‘It’s the Last Word. It’s Jet Age Hospitality—’
‘I’ll bet it is. That’s what I’m saying—’
‘It’s what the Young Executive demands. It’s for Trendsetters. Haven’t you seen any of the adverts?’
‘No, Buzzy.’
‘Then you’re not With It—’
‘I know I’m not.’
‘Me neither. Silly twerps!’ After a pause, Buzzy gave him a long, hard look. ‘If the boy didn’t do her, then who did?’
‘I’m not sure yet, Buzzy. Don’t press me.’
‘Okay, Doc. Bzzz. But you told ’em she was dead, didn’t you? Then took ’em to that house – eh? Just explain that part of it, Doc. As a favour. What with punters all day and rockers and rollers all night – no brains anywhere – my mind’s going an’ I’ll be a bloody imbecile shortly. Bzzz. So if you’ve anything clever to tell me, let’s have it – for God’s sake!’
‘It wasn’t that clever, Buzzy. But this is what happened.’ And by the time he had explained all that had happened, Whitey was hooting outside.
‘Listen to that,’ said Buzzy, getting up, ‘must have a shuvver’s cap, then makes that bleedin’ din. No class, no idea! Bzzz. Okay, then, Doc. You’ll move into the Beverly-Astoria this afternoon – eh? Tenth floor – 1012. And, of course, if you an’ Miss Culworth would like to come an’ see me at the Club, you’ll be heartily welcome. But tomorrow – good old Saturday – is the best night. Bzzz.’
‘At its gayest, is it, Buzzy?’
‘Gay? That’s gone out. But I can show you the biggest mad monkey-house of the week. It’s an education. Bzzz.’ He lowered his voice now as they moved out of the room together. ‘Another thing is – if you’re down there – nobody’ll be trying to kick your teeth in. I’m serious, Doc. You’ll have to watch it now. If they can’t frighten you out, they’ll try to frame you. Bzzz. So watch it closely. And if I don’t see you tonight, I might see you tomorrow – eh?’
‘You easily might, Buzzy. And thank you for everything.’
Outside his work – and especially at times like this, when he was really waiting for something important to happen – Dr Salt was anything but a methodical man. He kept lighting his pipe and then letting it go out again. He looked at several suitcases in his bedroom, then wandered back into the sitting room, carrying the smallest of them. Realizing that he ought to have left it in the bedroom, to be packed there, he dropped it on the floor. Then he looked at some books – on a pile of those he intended to keep – and chose two of them and put them into the suitcase. Not long after that he drifted towards the telephone, picked up the receiver and then put it down again, looked in the directory for Alicia’s Boutique and dialled its number.
‘Mrs Marton, please. Dr Salt here . . . Oh – Alice – how are you? . . . Good, good. . . . Are you still thinking about starting a branch boutique swindle in Hemton? . . . Well, I might have just the right girl for you . . . No, not over the phone, I think. There are things I have to explain. Why don’t you join me for a drink in the Cocktail Bar – it must have a Cocktail Bar – of the what’s-it – Beverly-Astoria, that place that’s just been opened? About seven – um? . . . Good, very good . . . What am I up to? Oh – just playing God. ’Bye.’
Absent-mindedly he returned to the bedroom, wondered why he was there, then collected pyjamas, a dressing gown and slippers, took them into the sitting room and dropped them into the suitcase. After looking at his watch, he went into the kitchen, examined what was left on its shelves and in the refrigerator, took down and opened a tin, French and good, of onion soup, and spooned it out into a saucepan to heat it. He cut a slice of bread for toast, and found all that was left of his parmesan cheese. Two oranges – and he hadn’t anything else – would have to complete the meal, such as it would be. Then he drank a little neat whisky and stirred the soup. For the first time he felt rather glad he had accepted Buzzy’s invitation to enjoy the Jet Age Hospitality of the Beverly-Astoria.
2
‘Oh – then you’re not here for either the books or the records.’ Dr Salt was addressing his first caller of the afternoon.
‘Not me. My card.’ He was a tall thin man who wore a nasty green tie and a suit the colour of faded chocolate. He suggested a Dante half ruined by too many late nights, too much whisky and not enough money, and was not an appealing figure. Above some address in Birmingham, his card read: Herbert X. Coleman – Confidential Investigations.
‘What’s the X. for?’ Dr Salt was genuinely interested.
‘Just a front – part of the build-up. You’re Herbert Coleman – who cares – who remembers? But Herbert X. Coleman – wow! Even the wife calls me Herbert X. now.’
‘Good for her! But I don’t want any confidential investigations, Mr Coleman.’
‘Do you mind, Dr Salt?’ He was offended. ‘I don’t go asking for clients on doorsteps. I’m not looking for business. Just wanted to have a little chat – in comfort and not where everybody might see us and hear us, don’t you think?’
‘I’m not sure I do. But come in.’
‘Mind if I sit here?’ said Mr Coleman, now near the suitcase. ‘Packing – eh? Clearing out?’
‘I’m moving into the Beverly-Astoria for a night or two.’
‘Any particular reason, Dr Salt?’
‘Yes, it isn’t costing me anything. And I’m curious. Jet Age Hospitality.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘You don’t have to. Or do you, Mr Coleman? Perhaps you already have a client here in Birkden.’
Instead of replying, Coleman stared hard at him. Dr Salt was a good starer himself. So they both stared.
‘About this Noreen Wilks murder,’ said Coleman. ‘I have a little idea of my own that ought to interest you. Now you say the boy didn’t do it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s going around. Now my idea is this. You did it.’
‘I did?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, to begin with, if I’d done it I wouldn’t have insisted that the girl wasn’t missing but dead and then have found the body for the police – would I?’
‘Why not? It’s happened before. Say you’re really a psychopath. You’ve done a girl in – a patient, too. You’re going away and nobody knows about it. That won’t do. So you insist that the girl didn’t leave town but is lying dead somewhere, and, as there isn’t much time, you lead the police straight to the body. Then when they say the boy must have done it, you won’t have that – it’s your job, not his—’
‘And what do I do next? Give myself up? Confess?’
‘Probably not. Depends how far gone you are.’
‘And how far gone am I?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Oh – come on. Why stop now?’ Dr Salt paused, realizing that the most withering irony had no effect on Herbert X. Coleman. ‘You can do better than that.’
‘I can try. I’d say there won’t be any giving yourself up and confessing. The murder’s out, that’s enough. You’ll prove the boy didn’t do it – and that’ll satisfy you. Then you’ll go, quite happy, after celebrating at the Beverly-Astoria. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing – except it’s all balls.’
‘Could be. But one or two people round here might buy it. Then – when do you leave? You might be weeks – helping them with their inquiries, as they say.’
‘I see,’ said Dr Salt, looking hard at him. ‘I began to think you were a complete crackpot. But you’re not, are you?’ There was somebody at the door. ‘That must be either for books or records. So now I’m busy, Mr Coleman.’
‘Thanks for your time, Dr Salt. I’ll be seeing you.’
‘I hope not. Good afternoon.’
3
Dr Salt followed the youth who had taken his suitcase – a youth with a thick Birmingham accent but wearing a uniform originally designed for Hungarian bandsmen about 1908 – and they arrived at the lifts. One was down and wide open. A middle
-aged couple, looking indignant, were waiting inside. The youth pressed the number ten, which lit itself up. ‘All automatic – see?’ he announced proudly to all three of them.
‘I dare say,’ said the indignant man. ‘But when does it start?’
‘Doors have to shut first.’
‘I know that – but when?’
‘You can always close ’em yourself,’ said the youth. ‘You press this.’ He pressed it. Nothing happened.
‘Now then – what?’ And she sounded more indignant than her husband.
The youth pressed the same button and then tried lighting up numbers eleven and twelve, in the hope of making something happen. Nothing did until a short fat woman, carrying two hat boxes, tried to enter. At once the doors came to life in a sinister fashion and smartly caught her between them. She gave a shriek; Dr Salt tugged at one door, the youth at the other; the woman pushed her way in, ramming the hat boxes against the indignant couple; and the lift started.
‘What floor?’ the youth asked, ready for more pressing and lighting up.
‘Second – and I wish I’d never bothered with this thing.’
‘It’s what the Young Executive demands,’ said Dr Salt.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Neither do I. But here you are. Now – watch those doors.’
The doors parted an inch or two and then trembled, as if they were begging the short fat woman to come and play. ‘Well, make your mind up,’ she told them. They did, and she charged out, but only just in time, nearly leaving a hat box behind. The indignant couple wanted the sixth floor but the lift preferred the seventh, so they hurried out to walk down. Then the doors sulked again. The youth did more pressing. Fortunately another 1908 Hungarian bandsman arrived, and in trying to nip him the doors had to close. The lift went up and apparently reached ten, but the doors were not co-operating. Tired of them by this time, Dr Salt gave the nearest one a kick. This opened them at once.
On their way to 1012 the youth noticed the old black bag Dr Salt had insisted on carrying himself. ‘You a doctor?’ he asked.
‘I am. But I’m not here professionally.’
‘Maybe not,’ said the youth darkly. ‘But if you ask me there’s a woman on the next floor going to need one soon. This is it – 1012.’
The sitting room looked so new it might have been in a shop window. And not a particularly large window. It was a very small room, and there was space for a television set and a radio only because the two armchairs and the sofa seemed to have been designed for midgets. It was like a sitting room in science fiction – say, about a.d. 2250, in a block of flats two miles high, with the world population perhaps at 32,000,000,000. Dr Salt detested it at once. The bedroom and bathroom were better, and he gave the youth, who was fussing around and behaving as if the solitary suitcase was really three cabin trunks, half a crown instead of the shilling he had mentally promised him.
Left to himself he went prowling around, like an animal moved into a new cage. His windows offered him what he had already been told was ‘a breath-taking view’ of Birkden, but he found he could breathe quite easily as he stared out and down, nothing in sight being worth looking at. Hanging in the bedroom was a bad water-colour of Fountains Abbey, and in the sitting room was a guitar-bottle-newspaper mess painted by somebody who had once seen a postcard of an early Braque. He switched on the television set, which, after making a noisy protest, showed him a number of dazzling lines moving up and down the screen. So he turned it off, unpacked his suitcase, took his sponge-bag into the bathroom. There was no toilet paper.
He looked both in the bedroom and the sitting room for a bell to summon the chambermaid. But progress and the demands of young executives and trend-setters had left such bells far behind. Their place had been taken by the telephone, which proved to have a most elaborate dialling system, turning him into a switchboard operator; and an equally elaborate directory of services that seemed to include everything except any mention of chambermaids and toilet paper. He dialled the Op., but found himself talking to Valet Serv., tried again and got through to Sten & Copying Serv., finally reached Op. and told her he had no toilet paper. She said she would put him through to the Housekeeper, and after some delay, during which he heard an angry man shouting: ‘Charlie said Tuesday? Charlie’s always saying Tuesday,’ he was able to speak to some remote gentlewoman, who promised faintly to provide him with toilet paper. It arrived fifty minutes later.
Meanwhile, for want of something better to do, he took a bath. The bath itself was long, wide and rather low, unsuitable for reading, so he abandoned Tomlinson’s Tidemarks, one of the two books he had brought, did some sketchy soaping and sponging, and then, for no reason at all, thought about a man called Hibberson he hadn’t seen for ten years. Then it was time to get out. And this, he saw at once, could be tricky. He was a heavy man – even heavier than he looked – and the bath was slippery. There was nothing for his right hand to grip or rest on, and a one-handed job, with his left hand slipping along the edge, was impossible. However, about eighteen inches above the bath on the wall was a fitting that had a recessed soap dish and a handle above it for people like him to use. So he gave a push with his left hand and stretched to grab the handle with his right, and he had pulled himself half out of the bath when the whole fitting came out of the wall, a shower of plaster with it. He felt he might have broken his neck, and, as it was, he had given his knee a nasty knock. After hurling the wretched fitting across the room, he managed somehow to get himself out of the bath, and then, wrapping a towel round his middle, he went padding out, wet and furious, to the telephone to call the manager. What he got was Trav. & Trans. Bureau.
When the management finally arrived, it was represented by a young man with a long falling-away face who was wearing a black coat too large for him. ‘I am the assistant manager, sir. Mr Mallini is out at the moment. What can I do for you, sir?’
‘Come and look at this,’ said Dr Salt, who was dry now and in a dressing gown, bought in Kowloon ten years before and well past its best. He pointed at the hole in the bathroom wall. He pointed at the fitting and at the plaster both inside and outside the bath.
The young man, who looked frightened, made a tuttering noise. ‘How did this happen, sir?’
‘It came out of the wall as soon as I tried to make use of it. Gave my knee a hell of a knock. Look!’
The young man tut-tutted again. ‘If you’d like me to call a doctor, sir—’ he began.
‘I am a doctor. Who built this hotel? A women’s magazine? Jet Age Hospitality!’
‘Pardon?’
‘Never mind.’
‘I’m very sorry indeed, sir, this has happened. If there’s anything we can do—’
He was wriggling inside the black coat, which had been designed for it, and he looked so like a terrified sheep that Dr Salt hadn’t the heart to be bad-tempered any longer. ‘No – forget it. And off you go. It’s time I got dressed.’
When he went down to the main floor it was still too early for his appointment with Alice Marton in the Cocktail Bar, but he felt that he needed a drink. On his way to it he noticed a tall thin man talking at the reception desk. It was Herbert X. Coleman, apparently still engaged in confidential investigations.
4
He saw her approaching the bar and went forward to meet her. ‘Hello, Alice. You’re looking healthy, prosperous and fine.’
‘Thank you, dear. I’d return the compliment, but I can’t see how you’re looking. Very dim, isn’t it?’
‘It’s probably what the Young Executive wants. There’s a table free in the corner. Are you still drinking gin and Campari?’
After he had ordered their drinks, she said: ‘Let’s talk business first, Salt dear. Who’s this girl you’re wishing on me? Not some sweet little thing you’ve been amusing yourself with, I hope. I never trust a man’s judgement – not even yours – if sex is mixed up in it.’
‘Nothing like that, Alice. I’ve never spe
nt two minutes alone with this girl. And, as far as I can gather, she’s just fallen violently in love with a young man I know, Alan Culworth, who teaches physics at the university. And that’s the point. She’s lost – or will shortly lose – her present job, and I’ll be partly responsible for that. They’ll want to marry soon – and I don’t suppose he has much of a salary yet – and running your Hemton boutique would be just right for her.’
‘Well, I’m looking for somebody, as you know. But don’t forget, darling, I’m not a soft-hearted doctor – and you know very well you’re just a lot of warm mush inside – but a tough business woman. So stop telling me how nice and convenient it would be for her and her boy friend. What has she got to offer me and the job?’
‘Rather a lot, I’d say. But you’ve probably run into her. Perhaps at the Fabrics Club – if you ever go there. Her name’s Jill Frinton—’
‘Now – wait a minute. A tallish, dark girl, rather smart – isn’t she? But somebody told me she was the girl friend of one of the Fabrics’ directors—’
‘She was but isn’t now. My dear Alice, do I have to explain all over again—’
‘No – shut up! I want to think.’
Left to sip his whisky and water in silence, Dr Salt began to listen to a voice that he felt he had heard before. It was coming from the opposite corner of the room, the one nearer the entrance, but it was high, nervous, rather loud, so not hard to hear above other more subdued voices and the idiot music that was being pumped into the room. He half rose to stare across, saw a young man and a girl sitting at that table, and then concentrated on the girl. And as he sank down again he awarded himself a little nod.
‘When you’ve finished bobbing about, Salt darling,’ said Alice, ‘I’ll tell you what’s in my mind. Unless, of course, you’ve lost interest and would rather join your friends over there.’
‘They aren’t my friends, I haven’t lost interest, and drop the sarcasm – it doesn’t suit you and you have to work too hard at it. Now what about Jill Frinton?’
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