‘Has the unyielding Bowser a soft spot for Merton?’
Oates was nettled. ‘I thought of that at once, naturally,’ he said acidly, ‘but the evidence is all the other way. One could even suspect Bowser of having a grudge against the chap. Merton made a complaint about him just before the crash. It was a stupid, petty quarrel—something about who should say ‘Good morning’ first, member or club servant? Merton is like that, very self important and a born bully. Bowser is a graceless, taciturn old chap, but I swear he’s speaking the truth. He hasn’t seen Merton this afternoon.’
Mr Campion glanced round the spacious room, its walls lined with cue-racks and an occasional bookcase.
‘All of which leaves us with the lame marker, I take it,’ he ventured.
‘The perishing little fool!’ The Superintendent exploded. ‘He isn’t helping. He’s gone to pieces and is trying to say he hasn’t been here this afternoon. He lives in the mews at the back of the building, and he’s trying to say he played hooky after lunch today—says he thought no one would be in to play. Actually anyone can see what did happen. He dropped in, found Fenderson didn’t want a game, and went out again very sensibly. Now he doesn’t want to appear as the last man to see the poor chap alive. I’ve told him he’s doing himself no good by lying. Hang it all. Bowser saw him.’
‘And so…?’
‘And so there must be another way into this room, but I’m damned if I see it.’ The Superintendent stalked over to the windows again and Campion stood watching him.
‘I’d like a word with Bowser,’ he murmured at last.
‘Have it. Have it by all means.’ Oates was exasperated. ‘I’ve put him through it very thoroughly. You’ll never shake him.’
Campion said nothing, but waited until the doorkeeper came in a few minutes later, stalking gravely behind the sergeant who had been sent to fetch him. Bowser was a typical man of trust, a little shaky now and in his seventies, but still an imposing figure with a wooden expression on a proud old face, chiefly remarkable for its firm mouth and bristling white eyebrows. He glowered at Campion and did not speak, but at the first question a faint smile softened his lips.
‘How many times have I seen Chetty come into the club in my life, sir? Why, I shouldn’t like to say—several thousand, must be.’
‘Has he always been lame?’
‘Why yes, sir. It’s a deformity of the hip he’s had all his life. He couldn’t have done this, sir, any more than I could—neither of us has the strength.’
‘I see.’ Mr Campion went over to a bookcase at the far end of the long room and came back presently with something in his hand.
‘Mr Bowser,’ he said slowly, ‘look at this. I suggest to you that it is a photograph of the man you really saw come in and go out of the club this afternoon when Mr Fenderson was already here.’
The old man’s hand shook so violently that he could scarcely take the sheet, but he seized it at last and with an effort held it steady. He stared at it for a long time before returning it.
‘No sir,’ he said firmly, ‘that face is unknown to me. Chetty came in and went out. No one else, and that’s the truth, sir.’
‘I believe you think it is, Bowser.’ Mr Campion spoke gently and his lean face wore a curious expression in which pity predominated. ‘Here’s your unseen door, Superintendent,’ he spoke softly. Oates snatched the paper and turned it over.
‘Good God! What’s this?’ he demanded. ‘It’s a blank brown page—from the back of a book, isn’t it?’
Mr Campion met his eyes.
‘Bowser has just told us it’s a face he doesn’t know,’ he murmured. ‘You see, Oates, Bowser doesn’t recognise faces, he recognises voices. That’s why he glares until people speak. Bowser didn’t see Chetty this afternoon, he heard his very distinctive step—a step which Merton could imitate very easily. I fancy you’ll find that when there was that little unpleasantness earlier in the year, Merton guessed something which no one else in the club has known. When did it come on, Bowser?’
The old man stood trembling before them.
‘I—I didn’t want to have to retire from the club, sir,’ he blurted out pathetically. ‘I knew everyone’s voice. I could still do my work. It’s only got really bad in the last six months—my daughter comes and fetches me home at night. It was Chetty’s step, sir, and I knew he could never have done it.’
‘Blind!’ The word escaped the Superintendent huskily. ‘Good Lord! Campion, how did you know?’
It was some time before Mr Campion could be prevailed upon to tell him, and when he did he was slightly diffident.
‘When I first passed through the hall,’ he said, ‘Bowser glared at me as I told you, but as I came upstairs I heard him say to a constable: ‘Another detective, I suppose?”.’
He paused, and his smile was engaging as he flicked an imaginary speck from an immaculate sleeve.
‘I wondered then if there was something queer about his eyesight—no offence, of course, no offence in the world.’
Cheese
Ethel Lina White
Ethel Lina White (1876–1944) was born in Abergavenny, and worked in the Ministry of Pensions before deciding to concentrate on writing fiction. She died in Chiswick just six years after her novel The Wheel Spins was transformed into The Lady Vanishes, a light-hearted thriller which became one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most popular films. Two years after her death, her book Some Must Watch became another highly successful movie, The Spiral Staircase, this time directed by Robert Siodmak.
White’s speciality was ‘woman in jeopardy’ suspense fiction, and her ability to evoke a mood of mounting fear has seldom been matched. Her short stories are little known and mostly hard to find, but ‘Cheese’ demonstrates her knack of involving the reader in the terror experienced by a woman who faces a cruel adversary, but proves strong and courageous enough to fight back.
***
This story begins with a murder. It ends with a mouse-trap.
The murder can be disposed of in a paragraph. An attractive girl, carefully reared and educated for a future which held only a twisted throat. At the end of seven months, an unsolved mystery and a reward of £500.
It is a long way from a murder to a mouse-trap—and one with no finger-posts; but the police knew every inch of the way. In spite of a prestige punctured by the press and public, they had solved the identity of the killer. There remained the problem of tracking this wary and treacherous rodent from his unknown sewer in the underworld into their trap.
They failed repeatedly for lack of the right bait.
And unexpectedly, one spring evening, the bait turned up in the person of a young girl.
Cheese.
***
Inspector Angus Duncan was alone in his office when her message was brought up. He was a red-haired Scot, handsome in a dour fashion, with the chin of a prize-fighter and keen blue eyes.
He nodded.
‘I’ll see her.’
It was between the lights. River, government offices and factories were all deeply dyed with the blue stain of dusk. Even in the city, the lilac bushes showed green tips and an occasional crocus cropped through the grass of the public-gardens, like strewn orange-peel. The evening star was a jewel in the pale green sky.
Duncan was impervious to the romance of the hour. He knew that twilight was but the prelude to night and that darkness was a shield for crime.
He looked up sharply when his visitor was admitted. She was young and flower-faced—her faint freckles already fading away into pallor. Her black suit was shabby, but her hat was garnished for the spring with a cheap cowslip wreath.
As she raised her blue eyes, he saw that they still carried the memory of country sweets…Thereupon he looked at her more sharply for he knew that of all poses, innocence is easiest to counterfeit.
‘You say Roper sent you?’
he enquired.
‘Yes, Maggie Roper.’
He nodded. Maggie Roper—Sergeant Roper’s niece—was already shaping as a promising young Stores’ detective.
‘Where did you meet her?’
‘At the Girls’ Hostel where I’m staying.’
‘Your name?’
‘Jenny Morgan.’
‘From the country?’
‘Yes. But I’m up now for good.’
For good?…He wondered.
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s that?’ He looked at her mourning. ‘People all dead?’
She nodded. From the lightning sweep of her lashes, he knew that she had put in some rough work with a tear. It prejudiced him in her favour. His voice grew more genial as his lips relaxed.
‘Well, what’s it all about?’
She drew a letter from her bag.
‘I’m looking for work and I advertised in the paper. I got this answer. I’m to be companion-secretary to a lady, to travel with her and be treated as her daughter—if she likes me. I sent my photograph and my references and she’s fixed an appointment.’
‘When and where?’
‘The day after tomorrow, in the First Room in the National Gallery. But as she’s elderly, she is sending her nephew to drive me to her house.’
‘Where’s that?’
She looked troubled.
‘That’s what Maggie Roper is making the fuss about. First, she said I must see if Mrs Harper—that’s the lady’s name—had taken up my references. And then she insisted on ringing up the Ritz where the letter was written from. The address was printed, so it was bound to be genuine, wasn’t it?’
‘Was it? What happened then?’
‘They said no Mrs Harper had stayed there. But I’m sure it must be a mistake.’ Her voice trembled. ‘One must risk something to get such a good job.’
His face darkened. He was beginning to accept Jenny as the genuine article.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘have you had any experience of life?’
‘Well, I’ve always lived in the country with Auntie. But I’ve read all sorts of novels and the newspapers.’
‘Murders?’
‘Oh, I love those.’
He could tell by the note in her childish voice that she ate up the newspaper accounts merely as exciting fiction, without the slightest realisation that the printed page was grim fact. He could see the picture: a sheltered childhood passed amid green spongy meadows. She could hardly cull sophistication from clover and cows.
‘Did you read about the Bell murder?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Auntie wouldn’t let me.’ She added in the same breath, ‘Every word.’
‘Why did your aunt forbid you?’
‘She said it must be a specially bad one, because they’d left all the bad parts out of the paper.’
‘Well, didn’t you notice the fact that that poor girl—Emmeline Bell—a well-bred girl of about your own age, was lured to her death through answering a newspaper advertisement?’
‘I—I suppose so. But those things don’t happen to oneself.’
‘Why? What’s there to prevent your falling into a similar trap?’
‘I can’t explain. But if there was something wrong, I should know it.’
‘How? D’you expect a bell to ring or a red light to flash ‘Danger”?’
‘Of course not. But if you believe in right and wrong, surely there must be some warning.’
He looked sceptical. That innocence bore a lily in its hand, was to him a beautiful phrase and nothing more. His own position in the sorry scheme of affairs was, to him, proof positive of the official failure of guardian angels.
‘Let me see that letter, please,’ he said.
She studied his face anxiously as he read, but his expression remained inscrutable. Twisting her fingers in her suspense, she glanced around the room, noting vaguely the three telephones on the desk and the stacked files in the pigeon-holes. A Great Dane snored before the red-caked fire. She wanted to cross the room and pat him, but lacked the courage to stir from her place.
The room was warm, for the windows were opened only a couple of inches at the top. In view of Duncan’s weather-tanned colour, the fact struck her as odd.
Mercifully, the future is veiled. She had no inkling of the fateful part that Great Dane was to play in her own drama, nor was there anything to tell her that a closed window would have been a barrier between her and the yawning mouth of hell.
She started as Duncan spoke.
‘I want to hold this letter for a bit. Will you call about this time tomorrow? Meantime, I must impress upon you the need of utmost caution. Don’t take one step on your own. Should anything fresh crop up, ’phone me immediately. Here’s my number.’
When she had gone, Duncan walked to the window. The blue dusk had deepened into a darkness pricked with lights. Across the river, advertisement-signs wrote themselves intermittently in coloured beads.
He still glowed with the thrill of the hunter on the first spoor of the quarry. Although he had to await the report of the expert test, he was confident that the letter which he held had been penned by the murderer of poor ill-starred Emmeline Bell.
Then his elation vanished at a recollection of Jenny’s wistful face. In this city were scores of other girls, frail as windflowers too—blossom-sweet and country-raw—forced through economic pressure into positions fraught with deadly peril.
The darkness drew down overhead like a dark shadow pregnant with crime. And out from their holes and sewers stole the rats…
***
At last Duncan had the trap baited for his rat.
A young and pretty girl—ignorant and unprotected. Cheese.
When Jenny, punctual to the minute, entered his office, the following evening, he instantly appraised her as his prospective decoy. His first feeling was one of disappointment. Either she had shrunk in the night or her eyes had grown bigger. She looked such a frail scrap as she stared at him, her lips bitten to a thin line, that it seemed hopeless to credit her with the necessary nerve for his project.
‘Oh, please tell me it’s all perfectly right about that letter.’
‘Anything but right.’
For a moment, he thought she was about to faint. He wondered uneasily whether she had eaten that day. It was obvious from the keenness of her disappointment that she was at the end of her resources.
‘Are you sure?’ she insisted. ‘It’s—very important to me. Perhaps I’d better keep the appointment. If I didn’t like the look of things, I needn’t go on with it.’
‘I tell you, it’s not a genuine job,’ he repeated. ‘But I’ve something to put to you that is the goods. Would you like to have a shot at £500?’
Her flushed face, her eager eyes, her trembling lips, all answered him.
‘Yes, please,’ was all she said.
He searched for reassuring terms.
‘It’s like this. We’ve tested your letter and know it is written, from a bad motive, by an undesirable character.’
‘You mean a criminal?’ she asked quickly.
‘Um. His record is not good. We want to get hold of him.’
‘Then why don’t you?’
He suppressed a smile.
‘Because he doesn’t confide in us. But if you have the courage to keep your appointment tomorrow and let his messenger take you to the house of the suppositious Mrs Harper, I’ll guarantee it’s the hiding-place of the man we want. We get him—you get the reward. Question is—have you the nerve?’
She was silent. Presently she spoke in a small voice.
‘Will I be in great danger?’
‘None. I wouldn’t risk your safety for any consideration. From first to last, you’ll be under the protection of the Force.’<
br />
‘You mean I’ll be watched over by detectives in disguise?’
‘From the moment you enter the National Gallery, you’ll be covered doubly and trebly. You’ll be followed every step of the way and directly we’ve located the house, the place will be raided by the police.’
‘All the same, for a minute or so, just before you can get into the house, I’ll be alone with—him?’
‘The briefest interval. You’ll be safe at first. He’ll begin with overtures. Stall him off with questions. Don’t let him see you suspect—or show you’re frightened.’
Duncan frowned as he spoke. It was his duty to society to rid it of a dangerous pest and in order to do so, Jenny’s co-operation was vital. Yet, to his own surprise, he disliked the necessity in the case of this especial girl.
‘Remember we’ll be at hand,’ he said. ‘But if your nerve goes, just whistle and we’ll break cover immediately.’
‘Will you be there?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Not exactly in the foreground. But I’ll be there.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’ She smiled for the first time. ‘You laughed at me when I said there was something inside me which told me—things. But I just know I can trust you.’
‘Good.’ His voice was rough. ‘Wait a bit. You’ve been put to expense coming over here. This will cover your fares and so on.’
He thrust a note into her hand and hustled her out, protesting. It was a satisfaction to feel that she would eat that night. As he seated himself at his desk, preparatory to work, his frozen face was no index of the emotions raised by Jenny’s parting words.
Hitherto, he had thought of women merely as ‘skirts’. He had regarded a saucepan with an angry woman at the business end of it, merely as a weapon. For the first time he had a domestic vision of a country girl—creamy and fragrant as meadowsweet—in a nice womanly setting of saucepans.
***
Jenny experienced a thrill which was almost akin to exhilaration when she entered Victoria station, the following day. At the last moment, the place for meeting had been altered in a telegram from ‘Mrs Harper’.
Capital Crimes: London Mysteries Page 34
