The train tingled and sparked down the Embankment. If it was a woman who had made Fred unhappy, she’d tell her what she thought. If Fred had killed himself, she’d find it out, the papers would print the news, someone would suffer. Ida was going to begin at the beginning and work right on. She was a sticker.
The first stage (she had held the paper in her hand all through the service) was Molly Pink, ‘described as a private secretary’, employed by Messrs Carter & Galloway.
Ida came up from Charing Cross Station, into the hot and windy light in the Strand flickering on the carburettors; in an upper room of Stanley Gibbons a man with a long grey Edwardian moustache sat in a window examining a postage stamp through a magnifying glass; a great dray laden with barrels stamped by, and the fountains played in Trafalgar Square, a cool translucent flower blooming and dropping into the drab sooty basins. It’ll cost money, Ida repeated to herself, it always costs money if you want to know the truth, and she walked slowly up St Martin’s Lane calculating, while all the time beneath the melancholy and the resolution, her heart beat faster to the refrain: it’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s living. In Seven Dials the negroes were hanging round the public house doors in tight natty suitings and old school ties, and Ida recognized one of them and passed the time of day. ‘How’s business, Joe?’ The great white teeth went on like a row of lights in the darkness above the bright striped shirt. ‘Fine, Ida, fine.’
‘And the hay fever?’
‘Tur’ble, Ida, tur’ble.’
‘So long, Joe.’
‘So long, Ida.’
It was a quarter of an hour’s walk to Messrs Carter & Galloway who lived at the very top of a tall building on the outskirts of Grays Inn. She had to economize now: she wouldn’t even take a bus, and when she got to the dusty antiquated building, there wasn’t a lift. The long flights of stone stairs wearied Ida. She’d had a long day and nothing to eat but a bun at the station. She sat down on a window-sill and took off her shoes. Her feet were hot, she wiggled her toes. An old gentleman came down. He had a long moustache and a sidelong raffish look. He wore a check coat, a yellow waistcoat and a grey bowler. He took off his bowler. ‘In distress, madam?’ he asked peering down at Ida with little bleary eyes. ‘Be of assistance?’
‘I don’t allow anyone else to scratch my toes,’ Ida said.
‘Ha, ha,’ the old gentleman said, ‘a card. After my own heart. Up or down?’
‘Up. All the way to the top.’
‘Carter & Galloway. Good firm. Tell ’em I sent you.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Moyne. Charlie Moyne. Seen you here before.’
‘Never.’
‘Some place else. Never forget fine figure of a woman. Tell ’em Moyne sent you. Give you special terms.’
‘Why don’t they have a lift in this place?’
‘Old-fashioned people. Old-fashioned myself. Seen you at Epsom.’
‘You might have.’
‘Always tell a sporting woman. Ask you round the corner to split a bottle of fizz if those beggars hadn’t taken the last fiver I came out with. Wanted to go and lay a couple. Have to go home first. Odds’ll go down while I’m doing it. You’ll see. You couldn’t oblige me, I suppose? Two quid, Charlie Moyne.’ The bloodshot eyes watched her without hope, a little aloof and careless; the buttons on the yellow waistcoat stirred as the old heart hammered.
‘Here,’ Ida said, ‘you can have a quid; now run along.’
‘Awfully kind of you. Give me your card. Post you a cheque tonight.’
‘I haven’t got a card,’ Ida said.
‘Came out without mine, too. Never mind. Charlie Moyne. Care of Carter & Galloway. All know me here.’
‘That’s all right,’ Ida said. ‘I’ll see you again. I’ve got to be going on up.’
‘Take my arm.’ He helped her up. ‘Tell ’em Moyne sent you. Special terms.’ She looked back at the turn of the stairs. He was tucking the pound note away in his waistcoat, smoothing the moustache which was still golden at the tips, like a cigarette smoker’s fingers, setting his bowler at an angle. Poor old geezer, Ida thought, he never expected to get that, watching him go down the stairs in his jaunty and ancient despair.
There were only two doors on the top landing. She opened one marked ‘Enquiries’, and there without a doubt was Molly Pink. In a little room hardly larger than a broom cupboard she sat beside a gas-ring sucking a sweet. A kettle hissed at Ida as she entered. A swollen spotty face glared back at her without a word.
‘Excuse me,’ Ida said.
‘The partners is out.’
‘I came to see you.’
The mouth fell a little open, a lump of toffee stirred on the tongue, the kettle whistled.
‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ Ida said. ‘You’d better look out. The kettle’ll boil over. You are Molly Pink?’
‘You want a cup?’ The room was lined from floor to ceiling with files. A little window disclosed through the undisturbed dust of many years another block of buildings with the same arrangement of windows staring dustily back like a reflection. A dead fly hung in a broken web.
‘I don’t like tea,’ Ida said.
‘That’s lucky. There’s only one cup,’ Molly said, filling a thick brown teapot with a chipped spout.
‘A friend of mine called Moyne. . . ’ Ida began.
‘Oh, him!’ Molly said. ‘We just turned him out of house and home.’ A copy of Woman and Beauty was propped open on her typewriter, and her eyes slid continually back to it.
‘Out of house and home?’
‘House and home. He came to see the partners. He tried to blarney.’
‘Did he see them?’
‘The partners is out. Have a toffee?’
‘It’s bad for the figure,’ Ida said.
‘I make up for it. I don’t eat breakfast.’
Over Molly’s head Ida could see the labels on the files: ‘Rents of 1–6 Mud Lane.’ ‘Rents of Wainage Estate, Balham.’ ‘Rents of. . . ’ They were surrounded by the pride of ownership, property. . .
‘I came here,’ Ida said, ‘because you met a friend of mine.’
‘Sit down.’ Molly said. ‘That’s the client’s chair. I has to entertain ’em. Mr Moyne’s not a friend.’
‘Not Moyne. Someone called Hale.’
‘I don’t want any more to do with that business. You ought to ’ave seen the partners. They was furious. I had to have a day off for the inquest. They kept me hours late next day.’
‘I just want to hear what happened.’
‘What happened! The partners is awful when roused.’
‘I mean about Fred—Hale.’
‘I didn’t exactly know him.’
‘That man you said at the inquest came up—’
‘He wasn’t a man. He was just a kid. He knew Mr Hale.’
‘But in the paper it said—’
‘Oh, Mr Hale said he didn’t know him. I didn’t tell them different. They didn’t ask me. Except was there anything odd in his manner? Well, there wasn’t anything you’d call odd. He was just scared, that’s all. We get lots like that in here.’
‘But you didn’t tell them that?’
‘That’s nothing uncommon. I knew what it was at once. He owed the kid money. We get lots like that. Like Charlie Moyne.’
‘He was scared was he? Poor old Fred.’
‘“I’m not Fred,” he said, sharp as you please. But I could tell all right. So could my friend.’
‘What was the kid like?’
‘Oh, just a kid.’
‘Tall?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Fair?’
‘I couldn’t say that.’
‘How old was he?’
‘—Bout my age, I dessay.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Eighteen,’ Molly said, staring defiantly across the typewriter and the steaming kettle, sucking a toffee.
‘Did he ask for money?’
‘He didn’t have time to ask for money.’
‘You didn’t notice anything else?’
‘He was awful anxious for me to go along with him. But I couldn’t, not with my friend there.’
‘Thanks,’ Ida said, ‘it’s something learnt.’
‘You a woman detective?’ Molly asked.
‘Oh, no, I’m just a friend of his.’
There was something fishy: she was convinced of it now. She remembered again how scared he’d been in the taxi, and going down Holborn towards her digs behind Russell Square, in the late afternoon sun, she thought again of the way in which he had handed her the ten shillings before she went down into the ladies. He was a real gentleman: perhaps it was the last few shillings he had: and those people—that boy—dunning him for money. Perhaps he was another one ruined like Charlie Moyne, and now that her memory of his face was getting a bit dim, she couldn’t help lending him a few of Charlie Moyne’s features, the bloodshot eyes if nothing else. Sporting gentlemen, free-handed gentlemen, real gentlemen. The dewlaps of the commercials drooped in the hall of the Imperial, the sun lay flat across the plane trees, and a bell rang and rang for tea in a boarding-house in Coram Street.
I’ll try the Board, Ida thought, and then I’ll know.
When she got in, there was a card on the hall table, a card of Brighton Pier: if I was superstitious, she thought, if I was superstitious. She turned it over. It was only from Phil Corkery, asking her to come down. She had the same every year from Eastbourne, Hastings and once from Aberystwyth. But she never went. He wasn’t someone she liked to encourage. Too quiet. Not what she called a man.
She went to the basement stairs and called Old Crowe. She needed two sets of fingers for the Board and she knew it would give the old man pleasure. ‘Old Crowe,’ she called, peering down the stone stairs. ‘Old Crowe.’
‘What is it, Ida?’
‘I’m going to have a turn at the Board.’
She didn’t wait for him, but went on up to her bed-sitting-room to make ready. The room faced east and the sun had gone. It was cold and dusk. Ida turned on the gas-fire and drew the old scarlet velvet curtains to shut out the grey sky and the chimney-pots. Then she patted the divan bed into shape and drew two chairs to the table. In a glass-fronted cupboard her life stared back at her—a good life: pieces of china bought at the seaside, a photograph of Tom, an Edgar Wallace, a Netta Syrett from a second-hand stall, some sheets of music, The Good Companions, her mother’s picture, more china, a few jointed animals made of wood and elastic, trinkets given her by this, that and the other, Sorrell and Son, the Board.
She took the Board gently down and locked the cupboard. A flat oval piece of polished wood on tiny wheels, it looked like something which had crept out of a cupboard in a basement kitchen. But in fact it was Old Crowe who had done that, knocking gently on the door, sidling in, white hair, grey face, shortsighted pit-pony eyes, blinking at the bare globe in Ida’s reading-lamp. Ida tossed a pink netty scarf over the light and dimmed it for him.
‘You got something to ask it, Ida?’ Old Crowe said. He shivered a little, frightened and fascinated. Ida sharpened a pencil and inserted it in the prow of the little board.
‘Sit down, Old Crowe. What you been doing all day?’
‘They had a funeral at twenty-seven. One of those Indian students.’
‘I been to a funeral, too. Was yours a good one?’
‘There aren’t any good funerals these days. Not with plumes.’ Ida gave the little board a push. It slid sideways across the polished table more than ever like a beetle. ‘The pencil’s too long,’ Old Crowe said. He sat, hugging his hands between his knees, bent forward watching the board. Ida screwed the pencil a little higher. ‘Past or future?’ Old Crowe asked, panting a little.
‘I want to get into touch today,’ Ida said.
‘Dead or alive?’ Old Crowe said.
‘Dead. I seen him burnt this afternoon. Cremated. Come on, Old Crowe, put your fingers on.’
‘Better take off your rings,’ Old Crowe said. ‘Gold confuses it.’
Ida unclothed her fingers, laid the tips on the board which squeaked away from her across the sheet of foolscap. ‘Come on, Old Crowe,’ she said.
Old Crowe giggled. He said, ‘It’s naughty,’ and placed his bony digits on the very rim, where they throbbed a tiny nervous tattoo. ‘What you going to ask it, Ida?’
‘Are you there, Fred?’
The board squeaked away under their fingers drawing long lines across the paper this way and that ‘It’s got a will of its own,’ Ida said.
‘Hush,’ said Old Crowe.
The board bucked a little with its hind wheel and came to a stop. ‘We might look now,’ Ida said. She pushed the board to one side, and they stared together at the network of pencilling.
‘You might make out a Y there,’ Ida said.
‘Or it might be an N.’
‘Anyway something’s there. We’ll try again.’ She put her fingers firmly on the board. ‘What happened to you, Fred?’ and immediately the board was off and away. All her indomitable will worked through her fingers: she wasn’t going to have any nonsense this time, and across the board the grey face of Old Crowe frowned with concentration.
‘It’s writing—real letters,’ Ida said with triumph, and as her own fingers momentarily loosened their grip she could feel the board slide firmly away as if on another’s errand.
‘Hush,’ said Old Crowe, but it bucked and stopped. They pushed the board away, and there, unmistakably, in large thin letters was a word, but not a word they knew: ‘SUKILL’.
‘It looks like a name,’ Old Crowe said.
‘It must mean something,’ Ida said. ‘The Board always means something. We’ll try again,’ and again the wooden beetle scampered off, drawing its tortuous trail. The globe burnt red under the scarf, and Old Crowe whistled between his teeth. ‘Now,’ Ida said and lifted the Board. A long ragged word ran diagonally across the paper: ‘FRESUICILLEYE’.
‘Well,’ Old Crowe said, ‘that’s a mouthful. You can’t make anything of that, Ida.’
‘Can’t I though,’ Ida said. ‘Why, it’s clear as clear. Fre is short for Fred and Suici for Suicide and Eye; that’s what I always say—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
‘What about those two L’s?’
‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll bear them in mind.’ She leant back in her chair with a sense of power and triumph. ‘I’m not superstitious,’ she said, ‘but you can’t get over that. The Board knows.’
‘She knows,’ Old Crowe said, sucking his teeth.
‘One more try?’ The board slid and squeaked and abruptly stopped. Clear as clear the name stared up at her: ‘PHIL’.
‘Well,’ Ida said, ‘well.’ She blushed a little. ‘Like a sugar biscuit?’
‘Thank you, Ida, thank you.’
Ida took a tin out of the cupboard drawer and pushed it over to Old Crowe. ‘They drove him to death,’ Ida said happily. ‘I knew there was something fishy. See that Eye. That as good as tells me what to do.’ Her eye lingered on Phil. ‘I’m going to make those people sorry they was ever born.’ She drew in her breath luxuriously and stretched her monumental legs. ‘Right and wrong,’ she said. ‘I believe in right and wrong,’ and delving a little deeper, with a sigh of happy satiety, she said, ‘It’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be a bit of life, Old Crowe,’ giving the highest praise she could give to anything, while the old man sucked his tooth and the pink light wavered on the Warwick Deeping.
PART TWO
1
The Boy stood with his back to Spicer staring out across the dark wash of sea. They had the end of the pier to themselves; everyone else at that hour and in that weather was in the concert hall. The lightning went on and off above the horizon and the rain dripped. ‘Where’ve you been?’ the Boy asked.
‘Walking around,’ Spicer said.
‘You been There?’
‘I wanted to
see it was all safe, that there wasn’t anything you’d forgotten.’
The Boy said slowly, leaning out across the rail into the doubtful rain, ‘When people do one murder, I’ve read they sometimes have to do another—to tidy up.’ The word murder conveyed no more to him than the word ‘box’, ‘collar’, ‘giraffe’. He said, ‘Spicer, you keep away from there.’
The imagination hadn’t awoken. That was his strength. He couldn’t see through other people’s eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy, the catgut vibrating in the heart; it was like nerves losing their freshness, it was like age coming on, other people’s experience battering on the brain. ‘Where are the rest of the mob?’
‘In Sam’s, drinking.’
‘Why aren’t you drinking too?’
‘I’m not thirsty, Pinkie, I wanted some fresh air. This thunder makes you feel queer.’
‘Why don’t they stop that bloody noise in there?’ the Boy said.
‘You not going to Sam’s?’
‘I’ve got a job of work to do,’ the Boy said.
‘It’s all right, Pinkie, ain’t it? After that verdict it’s all right? Nobody asked questions.’
‘I just want to be sure,’ the Boy said.
‘The mob won’t stand for any more killing.’
‘Who said there was going to be any killing?’ The lightning flared up and showed his tight shabby jacket, the bunch of soft hair at the nape. ‘I’ve got a date, that’s all. You be careful what you say, Spicer. You aren’t milky, are you?’
‘I’m not milky. You got me wrong, Pinkie. I just don’t want another killing. That verdict sort of shook us all. What did they mean by it? We did kill him, Pinkie?’
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