Murder in Piccadilly

by Charles Kingston

  “Don’t you mind her, Mr. Cheldon,” he said in a voice pregnant with good nature. “She’s in one of her tantrums. Best little girl in creation but apt to go off the deep end if everything doesn’t come her way.”

  Nancy gave him a playful tap on the cheek.

  “I can’t be angry with you, Nosey,” she said, and when Bobbie heard her careless laughter he could have hugged the ex-pugilist.

  But the “Frozen Fang” now disgorged Billy Bright, Nancy’s dancing partner, a young man of sallow complexion and dressed in evening clothes and grease. He was only Nancy’s height and looked a couple of inches shorter, but Billy Bright bore himself with conscious pride, and his attitude towards Bobbie was one of patronising toleration.

  “Hello, Cheldon!” he said lazily, giving his dark moustache a twist and a pat at either end. “Quite a little party. I suppose you’ll come along to my rooms? We’re going to discuss a new contract over a bottle of whisky.” Bobbie shuddered in the safety of the gloom.

  “Thanks,” he said, feeling that nearly all the romance had been rubbed out of his fairy story. “I could do with a livener.”

  With an insolence too blatant to be resisted Billy took possession of Nancy, and Bobbie was compelled to follow with Nosey, who had the easiest of tasks in widening the distance between them and the couple in front. The ex-pugilist walked slowly, but of a purpose, and it was only when he could speak without being overheard that he opened a conversation on the only subject that interested his companion.

  “She’s a fine girl, Mr. Cheldon, a top-notcher. Got a great future before her in the profession—unless, of course, she marries.”

  Bobbie’s heart had sunk, but now it rose.

  “Perhaps, she’s told you I want to—to—”

  “Marry her? Of course. We’ve been talking about you all the evening, Mr. Cheldon.” Bobbie warmed to him. There was no familiarity, no coarseness and no insolence. Nosey might not be of the Cheldon type of gentleman, but he spoke and behaved like one. Bobbie could award him no praise greater than that.

  “And why shouldn’t you marry her if you can give her a better time than she can give herself?” Nosey continued. “You’re a gentleman and you have education and position. Nancy talks as if you hadn’t any money, but as soon as she told me all about the Cheldon estate I said to her, ‘Don’t you be a fool and chuck away the chance of a lifetime. The lad’s the right sort and the money will be there or thereabouts.’”

  “Thank you, Mr.—er—” Bobbie laughed from sheer embarrassment. How could he address him as “Mr. Nosey?”

  “Ruslin—Peter Ruslin,” said Nosey introducing himself. “Partner in the firm of Ruslin & Oakes, theatrical agents. Used to be a pug.”

  A great light dawned on Bobbie, but it was not a comforting light.

  “Have you got her the contract she mentioned?” he asked nervously.

  Nosey Ruslin nodded expressively.

  “A chance to make her name in two continents,” he answered, oracularly. “Name in electric letters. You know the sort of thing. If she produced the goods her salary would jump sky-wards. But, of course, you’ll marry her, and you’re to be envied.” He lowered his voice. “Between you and me, Mr. Cheldon, I want to get her away from Billy Bright. I can’t stomach foreigners. It ain’t English. Not a good influence. No, not at all. D’you know, tonight she was actually talking of marrying Billy if there was nothing better for her.” He knew Bobbie was shivering but pretended not to notice it. “Of course, my contract is for the pair of them. After all, Billy does know how to dance, and he’s got ideas. It’s Bright & Curzon, you know. They’d have to travel Europe together, and that would mean marriage first. Then there’s America and—”

  Billy Bright’s flat had now been reached and it soon engulfed them.

  “Whisky? Nosey, I’ve a bottle of champagne to celebrate.” Billy was doing the honours as if posturing in front of an audience.

  “Better not open it until we’ve decided one way or the other,” said Nosey genially. “But I’ll join you in a whisky.”

  Nancy had disappeared, and the three men were looking at their empty glasses when she returned.

  “Got anything to eat, Billy?” she asked in a voice that sounded hoarse and disagreeable. “Well, Bobbie, what’s the news? Uncle in the pink and feeling fit to live for another fifty years?”

  Bobbie tried to smile, but he failed to do more than produce a slight distortion of his features.

  “Uncle’s the goods, Nancy,” he said impulsively. “After you went he promised to do his best for me. Couldn’t say too much about you. You should have heard him. Pretty and clever and fascinating.” He was not the first editor to improve on his text.

  The girl eyed him suspiciously. At nineteen she knew something about men and their world; at twenty-three Bobbie knew nothing about women and their intuitions.

  “He said that to you, did he?” she muttered. Then aloud, “I wonder what exactly he meant by it?”

  A grating laugh from Billy Bright emphasised the sympathetic silence of Nosey Ruslin.

  “What you ought to ask, Nancy,” said her dancing partner, “is, what did he mean in hard cash by that?”

  “You mind your own business!” snarled Bobbie, losing his temper.

  Billy Bright, yellow-streaked through and through, was not afraid with a girl on the premises.

  “Whatever concerns Nancy is my business,” he retorted truculently. “And it’s because it’s my business we’re here now. Nosey, tell him about that contract.”

  “No, you won’t.” Nancy stepped forward into the centre of the room. “I’ll have no quarrelling about poor little me.”

  “I’m sorry, Nancy,” said Bobbie, penitently. “I shouldn’t have forgotten you were present. I wanted to see you alone and—”

  “We’re all friends here,” she declared meaningly, but her wink was reserved for Billy and Nosey, and Bobbie was unaware of it as he was ignorant of the meaning she put into her tone.

  “That’s right, Nancy, that’s right,” wheezed Nosey, selecting the only armchair and filling it completely. “Let’s sit down and have a quiet chat. Nice rooms you have here, Billy.”

  The diversion was diplomatic, and by the time the tenant had expatiated on the advantages of living above a grocer’s shop Nancy was back again in her usual humour.

  “Now listen to me,” Nosey said when he had emptied his glass for the third time, “I want to talk business and I want Mr. Cheldon to butt in whenever he likes. I’m a business man first and last, and I want to link up with Bright & Curzon.”

  “Curzon & Bright,” murmured Nancy, who had her pride.

  “I can give you two the chance of a lifetime—a long continental tour beginning in Paris and ending in Monte Carlo with a possibility of America to follow.” He stopped to glance covertly at Bobbie’s uneasy expression. “Now, Nancy, I know you too well to talk big when there’s nothing really big on the premises, and so I’ll not be coy in mentioning the actual salary. It’ll be a hundred a week, and when you’ve deducted my commission there’ll be ninety left. Out of that you’ll have to pay your own expenses, and these will average twenty quid a week.”

  “That’ll be thirty-five a week clear for each of us,” Billy Bright translated to his partner.

  A cry of delight burst from her lips.

  “Oh, Nosey, I could hug you!” she cried, springing up and suiting the action to the word. “You’re a perfect dear! Thirty-five quid a week and living in the best hotels! It’ll seem like fairyland.”

  “But if you score a win, Nancy,” the agent explained, “it’ll be double thirty-five for the American tour, and I’m certain you and Billy will be a wow. Your act is distinctive—a sure winner.”

  Bobbie’s heart was making his boots feel overcrowded, and his depression was not lightened by an impression that his companions had forgotten
he was in the room.

  Thirty-five pounds a week plus luxury in first-class hotels, continental travel with all its novelties and allurements! It would be ridiculous to offer in competition the salary he would earn in the situation which Uncle Massy had almost guaranteed to obtain for him.

  “Nosey,” said Billy, rising, “I want you to see some photographs I’ve had taken and framed. They’re hanging up in the dining-room.”

  For the first and only time in his life Bobbie’s heart warmed towards Nancy’s dancing partner, but the moment he was alone with her he had no thought of anything except the crisis which confronted him.

  “Nancy,” he said in a tone of supplication, “you won’t sign that contract? You won’t go abroad with Billy Bright?”

  “If you mean I’m likely to do the tour without first marrying him then all I can say is that you’re a—”

  He stopped the verbal garbage with a kiss.

  “I meant nothing of the kind, darling,” he said, “I only want to hear you promise to marry me and let me take care of you.”

  She melted into his arms according to plan.

  “I don’t want to leave England and I don’t want to dance, Bobbie,” she whispered with an attempt at the intonation of a child. “But what else is there for me? I hate poverty.” She shivered and the shiver was genuine. “It’s all very well for you to talk, but you don’t know what poverty is. Ten living in a room and meat once a week if you’re lucky. Dirt and starvation and misery. I’d rather die than be poor. I want the best things life has to give a girl.”

  “I will give you the world if only you will wait,” he said earnestly. “Nancy, can’t you realise how much I love you? I’ve been in love before, but my love for you is different, higher, purer. I’ll slave for you.”

  “Slaves don’t get paid,” she said impatiently.

  “Uncle Massy is our friend.” He was pathetically serious and proud. “With him behind us everything will be all right.”

  “He’s going to make you a fat allowance?” She sat up involuntarily. His face told the truth before he could frame a half-lie. “I thought so. What’s the use of wasting time, Bobbie? You think your uncle cottoned to me? Well, I know he didn’t. He and your mother are the same—they think I’m common.”

  “Common?” he echoed, aghast. “If they think that they must be mad, but I’m sure they don’t.”

  She rose and shook herself.

  “What a life! And fancy having to marry Billy? Ugh!” She gesticulated dramatically. “Life is hell without money, and don’t I know it!”

  “But listen, Nancy, I’m going to spend next weekend with uncle to talk over arrangements for our wedding.”

  She stared into his face as if seeking a clue to what she suspected was a new and subtle form of humour.

  “Say that again—I forgot to laugh,” she said aggressively.

  “I mean it,” he answered, unable to lose his temper with her. “We had a chat about you before he left. Uncle is director of a bank and has lots of influence. I might get an opening—”

  “The only worth while opening in a bank is the one that leads to the strong room,” she said with tired humour.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” he whispered humbly.

  She stroked his hair and smiled down at him as he sat transfixed with gloom on the arm of Nosey’s vacated armchair.

  “Bobbie,” she said, and her voice had tears in it, “I want to tell you something. I hate Billy.”

  The surprise brought him to a standing posture.

  “You mean it? Then why not leave him?”

  “Because without him I’d be penniless. He’s made me. It’s him the agents want. Nosey is very kind, but it’s Bright & Curzon he wants too—not Curzon & Bright. I’m no fool and I know it.”

  “Well, let me take you away from him?”

  “To what? From thirty-five quid a week to—your uncle’s promises? Oh, Bobbie, you’re a darling and a pet, but if only you had the Cheldon property! If only!” She covered her face with her hands.

  “Darling!” She seemed pathetically light, almost gossamer-light in his grasp. “Can’t you trust me? Won’t you give me a chance?” She began to sob. “You make me wish I could send uncle into the next world,” he muttered to himself, but she overheard and a smile came into dry eyes hidden by the upper portion of his waistcoat.

  “I don’t think there’d be many mourners,” she ventured to say when she had concluded the ceremony of pretending to wipe her eyes. “But, of course, I’m only joking, Bobbie. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You couldn’t have an evil thought, darling,” he protested.

  “Just think of what it would mean to your mother, Bobbie,” she murmured in a voice which was dreamy with sympathy, “to have plenty of money. She was meant for something better than that rotten flat.”

  “I’m so glad you like her, Nancy,” he said gratefully.

  She returned to the subject which was uppermost in her mind.

  “I know if the worst came to the worst you could always earn a decent living, Bobbie,” she resumed in an enticing tone, “but with your mother it’s different. You’re young and clever, and she’s growing old. Oh, dear, what a curious world it is when an old bachelor is allowed to keep decent people out of their rights.”

  He did not trouble to remind her that his and his mother’s rights did not begin until his uncle died. Romance seldom demands precision.

  “More than a hundred persons are killed each week by motor cars,” said Nancy reflectively. “Funny that should occur to me,” she added and laughed.

  Bobbie for once was not thinking of her, for a vision of Florence and her blighted hopes was encircling him.

  “Oh, well, it’s nearly daylight and we’re both fools to be thinking we’ll ever be rich.” She stretched herself and yawned. “Billy.” Her shrill cry was immediately answered by Billy and Nosey in person. “I want Bobbie and Nosey to see me home,” she explained. “I’m dead beat.”

  Nosey was first with the fur coat, but Bobbie was allowed the honour of escorting her down the rickety staircase, Nosey following close behind with elephantine fussiness.

  To Bobbie’s disappointment the walk had to be short as Nancy’s rooms were less than a quarter of a mile away, and it was with reluctance that he turned from the doorstep of the unsavoury building.

  “Isn’t she amazing?” said Nosey Ruslin enthusiastically. “Isn’t she worth taking any risk for?” He produced a nearly gold cigarette case and when they had lighted up they strolled leisurely towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

  “I tell you what, Mr. Cheldon,” said Nosey, pausing as if he had just made a momentous discovery and must record it vocally, “if I were twenty years younger and built a little more on Ronald Colman lines I’d commit murder if there was no other way to get her.”

  Bobbie meant to greet the remark with a laugh and tried his best to carry out his intention, but all he could do was to blink at the speaker.

  “But I suppose I’m talking rot,” Nosey added in a different tone. “I’m middle-aged and if it came to the point it would be Safety First with me from start to finish. But she’s a marvel, Mr. Cheldon, and a regular knock-out.”

  Bobbie’s opinion of Mr. Ruslin was rising every minute. He was the cleverest man he had yet met.

  “I can’t tell you how I feel about her,” he answered under his breath.

  Nosey Ruslin stopped again. They had not only the pavement to themselves but apparently the whole of London. Somewhere in the background there was a policeman and a pedestrian or two, but their immediate boundary was formed by the periphery of the light from the street lamp.

  “I’m not in love with Nancy and never have been. But I’m fond of her. She’s got that touch of genius that appeals to the artist in me.” He repeated the tapping of Bobbie’s chest. “Between you and me, Mr. Chel
don, I think Billy Bright a cad, and if Nancy’s fool enough to marry him she’s finished. You know what it is with these dancers—the men, I mean. They select a pretty girl, train her and tour with her for a year or two. After that she is too well known to be any longer a draw. The public require youth and beauty and freshness—particularly the freshness—in a girl. So the male gets rid of her and finds a substitute.”

  “But supposing she’s his wife?”

  “Then so much the worse for the wife.” Mr. Ruslin laughed as harshly as he could.

  They resumed their walk and in another ten minutes they were standing outside another of London’s imitation mansions.

  “I’m home, Mr. Cheldon,” said Nosey genially. “Hope you haven’t far to go. But remember what I’ve said. I like the look of you and if you’re in love with Nancy you’ll save her from the clutches of that dago Billy Bright. I’ve spoken freely to you because you’ve got sense, and if you want to hear me talk more Nancy will tell you where to find me if I’m not at home.”

  To his astonishment Bobbie clutched him by the arm.

  “What about that contract? They didn’t say what their decision was.”

  “Oh, the contract.” Mr. Ruslin threw away half a cigarette. “Nancy insisted on my giving her a week to think it over.” He laughed. “Think it over, indeed! What she really meant was that she wanted time to consider if you could prove you were in a position to marry her. She’s dead crazy on becoming Mrs. Cheldon but not in a tenth-rate flat. She can keep herself in luxury—”

  “For a time,” Bobbie interjected.

  “Exactly—for a time. But do you think she knows that? Nancy is like all of them—she’s under the delusion that she’s got about twenty years of dancing ahead of her.” He held out a massive hand. “Good night, Mr. Cheldon, and take my advice.”