‘She gave you no indication where she was going?’ I asked, knowing the answer already.
Madame Rene shook her head but averted her eyes from my gaze.
‘You didn’t say anything to her about my enquiries, did you? That I’d be calling in to see her today?’
‘I…’ Madame Rene stopped, apparently lost for words. But she didn’t have to say any more. Her furtive eyes told me all I needed to know. The stupid woman had blabbed about a man with an eye patch calling to see her about an inheritance. I could hear her silly voice in my head gurgling away, ‘How wonderful, dear. A windfall. What a lucky girl. The rather shabby fellow with the one eye will be round today to tell you all about it.’ With her gossip, Madame Rene had lit the blue touch paper and as a result Sylvia Moore had retired.
Angry though I was at this loose-tongued woman, I contained myself. It was pointless flying off the handle at her indiscretions. That would get me nowhere. The damage was done. And serious damage, too. I no longer had any lead as to where this Sylvia Moore would be and she had been alerted to cover her tracks. Not only had she left her flat but also her place of employment.
And now she had vanished without trace.
With a curt good day and a perfunctory raise of my hat, I left Madame Rene’s establishment, more in sorrow than in anger.
‘What to do now? I asked myself.
After some moments pondering while I mooched along the pavement on my way to the Kensington High Street tube station, I answered my own question. I needed to go back to my client and question him again to see if I could extract any further information from him that might give me a glimmer of a clue where I could start looking for Sylvia or his wife.
I made my way to Harper Street, a small thoroughfare just off Russell Square which houses a whole stretch of small shops including a barber, a newsagent, a greengrocer, an ironmonger and, at the far end, Brian Garner’s electrical shop. It was there that I was in for my second unpleasant surprise of the day. As I approached the little shop, I observed a police car parked outside and a constable standing guard by the door. A group of half-a-dozen onlookers had congregated near the shop frontage, shifting their feet and muttering like the supernumeraries in a film crowd scene.
I approached the constable, but before I could say a word, he held up his hand as though directing traffic. ‘I’m afraid you can’t go in there, sir,’ he announced sternly in what he perceived as an authoritarian manner.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, opening my wallet and extracting my detective licence.
‘There’s been…an incident, sir.’
I showed him my licence. ‘Mr Garner is my client,’ I said.
‘Was your client. I’m afraid the gentleman is dead.’
‘Dead.’
Now there was a real turn up for the book.
‘Murdered. Stabbed something shocking,’ said the constable, leaning forward and lowering his voice so that the small group of onlookers could not hear. ‘Inspector Eustace is in there now taking stock of the situation.’
It is strange at times like these when the mind goes into shock at such unexpected news and yet it still allows one to continue to behave normally. On the surface, the pool is placid, but beneath the surface the undercurrents are ferocious. It certainly was the case on this occasion. While the bottom seemed to be falling out of this particular investigation—well, things can’t get worse than losing your client—to the outside world I behaved with calm equanimity.
‘You’d better let me have a word with the inspector. I may have information useful to him in his investigation.’
The constable’s face clouded with consternation. ‘I’m not sure…’ he began.
‘I am a detective, after all,’ I added, flashing my licence again.
‘Very well,’ he said with some reluctance, stepping aside, and allowing me to enter.
The shop was dingy inside, crammed with cardboard boxes and an array of radios and a couple of radiograms. There were three people in the cramped service area. Two men and an elderly lady. On the floor by the counter lay a body covered by a grey sheet. Escaping from the folds was a blood-spattered hand curled in a gruesome fashion like a scarlet claw.
‘Who the devil are you?’ asked the older man.
‘Inspector Eustace?’ I said quickly. ‘I am John Hawke, a private investigator. Brian Garner was a client of mine.’
‘A client. Was he now? What did he want a private ’tec for?’
I kept it simple. I was the one who needed to find things out. The inspector would have to cope with slender rations. ‘He’d asked me to find his wife.’
‘She’d gone AWOL, eh?’
‘Something like that. What happened?’ I nodded at the sheeted body.
‘Somebody stabbed the poor blighter to death. Rather savagely, too. Certainly a crime of passion. This lady here, Miss Peacock,’—he turned to the white-faced woman sitting nervously on the chair, almost in the foetal position, dabbing her eyes with a lace hand-kerchief—‘she found the body when she came in to see if her radio had been repaired.’
Miss Peacock shuddered. ‘It was terrible. Such a shock. Do you think I can go now, Inspector? I’m feeling a little faint.’
‘Of course. The sergeant here will see you home and take a statement.’
The youthful sergeant helped the old lady to her feet and escorted her from the premises.
‘Brave old girl. Had the presence of mind to ring for the police and wait here until we arrived,’ Eustace observed almost to himself, before turning his attention to me. ‘Now then, Mr…Hawke, was it?’ said Inspector Eustace when we were alone.
I nodded.
‘Well, Mr Hawke, what can you tell me? Who done it?’
I gave him a thin smile. I’ve no idea. I knew little about the man save he wanted me to find his wife.’
‘Ran off with another bloke, did she?’
‘Yes. But that was two years ago.’
‘Was it now? Took his time deciding he wanted her found.’
I wasn’t keen to go further into the complications of the case, so in order to divert the inspector’s attention, I pulled back the sheet. It was a horrible sight indeed. The murderer had not simply wanted to kill this man; they had wanted to damage his body into the bargain. There were numerous knife wounds to the chest and neck area. His face, frozen in horror no doubt at the moment of the first stab wound, was smeared with a fine crust of dried blood.
‘A lot of hatred in the attack,’ I said, pulling the sheet forward and covering the body again.
‘Indeed,’ said the inspector thoughtfully. ‘It’s very much a personal murder. It must have been someone he knew. Someone with a hell of a grudge. There’s no sign of robbery. The till was full of cash. You don’t think it could be this errant wife of his, do you?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose.’
‘And have you found her yet?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid I’ve drawn a blank. I’ve had very little to go on.’
‘You’d better give me what information you can, Mr Hawke and your own contact details.’ He took out his notebook and held his pen poised for my statement.
‘Sure,’ I said easily, already arranging in my mind what facts I was prepared to release. I told him the circumstances of her supposed death and how Garner had seen her recently on a platform at South Kensington tube station. I also let him know that she once worked as a hairdresser in Camden High Street. Poor old Harold Crabtree, he’d get all a’ fluster again receiving a visit from the police. I thought that was enough for the old professional to go on. He had as much information as I had when I started out. He took down what I told him in a neat feminine handwriting.
When I’d finished he said, ‘So you’ve had no luck in finding this woman then?’
I shook my head. ‘Needle in a haystack,’ I said miserably.
Inspector Eustace sighed, snapped shut his notebook and slipped it into his raincoat pocket. ‘Well, if you think of anyt
hing else, get in touch.’
I nodded and headed for the door. I turned and gazed at the sheeted corpse one last time.
Once out on the street, I asked one of the crowd of ghoulish onlookers where Macklin Gardens was. I got full and detailed directions. It was told it was but a ten-minute walk away and that turned out to be the case.
Macklin Gardens was a neat little street, not too far away close to Kings Cross Station, pleasant enough but anonymous. I sought out number seven. It was a narrow three-storeyed terraced property probably built sometime in the nineteenth century. It was the late Brian Garner’s house. Making sure I was unobserved, I performed my magic trick with my trusty strip of stiff wire and let myself in.
I had to be quick because I reckoned it wouldn’t be very long before Inspector Eustace and friends would descend on the property looking for clues. I needed to be out of there before that happened.
Brian Garner had been a very tidy fellow indeed. There were no items left about on surfaces, no letters, bills, items of clothing, and no pots on the draining board, nothing that was of any use to me. Until, that is, I went into his bedroom. The bed was unmade and the dressing table appeared to be a shrine to his supposedly dead wife. There were several pictures of her stuck to the mirror, one was like the snap he had given to me. On the glass-topped surface there were several necklaces and various tubes of lipsticks, along with a hairbrush which still had a few fair hairs caught in the bristles. It was like a miniature Marie Celeste. It was as though the woman had just stepped from the room. It was quite creepy. Obviously Brian Garner had never got over the loss of his wife. Opening the drawers I discovered other items belonging to Beryl Garner: jumpers, gloves, underclothes, scarves and lace handkerchiefs. Obviously, when she left him she had taken very little of her old life with her, as though she was intent on wiping that part of her history from her mind.
In the bottom drawer was an old shoebox containing pictures and letters. I took it over to the bed and tipped out the contents. I sifted through the photographs first. They were mainly of Beryl, some taken with Brian on their wedding day. They looked a pretty ordinary happy bride and groom, but in all the pictures Beryl’s smile always seemed a little unnatural and tinged with a strange sadness. Then I came upon a fragment of a photograph, a portrait of Beryl showing only the lower half of the face. I searched through the box and eventually found the other half and pieced them together. It was a haunting photograph. The eyes were hollow and frightened and the mouth was turned down in misery. She looked as though she had been crying, but what was most disturbing were the visible bruises to her face, dark, livid and fresh. Obviously the poor woman had been beaten up. Who would want to take a picture of her in that state? The answer to that question was unpalatable.
I shuddered with unease as I gazed at this grim picture. I put it to one side and continued my search. I now turned my attention to the letters. A few were from Brian on headed hotel notepaper, one from Birmingham and one from Leeds. He had obviously been visiting these cities on business. They were innocuous, mundane and passionless missives. What was of more interest were two letters from Beryl’s mother.
Brian had told me that Beryl did not get on with her mother and that they were estranged. This correspondence told a different story. They were full of warm sentiments and loving phrases. In the most recent letter, one short paragraph stood out: I hope that husband of yours is treating you better. You know you’ll always have a place with me if life becomes unbearable.
‘Unbearable’ was quite a dramatic word. What would make her life ‘unbearable’? I glanced again at the torn photograph and Beryl’s bruised features. That seemed to provide the answer.
I was getting a completely different picture of the domestic life of my late client, the apparently mild-mannered Brian Garner.
I slipped the letters, which boasted an address in Oxford, along with the torn photograph into my pocket and then returned the shoebox to the bottom drawer of the dressing table. Leaving things as neatly as possible, I went downstairs and had a final look in the spick and span sitting room. There was another picture of Beryl on the sideboard, a studio portrait in a silver frame. As I was about to leave, something drew my eyes back to this picture. I went over to the sideboard to examine it closely. Then I realized that the woman in the photograph wasn’t Beryl. It was someone who looked very much like her, but it wasn’t her. There were subtle differences in the features, but certainly this mystery woman had a striking resemblance to the late Mrs Garner. It could almost have been her younger sister. I flipped open the back of the frame and withdrew the photograph. As I slipped it into my coat I was pleased to observe that stamped on the back was the name of the photographic studio where it had been taken.
I made a quick exit. Just in time, for I had only just reached the end of the street when I saw a police car approaching. I hid behind a tree while it sped by but I caught a glimpse of the grim features of Inspector Eustace in the front passenger seat. They were obviously on their way to Garner’s house. As soon as they had passed, I legged it back to the tube station.
*
I had a late lunch at Benny’s. He was in a chirpy mood, relieved that the protection business seemed to have been resolved without further damage or stress. He even gave me extra custard on the apple pie with the cheery announcement, ‘On the house today, Johnny.’
He was in a good mood.
I now knew that my next move in the Garner case was to visit Oxford. I would go there tomorrow after I had carried out a certain early-morning errand. It was a murder investigation now and nearly everything pointed to Beryl as the killer of her husband. She had rid herself of him once, two years ago, but now that he had discovered she was still alive, she realized that she was not safe any more. He had become a real threat again. I thought of the bruises and of the savage blows that must have caused them. The only way she could be sure that she remained safe and free of him was to kill him. Certainly, that was the scenario suggested by the facts as I saw them. But somehow I wasn’t fully convinced. Something niggled at the back of my brain telling me there was more to this business than met my solitary eye.
*
That night I treated myself to some jazz-induced therapy. I took myself along to my favourite dive, the Velvet Cage, the dark smoky club in Greek Street, where the warm, sepulchral atmosphere wraps itself around you like a protective blanket, helping you to forget the miseries of war and the ragged and damaged panorama of London. I had been a habitué of this bolthole since 1939. The booze and the music helped to soften the rough edges of life.
I grabbed a ringside seat to listen to Tommy Parker and his boys improvise their way through a set of standards. On this occasion the group was supplemented by a Negro trumpet player who squeezed the melodies out of his horn with smooth precision. The fusion of alcohol and syncopation relaxed me and I even found myself smiling.
Inevitably when I slip into this kind of mood, my mind begins to wander and I began to think about things in an unstructured and inventive way. While the group were making their way through a soulful version of ‘It Had to Be You’, I thought about Brian Garner, violent, manipulative and deceitful Brian Garner. The image came to my mind of his bloody corpse punctured with innumerable stab wounds. Whoever had killed him had wanted to damage him also. A clean blow to the back of the head would not have sufficed for this murderer. Those vicious wounds were cathartic, affording some kind of release. There was real, violent hatred involved—and, I reckoned, a disturbed mind.
I’ve often thought that detectives would make good novel writers because we too have to construct stories, possible scenarios from a set of basic facts that we have accumulated. We have to create motives, opportunities, possibilities on the slightest of clues. Indeed, actually identifying what is a clue is an art in itself. Miss a significant one at your peril. It is then by applying our imagination to these suggestive scraps that we often reach the truth.
As I sifted through all the small pieces of eviden
ce I had at my disposal regarding the Garner murder, I began to build a plot around them. One had to hope that my fictions were in essence realities.
As the group finished their number, prompting a ripple of applause, I felt fairly certain that I knew who had killed Brian Garner and why. If my theory was right, I should be able to close that case quite soon. Of course, it was a big if. How does that canine cliché go? I could be barking up the wrong tree. However, my instincts told me otherwise.
By now the group were well into an upbeat version of ‘S’wonderful’ at a tempo that reflected my mood to some extent. I decided for the moment to put all thoughts of work aside and give myself over to the music and one more glass of Johnnie Walker before heading home.
On arriving at Hawke Towers just before midnight, I dialled the Nottingham number Max had given me for her digs. After a long while the phone was answered by a grumpy-sounding woman.
‘Who is it?’ she barked without ceremony.
‘My name is John Hawke. I’d like to speak to Maxine Summers, one of the guests at Hallas Lodge.’
‘Would you?’ came the curt reply. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’
‘I’m sorry if it’s rather late.’
‘Late. It’s bloody midnight.’
‘I’m sorry—but it is rather urgent.’
There was a long pause filled with a series of irritated sighs. These were followed by a sharp, ‘Wait a minute.’
I waited nearly five minutes before another voice spoke to me. It was Max.
‘Hello,’ she said tentatively.
‘Hello, Max. It’s Johnny.’
‘Oh, Johnny, how wonderful,’ she said, her voice brightening immediately.
‘I hope I didn’t get you into trouble by ringing so late.’
‘Sort of. There is only one telephone here and it’s right outside Mrs Miller’s room. She’s the owner. I think you got her out of bed.’
‘Oops.’
‘We’re not encouraged to arrange for incoming calls. I didn’t know that when I gave you the number.’
The Darkness of Death Page 10
