Salt is Leaving

by J. B. Priestley

  ‘A pity in a way,’ she sighed. ‘Now I come to think of it, I’m more in the mood for fooling around. But, after all, it was your dinner that created the mood. And thank you, Dr Salt – it was lovely. And now I’ll go – a mousey type creeping around like a mouse.’ She got up.

  ‘No, Maggie,’ he told her quite sharply as he got up too. ‘There’s one thing wrong there.’

  ‘Oh dear – what?’

  ‘You’re not a mousey type.’

  Her pleasure at hearing this lasted until the lift, which she had to herself, brought her to the eighth floor. No chambermaids or waiters or guests could be seen along the corridor that led her to 806. Outside the door she hesitated, rehearsing what she had to say, feeling silly. She pressed the button and heard the buzzer inside. Nothing happened. Resisting an impulse to leave it at that and hurry away, she pressed again, longer this time. ‘Oh – for God’s sake!’ she heard a man saying. ‘Now what is it?’ Then he opened the door.

  He was a big, youngish man who was pulling a dressing gown round him, and his hair was rumpled, his colour high, his eyes rather bleary.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she began.

  ‘Wrong room,’ he told her.

  ‘Well, that’s the point. I’m in 906, you see, and I think that a parcel I’m expecting may have been delivered here by mistake.’

  ‘No parcel here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He was already closing the door.

  ‘Of course I am. ’Night.’

  And that was that. She decided against using a lift again, found the stairs and walked as fast as she could, in what she was certain must have looked a very suspicious manner, up to the tenth floor. But nobody was about. It was rather like wandering about an hotel in a dream. But then, on her way to 1012, she heard voices behind her. Two people must have just arrived by the lift. She stopped, took out her compact and looked at her reflected nose, to allow them to pass her. It was a nonsensical move really; any girl in her right mind would either have fixed her nose downstairs or would wait now until she reached her room; but of course it worked and the couple ignored her. They had, in fact, disappeared by the time she moved on again slowly. She had a moment’s panic when the door of 1012 didn’t seem to respond to the key Salt had given her, but then a reverse turn took her in. In her relief she slammed the door behind her. After switching on some lights, she remembered what Salt had said about the door and she made haste to unfasten it so that he could push it open. By this time, after all that dinner and drink and anxiety, she felt hot and rather sickish inside, so she went to the bathroom and drank some cold water that wasn’t cold and didn’t taste like water. Then she returned to the idiotic little sitting room, kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa, and not only waited for Salt but thought about him.

  3

  ‘We’ll have to talk very quietly, if you don’t mind,’ said Salt, speaking very quietly himself.

  ‘I don’t mind. But I can’t help wondering why. I mean – this is a sitting room – or it’s trying to be—’

  ‘I’m not thinking about that. Something quite different. By the way, there’s some whisky in my bag.’

  ‘No, thanks, not for me. What I need, after all that mysterious creeping around, is something for my tummy.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got something for your tummy too,’ he told her. And of course he had, being a doctor, and came back with something fizzy in a glass. She thanked him all the more warmly because he had attended to her before asking what had happened at 806.

  ‘I feel I ought to have managed it better,’ she said. ‘But he was so determined to get rid of me. He was also rather tight, rather rude and quite ready to be still ruder. He wasn’t prepared to be interested at all in female callers.’

  ‘Which suggests there was a girl in his room – um?’

  ‘That’s what I felt. Also, just as he opened the door I thought I heard a girl laugh. I never heard anything afterwards. I may have imagined the girl’s laugh. I’m afraid this doesn’t add up to very much. I certainly can’t prove he had a girl in there. Sorry, Salt.’

  ‘Not to worry. I may try something else shortly. In the meantime, we’ll just have to sit and wait and keep our voices down.’

  ‘I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing,’ she said. ‘But if you want to suggest you’re here by yourself, then why don’t we turn on the television or the radio? My voice wouldn’t be heard above it. Right?’

  ‘Right. Let’s try this radio.’ He fiddled with the set until there came out of it, booming and boring away, the voice of a man who was talking about railway trains. After a minute or two of this, he tried again and found some music. ‘It’s the Mozart clarinet quintet,’ he announced with some satisfaction. ‘Let’s stay with it – unless you have a very strong objection, Maggie. You’re not a music-hater, are you?’

  ‘You ought to know I’m not. I like it, even though I don’t know much about it.’

  ‘Listen to this, then. It’s a masterwork – a credit to the human race.’

  It was five minutes later when the human race began discrediting itself. The door, which Salt had left unlatched, was flung open, and a young woman, wearing a dressing gown and apparently not much else, came charging in, looking as if she were about to embrace Dr Salt with her dressing gown flung wide open. With only a few seconds’ interval, she was followed by a tall thin man who was holding a flashlight camera.

  ‘Go ahead, Coleman,’ said Dr Salt cheerfully. ‘Maggie, this is Herbert X. Coleman.’

  ‘Another sodding balls-up,’ cried the young woman bitterly as she stepped away from Dr Salt and wrapped the dressing gown around her. ‘This is the last time, Bert.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like me to take my clothes off,’ Maggie suggested sweetly.

  ‘If you did, dearie, then something ’ud go wrong with his bloody flashlight. My God – I’ll never learn.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Coleman. ‘So it didn’t work out. Not that I did anything wrong, but he was too smart for me, that’s all. It can happen.’

  ‘It’s always happening,’ the young woman said contemptuously. ‘But not with me any more.’ She looked at Maggie. ‘Sorry to have intruded, dearie. Nothing personal. Just business.’

  ‘Come on, Enid, and stop yapping. I must have telegraphed the punch somehow—’

  ‘You did, Coleman,’ said Dr Salt sharply. ‘And we’ll leave it at that. But try anything else and I’ll make you wish you’d never left Birmingham. Now clear off – and don’t frighten anybody in the corridor.’

  As the door closed behind them, Maggie switched off the radio. ‘I know it’s lovely music, but you can listen to it some other time. He was trying to frame you, wasn’t he? I’ve seen it on the movies—’

  ‘So has Herbert X. Coleman,’ said Dr Salt, grinning. ‘He’s the Birmingham model of a Hollywood private eye.’ No longer troubling to keep his voice down, he explained how Coleman had called on him early in the afternoon. ‘I guessed then he’d been brought here to run me into any kind of trouble. Then I spotted him down below, first, waiting for somebody, and then, later, talking to the girl. And that’s why I didn’t want us to be seen together and why I asked you to come up here first. They didn’t know you were here, of course. Which reminds me.’ He went to the telephone.

  ‘Now, then, where are we?’ He pulled a kind of miniature directory out of the base of the telephone. ‘This is all so modern and convenient they turn you into a switchboard operator to speak to anybody. This is it, I suppose? “To call another room, first dial 17.”’

  As soon as he had finished dialling and had waited a moment, the receiver produced some sort of screech that even Maggie could hear. ‘What did you say?’ he asked the screecher. He listened and then, without speaking again, put down the receiver and gave Maggie a triumphant nod.

  ‘That’s all,’ he told her. ‘I can run you home now, Maggie. And thank you for being so patient and good.’

  ‘Do you mean you’ve finished now?�
��

  ‘For tonight, anyhow. I don’t want you to go, but I think you ought just in case our friend Coleman thinks of something that might involve you. Ready?’

  As they went down in the lift, she asked him if he had definitely decided to return to his flat in the morning.

  ‘Certainly. I’ve a lot of little things to do. But I may accept Buzzy’s invitation to spend the evening at his club. Would you like to come and lend me a hand as soon as you’re through at the shop? Saturday’s a busy day, I imagine. I can’t fetch you because I’ll no longer have my car. I’m selling it tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Alan can run me down on his way to Jill.’ As they left the lift, she said, ‘What about dinner tomorrow night?’

  ‘A very good question, Maggie. We’ll eat at home, eh? No Saturday night table-grabbing. We’ll be up late, so we might risk chump chops and then Welsh rarebit. All right?’

  ‘Lovely. Do you want me to bring anything?’

  ‘No, my dear. I’ll pop out fairly early in the morning. Now, just hang on and I’ll find the car.’

  As usual they said nothing while he was driving. However, when they stopped outside the house Maggie couldn’t leave him without saying something. ‘I’ve been wondering and wondering all the way here. And I can’t decide if I’m just stupid or you’re being fantastic. You’ve spent tonight playing these games with Herbert X. Thing – Coleman – and those people in 806, and you’re talking about selling your car tomorrow, buying chops and stuff, going to Buzzy’s club – and yet at the same time you’re defying the police and everybody and talking as if you’ll prove young Donnington didn’t kill Noreen Wilks.’

  ‘I am, yes. Quite right, Maggie.’

  ‘But if you mean it – then when – and how?’

  ‘Better not stay here. Excuse me.’ He leant across and opened the door for her.

  ‘Oh – you’re just being maddening now, Salt—’

  ‘I’m not trying to be. When? I’d say tomorrow night or Sunday night. How? Well, I think I know now who killed Noreen Wilks – and why. But let’s leave it. See you early tomorrow evening, Maggie. Goodnight, my dear.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday Night

  1

  They had just finished washing up the dinner things when the tele­phone rang. Salt was back after a few moments. ‘That was Buzzy. I asked him earlier to ring me – if necessary. We’ll go along to the Club now.’

  ‘Not until I’ve changed,’ Maggie told him firmly. ‘Did you notice I arrived carrying a small suitcase?’

  ‘I did, though, of course, I didn’t know what was in it. Daren’t even risk a guess. But you don’t need to change to visit Buzzy.’

  ‘I need to change for my own sake. But I promise not to be long. And please remember, Salt, it’s raining, it’s Saturday night, and we must have a taxi – if it’s possible to find one.’

  ‘Off you go, girl. I’ll have an old chum of mine waiting to take us to Buzzy’s long before you’re ready.’

  And so he had, to her surprise. Often he seemed so vague that she tended to forget he was capable of all manner of clever little arrangements. Though she guessed what Buzzy’s would be like, she couldn’t help feeling in the taxi that she was going to a party. She slipped an arm through his and squeezed it, and tried some gay chatter. But though he nodded and smiled, he wasn’t really responsive.

  ‘What’s the matter? The rain? The night? Buzzy’s?’

  ‘Probably they come into it, Maggie. I’ve never liked wet Saturday nights, and I don’t think I’ll enjoy Buzzy’s. But it’s chiefly something else. No thought in it. Just a feeling. One part of intuitive apprehension to two parts of melancholy. Sorry!’

  ‘It’s the Noreen Wilks thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes – that and the poor bedevilled human race. And now I’m playing Buddha, not God. I’d better shut up.’

  Then they were climbing the stairs that led to Buzzy’s peculiar office, long and narrow and with the window down one side, high above the dancing floor. Buzzy himself, wearing a vast dinner jacket, was smoking a cigar and drinking whisky. He was delighted to see them.

  ‘Miss Culworth – Dr Salt – welcome to the big monkey-house! Bzzz. Look at ’em down there. Did you ever see such a bloody spectacle? Two to three hundred of ’em twisting their guts out – an’ paying good money to do it – an’ not one smiling face. Bzzz. That’s progress, that is – affluence – technology – welfare—’

  ‘She’s still here, Buzzy?’ said Dr Salt.

  ‘Of course. But not on the floor. My boys have her taped. Bzzz. What are you drinking? How about something fancy, Miss Culworth? Now you take your pick.’ He waved at the long table and its array of bottles. ‘I’ve got the lot there. Bzzz.’

  Maggie said she would have some Cointreau, and as there really wasn’t room for Buzzy to act as barman at that table, Dr Salt attended to her before giving himself some whisky. She perched on a narrow sofa alongside the window, and she stared down, fascinated, at the dancers.

  ‘Coloured lights now, Buzzy,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘It’s really quite pretty. Salt, come and look.’

  ‘They get the lot down there, same as we do up here,’ said Buzzy. ‘Only what they get’s different. Bzzz. Lights all colours. Sprung floor. Five-piece band on Fridays and Saturdays – costs the earth. All for long-haired young twerps an’ their scrawny little birds. Bzzz.’

  ‘And their money, Buzzy, don’t forget,’ said Dr Salt.

  ‘No, Doc, I don’t make my real money here. That comes out of the betting shops, where they change their money for bits of paper. Bzzz.’

  ‘Why bother about this place, then?’

  ‘Bother? I love it, Doc. Just sitting here gives me something to do with my evenings. Bzzz. Besides, it’s prestige, Doc. I’m Buzzy Duffield of Buzzy’s Club. I’m one of Birkden’s Trend-setters. That reminds me. How was the Beverly-Astoria?’

  ‘Oh – I ought to have thanked you for last night, Buzzy. Now I do. But now I realize I’m old-fashioned. I like small out-of-date hotels where you ring a bell and somebody answers it, and you haven’t to operate a switchboard to ask for somebody and anything.’ Dr Salt was ready to go on, but now he was interrupted.

  ‘That’s right, Super,’ said Buzzy, looking up. ‘Don’t knock. No cissy stuff.’

  ‘This might be a raid,’ said Superintendent Hurst, who was standing in the doorway, shaking a wet mackintosh, and looking rather grim. ‘’Evening, Miss Culworth – Dr Salt.’

  ‘Go on. Bzzz. We don’t break the law here, Super. I know too much.’

  ‘No, you only think you do, Buzzy. People break the law all the time – especially in places like this – and if we wanted to catch them, we could. We nearly did tonight – yes, here. But I said No. I’d do it my way.’

  ‘Now what’s this about? No, let me think. Bzzz. It hurts, but it’s good for me. Otherwise, the stupid twerps I have to deal with, I’d be stupid for ever. Bzzz. All right. I’ve thought. It’s not me you’re interested in. It’s Doc Salt here. Right? An’ you wouldn’t know he was here if you hadn’t put a tail on him. See how it is, Doc? Bzzz. Try to help the police and they tail you. Disgusting!’

  ‘Either keep quiet or clear out, Buzzy,’ Hurst began.

  ‘Since when? This is my office, Super. Who you working for – Hitler or Stalin?’

  ‘Not funny. Turn it off, Buzzy. I’m here to talk to Dr Salt, for his own good, so if you’re a friend of his, you’ll let me get on with it. Now, Dr Salt, what do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘People seem to have been asking me that for days,’ said Dr Salt mildly. ‘Now let me see. This afternoon I sold my car—’

  ‘All right,’ Hurst cut in roughly. ‘If you’re going to take that line, then you’d better come along with me and make a statement.’

  ‘Certainly not. Unless, of course, you’re thinking of putting me under arrest.’

  Salt had spoken quite gently, but Maggie knew him sufficiently well no
w to realize that he was nearly as angry as the superintendent seemed to be. She looked from one man to the other, feeling rather frightened. The hard beat of the band below was like a pulse, steady but throbbing with anger.

  After a pause, Hurst said, ‘You think that’s impossible, don’t you?’

  Salt offered him a shrug. ‘I’ve stopped thinking anything’s impossible, Superintendent.’

  ‘You did me a good turn the night before last.’ Hurst hesitated. ‘So I didn’t agree you ought to be brought in to make a statement.’

  Salt stared at him. ‘A statement about what?’

  ‘You’re concealing evidence in a murder case.’

  ‘I must be rather stupid tonight,’ Salt told him quite pleasantly. ‘I find this very confusing. I thought you people believed the case was closed. And I was unpopular because I said it wasn’t. Now you talk about concealing evidence as if I wanted to close the case and you wanted to keep it open. I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘Yes, you do. And you’re meddling in police work, Dr Salt.’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like Colonel Ringwood.’

  This brought a loud guffaw from Buzzy.

  ‘Now let’s stop this banter and backchat,’ said Hurst, raising his voice. ‘You’ve already announced you have evidence that Derek Donnington didn’t kill the Wilks girl.’

  ‘Have I? What is it?’

  ‘How the hell do I know?’

  ‘Well, how the hell do you know I have any such evidence, Superintendent?’

  ‘Let’s stop being funny, shall we? This is serious. It could be very serious for you, Dr Salt.’

  ‘Very well.’ And Maggie knew as soon as he had said this that Salt was now just as angry as the superintendent, but in a different way, cold and scornful.

  ‘Now I’ll talk seriously, Superintendent. If I hadn’t planned to leave Birkden – on Monday, I hope – I’d ask in public, loud and clear, why the Birkden police think they’re working for United Fabrics. No, no – don’t interrupt now – I’m still serious, and I haven’t finished. You got that information about my having evidence from Aricson. Has he been told not to meddle in police work? Has Sir Arnold Donnington been told? No, only Dr Salt, who meddled and meddled until he found that girl’s body, and who’s meddling on until he discovers who killed her.’