‘Yes, it was,’ was her staccato reply. She turned, but now, being back-lit against the windows, her expression was still hard to discern.
‘He just came to ... er ... let me have some of Deborah’s more personal things. Nothing of value, of course. Childhood stuff, mainly: her old teddy bear, a black-faced doll ... School examination certificates, a leather bound Grimm’s Fairy tales she had won as a prize.’
I surreptitiously glanced round the room. I could see no obvious sign of the items she had mentioned, yet she could hardly have had much time to stow them all away before our own arrival. Maybe she had stuffed them somewhere in the hall or under the stairs.
‘I didn’t know he was coming,’ she went on, looking now at Tracy, ‘otherwise I would have stopped him and arranged to have the things picked up. I have no wish to see Michael Seagrave ever again. Except, perhaps, in the dock of the Old Bailey.’
*
A quarter of an hour later and we were sweeping back out of her drive. For there had been little more to learn — except practical bits and pieces, such as the address and telephone number of her sister’s lawyer and the name of the Chief Inspector who had been in charge of the police investigations into Deborah’s Seagrave’s death. Plus, I’d been given a wedding photograph of the then seemingly happy couple.
Oh, and of course, there was the little matter of my fee. To my immense relief, Diana Travers had circumvented all discussion over its size by offering me a retainer so much more than I’d been willing to settle for, that bargaining would have been highly indecent. One hundred pounds to engage my services (she gave me the cash there and then. I almost fainted) and fifteen pounds a week plus reasonable expenses for four weeks, the situation to be reviewed after that date. Upon a successful conclusion to my enquiries — which I took to mean proof of Seagrave’s hand in her sister’s death — I would be given a further one hundred pounds. I wondered what I’d get if I came up with proof that the whole thing was, in fact, a genuine accident. Beyond a thick ear, that is.
Tracy and I discussed it on our way back home. She defended her friend from the worst of my suspicions, which, I suppose, was only natural.
‘You mustn’t assume that Diana is always as edgy and icy as she was today. Don’t forget that Seagrave had only just left and she was obviously still upset. From what I’ve seen of Diana, she can be quite a generous girl.’
She saw my expression and chided me. ‘And I don’t just mean with money, you bounder.’
I swung the La Salle down Ashburton’s main street, being careful not to frighten the dray-horses champing at the bit outside a local hostelry.
‘What have you seen of Diana? I mean, how long have you actually known her?’
‘A couple of years. Not long. I met her at a house party one weekend. Turned out we were both bored with our respective escorts, so we got chin-wagging. Discovered we had quite a few things in common.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, going to the theatre. Not that Torquay is quite like the West End. But we sometimes make up parties to go when there’s anything decent playing. Been to the pictures with her on the odd occasion and even tried the dansant, unescorted. Diana’s got quite a knack for catching the eye of young men, without it seeming like a wanton invitation. Whenever I’ve tried to get a dancing partner on occasions like that, I’ve been taken for a girl of more than easy virtue. You’d be surprised at how many hands young men can prove to own on a dance floor, when they have misinterpreted the glint in your eye as a hint in your eye. Whilst Diana ...’
‘... keeps her man under control, once she’s got him?’
She laughed. ‘I suppose she does. She certainly does not get pestered the way I do. Must be something to do with the difference in our personalities. It doesn’t say much for yours truly, does it?’
I reached across and took her hand. ‘You and Diana are chalk and cheese. I know which I prefer.’
She squeezed back. ‘I’m not sure I like being likened to a cheese, if that’s what you mean. ‘I’m hard and yellow, if I’m Cheddar, and soft and gooey if I’m Camembert.’
I leant across and kissed her cheek. Her face powder smelt good enough to eat.
‘Sorry, I made a mistake. It’s chalk and peaches and cream.’
She slid up closer to me on the bench seat.
‘It seems ages,’ she said quietly.
‘For me too,’ I returned. ‘Anyway, thanks a million for recommending me to Diana. You will never know how it’s just in time to save my bacon.’
She rested her head on my shoulder. ‘I like your bacon, Johnny. Breakfast hasn’t seemed the same without you.’
‘A rasher statement you’ve never made,’ I oinked back, with a grimace.
She chuckled, bless her. ‘I take it all back. I’d forgotten the jokes.’
Her delicious bodily warmth was getting through to me. I opened my quarter light a little more to lower my emotional temperature. It was just too easy to pick up where we had left off all those months ago. Wonderfully and wickedly easy. Besides, I now had some work to do; work in which Tracy might well want to dabble her elegant fingers and I didn’t want her to get involved. Not because I wanted all the kudos (if there was any to be had), or that Diana Travers was her friend. It was just that I had a funny feeling that this Black Eye’s first case might well turn out to be not so much a can of worms as a basket brimful of vipers. And I preferred that Tracy kept well clear of their fangs.
Neither of us spoke for a while and we were almost back at my cottage before I took the plunge.
‘Tracy, do you mind if I go straight on into Torquay, directly I’ve dropped you? I want to open a file on this assignment, whilst all the facts are fresh in my mind.’
Instead of appearing disappointed, her languorous look changed into one of excitement.
‘Mind? Course not. I’ll come into Torquay with you. Then afterwards, you can treat me to a nice dry cocktail at the Imperial as a kind of thank you.’ She winked. ‘After all, you can always charge it to Diana on expenses.’
I argued until the cows, and we, came home, but to no avail. And Tracy had a point. Without her, I wouldn’t have got wind of the case and therefore, she insisted, she had no intention of getting excluded on the very first day.
‘Besides,’ she grinned, ‘I’ve never sat in a private eye’s offices before.’
‘Office,’ I corrected her, ‘not offices. One room. Desk, filing cabinet, bucket for waste-paper, typewriter I’ll swear that Churchill fellow used in the Boer War and two chairs, one with horsehair on the inside and my own, that is rapidly becoming the reverse.’
She raised a pencilled eyebrow and ran her fingers over the red leather of the La Salle’s seat. ‘Sounds wonderful. Maybe you should hold all your meetings in your car.’
‘One day, I may have to,’ I grinned. ‘That’s why I bought it.’
*
The grin soon came off my face when I arrived at the Ling offices and went to my room. I had hardly got the key in the door when a worried Babs fussed up to me.
‘Johnny, the phone has been ringing all morning. You have to ring back.’
She suddenly realised I was not alone and put her fingers to her mouth.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know —’
‘That’s all right, Babs,’ I said, letting us all in. ‘This isn’t a client. She’s an old friend of mine. Tracy Spencer-King. Tracy meet Babs. Babs meet Tracy.’
Blushing wildly, Babs almost curtsied as she shook hands with Tracy.
‘Now, calm down, Babs. D’you know who it was who was ringing?’
‘Yes. I popped in and answered every time. Luckily, Mr Ling has been out this morning.’
‘So who was it?’
‘Mr Briggs. He sounded crosser and crosser each time he rang. He said he’d noticed you weren’t parked at the usual cross-roads.’
I caught my breath and looked at Tracy. ‘Oh, hell’s bells, I’d forgotten all about Mrs Briggs.’
&
nbsp; ‘Mrs Briggs?’ she queried.
‘Yes. Her husband was my first and only client, until Diana came along.’
I mimed keeping two balls in the air at once, then went to the phone.
‘He suspects his wife’s two-timing him. I’m supposed to watch her. I’d better ring him back.’
Which I did. I just hoped his shouted expletives did not reach the delicate ears of my two female companions. However, I managed to calm him down, albeit with a lie — that I had been making discreet enquiries about her movements in and around the neighbouring villages and that I would be back on the regular beat on the morrow.
Once I’d hung the receiver back on its hook, I asked, ‘Anything else, Babs?’
She shook her head.
‘Not really.’
‘What do you mean, “not really”?’
‘Well er ― a Mr Shilling from the Imperial Hotel. He said to give you a message.’
I raised my eyebrows and asked the question to which, unfortunately, I already knew the answer.
‘Which was?’
‘Would you pop into the bar, soon, as it’s some time since he’s seen you.’
Tracy laughed. ‘We’re going to, the second Johnny has finished opening up a file on his big new client.’
Bab’s blue eyes doubled their size.
‘You’ve got a big new client, Johnny?’
I nodded.
‘Er, really big?’ she queried excitedly.
‘Well, the lady isn’t, but the case might be and the fee ... Well, let’s say it will more than pay my rent.’
Had Tracy not been there, I’m sure Babs would have jumped up and down like a kid with a new toy.
‘Oh, well — that’s nice,’ she faltered, then sidled towards the door. ‘Well, let me know if you need me to type ... or anything.’
‘I will.’
She performed her usual trick of bumping into the doorknob and exited.
Tracy took my hand. ‘You know she’s madly in love with you, don’t you?’
‘Who? Babs?’ I said, incredulously.
She kissed my cheek softly.
‘Amongst others,’ she breathed.
*
‘Fancy seeing you, Johnny,’ Ted Shilling grunted with a wry smile.
I reached in my pocket, took out two crisp pound notes and laid them on the bar.
‘In answer to your call.’
He covered the notes with his big hand.
‘I didn’t mean you to —’ he began, but I cut in.
‘Yes, you did. And you were right, Ted, to phone to remind me. A debt’s a debt.’
He more than glanced at the notes before he stowed them away in his pocket. Ted was reputed to be able to tell a counterfeit from a hundred paces. Not that he would ever think I would pass one off on him deliberately. He pushed his thick, horn frames back up his podgy nose, which was really too diminutive to deal with their spectacular bulk. His glasses had more than once taken a swim in the beer he was pulling.
‘You know it’s too much, don’t you? Or are you building up credit?’
‘No, I’m also paying for a Scotch and splash for myself and ...’ I turned to greet Tracy as she returned from the powder room, ‘... and an extra dry Martini for my old buddy.’
Ted guffawed, his double chins wobbling like a jelly fish.
‘Hello, Tracy,’ he said, wiping his hand on a bar towel before extending it to her.
‘Hello, Ted. How’s life?’
He winked. ‘Better now I’ve seen you two.’
When we were settled at the bar with our drinks, and Ted had served a colonial-type figure with a long gin concoction that was his own speciality — aptly called a Count Shaker, after Ted’s nickname, The Count, which he had earned for his rather imperious manner with the rest of the staff and the meticulous way he counted out change — I answered Ted’s masked but imminent question about where the filthy lucre had suddenly come from. For normally, he knew me as poor as a church mouse, unless the horses were running strong. Hence the need to sub me occasionally, bless his hide.
‘My first ship’s come in,’ I said.
He glanced out the window towards the harbour.
‘You mean Black Eye has got its first customer?’
‘Not customers, Ted. They’re called clients in my game.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Big ship?’
‘Do for the time being,’ I said and raised my glass. We all clinked.
‘Would I know the captain of yer ship?’
I shrugged, then reached into my jacket pocket and brought out the wedding photograph Diana Travers had given me of her sister.
‘Don’t know.’ I put the photograph down on the bar. ‘But you might have seen one or other of these two. The Imperial is just the kind of place the man, especially, might have frequented.’
Ted picked up the picture and peered closely at it through the pebbles in his horn-rims. After a moment, he said, ‘I’ve seen this picture before, haven’t I?’
‘You may have done,’ Tracy jumped in. ‘A similar one was published recently in the Torbay Express, when it all happened.’
Ted scratched at his slick, Brylcreemed hair that fitted his head like a black bathing cap.
‘Don’t tell me. I know,’ he muttered, then he looked across at us, saving his glasses sliding off at the very last moment. ‘She was killed, wasn’t she? In a car on the sands. Something about her scarf catching in the wheel. Yeah, I remember. Not long ago, was it? Terrible accident.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘terrible.’ I pointed back at the photograph. ‘Either of them ever come in here? Or have you heard anything on the old grapevine about them? There’s nothing that goes on in Torbay or the South Hams that you don’t usually know about.’
He handed back the photograph. ‘Don’t know much really. I’ve never seen her around at all. Beautiful girl like that, I’d have known the instant she came in here. She’d have been the talk of the bar.’
‘What about her husband?’
‘Now he’s different. I’ve seen him more than once. Not recently, mind.’
‘When?’
‘Oh, year or so ago, I suppose, was the last time.’ He sniffed and his glasses started to slide once more. ‘Wasn’t he an actor at one time?’
‘I gather so.’
‘Well, could be about three years or more ago, he came in here quite a bit. With a crowd from the theatre. Must say I didn’t take to him.’
‘Why?’ Tracy asked.
‘Well, I don’t think he was very popular even with his theatrical mates. You know, always last to buy a round, as I remember. And he didn’t seem to be able to keep his hands off the girls. And good looking though he was, in a foppish kind of way, not all of them seemed to like it.’
‘What about the last time he was in? A year ago.’
‘Well, as I remember, he came in alone, which surprised me. But some time later a lady did join him.’
‘Not the lady in the photograph?’ Tracy queried.
‘No, not her. I’d have known if it had been her. Not a bad looking woman, though, as I recall. I can’t give you an exact description now.’
He turned to me. ‘Why, what are you up to, Johnny boy? Can’t you let old Ted into the secret?’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry. Bit confidential and all that. Maybe one day ...’
‘Do you remember whether that lady was blond or brunette?’ Tracy asked, half to cover my embarrassment.
Fingers went to the Brylcreem once more.
‘Not really. All I remember is she was sort of classy looking. Not like those actresses with their painted faces I’d seen him with before. Oh, and she smoked like a chimney. I remember I had to send the boy over umpteen times to empty their ashtray.’
Tracy looked at me and smiled. ‘Well, that narrows it down to a couple of million of us. If you start directly after lunch, Johnny, you should have tracked her down by the end of the century.’
I raised my glass. Thank you, Wa
tson, for your encouragement.’
She raised hers. ‘Think nothing of it, Holmes.’ Then she laughed. ‘Which probably sums up your feelings exactly.’
Four
It began raining. Devon rain. Falls sideways, not downwards, more easily to infiltrate your clothing. I cursed under my breath, put up my trench coat collar and braved it for almost half an hour before walking back to where I had parked the La Salle.
I started up and edged back up the narrow road, where I nudged into a gateway that was flanked by two large yews that would still hide the car from Mrs Briggs as long as she didn’t decide to take a walk in the spring downpour. I deemed it a trifle unlikely, as I had only seen one sign of her that morning. She had white-washed the front step. Bobby Briggs certainly had a diligent wife, if not, in his opinion, a faithful one.
Through the small evergreen leaves, I could just about watch her house through my side window. At least I would spot her leaving or anyone calling, unless, of course, the visitor was under two foot tall. In which case, good luck to her.
Stake outs must be the most boring of all activities (or non-activities), and I’m afraid I spent my time not so much concentrating on Mrs Briggs as on the little problem landed in my lap by Diana Travers. I took out the notes I had written the previous evening, after I had at last managed to persuade Tracy to go home. (I should have thought of showing her the dilapidated state of my bedroom earlier, I suppose.)
Whilst I had actually got down to work on the case in the afternoon, after our noggins with Ted Shilling and a splendid Imperial lunch, I really needed time on my own to work out my real thoughts about Diana Travers and her dramatic suspicions. For whilst, from my office, I had rung a few theatrical friends in London to see if they could find out anything about Michael Seagrave through his previous acting career, and had visited the offices of the Torbay Express with Tracy to go through all their reports on the tragedy at Bigbury Sands, I could not fully explore my feelings about the lady who had commissioned the whole enquiry without risk of offending Tracy. After all, she was her friend. And I had only met Diana Travers a brief once.
So when the lights of Tracy’s SS100 had finally faded into the darkness and I’d managed to switch my inclinations from the distinctly physical to the mental, I had put down on paper a few of my first thoughts about the Seagrave affair. I re-read it now in the car. They seemed far less significant in the damp light of day than they had in the gloaming of the cottage. Not so much thoughts, as questions really. Like why had Diana Travers waited until now to call someone in over her suspicions? The inquest, after all, had been some weeks before. What had suddenly made her so very sure her sister had been murdered and that the accident had been staged? She had provided Tracy and me with not a shred of evidence for her suspicions. She was relying on the existence of a motive as the sole raison d’être for her case against Michael Seagrave. Then again, why had she, seemingly, made no attempt to raise the whole tragedy with the Devon constabulary and air her suspicions with them rather than an unknown private eye like yours truly?
Black Eye (A Johnny Black Mystery) Page 4
