‘All right,’ he said as they unwrapped themselves back at the police station, ‘what’s the matter?’
Bryant regarded him with innocent blue eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I always know when there’s something on your mind. You’re not happy. Out with it.’
‘Well, it’s really unimportant.’ Bryant dropped behind his desk and began to doodle aimlessly on a blotter.
‘Really, getting information out of you is like pulling teeth some days. Are you going to tell me or not?’
‘I’ve been thinking. Harry Whitworth had weak lungs, and had been out in the fog. The bloodless dry tongue is a classic sign of oxygen starvation, and it’s also consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning. In both cases it’s a form of hypoxia leading to death, but which of the two causes of death was it?’
‘Does it really matter?’ asked May. ‘Most likely it was a little of both.’
‘He told the boy he had an upset stomach when he arrived. Perhaps we should wait until Oswald Finch has had a chance to conduct a post-mortem.’ Finch was the coroner used by the Bow Street police.
‘Well, it’s terribly sad, but I’m sure there’ll be similar cases before the fog lifts.’ May opened his report folder, happy to fill it in and move on.
They worked quietly until lunchtime. At ten to one, Bryant rose and knotted his scarf around his face once more, leaving only his eyes and the tops of his ears exposed. ‘I thought I’d pop out and get something to eat,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ll bring you something back.’ And he was gone. This in itself was extraordinary, as May knew his partner always brought sandwiches in gruesome combinations that involved cheese, jam and sardines. Sure enough, today’s greaseproof-paper packet was still in the top drawer of his desk. What’s he up to? he thought.
Half an hour later, he received a phone call. Bryant was ringing from the blue police box on Shaftesbury Avenue. ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to meet me back at the coachworks?’ he asked.
Harry Whitworth’s body had been removed, but Stan the apprentice was still seated glumly in the manager’s office, waiting to be released. He rose in anxiety as the detectives arrived. ‘Will it be all right for me to go home soon, sir?’ he asked. ‘It’s been a terrible morning.’
‘Of course, Stanley, I just want you to repeat what you told me a few minutes ago.’
‘About Harry and his son?’
‘That’s right.’
Stan turned to John May. ‘I was telling Mr Bryant that they didn’t get on. Ever since Harry’s wife died he hardly allowed Clive out of his sight.’
‘Not that part, the part about why Harry seated himself behind the wheel of the coach.’
Stan looked sheepish. ‘He missed it, see. He’d been banned from driving.’
‘And why was he banned? Tell Mr May here.’
‘After Mrs Whitworth died, Harry started drinking. He had a bit of an accident. He’s been here all his working life, though, so Charlie put him in charge of the rosters. You don’t need to drive for that position. He missed taking the coaches out.’
‘And that little tidbit of information was of interest to me because?’ asked May as he was virtually dragged back into the shrouded street by Bryant.
‘Next stop, the ABC café,’ said Bryant, ignoring him.
When they reached the café, Bryant prevented his partner from going in. To May’s astonishment, Bryant knocked on the window and the pretty little waitress slipped out. She sucked her crimson bottom lip and widened her eyes at May in a way that reminded him of Betty Boop.
‘Our prearranged signal,’ Bryant explained. ‘Dolly, tell Mr May what you told me.’
Dolly was clearly excited to be part of an investigation. ‘Just that Clive and the old man had a terrible bust-up the other day, right in the middle of the restaurant.’ May couldn’t help noticing that she had upgraded the ABC from a mere caff. ‘Clive and me went out to the dance hall last Saturday and got back late, and the old man was furious, told him he couldn’t go out no more, and Clive said, “I’m twenty-one, I’ve got the key of the door and can do what I like,” and the old man said, “Over my dead body,” and Clive said he wished the old man would hurry up and die.’
Released, Dolly reluctantly returned to her station in the café.
‘What is the point of all this?’ asked May tetchily.
‘Harry Whitworth was already sick when he got to the coachworks.’
‘Yes, so you said.’
‘He hopped on a bus from the tube. Dolly was arriving for work, and saw him getting off at the bottom of Wardour Street. So he wasn’t out in the fog for very long at all.’
‘What about at the other end, from his house?’
‘He lives right next door to the station, and leaves a minute before the train arrives. She’s a mine of information, Clive’s little lady.’
‘So you’re telling me he didn’t die of either cause?’
‘No,’ said Bryant, ‘but I think somebody would like us to think he did.’
‘Not Stan.’
‘Stan was at the coachworks an hour before Harry, and even though he had been running the engines all that time there couldn’t have been enough carbon monoxide in the air to hurt either of them. There’s a ventilation shaft at the back of the shed.’
‘Then what made him sick?’
‘Harry came to work separately from his son this morning. I think they had another argument last night. The only thing he did before reaching his place of employment was have a bite to eat.’
‘You think Clive poisoned him?’
‘I’m just saying that I think we should search the kitchen.’
Harold Whitworth had eaten some scrambled eggs and had drunk a bowl of Brown Windsor soup, his favourite. His son watched on blankly, seeming barely present as the two detectives went about checking every canister of ingredients. Rationing meant that powdered eggs were still in use, but May tasted them and found nothing wrong. Bryant tried everything from the lard to a piece of mutton shin that had been used for the soup. It was hard to tell if he was testing them or grabbing a quick snack.
‘This is ridiculous,’ May complained. ‘Dolly, how many eggs and Brown Windsors have you got through serving today?’
Dolly check the larder and returned. ‘About two dozen eggs and six soups,’ she told them.
‘And did Harry Whitworth’s come from the same place as all the others?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘There you have it.’ May threw up his hands in despair, but he knew that once Bryant was convinced of something, nothing would disabuse him of the notion until every last particle of doubt had been combusted. He turned to the son. ‘Clive, did you have words with your father this morning?’
‘No, he had one of his sulks on. Barely said a thing, just ordered from the menu, ate and left without even paying.’
Bryant turned to Dolly, the waitress. ‘Where did Harry sit?’
‘Over there,’ she said, pointing to a small Formica-topped table in the corner, beneath a doubtful painting of the Bay of Naples.
‘Does he always sit in the same place?’
‘No, of course not. We do have other customers, you know. We’re very popular.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’ Bryant wandered over to the table, tasted the salt, pepper and tomato sauce, and returned more dissatisfied than ever.
‘Well, I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time,’ he told Clive finally. ‘I’ll let you attend to your customers.’
The moment they stepped outside the café, Bryant slapped his partner in the chest and brought him to a standstill. ‘I need you to stay in the doorway opposite, by the Craven “A” sign, and not let that young man out of your sight until I get back,’ he said.
‘In this fog? You must be joking.’
‘Then take my scarf.’ Bryant unwrapped it from his own neck and began to mummify May before he could protest.
Helpless, May was forced to install himself in the shadowed doo
rway of a tobacconist’s shop, but found he could barely see across the narrow road. The city had entered a state of limbo. Trucks and taxis hove into his blurred line of vision like prehistoric beasts, only to vanish just as mysteriously. He could see black particles floating in the air. He wondered how much poison the people of London were being forced to consume, and how it would affect them.
The bell on the door of the café tinkled with each arrival and departure. The customers appeared as little more than phantoms, and it was hard to keep track of them all. May stamped his feet and wiped the beads of black water from his brow. He readjusted the scarf, and was alarmed to note that the patch covering his mouth was thick with grime. He wanted to go home and scrub himself in a hot bath.
Two hours and ten minutes after he had left, Bryant returned. His stumpy figure was as unmistakable as ever in the gloom. He was panting. ‘Sorry to leave you so long,’ he apologized, ‘but I had to get a preliminary result from a friend of mine who runs a chemist’s shop in Oxford Street. Has he come out?’
‘Who, Clive Whitworth? A result on what?’ asked May.
‘I tipped some of the salt and pepper into my handkerchief before I left the café. Dolly told me the old man didn’t like ketchup, so I thought it had to be in the condiments.’
‘You mean poison?’
‘What else would I mean? The pepper was fine. The salt has been cut with an industrial chemical that causes hypoxia. But it’s a very low dosage, too low to do any damage, no more than one grain to every thirty of salt. Hang on, someone’s coming out.’
They both peered across the road. ‘I can’t see a blinking thing,’ Bryant complained.
‘It’s Clive,’ said May.
‘Damn, he’s leaving early. I’ve arranged to have him placed under arrest, but the others aren’t here yet. This blasted fog. We’ll have to follow him.’
Tracking their quarry through the chaotic backstreets of Soho would have been tricky enough without the obscuring murk. But at least if they could not see him, Clive Whitworth could not spot that he was being followed. At one point, when he disappeared behind a stack of fish-crates, the detectives feared they had lost him, but he emerged the other side, crossing into Greek Street and then Soho Square. The watery sun threw shafts of strange green light through the branches of the plane trees, as if London was in the throes of an apocalypse.
‘He’s heading for St Peter’s,’ Bryant pointed out. The red-brick tower of the Roman Catholic church rose in the east quadrant of the square. The detectives followed their suspect inside.
Even here, blossoms of yellow mist were unfolding beneath the doors of the church. Fog hung in the air like the manifestation of holy spirits. Clive seated himself at a pew and dropped forward on to his knees in fervid prayer. The detectives crept into the row behind him and quietly listened.
After a few minutes, Bryant stood. ‘A confession of guilt, I think,’ he told his partner. Clive turned to look at them and started.
‘I am arresting you for the murder of Harold Whitworth,’ Bryant began, placing a hand on his shoulder. He liked to do things the traditional way. ‘Anything you say …’
Clive tried to rise, but was restrained by May’s rugby-strengthened arms.
‘Come on,’ said Bryant, ‘hold him tight and let’s get out of this fog. I’ve had enough poison for one day.’
Back at Bow Street, Clive Whitworth did not attempt to rescind his confession. He looked utterly defeated. The detectives retreated to their cluttered first-floor office. It was so gloomy that they had to turn on the lights. May placed a kettle on the gas ring, and Bryant filled his pipe.
‘You’re not going to smoke your navy shag in here, are you?’ May complained. ‘The air’s thick enough as it is.’
‘I’m replacing the coal smoke with the healthy aroma of high-grade naval tobacco.’ Bryant tipped back in his chair and began to puff. ‘Come on, then, I know you’re dying to ask me how he did it.’
‘All right then. I can’t for the life of me see how.’
‘Clive and Harry Whitworth had a fight last night. Harry told his son he would never have the house. Clive took a powerful poison from his garden shed and carried it to work. He added a tiny amount to the salt. Harry always came in for something to eat before the start of his shift, even when they had argued.’
‘But surely he couldn’t know where the old man would end up sitting.’
‘Precisely. So he measured out the poison and added it to each of the salt cellars in the room. It didn’t matter where Harry sat.’
‘Then why didn’t any of the other customers become ill?’
‘Harry used more salt than anyone else. Clive knew he would.’
‘I really don’t see how he could know that.’
‘After the argument, Harry went down the pub and got drunk. You heard what Stan said; since the death of his wife he had become an alcoholic and lost his licence. Excessive drinking removes the salt from your system. Alcoholics always oversalt their food, especially when they’re hungover. Harry had no choice but to do so – it was a biological necessity. And for every thirty grains of salt, he consumed a grain of poison.’
‘Well I’m damned,’ said May. ‘I wonder what gave him that idea?’
‘Look out of the window,’ Bryant replied. ‘The city poisons us all. It’s just a matter of degree.’
He blew a satisfying cloud of smoke into the air, and watched in amusement as John May had a violent coughing fit.
One of my favourite Golden Age authors is Margery Allingham. The first time I read The Tiger in the Smoke, the book widely regarded as her masterpiece, I kept losing my place. The chase to track Jack Havoc, jail-breaker and knife artist, in the London fog is as densely confusing as the choking gloom through which he carves his way. There’s a central image of a hopping, running band of ragtag musicians silhouetted in the murk that stays beyond the conclusion. It’s a dark, strange read that leaves its mark.
Anyway, every year there’s a Margery Allingham award for the best short mystery story. I’d done fog – see the last story – so I wrote this. It didn’t win but it did make the shortlist, and I’m proud of that.
BRYANT & MAY
AND THE NAMELESS WOMAN
‘There’s someone to see you,’ said Janice Longbright, dropping Monday morning’s mail on John May’s desk in a way that didn’t destroy her freshly painted nails. Arthur Bryant had been confined to his apartment, having recently suffered a debilitating bout of memory loss, and May did not enjoy working alone. He was worried about his old friend. Bryant was supposedly due back at the Peculiar Crimes Unit today but there had been no sign of him yet.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘Oh, someone.’ Longbright raised a stencilled eyebrow, indicating that the someone was a woman, and an attractive one. ‘You might want to comb your hair. She specifically asked for you.’
‘You’d better show her up, then.’
‘I’m not your secretary and you’re not Sam Spade,’ said Longbright. ‘Get her yourself.’
‘What is wrong with everyone today?’ May asked the empty room, knowing all too well what was wrong: his partner was away and although nothing ran smoothly when he was here, without him the place was worse.
He found her on the landing, waiting to be collected. ‘Please, come in and take a seat,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
The woman had cropped blonde hair and was elegantly dressed in grey silk. Tall and slender, she had a pleasant smile and an aura of calm control. She was wearing white cotton gloves, May noted, an odd affectation in this day and age. She avoided giving him her name, and somehow made the omission seem like the most natural thing in the world. She looked like someone they’d once interviewed as an accessory to murder – what had her name been?
May behaved differently around such women. He felt somehow vulnerable and awkward, as if he was a teenager again. The change was obvious enough to wring sarcastic responses from those who knew him well, b
ut there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Opening her handbag, she took out a monochrome photograph and pushed it across the desk. ‘I thought I should let you know what I’m going to do,’ she said. ‘I want there to be no mistakes or misunderstandings.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite with you,’ said May uneasily, sensing something bad approaching.
‘In one week’s time I’m going to kill this man. There’s nothing you can say or do that will make me change my mind.’
For a moment May wondered if he had indeed wandered into a 1940s noir movie. ‘We’re not a private detection agency,’ he said, ‘we’re a unit seconded to the City of London Police. You can’t just come in here and tell me you’re going to kill someone.’
The woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Then who should I tell?’
‘No one. Well, I mean, you’re not actually allowed to kill anyone. Who is he? Your husband, your boyfriend? What has he done that makes you think he deserves to die?’ The photograph showed a handsome, tanned businessman in early middle age, sleek and well groomed.
‘If I told you, you wouldn’t …’ She searched carefully for the right words. ‘… appreciate the problem.’
‘If anything happens to this man, you’ll be arrested. Am I allowed to know who he is?’
‘His name is Madden. He’s rich and successful.’ Slipping crimson nails under the photograph, she dropped it back in her bag.
‘And he’s hurt you?’
‘No.’
‘Then why come here and tell me this?’
‘Because in a week’s time he’ll be dead, and you’ll come looking for me.’
‘I don’t know who you are,’ said May, exasperated.
‘No, but you will,’ she said, rising and leaving.
Against his better judgement May had a look for Madden, but with only a surname and his memory to guide him he drew a blank. One week later, the PCU received a call about a man who had drowned in the rooftop swimming pool of an exclusive City club near the Guildhall. He had indeed been identified as Joel Madden. A young woman had been picked up on the building’s CCTV, and was now being sent to them for questioning. And so it was that John May found himself in the unit’s interview room sitting opposite the very same woman, once again clad in dark couture.
Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection) Page 8
