The Chelsea Murders

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Whenever you can. Sorry about it. Policeman’s lot, you know.’

  ‘Not a happy one. Gilbert and Sullivan,’ said Summers, prophetically.

  21

  AT two, Steve cut out for lunch. In the night it had occurred to him that Artie’s prints were all over the dollar bills, and he was pretty sure the police would be back. He had been on tenterhooks all morning. The place had been like a madhouse; the murder a great boost for business.

  Chen had called in his wife and an extra hand from the warehouse, so that six of them in all were coping. Lunch was being staggered, the six of them dashing out individually for a sandwich and a cup of coffee; so Steve had had to look lively when Stanley dashed out for his.

  He was aware that Stanley had been keeping an eye on him all morning. Despite the crush and the confusion, whenever Steve turned he had met that bulging eye. With Stanley safely out of the way, he had lost no time. He had left a customer trying on denim topcoats, explained he was going to get others, and had shot upstairs; and up the ladder.

  The police had put everything back where it was; and the object of their search had seemed to be for something bulkier than his. They had felt among the big tied bales, but hadn’t taken them apart. Steve identified the bale and the individual pair of jeans and slipped his hand up the trouser leg and found it.

  Artie had done this piece of work. The five bills had been spread out in a line, and as Steve ripped off the two lengths of adhesive tape, top and bottom, the whole lot came away in one piece in his hand. In a trice he had folded it double so that the two ends of tape met each other, without sticking further to the money, crumpled the wad into his pocket, and was down the ladder.

  He picked up a couple more of the topcoats, and within three minutes was trying them on his customer.

  And not a moment too soon; unbelievably, as he squared off the shoulders of the second, he saw in the mirror that Stanley was back. He couldn’t possibly have eaten in the time, and he hadn’t. He had brought his sandwiches back with him. He was watching Steve as he ate them.

  Steve polished off his customer, handed him and his parcelled coat over to Chen for payment, and said that he’d grab a bite himself now.

  By five-past two he was in the Markham Arms, Where Artie had been waiting since one.

  He was very nervous, Steve saw. However, they had made their plans, and Steve passed the money. While he got on with a sandwich and beer, Artie took off to the toilet. When he returned, they left immediately.

  Steve returned to the fray and felt Stanley’s eye, even more hotly suspicious, on him all afternoon. Artie jumped on a number 22 bus.

  He changed from this to a number 19, and then a 137, and a 133. By this time he was miles away, at Streatham Common. He was pretty sure no one was accompanying him, so he got off.

  He posted his envelope in a drowsy tree-lined street of suburban houses, just off the common, with not a soul in sight. This was at about four o’clock. He saw from the enamelled plate on the box that the next collection would be at four-thirty. It was still only Thursday, so that by Monday at the latest the letter ought to get anywhere from Land’s End to John o’Groats. But it was only going to Liverpool.

  There was no time to return home after this, so he went straight to the restaurant, enormously relieved to be free of his burden, and made it by a quarter-past five.

  The two men were waiting for him there; plain-clothes men. They took him home and searched him, and then searched the flat, and he tried hard to stop himself trembling, realizing the closeness of the shave.

  *

  Warton’s sweep had been going on since three o’clock. Work on the main London terminals had been started; and as a grace note, Summers had got permission to inspect anything that the leading suspects might have deposited at their banks. As he didn’t yet know which were their banks, he was holding this useful permission up his sleeve.

  A little later, while Warton slept, some other research proceeded in a landscape of rubbish dumps. A gruesome collection of cotton wool pads, used for miscellaneous purposes, had been isolated from the general refuse. But it was quite an unsullied one that the forensic scientist at last held aloft in his tweezers.

  *

  Frank had spent the day making notes in the British Museum. He returned to receive his special frisson shortly before five.

  Summers had managed a couple of hours’ sleep himself by this time, and was among the welcoming party.

  ‘Well, how marvellous,’ Frank said, on having the matter explained to him. ‘Of course you must … Quite all right, dear,’ he said to the indomitable lady who immediately peered out of her room as they entered the house. ‘Friends not foes.’

  ‘Are they going to look at the boiler?’ the old lady said.

  ‘Shall we let them – as a special treat?’ Frank asked gaily.

  ‘It still isn’t right. He hasn’t put the door on. He’s got to, by law,’ the old lady seriously told Summers, whom she rightly took to be the chief of the party. ‘He doesn’t care about the law, that Indian.’

  ‘Well, they do,’ Frank said. ‘They care tremendously. They’ll make him put it on, don’t you worry. They’ll torture him till he does.’

  ‘Oh, lor’, are you off again?’ the old lady said.

  ‘You never know,’ Frank said, with a roguish look at the detectives. ‘This way, lads.’

  Summers and his three men exchanged glances as they followed Frank up the stairs, and then exchanged more on entering the flat. The place was in a colossal mess, the remains of a meal on the table, cushions on the floors, and a heavy odour of curry, together with a fainter one of incense, lingering.

  ‘Not as neat as a pin,’ Frank confessed, pursing his lips. ‘Never mind. What can I offer you?’

  ‘Just the keys to whatever’s locked,’ Summers said grimly.

  They took an hour and a half over it, and turned up some interesting things. Apart from a select collection of pornography, the materials set aside were a small screw of marijuana, a phial of white powder, and a folio of colour sketches on cartridge paper.

  Frank was restive about the marijuana.

  ‘You surely wouldn’t make trouble about a scrap of grass,’ he said plaintively.

  Summers certainly would, but his interest was arrested by the last item. He stopped at one of the sketches.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘A mask we’re using in the film.’

  Summers stared at it. Almost certainly the one used in the attack on Mrs Honey.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said.

  Frank paused. ‘I don’t know,’ he had to admit. ‘I just design them, you know. These are specials, and they get them made up. I expect Artie – Mr Johnston – will know.’

  *

  But Mr Johnston didn’t.

  He had all the rest of the specials that they’d had made up; they were in three large cardboard boxes. He didn’t have this one.

  Summers had radioed Warton, and had gone over to Johnston’s himself, with the folio.

  Fifteen minutes later, Warton appeared, with Mrs Honey.

  ‘Well, something like that,’ she said uncertainly, and very Welshly, looking at the folio. ‘Only it was dark, wasn’t et?’

  ‘You’d know the real one if you saw it?’ Warton asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Only this is just a scribble, esn’t et?’

  Warton got them searching again, and meanwhile questioned Johnston in a corner.

  ‘Why should this one be missing?’ he asked again.

  ‘Jesus – it was after four in the morning! People were dressing and undressing. We were dismantling lights and cameras and recording gear. Do you know what it’s like after night-shooting?’

  ‘It was used in the night-shooting, was it?’

  ‘I don’t even know that. I can’t remember.’

  ‘Isn’t it on the film?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the bloody film!’

  Warton got to the bottom of this one, and wo
rked through the possibilities of the missing costume still being at the wharf, or at one of the actors’, or at a dozen other places.

  The one place it definitely wasn’t at was Artie Johnston’s.

  *

  The search at Giffard’s produced nothing, and neither did the later interrogation which Warton conducted at Lucan Place. He was particularly interested in Giffard’s chat with Wu.

  ‘How much was it you asked him for?’

  ‘Two hundred pounds,’ Steve patiently repeated.

  ‘Your mate Johnston expected more.’

  ‘He’s more optimistic,’ Steve said.

  ‘But two hundred suited you. What – cash, cheque?’

  ‘All welcome.’

  ‘Dollars?’ Warton said.

  ‘Very welcome.’

  ‘You didn’t ask for dollars?’

  ‘I asked for two hundred pounds.’

  ‘What would that have made in dollars?’

  ‘I don’t know. Three or four hundred?’

  ‘You haven’t been changing any lately?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve even seen one.’

  ‘They’re green,’ Warton said. ‘Unlike me. I’m not green, Giffard. You didn’t know he had dollars on the premises, of course.’

  ‘I’d heard Stanley on the subject.’

  ‘What was your view?’

  ‘I didn’t have one.’

  Warton stared at him for a full minute.

  ‘Where’s your bank?’ he said.

  ‘My bank?’ Steve blinked. He told him.

  Warton jotted it down. ‘Any accounts elsewhere?’

  ‘No. I don’t even get too much use out of that one.’

  Warton lit a cigarette and looked at him through the smoke a bit longer. He took him there and back through the rigmarole. He heard some cock-and-bull story of the Chinaman having offered him a partnership together with a trip to China. He couldn’t trip him on it, however, and he couldn’t trip him on anything; so he let him go, and sat on smoking, watching the closed door.

  It was past nine o’clock, and he was dead beat. But he thought over the results of the day.

  The chloroform pad recovered from the refuse was now safely stored, a future exhibit.

  The large-scale searches of lock-up boxes had produced nothing of relevance to the case.

  The search at Colbert-Greer’s had disclosed that he was in legal possession (as a registered addicted person) of his ration of heroin, and in illegal possession of fifteen grams of marijuana, which might come in very useful. The real find had been his sketchbook; with the shadowy drawing of the mask used in the attack on Honey.

  For the first time, if he could get a positive identification out of Honey, this definitely linked the golden threesome to the inquiries. It also tended, together with the drugs found, to eliminate Colbert-Greer, since he would hardly leave himself in such a position if he was a culpable party. Still: open mind.

  The search at Artie Johnston’s had produced information also of interest though negative: the absence of the costume. He was supposed to have it. His not having it attracted attention to him. However, there were multiple interpretations of this, so he kept an open mind here, too.

  And he tried to do the same with Giffard. Nothing whatever had been produced from him. The little squirt was clean as a whistle. And as Warton had just heard, he had an answer for everything.

  He brooded on this all the way to Sanderstead.

  *

  He had a premiere next morning, at ten sharp, in the cramped and tatty viewing room at the film labs. He had Summers with him, and Mrs Honey, and a copy of the script. He read this with a penlight to keep track of what was going on.

  The script was a piece of lunacy, but the film version even worse. He had arranged with the projectionist that when he yelled ‘Oy!’ he wanted him to stop, and he yelled it a good few times while finding his place in the script. The night scenes were scattered through it, in no particular order as far as he could see. On the screen, scene 186 was followed by scene 92, and then 301 and 124.

  But he got the hang of it. Each fresh piece of rubbish was preceded by someone holding up a slate with a number chalked on it, and then smartly clapping the two parts of the hinged board together. And he saw soon enough what the geniuses were up to.

  A girl dressed as a Mother Superior was in the first scene, filmed from different angles and distances, pointing imperiously. In the script it said: Silent action. Superimpose Caption style No. 3: ‘I beg you will leave immediately!’

  But the girl on the screen was obviously not mouthing this. She was obviously mouthing a two-word obscenity. She was mouthing it, as the next series of shots showed, to a young woman with a baby who had to reply, ‘Mother I humbly obey!’ But she wasn’t saying this, either. She was obviously responding with a three-word obscenity.

  Yes; very comical.

  The young woman had to scurry to the river bank with the baby. An old-time toff in topper was on the river bank. There were a few close-ups with eyebrow-raising and long looks. Then bafflingly, there was a crowd scene, with comical bobbies strolling.

  ‘That’s et!’ Mrs Honey said.

  ‘Oy!’ Warton called.

  The film flickered to a halt.

  ‘No, before. Et esn’t there now.’

  ‘Go back!’ Warton bawled. ‘Do it in slow motion.’

  After a faint hail, and a whirring, they were back with the toff and his eyebrows, and the board slowly clicking to, and bobbies articulating like marionettes.

  ‘That’s et!’

  After a minute or two they’d got it, and held it. The thing was seen in mid-distance and between two sets of shoulders.

  There were two other views of it, one less clear but showing, interestingly, that it was worn by a woman.

  During the remaining nonsense, the toff strangled the young mother and threw the baby in the river while the bobbies continued strolling.

  They ran through the whole thing a few times more, and it was noon before they were through.

  ‘Prints of those shots,’ Warton said.

  *

  By noon, Mr Chen had completed what he had to do. He had been very gravely worried at the prospect, but his wife had convinced him that it was right.

  He had cut out the required words from the newspaper, but there was one he couldn’t find, so he had written it in with a new fibre-tipped pen, and had then thrown the pen away. He had seen how the police had gone about fingerprinting everything, so he was very careful with his handkerchief.

  Despite his wife’s reassurance, he knew that the police would know from whom it had come. But he knew they couldn’t prove it.

  And he had a duty to Wu. He posted it.

  *

  It was the second Saturday in a row that Warton and Summers had worked. They looked together at the sheet of airmail paper and the words stuck on it. One word had been written in with a fibre-tipped pen: $2,500. The complete message ran: FOR CERTAIN THERE WAS $2,500 IN THE BOX.

  Warton studied it and looked at Summers.

  ‘Chen, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Could be, sir.’

  ‘Not a doubt of it. First break, Summers!’

  After a discussion with the Yard, and in view of the new policy, the story was given a few hours later to the Sunday Press.

  22

  BY Sunday, Artie and Steve were certain they were being followed, and Artie wondered how far they would follow him. He was up early in the morning, and off to Euston.

  His tail had to do some fast work buying himself a platform ticket; but he was on the same train with him to Liverpool. He paid the ticket inspector in the corridor, and took a receipt.

  At Liverpool, he was in the next taxi after Artie, and once he’d marked the address, found the nearest phone and rang the Yard in London. The Yard liaised with Liverpool C.I.D. and got him immediate reinforcement, and the tail worked watch and watch with them.

  But he was sleeping in his hotel when Artie sud
denly took off for London early on Monday evening, so the Liverpool tail found himself en route for Euston, and thus in the same position as the London man on the outward journey. He followed Artie to the Albert Bridge Road, noted the address, and then found a phone and explained himself to the Yard.

  The Yard contacted Warton’s Incident Room, and in ten minutes the Liverpool man was relieved; and just about in time. Artie and Steve were both leaving.

  They had spent a few hilarious minutes in the flat. Steve had a suspicion the place was bugged and had indicated as much to Artie, so they’d communicated what they wanted to say in sign language, and talked of other things for anybody else’s possible interest. Artie had needed immediate relief in the bathroom, and found a fresh subject to talk out loud about when he emerged. ‘Damn it, I could have brought the old toilet sign you made, “God Bless This Crapper”. Remember it?’

  ‘How have you got that?’

  ‘I must have packed it by mistake, couple of years ago. It could go up here.’

  ‘Next time. How were things at home?’ Steve said, nodding away.

  ‘Great,’ Artie said, giving him a similar nod, and also a thumb and forefinger sign. ‘I only slipped in here to say hello. Want to walk me up the road?’ He was making a talk-talk sign.

  ‘Sure.’ They left together, and immediately they were in the street Steve said, ‘What the hell is this two and a half thousand?’

  ‘Christ, you didn’t believe that?’ Artie said. ‘They fed the Press that stuff.’

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘Who knows? Look, we were there. We know what was there.’

  ‘After someone else was there.’

  ‘Why would anyone take two thousand and leave five hundred?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been wondering,’ Steve said.

  Artie didn’t say anything for a while, then he said, ‘Well, screw it. I tell you, it’s a put-on. Anyway, there’s more immediate things.’

  He told Steve some of them. Steve saw him to the bus, and went back home, a bit worried. He didn’t like some of what he’d heard. Artie was unpredictable, and rash. The little parcel of dollars could be the source of a lot of trouble.