“I tell you it is not so,” Cousin Vidur declared, fiercely astride on his two plump little legs. “Once or twice I may have been. But if I was it was for business only. I did not want to go looking into cheap eating-houses and brothels.”
“The Robin’s Nest is not brothel,” Mrs. Datta retorted, giving her husband a furious glare through her steel-rimmed spectacles. “It is a café, and very well you know it.”
“Café, brothel. Brothel, café. They are all the same these places,” Vidur pronounced.
He glared at his wife.
“But I have no time to be talking all this,” he added sharply. “Someone has to perform religious duties in this house.”
And, stamp, stamp, stamp, he crossed over the bare floor and marched out.
Mrs. Datta turned to Ghote.
“I tell you,” she said with vehemence, “that café is ten yards only from the Portobello Road.”
Ghote however was not going to get embroiled in that argument.
“And do you think it is likely the Peacock got drugs there?” he asked brutally.
The question had the deflating effect he had hoped for.
Mrs. Datta sat on the edge of the low couch and blinked at him behind her sharply askew spectacles.
“I do not know,” she said quietly at last.
“You saw no signs?”
Again Mrs. Datta blinked.
“It is possible,” she said. “I do not know what are the signs of drugs. But in the last few weeks she was sometimes very gay and excited, though she is the sort of girl who is often very excited.”
She sat silent and thoughtful.
Ghote did not think there would be much more she could tell him. He watched her, wondering whether there was anything he ought to do to help her. She had held the Peacock so highly that even the suspicion that the girl’s high spirits had led her into the world of the drug-takers must be a sharp blow.
At last she looked up.
“And Johnny Bull?” she asked. “What else did he say?”
“He confirmed what the policewoman and detective-sergeant who went to see him had found out,” Ghote answered, as sympathetically as he could.
“And you asked no more than they did?” Mrs. Datta said.
There was an edge to the remark. But Ghote decided to ignore it.
“I do not know exactly every question they asked,” he said. “But I myself saw enough to be certain that Johnny Bull and this girl he has would have been together for the whole of the time the Peacock disappeared. She is a most possessive girl. Most.”
“But why did you not ask more?” Mrs. Datta said.
She cocked her head sharply to one side. Her spectacles glinted fiercely.
Ghote found that he was beginning to be a little irked. Who was this restaurant-keeper’s wife to go querying the methods of an inspector of the C.I.D.?
“But please understand,” he said. “Questions to Johnny Bull are no longer necessary. The new factor in the case puts a completely different complexion on the whole matter.”
Mrs. Datta shook her head in bland negative.
“What you have to do,” she said, “is to get my Peacock back from that Johnny Bull.”
And suddenly Ghote had the sensation of being asked to fight his way through a dense black, impenetrable mass pressing in on him from every side. He made one gigantic effort.
“Listen,” he almost screamed out, “listen, if anything has happened to the Peacock, it is because she was involved with a lot of drug addicts. At this café called the Robin’s Nest. And just as soon as I can I am going to go round there and find out exactly what she did, who she saw and what she said. And then perhaps we will begin to get at the truth.”
But it was not until well into the evening of the next day that Ghote was able to set out for the Robin’s Nest. On this of all occasions the organisers of the Drugs Conference had elected to fit in one more paper than usual, and in consequence the meeting was not over until after six o’clock. Ghote had fumed and fretted, but there was nothing he could do about it. Superintendent Ketkar had the programme of papers and he would expect notes as comprehensive on one as on any other. And there was already the missing part of the first paper of all to be accounted for somehow.
So it was just seven o’clock when eventually Ghote arrived at the top end of the twisting market-street. Thrusting his guide book into an outside pocket of his great hairy coat, he looked all round about him. The street looked narrow, deserted and a little ominous in front of him, its shabby-looking houses dwarfed by the distant skyline pricked out by scattered patches of lights. Ghote thought he recognised one of these, a tall rectangle, as the tower block of Council flats where he had met Patsy and Renee, those giggly but attractive representatives of the New Britain, and had first begun seriously to consider the possibility that the Peacock was dead.
He turned back to the narrow street in front of him. Perhaps before long he would learn something to lead him to whoever it was who had killed her. He began walking slowly forward.
At this hour only a litter of discarded vegetables, fruit and wrapping-paper showed where the market-stalls had been earlier in the day. But the windows of some of the small shops had lights in them and their higgledy-piggledy miscellany of bric-à-brac was attracting an occasional passerby to stop and stare in at them in a melancholy way for a moment or two. Ghote looked at one of them himself.
What could anybody possibly want with an old, old horn-gramophone obviously jammed into silence years ago? He twisted his head round till he could read the price on the tiny little white ticket attached to the handle. It ran into pounds. He left the window abruptly and walked hurriedly off.
He kept a good look-out to either side for the Robin’s Nest, though, if what Mrs. Datta had said was true, it should not be hard to spot. He looked at one or two small, unpretentious cafés, but they were all on the street itself.
And then, just before he got to a big old public-house, the Warwick Castle, he saw it.
Mrs. Datta appeared to have had justice on her side in the argument with her husband: the Robin’s Nest was very obvious. It was only a few yards up a side-turning, a small place, but brightly enough lit. With its name painted up above it in crudely bright red letters it would be hard to miss.
Ghote turned into the side-street and made a casual-seeming inspection from across the narrow roadway. Compared with the restaurants and tea-shops he had seen round Marble Arch and in the City, the Robin’s Nest was unprepossessing. It consisted of a single room of moderate size with a dozen small tables in it jutting out from the walls and set rather too closely together for comfort. Through the steamy glass of its single shop-window, Ghote could see only one customer and a vague figure flitting about behind a counter at the far end.
This would be the ideal time to go in and ask questions.
He crossed the road. On the glass door of the café was an inexpertly painted robin chiefly notable for the extreme brightness of its red breast. He put his hand on the glass just above it and pushed. The door opened with a clucking sort of ping from its bell.
The one customer, a white-faced, depressed-looking youth in a grubby fawn mackintosh sitting near the door, just glanced up and then buried himself again in his evening paper. In front of him there was a half-full cup of tea. The cup was of thick white china and looked very small.
Making his way up to the counter at the far end, Ghote was struck by the painstaking efforts that had been made everywhere to brighten up the tattered framework of the place.
The tops of the tables had been covered in patterned plastic, mostly red with a design of yellow circles. But evidently this material had run out, because one of the two tables nearest the counter was blue with a pattern of red stars. The wooden chairs had been painted a gay shade of red too, though even at a casual glance it was clear the painter was no professional. Along the row of shelves behind the counter brightly patterned paper—yellow bells on a green background—had been carefully pinne
d, and its edges had been neatly trimmed with a pair of serrated scissors. On the shelves, the bottles of soft drinks were ranged in clumps of contrasting shades.
Pinned to the walls, which had recently been papered in blue and white stripes, already splodged here and there with grease stains, were three hand-written notices, each done in bold but uneven letters in green ink and each carrying a version of the inexpertly drawn robin on the door. One said “No Dogs Allowed—Please,” the next “Gentlemen are Kindly requested NOT to kick the juke box” and the third “Why not try a Lolly Cola. New. Refreshing. DIFFerent.”
The juke box, which was jammed up against one end of the counter, looked as if it had nevertheless received plenty of kicks in the course of a long life of gradual decline. But even here something had been done to restore some of the original spruceness. A fresh line of bold red paint had been applied all round the top edge, the criss-cross battlefield of the metal parts had been devotedly polished and on the top of the whole there had been placed a bright blue bird-cage. In this there sat, rather huddled and morose, a real-live robin.
The man behind the counter had somewhat the same air as the juke box—of having had a hard time of it but of being determined to stay spry.
He was aged about fifty and was a good deal below medium height and decidedly tubby. He had a round, ruddy face, with a little hook of a nose jutting out in the middle of it and sparse auburn hair brushed to the best advantage across a balding, red, round skull. He wore a blue-and-white striped apron round his little tummy with, above it, a plum-coloured waistcoat with brass buttons.
As Ghote came up, he put down a cup he had been drying.
“And for you, sir?” he said chirpily.
“Good evening,” Ghote said, with deliberately careful slowness, “do you serve coffee here?”
“Straight from the big tin, sir. Tenpence a cup.”
“Thank you. Thank you. That will be excellent.”
He watched while Robin—for there was such an air of proprietorship about him that he could be none other than the owner of Robin’s Nest—dipped under the counter, produced the big tin of coffee powder, scooped out one precise measureful, tipped it neatly into a cup and held it under the little brass tap of the dented chromium hot-water urn on the counter.
After a little Ghote proffered another remark in the character he had assumed.
“I have been strolling along your Portobello Road,” he said, “but I was regretful to find all the market stalls had gone.”
“Ah, yes,” said Robin brightly, “pack up any time round half past five, they do. But if it’s antiques and curiosities you’re after, and many foreign gentlemen are, then you want to come on a Saturday. Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, all the same thing.”
Ghote noted with pleasure that at least his impersonation had been accepted.
“On Saturday, I will remember,” he said. “I have heard a great deal about the Portobello Road, and I am curious to see it myself in full swing.”
“And well worth seeing too, if you’ll take my advice,” Robin replied, cocking his head knowingly to one side. “You wait till Saturday. Fine old crowd you’ll find here then, poking and prying among all the barrows and in the shops. And you can pick up anything here. Anything. Gentleman found a genuine Rembrandt the other day. Brought it in here, he did. Proud as Punch. Didn’t think all that much to it myself. Just a grey old thing, it was. Like a bit of colour, I do.”
He looked round with shining pleasure at the bit of colour he had superimposed on the shoddy framework of his Nest.
Ghote saw his chance of moving the conversation one step nearer his goal.
“You certainly seem to have made this place most colourful, most agreeable.”
Robin blushed with delight.
“Not too bad,” he said. “Haven’t been here all that long, mind. But it certainly needed a lick or two of paint when I came along.”
Ghote put down his coffee and carried out a long inspection. The depressed-looking youth by the door had sidled out and the place was empty. But, except for the one empty cup and abandoned chewed-looking newspaper, everything was as spick and span as wiping and polishing could make it.
“’Course,” Robin went on, “there’s a lot wants doing to it yet, when I find the time. And the money. Needs a bit of capital outlay, this place does, really. And that’s not so easy to come by.”
“Quite so, quite so,” said Ghote heartily. “But all the same, it has a very nice appearance even now. I would not be at all surprised if it does not attract a good many of my countrymen. We are very particular about cleanliness in India, you know.”
“Indians?” Robin answered. “Yes, I get one or two Indians come in from time to time. Always sure of a good welcome here, they are. Every creed and colour welcome at Robin’s Nest, I say.”
He preened himself.
“Yes, yes,” said Ghote eagerly. “I am sure it would be most pleasing to them to come here.”
He leant a little farther across the counter.
“And there is something you might be able to tell me about that,” he said.
“Anything to oblige,” said Robin. “That’s my motto: anything to oblige.”
“I have a relative over here,” Ghote said. “A girl, about seventeen. I understand she was fond of coming to this particular area, and unfortunately she has disappeared from home. I wonder if you ever saw her in here?”
On the far side of the shiningly polished counter, Robin’s face abruptly lost every trace of geniality.
He turned sharply away and picked up the cup he had finished drying as Ghote had come up. He took a tea-towel and began vigorously rubbing at it with his back turned.
“Can’t say I recollect anyone of that nature,” he said. “Definitely not.”
Ghote’s stomach tautened a little with the scent of a quarry.
He pushed aside his cup of coffee, which he had been carefully spinning out, and went quickly along the short length of the counter until he had Robin cornered next to the dented chromium urn.
“Now,” he said, “you will answer some questions, and you will answer quickly.”
Robin shot him a half-defiant glance over his shoulder.
“I’ve got work to do,” he said. “I can’t be answering questions all night for a lot of bloody foreigners.”
“What was that girl’s name?” Ghote snapped back.
This time Robin did not turn at all.
“You should know her name,” he muttered. “Why ask me?”
“Because you know and you are going to tell me,” Ghote replied in a tone of patience-nearly-at-the-end-of-its-tether which he copied from his old teacher Mr. Merrywether and had used to effect on other occasions.
“But I don’t know,” Robin said petulantly.
“You do. Now, what is it?”
Robin’s reply was scarcely audible. But Ghote did not need to hear every syllable.
“They called her the Peacock or something, if you must know.”
“Exactly,” Ghote barked. “They called her the Peacock. Now, why did she keep coming in here?”
Robin swung round.
“I don’t know,” he shouted. “I tell you I don’t know. And if I did, I wouldn’t say. Never.”
Ghote smiled, quite slowly.
“Then it is a good thing that I do know,” he said.
“You know?”
Robin’s eyes flicked to and fro.
“What did she get from you?” Ghote said. “Was it Purple Hearts? Or Black Bombers? Dexies? Bennies? Or was it the straight junk?”
The notes he had taken from a paper by a notably efficient Scotland Yard inspector at the conference had not been for nothing.
Robin thrust his little pot-belly over the counter till he was as close to Ghote as he could get.
“Listen,” he whispered hoarsely, “I swear it wasn’t the proper junk. I wouldn’t give that to a kid. I can’t get it anyhow. It costs money that stuff.”
Ghote put a sneer on his features.
“And of course someone like you would not get that sort of money, would they?” he said. “So what was it you sold her? Quick.”
“It was French blues mostly,” Robin said.
Ghote absorbed this. French blues were a more recent form of the well-known Purple Hearts, an amphetamine. They got on to the market after thefts at chemists’ shops.
He turned back to Robin. The tubby little man’s eyes were filled with tears.
“They know I can get them,” he said, “and they won’t leave me alone till I sell them a few. But I don’t let them have too many, really I don’t. And they don’t do anybody any harm. Medical experts tell you that. They don’t do anyone any real harm.”
Ghote looked him straight between the eyes.
“Then why,” he said very quietly, “has the Peacock been killed?”
NINE
Robin’s round red face paled. It paled by stages as Ghote held him in a fixed gaze. First, all colour left the odd beaky little nose. Then the plump cheeks began to grow less and less ruddy. And finally, quite suddenly, small glistening points of sweat appeared on the forehead and it too turned like the cheeks a greyish-purple.
“I don’t know about the girl being killed,” he said squeakily. “I swear I don’t know anything about that. I just saw her leave this place one night with one of the Smith Boys and I never saw her again.”
His lower lip started quivering uncontrollably and he clamped his front teeth down on it in a sharp, nervous little jab.
“The Smith Boys?” Ghote said.
“They’re brothers. Three of them. They use this place.”
Robin gulped.
“I have to pay them,” he said.
With a corner of his tightly screwed-up tea-towel he began rubbing hard at one small patch of the counter.
“I have to pay, you know,” he went on. “They came in here one day. All three of them. Jack it was who did the talking. He’s the oldest. I didn’t understand what he meant at first. And then I did. I had to pay up, or the place would get smashed. I told them I wouldn’t. And Jack sort of nodded to Pete.”
He looked up at Ghote.
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 10
