment and lodgings by the time I contacted her.
“I’ve got a job in the pickle factory,” she said. “So it all fits together nicely. All part of His plan, as the nuns would say.”
“You got a job just like that?” I asked, amazed. There were men at the gym who had been looking for work for months.
“There’s plenty of jobs going for women round here. They ain’t very well paid, though.”
“I’ll make sure you’re recompensed for the assistance you’re rendering us,” I said.
“Don’t you fret about that. You just put in a good word for me with Mr Renville. Once I’m back on my feet, I mean to get my little boy back—he’s with my sister and her husband.” She looked down at the table. “If Mr Renville can speak for me, it would make a world of difference with my brother-in-law.”
That was new information to me. All I had known about Sally was that she worked on the streets under the protection of a man called Collins, who’d since departed for parts unknown. I had no idea she had a child—and presumably a husband somewhere. I looked reflexively to see if she was wearing a ring, but of course she was not, and she smiled at my confusion.
“He fell in the canal, drunk. Drowned.”
“Who?”
“My husband. I’ve been a widow three years. It was always going to happen; he drank that much. And after that—but you don’t want to hear about my troubles. You want to know what’s going on in that rooming house.” She leaned closer. “And I’ve got it for you, all cut and dried. Seven women, and one murder suspect who stands out like a sore thumb.”
Sally had only been in the house for one day. I closed my gaping mouth just as the waitress arrived and efficiently delivered doilies, teapot, cups, saucers, cutlery, sugar, milk, two plates with scones, a butter dish, and a miniature porcelain jam pot before taking off again.
“That’s some fast work,” I said. “You must be Sherlock Holmes. But nobody mentioned murder.”
She brushed my assertion away with a gesture. “Mrs Berry, the landlady, is an old chatterbox. That woman would explode if she had to keep a secret for fifteen minutes.” Sally poured an experimental dribble of tea to check the colour then filled two cups and added milk. “The other girls in the place are one typist, two secretaries, one dressmaker’s assistant, and one American writer. Plus, Mrs Berry herself, and me working in the factory and smelling of pickles, for which I do apologise if it puts you off your tea.”
“An American writer?”
“A lady writer. Miss De Vere. The others had been there for years, but your Miss Brown had only been there three months, and this writer lady for two weeks. And guess who strikes up a friendship with Miss Brown the minute she comes through the door?”
“The American lady, De Vere?”
“She says she’s writing a book about modern life in England.” Sally raised her eyebrows. “That’s what she says. She goes around interviewing everyone. She even wanted to interview me, but I said no, thank you, I don’t want to be in any book.” Sally’s eyes narrowed. “She’s got money, that one. Silk stockings on Monday afternoon. And has a car to pick her up, if you please. And she’s always off to the West End to meet someone—commodores and company directors and people. She says.”
“She may be suspicious,” I said, pausing with cup halfway to my lips. “But not necessarily the only suspect.”
“The others are as plain as anything. All chitchat about Valentino and shingling and which boy will take them to the dance on Saturday. I know their sort.” She leaned forward again, elbows on the table. “Miss De Vere was the only one who ever talked to Mabel Brown. And she was the last one to see her the night before.”
“You didn’t ask her—”
“I’m not daft,” Sally said. “She doesn’t suspect me. If I was of a romantic turn—which I’m not—I’d say Miss De Vere was an international jewel thief. She has that air about her.”
“She sounds worth investigating.”
“Hmm. You be careful about investigating her. She’d have you for breakfast.”
I decided to ignore that slur. “Did you find anything out about Miss Brown?”
“I was just getting to that,” said Sally, putting her untouched scone on my plate. “Here, you have mine—you need feeding up. Mabel Brown is a woman of mystery, sort of. Very evasive about where she came from and what she did and everything. The one thing that Mrs Berry did know was that Mabel Brown worked at the museum. Mrs Berry insists on an employer’s reference before she lets a room out, you see. And when she disappeared, Mrs Berry checked with the museum, and they hadn’t seen her either.”
“The museum” could only mean the Horniman Museum. It commanded the borders of Dulwich like a medieval castle.
“Now, that is most interesting,” I said, spreading a thick layer of jam over a thick layer of butter.
“Isn’t it? Perhaps Mabel’s an international jewel thief too. If they have jewels at the museum.”
“What sort of reference does Miss De Vere have?”
“She wears furs and a diamond bracelet and an alligator-skin handbag,” said Sally, sniffing. “And she pays in advance. That’s her reference. As though money has anything to do with respectability. Quite the opposite, in my experience.”
“I think you should leave that house now. You’ve done an excellent job, and I don’t want you in any unnecessary danger.”
“It is murder—Mabel Brown’s dead, isn’t she?”
I spent longer chewing and swallowing than necessary. “I’m not free to comment on that. But hypothetically speaking, if something happened to her and if Miss De Vere had something to do with it and if Miss De Vere suspects that you have an interest in the case, then you might be in some danger. There’s no reason for you to go back there. We could send someone to collect your things.”
“Oh, and speaking of collecting things, that reminds me—they’ve already collected her things. Mabel Brown’s. A second-hand shop took them, including that Mrs Beeton book you were asking about. I didn’t have a chance to get to them.”
“That’s worth knowing,” I said. “There’s no reason for you to stay, then.”
“If I just leave without telling her, poor Mrs Berry will think there’s something wrong with her house. I’ll stay there a few more days until I can find an excuse, but I’ll leave off my investigations. I’ll let you know if Miss De Vere gets up to anything.”
“I don’t want you poking around or doing anything that might alert her.” I was thinking of the suitcase full of blackened bones.
“You may worry about me, but I worry about you, Harry Stubbs. You came through last time, but then, Mr Yang was with you, and he was a gentleman even if he was Chinese. Trustworthy. Your friend Skinner, I don’t call him reliable, especially not when it comes to women.” She stopped suddenly. “Those two over there are talking about us.” She indicated with a jerk of her head where two older women conspired over an arrangement of yellow-and-pink cakes. “They probably think we’re illicit lovers having a tryst.”
“Why illicit?”
“Because it always is illicit lovers, isn’t it?”
“They could think I’m a private detective you’ve hired to find some missing diamonds.”
“Then why would you be whispering? No, you’re a detective who’s been following my husband, and you’re spilling the beans about his illicit love affair with his secretary.”
“Your mind runs to forbidden love,” I said.
“I expect it’s the sort of books I read,” she said, putting down her teacup. “But I promise I’ll be very careful if you’ll do the same.”
“I promise, Sally, that I’ll be careful.”
Not that being careful would be enough, as I was shortly to discover.
Chapter Seven: J. P. G. Higgs
There is a hierarchy in the business of disposing of unwanted goods. At the pinnacle are those who are pleased to call themselves antique dealers, who handle the rare and valuable items. On the very bottom rung are the rag-and-bone men who take any and all rubbish for the value of its material—bones to be rendered down for glue, rags to turn into paper, a thousand types of scrap metal, and wood for furnaces. In between these two poles is a world of second-hand traders and pawnshops, all with subtly different gradations of affluence and honesty.
The business of J. P. G. Higgs, Esq. lay very much towards the lower end of the scale. His premises occupied a small warehouse with a sagging roof, located on a street off the brickyard. As we approached, the sky was clouding over, and it looked like we were in for rain. I tried not to see the gathering clouds as an omen.
The front door was wedged open. Skinner dropped his cigarette stub and ground it into the pavement, allowing two men carrying a trunk between them to go ahead. We followed them in, where they were met by a middle-aged woman with gold pince-nez.
The room was like a church-hall jumble sale with trestle tables, some of them bare and some piled with all sorts of goods. The men carried the trunk to an empty table and threw it open. The woman drew on a pair of mismatched dirty kidskin gloves and placed a mask over her mouth and nose before rifling through the contents, which seemed to be mostly women’s clothes. She picked through them with the rapid, efficient gestures of a professional scavenger, quickly evaluating the contents.
I began to discern an order in the layout of room. The tables in the middle were unsorted items recently arrived, while round the outside, everything of value was collected by type. One table held nothing but umbrellas of all shapes and sizes; another was in two halves, with coloured medicine bottles on one side and spectacles on the other. There was a sad little pile of dolls and teddy bears in one corner. I looked in vain for where books were stored.
The woman passed over a handful of coins; the men touched their caps and filed out.
“Good morning, madam. Mrs Higgs, I presume,” said Skinner, removing his hat. “Mr Skinner and Mr Stubbs for Mr Higgs, if you please.”
“Good morning,” she said, pulling the mask off her face. “It’s the germs, you know. You can’t be too careful.”
“No indeed,” said Skinner. “Mrs Higgs, we were looking to purchase a certain item that was accidentally included in a lot sold from Norbury Avenue. An item that was not, in fact, the property of the vendor.”
“Is that right?” Then, turning her head, she said, “John! Two gents here for you.”
In the quiet that followed, we could hear the pattering of rain on the wooden roof above.
A door opened into a sort of cabin suspended above one end of the hall. An elderly man in a dusty velvet jacket looked down on us with appraising eyes then made his way down the wooden stairs. His progress was purposeful but unhurried.
“Says there was something in a lot from Norbury Avenue,” she called to him.
Higgs was short, almost gnomelike, with a few grey hairs plastered across his pate and eyes that glittered with cunning.
“Mr Stubbs,” he said, raising a hand in greeting but not offering to shake. “Formerly collecting for Latham and Rowe, I think. Now with a new employer?”
“Stubbs and Skinner of Lantern Insurance, at your service,” said Skinner, proffering a business card with a slight bow.
Higgs accepted the card and read it carefully. “Norbury Road, you say?” he said thoughtfully. “Have we had anything from there recently? I don’t recall.”
“Wouldn’t like to say,” added his wife, taking her cue and moving to stand beside her husband.
“A woman moved out owing rent, and the landlady disposed of the contents of her room,” said Skinner. “I have it on good authority that your van called by to pick up the effects.”
Husband and wife exchanged a look. They were old hands at this game.
“Well, we must have done, then,” said Higgs. “If you say so.”
“There were some books,” said Skinner. “Including a copy of Mrs Beeton’s cookbook.”
“A very popular volume.” Higgs’s knowing smile grew a little. “We’ve probably got a dozen of them in stock if you want one.”
“This was a very special copy. It was hollowed out with a secret compartment inside.”
“I’m sure I’d remember something like that,” said Higgs. “You haven’t seen a hollowed-out book recently, have you, Edith?”
“I don’t know as how I have.”
That was very much as expected. They would certainly have found whatever was in the book, and simply by being there, we showed that it was valuable, if that was not obvious already. Our presence also suggested that it might be stolen property. Higgs had no need to talk to us. He could simply show us the door, if he felt like it, and see if he could find a buyer, which made Skinner’s next move inevitable.
“Pity,” said Skinner, gazing at a gold sovereign that had appeared in his palm then flipping it casually into the air with his thumb. “We would have paid a good bit for it.”
Skinner always said that a sovereign had far more attractive power than any amount of silver coinage and more even than folding money with a nominally higher value. Gold had a primeval hold over the hearts of the acquisitive; it called out to them in a way that no other currency could.
Higgs tore his gaze away from the spinning coin with difficulty. “Now I think of it, there was a little thing in a copy of that very book you just mentioned. You just wait here a minute.”
He went back up the stairs to the office, fishing out a bunch of keys on a chain from his pocket as he did so.
“Filthy weather,” remarked Mrs Higgs, glancing upwards towards the roof, which was starting to resound with the hammering of rain.
“Maybe we can get you to throw in a couple of used umbrellas as part of the deal,” said Skinner.
A minute passed, during which the metallic clanking sounds of a cash box being opened came from
upstairs. Higgs reappeared, holding a silver cylinder, which I first took for a saltcellar. When he held it in his palm in front of us, I saw it more resembled a miniature vacuum flask.
“That might be it,” said Skinner.
“Five pounds, sold as seen,” said Higgs slyly. “Take it or leave it, as you please.”
“I believe you paid ten shillings for Miss Brown’s effects all told.”
“I’m entitled to a fair profit,” Higgs said, nettled. “You think it’s easy work, picking through this filthy trash, day in, day out, everyone trying to cheat you? When some weeping widow brings me her dead husband’s mildewed old coats, I can’t turn her away with nothing, can I? When people get turned out on to the streets and want me to take their worthless belongings, old Higgs always pays up. I have to pay for everyone’s rubbish—it’s expected. Nobody is ever bothered about me making a return. I’ve got to make my living somehow.”
Higgs’s anger was entirely manufactured. He must have trotted out the same speech so many times that he had worn the shine off the argument.
“You have no idea,” Mrs Higgs chipped in, supporting her husband. “The hours we spend, the filth we have to go through. Fleas and lice and nits and all sorts of crawling vermin. I wash my hands in bleach, I do. There’s things that people hide away because they don’t dare throw them out. The things in tin trunks and old boxes that end up here—they’d turn your hair grey.”
“Is that so?” asked Skinner.
“I could tell you stories,” she said. “When you die, relatives don’t dare go through your belongings. We have to do it.”
“We’re entitled if we do find the odd coin or bit of jewellery,” said Higgs.
“That’s all very fine and worthy of you, but we don’t have unlimited funds at our disposal,” said Skinner. This was largely a bargaining ploy; Stafford would probably have paid a fortune, but we did not want to alert Higgs to just how valuable the item was.
“I’m not asking for unlimited funds, Mr Skinner; I’m asking five pounds.” Higgs held up the silver cylinder. “It’s yours if you want it. But that’s my last and final offer.”
Alien Stars: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Page 6