by Colin Dexter
Two points remain to be cleared up. First, why was it necessary for Ambrose Whitaker to pose as a woman? Second, what was the relationship between Ambrose and the artillery corporal from Bodmin? On the first point, it’s clear that if he wanted to avoid any further wartime traumas Ambrose couldn’t stay in Bristol, where he was far too well known. Even if he moved to a place where he wasn’t known, it wouldn’t have been completely safe to move as a man: because suspicious questions were always going to be asked in wartime about a young fellow who looked as if he might well be dodging the column. So he took out a double insurance on his deception—for him a desperately needed deception—not only by moving to Oxford, but also by dressing and living as a woman. On the second point, we don’t perhaps need to probe too deeply into the reasons why the sensitive and effeminate Ambrose was happy to take every opportunity of spending his nights with (forgive me!) the rather crude, whisky-swilling opportunist you got to know in the war. Such speculation is always a little distasteful, and I will say no more about it.
I rang Ambrose’s widow, asking for a wartime photograph of her husband, and I gave her your address, telling her you are an archivist working for the Imperial War Museum. You should hear from her soon; and when you do you’ll be as near as anyone is ever likely to be to knowing the truth about this curious affair.
E. M.
It was two days later that a still-pyjamaed Wise took delivery of a stiff white envelope, in which he found a brief note, together with a photograph of a young man in army uniform—a photograph in which no attempt had been made to turn the left-hand side of the sitter’s face away from the honesty of the camera lens, or to retouch the line of a cruel scar that stretched across the face’s lower jaw. And as Philip Wise looked down at the photograph he saw staring back at him the familiar, faithless eyes of Dodo Whitaker.
AT THE
LULU-BAR MOTEL
“I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life.”
(Samuel Johnson, as reported by Boswell in
Tour to the Hebrides)
I shall never be able to forget what Louis said—chiefly, no doubt, because he said it so often, a cynical smile slowly softening that calculating old mouth of his: “People are so gullible!”—that’s what he kept on saying, our Louis. And I’ve used those selfsame words a thousand times myself—used them again last night to this fat-walleted coach-load of mine as they debussed at the Lulu-Bar Motel before tucking their starched napkins over their legs and starting into one of Louis’s five-star four-coursers, with all the wines and a final slim liqueur. Yes, people are so gullible … Not quite all of them (make no mistake!)—and please don’t misunderstand me. This particular manifestation of our human frailty is of only marginal concern to me personally, since occasionally I cut a thinnish slice of that great cake for myself—as I did just before I unloaded those matching sets of leather cases and hulked them round the motel corridors.
But let’s get the chronology correct. All that hulking around comes right after we’ve pulled into the motel where—as always—I turn to all the good people (the black briefcase tight under my right arm) and tell them we’re here, folks; here for the first-night stop on a wunnerful tour, which every single one o’ you is goin’ to enjoy real great. From tomorrow—and I’m really sorry about this, folks—you won’t have me personally lookin’ after you anymore; but that’s how the operation operates. I’m just the first-leg man myself, and someone else’ll have the real privilege of drivin’ you out on the second leg post-breakfast. Tonight itself, though, I’ll be hangin’ around the cocktail bar (got that?), and if you’ve any problems about …well, about anything, you just come along and talk to me, and we’ll sort things out real easy. One thing, folks. Just one small friendly word o’ counsel to you all. There’s one or two guys around these parts who are about as quick an’ as slick an’ as smooth as a well-soaped ferret. Now, the last thing I’d ever try to do is stop you enjoyin’ your vaycaytions, and maybe one or two of you could fancy your chances with a deck o’ cards against the deadliest dealer from here to Detroit. But … well, as I say, just a friendly word o’ counsel, folks. Which is this: some people are so gullible!—and I just wouldn’t like it if any o’ you—well, as I say, I just wouldn’t like it.
That’s the way I usually dress it up, and not a bad little dressing up at that, as I think you’ll agree. “OK” (do I hear you say?) “if some of them want to transfer their savings to someone else’s account—so what? You can’t live other folks’ lives for them, now can you? You did your best, Danny boy. So forget it!” Which all makes good logical sense, as I know. But they still worry me a little—all those warm-hearted, clean-living folk, because—well, simply because they’re so gullible. And if you don’t relish reading about such pleasant folk who plop like juicy pears into the pockets of sharp-fingered charlatans—well, you’re not going to like this story. You’re not going to like it one little bit.
Most of them were in their sixties or early seventies (no children on the Luxi-Coach Package Tours), and as they filed past the old driving cushion they slipped me a few bucks each and thanked me for a real nice way to start a vaycaytion. After that it took a couple of hours to hump all that baggage around the rooms, and it was half-past eight before I got down to some of Lucy’s chicken curry. Lucy? She’s a honey of a girl—the sort of big-breasted blonde that most of my fellow sinners; would willingly seek to seduce and, to be honest with you … But let me return to the theme.
The cocktail bar is a flashily furnished, polychrome affair, with deep, full-patterned carpet, orange imitation-leather seats, and soft wall-lighting in a low, pink glow; and by about half-past nine the place was beginning to fill up nicely. Quite a few of them I recognized from the coach: but there were others. Oh yes, there were a few others …
He wasn’t a big fellow—five-six, five-seven—and he wore a loud check suit just like they used to do in the movies. When I walked in he was standing by the bar, a deck of cards shuttling magically from hand to hand. “Fancy a game, folks? Luke’s the name.” He was pleasant enough, I suppose, in an ugly sort of way; and with his white teeth glinting in a broad-mouthed smile, you could almost stop disliking him. Sometimes.
It was just before ten when he got his first bite—a stocky, middle-aged fellow who looked as if he could take pretty good care of himself, thank you. So. So, I watched them idly as they sat opposite each other at one of the smooth-topped central tables, and it wasn’t long before a few others began watching, too. It was a bit of interest—a bit of an incident. And it wasn’t their money at stake.
Now Lukey loved one game above all others, and I’ll have to bare its bones a bit if you’re going to follow the story. (Be patient, please: we’re running along quite nicely now.) First, it’s a dollar stake in the kitty, all right? Then two cards are dealt to each of the players, the court cards counting ten, the ace eleven, and all the other cards living up to their marked face-value. Thus it follows, as day follows night and as luck follows Luke, that the gods are grinning at you if you pick up a ten and an ace—for that is vingt-et-un, my friends, whether you reckon by Fahrenheit or Centigrade, and twenty-one’s the best they come. And so long as you remember not to break that twenty-one-mile speed limit, you can buy as many more cards as you like and …but I don’t think you’re going to have much trouble in following things.
It was the speed with which hand followed hand that surprised all the on-lookers, since our challenger (“Call me Bart”) was clearly no stranger to the Lukesberry rules and five or six hands were through every minute. Slap! A dollar bill in the kitty. Slap! A dollar bill on top. Flick, flick; flick, flick; buy; stick; bust. Dollar, dollar; flick, flick; quicker, ever quicker. Soon I’m standing behind Barty and I can see his cards. He picks up a ten, and a four; and without mulling it over for a micro-second he says, “Stick.” Then Lukey turns over a seven, and an eight—and then he flicks over another card for himself: a Jack. Over the top! And Barty pockets yet anoth
er kitty; and it’s back to that dollar-dollar, flick-flicking again. And when Bart wins again, Luke asks him nicely if he’d like to deal. But Bart declines the kind offer. “No,” he says. “I’m on a nice li’l winnin’ streak here, pal, so just you keep on dealing them pretty li’l beauties same as before—that’s all I ask.”
So Lukey goes on doing just that; and by all that’s supersonic what a sharp our Lukey is! I reckon you’d need more than a slow-motion replay to appreciate that prestissimo prestidigitation of his. You could watch those fingers with the eagle eye of old Cortes—and yet whether he was flicking the cards from the top or the middle or the bottom, I swear no one could ever tell. In spite of all this, though, Barty-boy is still advancing his winnings. Now he picks up a seven, and a four; and he decides to buy another card for ten dollars. So Lukey covers the ten dollars from his own fat roll, deals Barty a nine—and things are looking mighty good. Then Luke turns over his own pair (why he bothers, I can’t really say, for he knows them all along): a six, and a nine, they are—and things look pretty bad. He turns over another card from the deck—an eight. And once more he’s out of his dug-out and over the top.
“My luck’ll change soon,” says Luke.
“Not with me, it won’t,” says Bart, picking up the twenty-two dollars from the kitty.
“You quitting, you mean?”
“I’m quitting,” says Bart.
“You’ve played before, I reckon.”
“Yep.”
“You always quit when you’re winning?”
“Yep.”
Luke says nothing for a few seconds. He just picks up the deck and looks at it sourly, as if something somewhere in the universe has gone mildly askew. Then he calls on the power of the poets and he quotes the only lines he’s ever learned:
“Barty,” he says,
“ ‘If you can make one heap of all your winnings?
And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss …’
Remember that? What about it? You’ve taken seventy-odd dollars off o’ me, and I’m just suggestin’ that if you put ’em in the middle—and if I cover ’em … What do you say? One hand, that’s all.”
The audience was about thirty strong now, and as many were urging Barty on as were urging him off. And they were all pretty committed, too—one way or the other. One of them in particular …
I’d seen him earlier at the bar, and a quaint little fellow he was, too. By the look of him he was in his mid- or late-seventies, no more than four-ten, four-eleven, in his built-up shoes. His face was deeply tanned and just as deeply lined, and he wore a blazer gaudily striped in red and royal blue. Underneath the blazer pocket, tastelessly yet lovingly picked out in purple cotton, was the legend: Virgil K. Perkins Jnr. Which made you wonder whether Virgil K. Perkins Snr. was still somewhere in circulation—although a further glance at his senile son seemed to settle that particular question in the negative. Well, it’s this old-timer who tries pretty hard to get Barty to pocket his dollars and call it a night. And for a little while it seemed that Barty was going to listen. But no. He’s tempted—and he falls.
“Okey doke,” says Barty. “One more hand it is.”
It was Luke now who seemed to look mildly uneasy as he covered the seventy-odd dollars and squared up the deck. From other parts of the room the crowd was rolling up in force again: forty, fifty of them now, watching in silence as Luke dealt the cards. Barty let his pair of cards lie on the table a few seconds and his hands seemed half full of the shakes as he picked them up. A ten; and a six. Sixteen. And for the first time that evening he hesitated, as he fell to figuring out the odds. Then he said, “Stick,” but it took him twice to say it because the first “stick” got sort of stuck in his larynx. So it was Lukey’s turn now, and he slowly turned over a six—and then a nine. Fifteen. And Luke frowned a long time at his fifteen and his right hand toyed with the next card on the top of the deck, quarter turning it, half turning it, almost turning it—and then putting it back.
“Fifteen,” he said.
“Sixteen,” says Barty, and his voice was vibrant as he grabbed the pile of notes in the middle.
Then he was gone.
The on-lookers were beginning to drift away as Luke sat still in his seat, the cards still shuttling endlessly from one large palm to the other. It was the old boy who spoke to him first.
“You deserve a drink, sir!” he says. “Virgil K. Perkins Junior’s the name, and this is my li’l wife, Minny.”
“We’re from Omaha,” says Minny dutifully.
And so Virgil gets Luke a rye whisky, and they start talking.
“You a card player yourself, Mr. Perkins?”
“Me? No, sir,” says Virgil. “Me and the li’l wife here” (Minny was four or five inches the taller) “were just startin’ on a vaycaytion together, sir. We’re from Omaha, just like she says.”
But the provenance of these proud citizens seemed of no great importance to Luke. “A few quick hands, Mr. Perkins?”
“No,” says Virgil, with a quiet smile.
“Look, Mr. Perkins! I don’t care—I just don’t care—whether it’s winnin’ or losin’, and that’s the truth. Now if we just—”
“No!” says Virgil.
“You musta heard of beginner’s luck?”
“No!” says Virgil.
“You’re from Omaha, then?” says Luke, turning all pleasant-like to Minny …
I left them there, walked over to the bar, and bought an orange juice from Lucy, who sometimes comes through to serve about ten o’clock. She’s wearing a lowly cut blouse, and a highly cute hairstyle. But she says nothing to me; just winks—unsmilingly.
Sure enough, when I returned to the table, there was Virgil K. Perkins “just tryin’ a few hands,” as he put it; and I don’t really need to drag you through all the details, do I? It’s all going to end up exactly as you expect … but perhaps I’d better put it down, if only for the record; and I’ll make it all as brief as I can.
From the start it followed the usual pattern: a dollar up; a dollar down. Nice and easy, take it gently; and soon the little fellow was beaming broadly, and picking up his cards with accelerating eagerness. But, of course, the balance was slowly swinging against him: twenty dollars down; thirty; forty …
“Lucky little run for me,” says Luke with a disarming smile, as if for two dimes he’d shovel all his winnings across the table and ease that ever-tightening look round Virgil’s mouth. It was all getting just a little obvious, too, and surely someone soon would notice those nimble fingers that forever flicked those eights and nines when only fours and fives could save old Virgil’s day. And someone did.
“Why don’t you let the old fella deal once in a while?” asks one.
“Yeah, why not?” asks another.
“You wanna deal, pop?” concedes Luke.
But Virgil shakes his white head. “I’ve had enough,” he says. “I shouldn’t really—”
“Come on,” says Minny gently.
“He can deal. Sure he can, if he wants to,” says Luke.
“He can’t deal off the bottom, though!”
Luke was on his feet in a flash, looking round the room. “Who said that?” he asked, and his voice was tight and mean. All conversation had stopped, and no one was prepared to own up. Least of all me—who’d said it.
“Well,” said Luke, as he resumed his seat, “that does it, pop! If I’m bein’ accused of cheatin’ by some lily-livered coward who won’t repeat such villainous vilification—then we’ll have to settle the question as a matter of honour, I reckon. You deal, pop!”
The old man hesitated—but not for too long. “Honour” was one of those big words with a capital letter, and wasn’t a thing you could shove around too lightly. So he picked up the cards and he shuffled them, boxing and botching the whole business with an awkwardness almost unmatched in the annals of card-play. But somehow he managed to square the deck—and he dealt.
“I’ll buy one,” says Luke, slipping a ten-dol
lar bill into the middle.
Virgil slowly covers the stake, and then pushes over a card.
“Stick,” says Luke.
Taking from his blazer pocket an inordinately large handkerchief, the old man mops his brow and turns his own cards over: a queen; and—an ace!
Luke merely shrugs his shoulders and pushes the kitty across. “That’s the way to do it, pop! Just you keep dealing yourself a few hands like that and—”
“No!” cries Minny, who’d been bleating her forebodings intermittently from the very beginning.
But Virgil lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be cross with me, old girl. And don’t worry! I’m just a-goin’ to deal myself one more li’l hand and …”
And another, and another, and another. And the gods were not smiling on the little man from Omaha: not the slightest sign of the meanest grin. Was it merely a matter of saving Face? Of preserving Honour? No, sir! It seemed just plain desperation as the old boy chased his losses round and round that smooth-topped table, with Minny sitting there beside him, her eyes tightly closed as if she was pinning the remnants of her hopes in the power of silent prayer. (I hitched the briefcase tighter under my right arm as I caught sight of Lucy behind the crowd, her eyes holding mine—again unsmilingly.)
