Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock

by H. R. F. Keating

  A look of frank disgust appeared on Policewoman Mackintosh’s pink-and-white features.

  “Not a thing,” she said. “A silly, cheeky pair of giggling nits if ever I saw any.”

  Her blue eyes sparked cold fire.

  The way her encounter with the Peacock’s two friends had gone became startlingly clear to Ghote. There had been misunderstandings on both sides.

  And with the vision of this there came an exciting thought. It was plain from the bitterness Mrs. Datta had shown in speaking about the Peacock’s schoolfriends that the girl had indeed confided in them more than a little. And, equally, it was clear that Policewoman Mackintosh had not been told about these confidences. Yet, if anyone knew what had been in the Peacock’s mind before she vanished, it would be these two.

  “Tell me—” he began cautiously.

  But suddenly from the splay-teethed sergeant down at the cluttered, untidy table there came a deep guffaw of laughter.

  “Suppose you got a bit more out of that Johnny Bull feller, Mackintosh,” he said. “A hell of a lot more.”

  Policewoman Mackintosh’s sturdy pink-and-white complexion turned a shade pinker.

  “I went there with D.S. Turner,” she said tersely.

  “To Johnny Bull’s?” Ghote said. “I would be most interested to hear your conclusions. Was that a detective sergeant you saw him with?”

  “Yes. Thought two heads would be better than one dealing with someone well-known like that,” Policewoman Mackintosh replied.

  She sounded distinctly grateful for Ghote’s quick intervention.

  “Well,” she went on, “we found Johnny Bull accounted for his movements on the night in question pretty well.”

  “Oh, yes?” said Ghote. “How was that?”

  Policewoman Mackintosh gave a short laugh.

  “Had girl-friend with him,” she said. “A little blonde, name of Sandra. She was there when we called, and she was there on October the twenty-first. In fact, I got the impression she never lets the great Johnny out of her sight.”

  “I see,” said Ghote. “And a person like that would hardly be likely to tolerate the presence of another female.”

  Policewoman Mackintosh grinned broadly.

  “You size up a situation pretty quickly yourself,” she said.

  Ghote grinned back. Then he looked suddenly depressed.

  “So it looks as if there will not be a lot to tell them at the Tagore House,” he said.

  “Well, I dare say she’ll turn up soon enough,” Policewoman Mackintosh replied sympathetically. “You know what girls of that age are like over boy-friends sometimes.”

  Once more the yellow-toothed sergeant found a comment.

  “’Ark at her,” he said. “W.P.C. Mackintosh, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I bet you give your boy-friends something to think about all the same, eh?”

  “Well, thank you, Miss Mackintosh,” Ghote said loudly. “You have been more than helpful.”

  “Not at all. Sorry there wasn’t more I could do.”

  Ghote, turning away from the counter, paused.

  “Perhaps there is one thing,” he said. “If I could have the names and addresses of those friends of the Peacock’s, then if Mrs. Datta continues to be anxious I can go and see them.”

  At the old typewriter, the sergeant looked up. His long higgledy-piggledy yellow teeth glinted.

  “I don’t think we can do that there ’ere,” he said. “What you might call confidential information, that is.”

  Policewoman Mackintosh gave him a sharp look.

  “But we’re going to make an exception for a distinguished visiting police officer,” she said.

  SIX

  Ghote left the police-station with feelings of considerable satisfaction. He had at least hit on a line of inquiry which had not yet been pursued. He made up his mind to follow it to the very end.

  Buried deep in his enormous check coat, he plunged through the misty evening not uncontent with the way things were now going.

  In the neat, well-kept square near the restaurant the bare forms of the elegantly drooping trees stood out by the light of the tall street-lamps a deeper black against the faint whiteness of the gathering mist. On the damp, empty and unfamiliarly clean pavement in front of him a cat emerged from the upright railings of one of the smoothly tidy houses. It stalked, tail proudly erect, across the gleaming flat stones of the pavement, round the base of a lamp-post with a sinuous turn of its body, over the empty roadway and into the square garden.

  Ghote stood and watched it, reflecting how differently it behaved from the slinking, mangy, vile cats of Bombay. The difference seemed to sum up for him the whole alteration in his surroundings in the past short forty-eight hours. He had come to a land where dignity had real meaning, to a land of law and order.

  He straightened his back. He would do his small share to preserve this law and order: he would if he possibly could bring the Peacock back to her appointed home.

  Features set in an expression of high resolution, he marched off towards the Tagore House, turned the corner and strode hard along the narrow, less well-lit mews of the back-entrance. And in the gloom walked almost straight into a closely intertwined couple.

  “Frigg off,” a muffled voice barked.

  Ghote seized the latch of the Dattas’ tall gate, tugged it hastily down and flung himself into the cluttered back garden.

  Really, he thought, such behaviour. Kissing and hugging in a public place. Back at home he would have had the pair of them arrested in next to no time.

  Standing breathing rather hard on the narrow brick path, he began to wonder whether the task that he had just pledged himself to was not going to be more complicated than it had started to seem.

  He shrugged his shoulders, slipped the key as quietly as he could into the door in front of him and crept upstairs to continue his search of the possessions the Peacock had left behind her.

  This time he was uninterrupted. But he made no discoveries.

  Next evening Ghote left the conference meeting in a hurry, not displeased to have found a reason for avoiding Detective Superintendent Smart. He went by Underground straight to Royal Oak station, the nearest point according to his guide to the tower block of flats where both the two girls Policewoman Mackintosh had told him about lived. As he entered the ground-floor lobby of the towering, square-shouldered twenty story block, he felt the familiar tugging hunting instinct comfortably at work inside him. False trail it could still be, but he felt sure he was on to something. The Peacock must have had some reason for her sudden disappearance, and these two girls were almost bound to know something about it.

  He glanced round. The bare lobby was, to his eyes, extraordinarily clean. No betel juice stains splattered the smooth grey walls, no huddled sleepers were taking advantage of the free shelter, there were no chips, cracks and dilapidation. Yet this was a block of Council flats, where the working-class lived. In such luxury as this the poor of mighty England dwelt.

  His eye fell on the call-button for the two lifts. He pressed it. There was the soft hum of quietly working machinery, and a moment later one of the two aluminium doors in front of him slid open and the lift, a deep silver-walled square, was waiting.

  He stepped in. The indicator board showed that both the flats he was looking for were up on the nineteenth floor. He pressed the button. The doors closed with a gentle thud. There was the slightest of shudderings and in less than a minute he had arrived.

  The nineteenth floor landing was very much like the lobby below, clean and bare but thoroughly solid. There were four green-painted front doors for the four flats there. Ghote consulted the slip of paper Policewoman Mackintosh had given him and rang at the neat doorbell of the first of his two numbers.

  He felt a little chill of expectation.

  In a moment the door was opened. A smallish man of about fifty, very trim with neatly curling grey-white hair well brushed back above a fresh-looking face stood there. He wore an open-n
ecked shirt, V-necked Fair Isle pullover and slacks.

  “Good evening,” Ghote said, “I am looking for a Miss Patsy Morgan or a Miss Renee Timperley.”

  “Patsy’s my kid,” the man said. “And Renee’s in here with her, as per usual.”

  Ghote drew breath to explain the reason for his visit. But with a sudden look of almost avaricious pleasure Mr. Morgan shot out a sharp question.

  “You’re Indian, aren’t you?” he said. “Have you been here long?”

  “Just two days,” Ghote answered cautiously.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Morgan, “it’s more than twenty years since I was in India. Do you know Barrackpore?”

  “I am afraid not,” Ghote said. “It is in Bengal, is it not? I am from Bombay. But, excuse me, I want—”

  Mr. Morgan took a pace forward and tapped him smartly on the chest with the fingers of his right hand.

  “Finest troops in the Indian Army stationed at Barrackpore,” he said. “And I should know. I had the handling of ’em. Sergeant I was in those days. Sergeant Morgan, J. 1406231.”

  He banged sharply to attention. And, had it not been that he was wearing slip-on, rubber-soled shoes, the effect would have been dramatic indeed.

  Ghote smiled with as much sympathy as he could muster in face of his urgent need to talk to Mr. Morgan’s daughter.

  “They must have been fine days,” he said. “Only—”

  “Fine days? They were the best days of my life. The best days of my life.”

  Mr. Morgan darted forward, swung round and fixed Ghote with a blazing-eyed look of distant enthusiasm.

  “Imagine the scene,” he said. “The drill square is here. To my left, cantonments for the native troops. To my right, sergeants’ mess, cookhouse, etcetera. Straight ahead, officers’ mess.”

  “Oh, Dad, turn it in, do.”

  The voice came from the open door of the flat. Both Mr. Morgan and Ghote flicked round to face it as if on a single rotating platform.

  Standing in the doorway were two girls of sixteen or seventeen dressed in neat, light grey school uniforms.

  “Oh, Patsy,” Mr. Morgan said, as soon as he had got his breath back. “You got a visitor here, my girl. You and Renee. I was just recalling to him my time in India.”

  “We heard,” said Patsy.

  She was a short, fair-haired, plumpish girl with an air of about to go off at any second into a dazzle of bouncing like a pent-up rubber ball.

  Behind her, her friend Renee, taller and darker and apparently quieter, was unable entirely to suppress a soft giggle.

  Patsy looked at her father.

  “I dare say they heard right down on the ground,” she added.

  “Well, right down to the ground is where I’m going,” Mr. Morgan replied. “Down to the ground and out to the pub where I won’t have no girls to bother me.”

  He marched, proudly as once he had marched across the great drill square at Barrackpore, over and into the still waiting lift, and a moment later he was whisked out of sight.

  “He’s nuts, you know,” Patsy said to Ghote. “Stark, staring, raving bonkers. I don’t know why I put up with him.”

  She stood in the doorway, giving him a pertly challenging look.

  Ghote remained stern-faced. Then he grinned.

  “At last I see what was the purpose of the British Raj,” he said. “It is to keep girls like you amused.”

  Patsy giggled. Unwillingly at first, but soon uncontrollably.

  “No,” she said at last, “but he can’t get it off his mind, and he’s very sweet really.”

  The quieter Renee put in a word of her own.

  “You came to see us about the Peacock, didn’t you?” she said acutely.

  “Yes, I did,” Ghote answered. “You were both friends of hers, I think?”

  “It was because of Reen really,” Patsy said eagerly. “Because of the names. Renee and Ranee. Get it? I mean, that’s how it all began. But as soon as we really got to know her, then we knew we were going to be real friends for ever. Didn’t we, Reen?”

  The taller girl’s eyes lit up.

  “She was just marvellous,” she said. “That’s why we called her the Peacock. She was like something bright and dazzling sort of. Being with her was—was—”

  She struggled for an image.

  “It was like a party going on every minute of the day,” she said.

  Plump, bouncy little Patsy’s face went suddenly cloudy with tears.

  “That’s what makes it so awful,” she wailed.

  “That she has gone?” Ghote said. “I am here to try and find out exactly why she went, you know. I am a relative of hers, and a police officer back at home in India.”

  The quiet Renee stepped forward.

  “Can you find her?” she said. “Do you think there’s any hope? Or—”

  She broke off.

  “I am afraid I cannot make any guarantees by any means,” Ghote said soberly.

  “I bet you can do more than that awful policewoman who came,” Patsy broke in, instantly alive again.

  “I have met her,” Ghote said. “She did not seem altogether happy about her interview with you.”

  “She got so cross,” Patsy said.

  She giggled.

  “It was just a crack I made about police brutality,” she said. “A friend of mine—Well, a friend of a sort of friend of mine got punched up in a police-station once. Or, anyhow, he thought he was going to get punched up. And he’d only been demonstrating about anti-apartheid or something.”

  “And so you did not tell Policewoman Mackintosh what you know about the Peacock?” Ghote inquired.

  He waited for the answer. Down in his stomach was the familiar feeling of tension.

  It was the slightly more serious Renee who spoke for them both.

  “It didn’t seem much use telling someone like that,” she began. “She’d have only gone and given us a lecture or something.”

  She paused.

  “And what was it you had to tell?” Ghote prompted.

  “Well, really that she’d got the whole thing wrong.”

  “Yes,” Patsy broke in, unable to keep out of things a moment longer. “She began right off wanting a list of what she called ‘every single boy-friend’ the Peacock had had. Cheek.”

  “So we knew she wouldn’t believe us if we said the Peacock had never had more than the one,” Renee explained.

  “And then came the crack about brutality,” said Patsy.

  A leaden feeling began growing up in Ghote’s mind. Only one boy-friend: the signs were swinging round to point all together in the direction of Johnny Bull.

  He fought against the tide a little.

  “You know that the Peacock’s aunt believes most strongly that she did not tell all her secrets to her friends,” he said.

  “But of course she didn’t,” Renee replied unexpectedly.

  Ghote’s hopes began to rise a little.

  “No,” Renee went on, “she didn’t tell us things sometimes ’cos she liked giving surprises. She’d keep something secret for a day or two, and then bring it out with a bang like.”

  “That was one of the things that made her fun,” Patsy added. “Oh, I do wish she’d come back.”

  “Still,” Renee said, picking up the thread earnestly, “that sort of thing didn’t mean she ever had real secrets from us. It goes to prove she didn’t really, if you get me.”

  Ghote did indeed get her.

  “And it was Johnny Bull who was the one boy-friend?” he asked fatalistically.

  “Oh, yes,” said Patsy, her eyes bright and her cheeks glowing with excitement. “They were lovers. She seduced him in Calcutta, you know.”

  Ghote was unable to keep a hint of disbelief from his features.

  “Oh, go on, Patsy,” Renee said, with a touch of scornful impatience. “You know it was the other way round really. She told us it was. Though she let him, of course.”

  “She would,” Patsy said, all aglow. “S
he was wonderful. So daring. So free.”

  “That’s what made it so sad.” Renee said. “When he went off her.”

  “He went off her?” Ghote asked, determined at least to keep the record absolutely straight.

  “Yes,” said Patsy disgustedly. “Some mean little bitch called Sandra got hold of him. I mean, she must have. Nobody could just get tired of her, not the Peacock.”

  “I don’t know, Pat,” Renee put in. “I mean Johnny Bull’s getting old. He must be nearly thirty. You get different then.”

  “Yeah,” said Patsy. “Can’t keep up any more. I know.”

  Ghote cautiously applied for further information.

  “But the Peacock had not ‘gone off’ Johnny Bull?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” said Patsy, as if the very suggestion smacked of treason.

  “No, she hadn’t, not a bit,” Renee confirmed. “That was what was so awful for her. Poor kid.”

  “It was terrible,” Patsy broke in, wild to have the telling of the romantic tale in her own hands. “She couldn’t stop loving that man, no more than a butterfly can stop singeing its wings in the candle-flame.”

  “Moth, you mean,” said Renee with brisk scorn.

  “Butterfly, moth, what’s it matter? The thing is she’d have done anything to get him back. That’s why she was so extra mad on new clothes and stuff. To win his love.”

  Ghote considered for an instant.

  “Has it occurred to you,” he said, “that there may be a special reason for her disappearance?”

  Patsy was quick.

  “You mean to kind of scare Johnny?” she asked. “Make him realise what he’s lost?”

  “That is what I was thinking.”

  Patsy shook her head decisively.

  “No,” she said. “We talked about that, all three of us. But we reckoned it wouldn’t do any good at all. A type like Johnny Bull’s too selfish altogether to fall for that.”

  “You wait till you meet him,” Renee said.

  With a last sinking lurch, Ghote saw that this encounter was now inevitable.

  “Well, I will wait until I have done that,” he said.

  He regarded the two girls gravely. For all their happy chatter about sexual promiscuity, there was an untouched innocence about them still.