Cart Before The Hearse (David Mallin Detective Book 14)

by Roger Ormerod

  But apparently Caldicott was of some importance, because when I looked round again George was no longer there. The ceremony was completed, and various anonymous friends were speaking soothingly to Gregory Poole, and George was disappearing up the road after Caldicott. They seemed to be heading for a solitary car. George broke into his ambling run.

  Fyne asked would I excuse him. I nodded. He went over towards Poole, and I was left alone, gazing across at the blonde, who was lingering at the graveside. And strangely, by her very posture, she gave the impression that she, most of all, grieved for Mia Poole.

  I waited. She approached me blindly. Behind me, the cars were drawing away. I murmured:

  “Could I give you a lift?”

  She focused on me. “Thank you, no.”

  “I haven’t seen Wally, so that leaves you on foot.”

  Disdain doesn’t need an expression. By its very rejection, it is best accompanied by no expression at all. She did it with complete command.

  “I can walk.”

  There had been the slightest inclination of her head towards Greater Hay. “But up-hill,” I said.

  “All the same…”

  “It’d certainly bring a bloom to your cheeks. Could I be there to greet you?”

  And I’ll swear she smiled, though it got no further than her eyes. “Quite frankly, I could use a bloody drink,” she said calmly.

  “Instead of the walk? Then allow me…”

  There was no sign of George, nor of the car I’d seen him heading for. I opened the Flossie car door. She hesitated. An expression fought behind her features, but didn’t get through. Then she slid inside.

  “You know the car?” I asked.

  “Of course I do. What do we have to skate around things for? Wally was just being coy. It’s Flossie’s car.”

  I was making a U-tum. “But who,” I asked, “is Flossie?”

  “A big, stupid ape,” she told me evenly. “Used to come to the club, shouting the odds, dressed like a teenager — him in his stupid forties! Fancy car, fancy clothes, big voice and a big opinion of himself. Pretending to be a sodding copper…”

  “That’s what he is, I’m told.”

  “They’re all morons, so I suppose they’d welcome him. Left at the fork.”

  I lefted. “Would your name be Pat?”

  She glanced sideways. “Oh, you’re quick. It’s Patricia Montague.”

  “He stuck your name on the windscreen…”

  “Because I hated him, and he knew it. Wouldn’t let him get near me, or put a hand on me. He drooled — only his eyes were murder. You ever seen murder in a man’s eyes, mister?”

  “Call me Dave. Yes, I’ve seen that.”

  “It’s the Ragged Goat, on the right at the top. Quiet.” She didn’t go on. I drew in at the kerb.

  “Stuck your name up,” I prompted.

  She sat very still. Her voice was unemotional, her expression cool. “He called me his girl, his woman, because he knew I loathed that. He’d come to the club, shouting out: ‘where’s my girl, then?’ And I’d hate him, and have to smile and go over to him.”

  “Club?” I asked. “ Had to? Smile?”

  She turned to me and did it. Smiled. Her face came alive. “The Penguin Club. I work there.”

  “And… had to?”

  “I’m a prostitute,” she said. “They call it hostess. Shall we go in for that drink?”

  She was correct; it was quiet. I settled her into a corner and fetched her a Cinzano Bianco with lemonade. She sipped it, her grey-blue eyes solemn.

  “You said you refused him,” I prompted.

  “All I’m required to do is be friendly. I choose my own clients.”

  “But never Flossie.”

  “It made him mad. He was a degenerate. A raging moron.” She sipped again.

  “Why do you speak of him in the past?”

  She raised the two lines she used as eyebrows. “Isn’t he dead? Oh, I was so hoping… ”

  “I don’t know that he’s dead.”

  She lifted her glass. “Let’s drink to the possibility.”

  We drank to that. Flossie, for all I knew, was a grand chap, and the personality he’d presented could have been his cover. But if so, he had made too good a job of it. Women see through such things, and Pat Montague had seen through to something rotten. So think about it, Dave. His parents, presenting to him an inevitable nickname of Flossie, had also settled on the initials PUF. Assume his mother’s name had been Underhill, they need not have chosen Peter to precede it. Though, in those days, perhaps they didn’t have such things as poofs — and pansies and queens and dykes and lesbians. Or if they did, they didn’t flaunt it around. So, Flossie had had to cope with a little too much to be covered by a joke and a rueful pursing of the lips. Perhaps it had struck too deep, to his very soul, and what had started as a violent exhibitionism had rotted away to plain viciousness.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I haven’t met him.” I watched her eyes. “Had Mia met him?”

  A shadow. “How could she avoid it? He was always at the club.”

  “But she entertained him?”

  She shrugged, I thought with contempt for my ignorance. “She was a cigarette girl. She hadn’t got my talent.”

  “Or looks?”

  “She was very beautiful, until…”

  “The drugs?”

  “She was on them when I first met her.”

  “But beautiful at the time?”

  The glass chattered against her teeth and her eyes were bright. “She was dabbling — the soft stuff. She wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “This was — when?”

  “Oh… three years ago. When we met. At the club, that was, when she started. I was kind of her boss. I had to keep her on her toes, you see.”

  “But you were friends?”

  “Yes.” The small, even teeth clamped on it. “Six months later she moved in with me. My flat.” She inclined her head. “If you look through that window, you’ll see it. Third floor.”

  I did so. The block of flats was almost opposite, on the other side of the street, not something thrown up without thought as to the higher income bracket, and the maximum rent to be extracted. You’d have spacious rooms and discreet lifts, and a man at the desk to keep away the unwanted.

  “Swish,” I said in admiration. “Could she afford a share of that?”

  “I could. She was welcome. I could keep my eye on her.”

  “But not all the time, surely.”

  She didn’t take it up. I looked out of the window. A maroon Jag cruised past.

  “So tell me who the hell you are,” she said.

  “Just a chap who’s hunting around for a good murder.”

  “The way you’re going, it could be your own.”

  “Tell me.”

  She made an impatient gesture and a sharp noise of disgust. “Why should I talk to you? Why in Cod’s name am I talking to you?”

  Because you’re frightened, girlie, and you’re on the edge of something you don’t understand. Because you’ll turn anywhere. I said: “Because I’m in the stupid forties, and it’s your job to be friendly.”

  “I’m not on the job.”

  “Or you’d have taken me to the flat?”

  “I never take my gentlemen to my flat,” she said sharply.

  I raised my glass to her. There was no response in her eyes. She picked up her drink and sloshed it around.

  “Mia was a stupid kid,” she told me. “I thought of her like that, though there was only two years between us. She could’ve had it so good, with her looks and her smile. But there was nothing…” She broke off. “Left home, she told me. Yeah, you bet! Got herself chucked out — more like. Something she said — odd bits, you know — that she said about her father. One of them righteous bastards who never understood her. Never tried, if you ask me. He blew his top when he found she was on pot, and hoofed her out.” Her voice had gone thin and edgy. “And he never knew…”
>
  “Knew what?”

  “Oh… the way she said it, kind of hurt, like an animal that’s been kicked. So, I guess…” She shrugged.

  I too guessed; that Pat had tried to make good the loss, and had failed, as she’d have to. Those righteous bastards get a lot of worship.

  “You couldn’t have won,” I reassured her. “If that’s what you’re doing, blaming yourself — ”

  “Like hell!” she snapped. “She’d got her own bloody life. I wasn’t her keeper.” She calmed. She put down her empty glass. The pulse in her throat was strong. “If I blame myself — if, I say — it’s for letting her go to that useless do-gooder, Poole.”

  “Letting her go?”

  “She asked me, blast her. Asked me over and over. Greg Poole used to come all the time to the club. Fancied himself as a gambler. Idiot! She knew he’d got his eyes on her. Mostly on her legs. He didn’t see the drugs in her eyes. Never knew when she was high — thought it was his magnetism or something.”

  “They call it charisma, these days. She asked you, you said.”

  “About Greg. Did I think he was this, or that, or the other. I thought he was wet, but the kid’d got to have something, I guess, this security gag they all want. Search me. But he’d got the grand house and the like… he was a widower, I think. Maybe it was what she wanted, and if so, there was a chance she’d drop the drugs before she got onto the hard stuff. Lord, you know the things you weigh up. I should’ve known he’d got nothing for her, but I suppose he was the best of the crowd that hung around, pawing her legs at the tables. Or that older one who kept coming and just staring at her. God knows what he offered, but it only set her off in tears again. Yeah, I reckon Greg was the best on offer. But he wasn’t good enough.”

  “She drifted onto the hard stuff?”

  “I knew she had. You’ll understand — they were married a bit over a year ago. I was her bridesmaid. Then of course I didn’t see her, except when she came with him to the club. The pupils… you know what it does to your eyes?” “And your skin, and your nerves. I know.”

  “You don’t sound as though you care,” she said critically, as though regretting her confidences.

  “People do things to themselves all the time. They ruin their lives, kill themselves over a stupid fad or a pitiful boast. They take their bodies and shatter them on mountains, or trap them in caves. Of course I care, but I don’t rush round trying to stop them. As well put up my hand to stop the wind.” I looked at her. “Or they take their natural beauty and hide it behind cosmetics that rob them of humanity.”

  “Watch it, buster.”

  “I told you, I care.”

  “I’d better get out of here.”

  “Yes, Wally’s waiting up the road. Won’t he care that I’ve been talking with you? Won’t he wonder what you’ve told me?”

  She thought about that, her pert head tilted. “Not wonder. He might be a bit ashamed, I suppose.”

  “You haven’t told me anything about him.”

  She got to her feet. “Didn’t I? But I assumed you knew. Wally runs The Penguin. Wally was in love with Mia. As far as he could be. Her protector, he’d say, like a flabby, sex-less father for her.”

  “Protector? He didn’t do a very good job.”

  She headed for the door. I thought she said: “Nobody did,” but the voice was going away from me.

  “Pat!”

  She paused and looked round.

  “The older man,” I said. “The one at the club who simply stared. Can you describe him?”

  “Oh… what’s it matter! Fifty-odd. Big man, but gaunt-like, big hands, high forehead. Not much hair.”

  “Thank you.”

  She left. I watched her from the window. She crossed directly to the maroon Jag. The driver saw her coming and got out to hold open the rear door, and they drove away, but not towards her flat. She never took her gentlemen friends to the flat; but perhaps Wally wasn’t even a friend. Or a gentleman.

  I drove back to the church, but there was no sign of George. It was annoying. Now we had only one point of future contact, the motel where we had eaten. It meant I had to go there and wait, when the whole thing was wrapped up and ready for delivery. The case was nothing, and I knew whom Connolly had considered he had killed.

  There was, of course, the secondary matter of how he had come to be beaten up, but that wasn’t our affair. Was it?

  Chapter Three

  George arrived at around two in the morning. By that time I’d been obliged to take a double room, and was lying in its impersonal perfection on one of their beds, quietly smoking a cigarette and trying not to worry about the beating-up.

  George came in with his craggy face set, but his eyes were alight.

  “Dropped your friend?” I asked.

  “You know Ray…” He tossed his jacket on a chair, looked round, and suddenly realised how we were placed. “We dropped a clanger,” he said ruefully.

  We certainly had. Experience had led to our taking overnight bags on all the indefinite cases away from our own area. These now lay on the rear seat of George’s Renault.

  “You’ll have to sleep in your vest and pants,” I said. “Hang your socks out of the window.”

  “But… tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “we go back to Marcia Connolly and wrap it up.”

  He stared. He plumped down on his bed and it nearly collapsed. “You’re not with it, Dave.”

  I wasn’t in too good a mood, having left my pipe in his glove compartment. The cigarette tasted like straw. “While you’ve been chasing an old mate, I’ve been getting things done.”

  “Ray Caldicott’s no mate of mine. He’s one of your cheapies, calls himself a private eye. Imagine! The bottom dropped out of his world when adultery ceased to be grounds for a divorce. Though his eyes aren’t blood-shot any more. And guess what! He’d been hired by our own Marcia Connolly. A month ago, that was. Nothing had happened a month ago. So when it did, she couldn’t have been too pleased with him for letting it.”

  “Of course she wasn’t, you fool. She hired him to trace her daughter, I’ll bet.”

  He nodded, a bit of his news having been grasped from him. I didn’t give him time to recover. “Which he did — in time to attend her funeral.”

  He was covering up, giving himself time to decide how I’d got that far. The window wouldn’t open, because we were on air-conditioning. He dangled the socks in his fingers.

  “Sorry, Dave.”

  Suddenly I didn’t care if he ate the damn things. The wrapping was coming undone at the edges. I was irritated. Ernest Connolly had come on the local scene two years before — around the time he’d acquired a car for his work, which had conveniently required journeys outside his immediate area. But he’d kept it secret from Marcia, who, only recently, had set about the tracing of her daughter. All right. That was a domestic problem. We could still unload it. But my voice was sharp, because I know George when he gets stuck with an idea.

  “It didn’t take you all this time to discover that Mia Poole was their daughter,” I said.

  He tossed them in a far comer.

  “There was something else. I had to persuade Ray to take me a little run in his car.” He wasn’t meeting my eyes.

  “Little?” I demanded. “You’ve been missing for eight hours.”

  “Collie had moved,” he told me defensively. “You remember Collie Dolan, used to work in the forensic lab at Brum. He’s retired now, and got himself a little place near Evesham. He took some digging out.”

  The word “forensic” had clued me in. My heart sank. “Now George…”

  “We had to know, Dave.”

  “I didn’t. So… what did he say?”

  “We had to know what was in that sachet. We assumed — only assumed, Dave — that it was cut heroin.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Then you bloody-well ought to be,” he shouted.

  “Easy, easy. It’s late.”


  “Easy be damned! You don’t care what’s going on around you, Dave. That’s your trouble. It wasn’t cut heroin, anyway. Nothing like your two or three per cent. It was ninety-seven per cent pure. As raw as you can get it.” I threw the cigarette end angrily at his socks. “Then let Fyne handle it, him and his goon partner, Flossie. It’s not our case.”

  “Ain’t it? That’s pure poison, Dave, wandering around loose. And Mia Poole did die from an overdose, whatever you might say. And that’s our case. She’s our case… Mia. Go on, deny that.”

  I didn’t know how to get round that one. My mouth was sour and I was tired. I didn’t know why I should be tired! I’d spent most of the day lying around. Inertia. Reluctance. I’d got no heart for it.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “we’ll have a word with Mrs. Connolly.”

  “To hell with that!”

  “You’ll need some socks, George. Admit it.”

  He took half a minute to weigh the pros and cons. George is impulsive. The very hint of a drugs case had set his adrenalin flowing, and it didn’t occur to him that we were no longer in the Force, with all its powerful back-up. Mind you, it hadn’t occurred to him when he had been, when he’d acquired the reputation of diving in first, and shouting for assistance only when it came to sweeping up the pieces. And all the contacts were this end. Mia Poole was only a victim.

  But in the end he shrugged, and ten o’clock the next morning found us driving up to the Connolly’s house, myself with relief because the socks were beginning to make themselves felt. George never does things by halves, including sweating.

  This time she did not meet us at the front door. We rang, and after a minute she opened up, said: “Hmph!”, turned, and marched back through the house.

  She was doing her laundry. The front-loader was on its first wash and the windows were opaque with steam. It was bitterly cold outside. She was sitting at her formica-topped table, drinking a cup of tea. We were not offered one, nor a seat.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “The same.”

  “He should be in hospital.”

  She bit on a biscuit. “No. He can manage his normal functions.”

  “He5s safe to leave, is he?”