by Joyce Porter
A voice inside told her to come in and she opened the door. ‘Hello, Welks, old fish!’ she chortled. ‘Top of the morning to you.’
‘Constance, my beloved!’ Mr Welks dropped his pocket mirror and comb on to the desk and came rushing across to kiss the Hon. Con affectionately – but chastely – on both cheeks. ‘How heavenly to see you!’ He escorted her to a chair upholstered in pink leather. ‘You’re staying to luncheon of course, darling?’
The Hon. Con, remembering her last meal at the Martyr’s Head, thought not. ‘Got to watch the old waist line,’ she apologized and gave her spare tyre a few resounding slaps to prove her point.
Mr Welks nodded his head understandingly. ‘ Yes, one can see that, darling,’ he agreed,‘but, you know, a really good foundation garment would make all the difference. I do wish I could persuade you to go and see my corset lady in London. She’d do absolute wonders for you and she’s only the tiniest bit on the expensive side. And, oh, Constance, my angel’ – he flung his hands up in horror – ‘what have you been doing to your hair?’
‘Nothing,’ said the Hon. Con with a sheepish grin.
‘One can see that, too, darling! You really oughn’t to wear it so short, you know. With your face …’
‘Look, Welks, old chap,’ the Hon. Con broke in good-humouredly, ‘I haven’t come here to talk about my face. Or yours,’ she added quickly as Mr Welks smoothed down his eyebrows with an expertly damped finger. ‘I want some information.’
Mr Welks flounced petulantly back behind his desk and sat down. ‘Oh well, suit yourself, Constance! I just know that, if only you’d put yourself unreservedly in my hands, I could make you the most striking looking woman in Totterbridge.’ He screwed his eyes up. ‘Somehow I picture you in electric blue. You’d have to have your hair high-lighted, of course, and …’
‘Smith,’ said the Hon. Con firmly. ‘You had a fellow called Smith staying here.’
Mr Welks squeaked skittishly. ‘Darling, we have thousands of people called Smith staying here! It’s one of the occupational hazards of being an hotelier. And all these grotty old Mr Smiths are inevitably accompanied by even grottier Mrs Smiths! Ugh’ – he shuddered and patted his perm for comfort – ‘and double beds! They always ask for double beds!’
The Hon. Con was sympathetic. ‘Damned unhygienic,’ she agreed. ‘But I think the chap I’m after was staying here by himself.’
‘Oh?’ Mr Welks perked up a bit. ‘A single gentleman? Well, I ought to remember him, oughtn’t I? One always makes a point of being extra attentive to single gentlemen.’ He rolled his eyes.‘One has met some simply lovely people that way.’
‘Dunno if you’d call my Mr Smith a lovely person,’ rumbled the Hon. Con. ‘Still, he must have stopped here absolutely ages so you should remember him. I think he probably came round about the fourteenth of April and left about the twentieth of last month.’
‘Oh, him!’ Mr Welks flopped dramatically back in his chair to illustrate his disappointment. ‘That dreary little man! Well, I’m sorry, darling, but if you want the dirt on him, you’re going to have to apply elsewhere.’ He got his nail file out and flicked away delicately at the middle finger of his left hand. ‘I don’t think I squeezed more than a couple of words out of him all the time he was here. He was like an old sheep! Do you know he never even made a single complaint. Such forbearance is positively moronic. It isn’t as though we hadn’t given him grounds a-plenty for a bit of bitching. He was in No 26 for a start and …’
‘All I want is his home address,’ said the Hon. Con mildly. ‘Think you could let me have a peep at your register?’
‘His home address?’ repeated Mr Welks, suddenly suspicious. ‘What do you want that for?’
‘I just want to get in touch with him, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s in connection with some enquiries I’m making.’
‘Ah – that boy who killed himself at the Kama Sutra? Well, don’t look so grim, darling! It’s not supposed to be a deadly secret, is it? And, really, Constance my love, you ought to be dreadfully careful at your age not to keep pulling your face into such unattractive lines! I never do!’ Mr Welks picked up his pocket mirror and smiled into it. ‘See what a difference a pleasant expression makes? Of course, I always use a really good skin cream as well.’
‘Rodney Burberry – that’s the lad in the Kama Sutra – he used to work for this Mr Smith,’ explained the Hon. Con.
Mr Welks was no longer interested. He continued to examine his reflection. ‘ Did he really, dear?’
‘That’s why I’d like to have a word with him and that’s why I’d be obliged if you could let me have his address.’
Mr Welks tore himself away with a sigh. ‘Oh well, seeing it’s for you, ducky!’ He picked up his house phone and dialled a couple of numbers. ‘ Mr Baxter? Ah, could you be a honey and find me the address of that mousy little man called Smith? The one you incarcerated in No 26, you wicked boy!’ Mr Welks winked roguishly at the Hon. Con and reached for a pencil. He spoke into the phone again. ‘ Yes, I’m still here. Where did you think I was? Oooh … cheeky!’ He giggled happily. ‘Now, come on and stop messing about! …’ He wrote something down on the telephone pad. ‘Is that all? … You’re sure you’ve got the right Smith? … Yes … Yes … that’s the one. Oh well, thank you dear boy. A bientôt!’ He put the phone down and shrugged his shoulders at the Hon. Con. ‘Well, we must rejoice that he doesn’t owe you any money, Constance, my love.’
‘Didn’t he leave an address?’
‘Oh yes, he left an address all right. It isn’t quite No 10, High Street, London, but it’s not far off.’ He read from the telephone pad. ‘122 Stocker Crescent, Liverpool.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘In your boots, dear, I’d check it very carefully before I went off into the night to see him. I have a feeling in my bones that it’s a mite fishy.’
‘Is it?’ The Hon. Con accepted the piece of paper that Mr Welks held out. ‘Why?’
Mr Welks shrugged his shoulders again. ‘One does perhaps tend to become over suspicious,’ he admitted, ‘but doesn’t it strike you as a trifle odd? Me, I just don’t see this Smith man basking in a rough and tough milieu like hairy old Liverpool. I would have guessed somewhere softer and more southern, but I could be wrong.’
‘Haven’t met the fellow myself,’ said the Hon. Con, ‘so I can’t really judge.’
‘No, but the address itself looks frightfully phoney to me. Liverpool is a simply enormous town, so one hears.’ Mr Welks preened himself a little. ‘I’m proud to say I’ve never dipped toe in the place myself, but one has seen pictures and things on the telly. 122 Stocker Crescent looks so bare, don’t you think?’
‘You reckon there ought to be a postal number or something?’
‘Or the name of a district, perhaps. It’s just a suggestion. One doesn’t care to think of you slogging all the way to Liverpool on a wild goose chase’ – he couldn’t resist the temptation to be catty – ‘especially when one knows how you hate to waste money.’
This aspect of the problem had not escaped the Hon. Con. ‘Got any bright ideas about how we could check?’
‘If we could get hold of a Liverpool directory …’
‘In Totterbridge?’ The Hon. Con scratched her head. ‘Where? Would the Public Library have one? Or what about the cops? Liverpool’ll have an information bureau, won’t it? Maybe we could ring them and ask?’
Mr Welks put his fingers tips together and smiled a slow, mysterious smile. ‘I have a friend,’ he purred.
‘In Liverpool?’
Mr Welks nodded his head. ‘He’s head waiter at the Rebecca – and that’s the restaurant in Liverpool, I’ll have you know. A charming boy! He’d be only too delighted to help us – well, me.’
‘Jolly dee!’ said the Hon. Con. ‘Well, go on! Give him a ring!’
‘Oh, not now, dear! He’ll be right in the middle of serving lunch. He’d be furious
if I interrupted him.’
‘Oh, go on, risk it!’ urged the Hon. Con. ‘ This is a matter of life and death, Welks old son, honest it is. Every minute may count.’
‘Now, now, Constance!’ remonstrated Mr Welks. ‘ I’ll bet it’s not so important that it can’t wait a couple of hours.’
‘A couple of hours?’ The Hon. Con’s face fell. A couple of hours? She gulped. ‘I’ll pay for the call,’ she offered.
Mr Welks’s carefully shaped eyebrows rose. ‘Good heavens,’ he squealed, ‘it must be absolutely vital! What are you up to, Constance? No, dear’ – he stopped her before she could speak – ‘don’t bother! I think that on balance I would sooner not know. All right, I’ll give Adrian a tinkle for you and brave his wrath. He’ll probably never speak to me again.’
The call was put through and Mr Welks launched himself into a stream of apologies so fulsome that they made the Hon. Con squirm. Damn it, didn’t the blighter know what it cost to phone Liverpool at this time of day? At long last he appeared to get to the crux of the matter and things quietened down.
Mr Welks put his hand over the phone and twinkled at the Hon. Con. ‘It’s all right! He’s got over his tizzy and he’s going to cooperate. Isn’t he a love? He’s just sending out one of his little pot boys to ask the taxi drivers if they know where Stocker Crescent is. Isn’t he a clever boots to think of that?’
The Hon. Con agreed that he was.
The phone burst into a series of high pitched squeaks to which Mr Welks listened with an air of mounting excitement. ‘My dear, you don’t say … No, no – the handwriting was quite clear. Well, I’m terribly grateful for your help, Adrian, ducky, and if there’s ever anything I can do for you … Oh? Well, how kind! What a sweetie pie you are! … Yes, all right. If I don’t hear from you within a couple of hours, that will be that!’ While still cooing into the phone Mr Welks glanced across at the Hon. Con and eloquently turned his thumb down.
‘So,’ said the Hon. Con when Mr Welks had at last finished his fond farewells, ‘it is a dud address?’
‘’Fraid so. None of the taxi drivers had ever heard of it and Adrian says they’re frightfully good and they’d be sure to know. Anyhow, just to make absolutely certain, he’s going to get hold of a street map and look it up. If he does find a Stocker Crescent after all, he’s going to ring me back this afternoon but, frankly, dear, I think you can take it as definite. I’ll bet his name wasn’t Smith, either!’ Mr Welks flounced crossly up and down in his chair. ‘The saucebox!’
The Hon. Con did the decent and stayed on chatting to Mr Welks for a few more minutes in spite of the fact that she was dying to get away. In view of this latest development she’d got the dickens of a lot of detecting to do and, besides, the longer she sat here the more likely it was that Welks would remember who it was who was supposed to be paying for that telephone call. She was just getting up to go when she suddenly recalled something that Mr Stark-Denoon had said. Naturally she wouldn’t trust him to give her the time of day without getting it wrong but it wouldn’t, perhaps, do any harm to check.
‘Welks,’ she began, making up her mind not to get embarrassed about it, ‘you’re a man of the world, aren’t you?’
Mr Welks answered warily. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you think there was anything funny about this Smith fellow?’
‘How do you mean – funny?’
‘Well’ – the Hon. Con paused while she gave her nose a loud and quite unnecessary blow – ‘somebody suggested to me that he was – you know – one of those.’
‘One of which?’ asked Mr Welks, to the Hon. Con’s fury.
‘Like sort of curates and scout masters,’ she mumbled. ‘Taking a bit too much – er – interest in young boys and things.’
‘I have always suspected, Constance, dear,’ observed Mr Welks icily, ‘ that you had a mind like a cesspool.’
‘Oh, damn it all, Welks,’ grumbled the Hon. Con, ‘it’s not my fault, is it? In my job I can’t go around doing a Nelson to the seamier side of life. Now, come on – be a sport! Just tell me what your impression of the chap was.’
‘With special reference to any sexual deviations I may have observed, I suppose?’
‘Oh, heck’ – the Hon. Con writhed miserably – ‘I only wanted to know if you thought he could have been like that.’
‘I’m flattered you think I’d even know,’ snapped Mr Welks, getting very waspish. ‘Well, in my opinion and for what it’s worth, he could have been but I don’t think he was. And now, good-bye, Constance! So nice to have seen you.’
The Hon. Con left the Martyr’s Head and winged her way back to Upper Waxwing Drive in record time. She couldn’t wait to tell Miss Jones the marvellous news.
Unfortunately Miss Jones seemed to have some difficulty in appreciating that the Hon. Con had solved the mystery for the second time. Maybe the poor woman was a bit put out at having to concoct a hot meal for the Hon. Con at half-past two in the afternoon or maybe, as the Hon. Con herself was inclined to think, she was just being bloody-minded.
‘But it was only yesterday, dear,’ complained Miss Jones as she reached for the potato peeler, ‘that you said Rodney had been murdered by a group of teenage conspirators. Now you come rushing in and say that it was a man called Smith who doesn’t live in Liverpool. I’m afraid I can’t follow you at all.’
‘If you’d just concentrate for a couple of minutes, Bones, and listen to what I’m telling you for a change, you’d soon understand. Look – Rodney Burberry worked as an office boy for this Smith fellow. Soon as the boy’s dead, Smith disappears from the scene, leaving a fictitious address behind him. Well, if that doesn’t point the old finger of suspicion, I’m jiggered if I know what does! Nobody knows a blind thing about Smith. He just pops up in Totterbridge about the time Rodney got let out of Borstal, pays cash for everything, doesn’t say a word to anybody and then buzzes off again.’
Miss Jones sighed. ‘There could be a perfectly innocent explanation, couldn’t there, dear?’
‘For writing a false address in a hotel register?’ sneered the Hon. Con.
‘Please, Constance,’ Miss Jones eyed her friend severely, ‘do not assume that hectoring tone with me. I am not one of your hostile witnesses and, just because I haven’t an answer to all these questions, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a perfectly simple one.’
‘Oh, phooey!’ muttered the Hon. Con. ‘Whichever way you look at it you can’t deny that this chap’s been behaving in a dashed secretive and furtive manner.’
‘That still doesn’t make him a murderer. What reason could he possibly have?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the Hon. Con sulkily. ‘That’s what I want to see him for, isn’t it? Mind you, I’ve got my suspicions – and jolly sordid they are, too.’
‘And you still haven’t explained away Rodney buying the whisky and the poison himself, have you, dear? Last night you said that all the shop assistants were in the plot and that they were all lying but that theory’s no good now, is it? Or is Mr Smith supposed to be one of the conspirators?’
‘Can’t you do anything else but stand there picking holes?’ demanded the Hon. Con furiously. ‘ I’m not denying that there are still a few loose ends kicking around but I can’t do anything until I get my hands on Smith, can I?’
‘Well, I don’t know how you’re going to do that, dear, especially when you don’t really know if Smith’s his real name. He might be anywhere in the world, mightn’t he? No, Constance dear – I think you’ve done very well so far, considering that you’d no experience or anything, but there’s nothing to be ashamed of in recognizing your limitations.’
Somewhat unexpectedly, the Hon. Con agreed. ‘I’ll have to have some assistance,’ she said, ‘ that’s for sure.’
Miss Jones looked alarmed. ‘ I don’t see how I can possibly help you with this, dear. I just wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘No, but the police would. Their job, isn’t it? Finding missing-p
ersons.’
‘The police?’ Miss Jones glowed with relief. ‘Oh, what a good idea, Constance! Yes, I’m sure it’s time you handed the whole thing over to them. You’ve done your bit and …’
‘Hand over nothing!’ snorted the Hon. Con, bestirring herself to get a knife and fork out of the cutlery drawer as she saw her fried egg and chips nearing completion. ‘It’s my case and I’m blooming well sticking to it.’ She accepted the plate from Miss Jones. ‘Just carve us a few rounds of bread, will you, Bones? I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s cut.’ She installed herself in the dinette. ‘Oh, no – the police come in on my terms or they don’t come in at all.’
‘You may have some difficulty in persuading them to see it that way, dear,’ Miss Jones pointed out dryly as she watched the Hon. Con submerging her fried egg in tomato ketchup.
‘Oh, I’m used to difficulties!’ bragged the Hon. Con. ‘ I shall put it to Sergeant Fenner straight. He’s a reasonable man. Besides, the cops’ll be only too pleased to give me a bit of a hand. Make ’em look a jolly sight less silly when I prove that it really was murder, eh?’ She pushed her empty plate away. ‘ However, we’ll box this one clever. You go and ring up the cop shop, Bones, and tell ’em you want to speak to Sergeant Fenner personally. Don’t let ’em fob you off with anybody else! When you get through to him, tell him your name’s Mrs Shuttleworth or something and say you’ve got some terribly important information for him.’
‘I can’t do that!’ wailed Miss Jones.
‘’Course you can! It’s no good mentioning my name because he’ll only start making excuses. This way he won’t even know the appointment’s for me.’
‘What appointment?’
‘The appointment you’re going to make to see him first thing tomorrow morning, blockhead! Only it won’t be you, it’ll be me. Now, stop dithering there like a palsied jelly, Bones, and get cracking!’
