Black Eye (A Johnny Black Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  To slow the La Salle down in time for both bus and bend, I, reluctantly, put my foot down on the brake pedal. Instantly, I knew something was wrong. The pedal, firm at first, progressively went soft. The big car came down to seventy, then stopped slowing. I pumped the pedal frantically, but it felt like jelly. Cursing new-fangled hydraulic brakes, of which I’d had no previous experience before the La Salle, I looked desperately for any possible escape route, like an open gate-way or a farm track. For at seventy miles an hour, I knew I had as much chance of missing the charabanc and rounding the bend, as beating Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics.

  I clutched at the gear lever, but realised I was still going far too fast to change into second. After a quick glance in my mirror, I resorted to the only manoeuvre I could think of. I swung the wheel and started to swerve the La Salle from bank to bank. The tyres hit the grass verges with a series of deafening thuds. The whole car shuddered with each impact and the body creaked ominously, as the chassis flexed. But to my relief, the car was undoubtedly slowing. But as I glanced down at the speedometer, my door, against which I had been bracing myself, suddenly flew open.

  My body slid across the slippery leather. I clung like a drowning man to the only thing that could now save me from falling out — the steering wheel rim. But now my head was no longer at a height or angle to see forward out of the windscreen.

  The car veered alarmingly to the right as I pulled at the wheel to try to get myself back on the driving seat It didn’t take a genius to see I now had only a split second left before the open door was slammed against my body by the dry stone walling atop the grass verge. My right foot somehow found the running board and by pulling on the wheel and pivoting on my heel, I just made it before there was a sickening scream of tortured metal, as the door struck the wall, tore back on its hinges, then slammed back against the body and running board at a crazy angle.

  I was now on the wrong side of the road and through the windscreen, I could see the charabanc’s bluff bonnet nosing around the bend ahead. I banged my fist down on the horn button and kept it there, whilst the car careered along the grass verge at a thirty-degree angle, the mangled door catching every projecting stone in the wall. Each impact rocked the car sideways, as if it had been hit by a giant’s fist and I had,images of the La Salle turning turtle right in front of the charabanc that was now only a hundred yards or so ahead.

  I held onto the wheel like grim death, for every collision with the wall tried to deflect the car back onto the road and towards the charabanc, which had now got the message and switched lanes. As the right hand tyres thudded and bumped over the uneven bank, I now saw I had a chance, if only the door did not rip back or fold, thus projecting the La Salle further across the road.

  By now I could clearly see the look of sheer panic on the charabanc driver’s face and I vaguely heard another horn join mine. At the very last moment, I closed my eyes — not through fear, I like to think, but through the agony of effort to keep the big car on a line-ahead course. When I opened them again, the charabanc was gone and all I had now was the bend with which to contend. I swung the wheel to the left. The car responded, but my speed was still far too high.

  The last thing I remember was the sound of splintering wood, as the La Salle crashed through a five barred gate and yours truly struck his forehead on the windscreen, producing a star display worthy of a thousand galaxies, before all was blackness.

  Fourteen

  ‘You know, Mr Black, you should really stay in overnight,’ the nursing sister admonished. ‘It’s what we always advise in concussion cases.’

  I held onto Tracy’s arm and let her do the talking.

  ‘I agree with you, sister,’ she smiled, ‘but Johnny is more a mental case than a concussion one. He had a plane crash a year or two back that would have killed anyone else, but he discharged himself from hospital at least a fortnight too soon for any of the doctors.’

  The sister shook her head, then gently shook my hand.

  ‘Well, if the aches and pains in your head don’t clear in the next day or two, you ought to come in again, or at the very least, see your doctor.’

  ‘He will,’ Tracy promised. ‘I’ll see to that.’

  And so we left the quaint little hospital in Totnes and Tracy drove me back home at a funereal speed, the like of which I’m certain her SS100 had never experienced. Once back at the cottage, she fussed around me like a mother hen — about the most temptingly beautiful in the old coop, I must add — and insisted I went straight to bed. I was in no mood or condition to argue, so I obeyed. The hell was she wouldn’t tell what she had discovered in London until I was snugly tucked up and had told her all the frustrating, infuriating and terrifying details of my morning.

  ‘It could have been murder number four,’ she sighed. ‘Just before I came to collect you at the hospital, Bobby Briggs rang Black Eye to confirm he’d picked up your La Salle and has it back at the yard. Thinks he can patch it together, given a bit of time. But the main point is that he’s discovered what caused your brakes to fail — the hydraulic pipes had been neatly cut, presumably whilst you were in the Clipper Ship.’

  ‘I guessed as much. But I have a feeling that was just a warning, not a full-blooded attempt at murder.’

  ‘You can’t be sure.’

  She came and sat down on the counterpane and took my hand. ‘Johnny, if you had turned left and gone down that almost vertical hill into Salcombe ...’

  ‘But I didn’t and there was no reason for them to suspect I might. No, I think if I’d been killed, that might have been less of a bonus to them than a danger. After all, if we’re right and Seagrave and his chum are knee-high in three deaths, they would hardly want questions about a fourth. Dead private eyes might raise questions that dead actors and dancers do not.’

  I turned in my bed and winced, as the movement sent a thousand little daggers into my brain.

  ‘You all right, Johnny?’

  ‘I’ve survived worse, old girl, don’t fret.’

  She extended a soft loving hand to my cheek. ‘You know something, Johnny, you should always wear a bandage round your forehead. Suits you. Makes you look like some dashing bandit or a pirate on the Spanish Main.’ She peered closely at me. ‘Hey, I hate to tell you, but I think you’re going to have a black eye in the morning.’

  ‘Then I’ll wear an eye patch to complete your pirate picture.’

  ‘Johnny Black of Black Eye fame. It’s all coming true,’ she laughed, but I brought her back to hard reality by asking about what she had learned from Trenchard.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you now. But only on one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That you don’t go getting out of bed directly I’ve finished to follow up on what I got him to disclose.’ She held up an elegant but wagging finger. ‘Now, do you promise?’

  I thought for a second, then chose the words of my reply rather carefully.

  ‘I promise not to get out of bed until the morning.’

  ‘All right then, here goes. But heaven help you, Johnny, if you break your promise.’

  *

  Tracy glowered at me, after I had made her make the phone call. In fact, she didn’t speak to me again until Diana Travers actually arrived some thirty minutes or so later.

  I didn’t let Diana’s outpouring of both sympathy and alarm go on too long, as my head was killing me and I wanted to get the whole thing over before I lost what little strength, tact and patience I had left. The trouble was, Diana now looked ashen and about as fit as I felt and I was nervous about how she would be able to take to my extremely direct and personal line of questioning. However, I just had to know, so, with a glance at Tracy, I began.

  ‘Diana, what I’m going to ask you now may cause you embarrassment, even pain, and I guess you’re not going to like me by the time I’ve finished. But things now have accelerated to such a point, I’ve got to clear these questions from my mind.’

  As
always, under tension, Diana Travers reached into her handbag for her cigarette case.

  ‘All right if I smoke in your bedroom?’ she asked.

  I nodded from my bed and waited until she lit up before continuing.

  ‘Today, Diana, we have received information about Michael Seagrave’s past that may well have a bearing on this case and we need your help to evaluate its significance.’

  Her eyelids flickered. ‘Fire away, Johnny. I’ll try and help where I can.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Question number one. You knew Michael Seagrave at one time pretty closely, didn’t you? More than you’ve ever admitted to me.’

  She stared at her scarlet finger-nails and didn’t reply. I drew my own conclusions.

  ‘Question number two. That was the reason you did not want me to extend my investigations to London, wasn’t it? You didn’t want me to know you and he were that close?’

  The stare continued.

  ‘I’m sorry, Diana, I have to go on.’

  She inhaled long and deep on her Sobranie and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘Does Seagrave have some hold over you?’

  I saw her eyes flick toward Tracy. I tried another tack. ‘I’d better tell you what we’ve discovered. Seagrave almost hanged a girl once. From a beam in her bedroom.’

  I watched her face intently, as I went on. ‘It seems that’s how Seagrave gets some of his kicks. From mounting mock executions. Apparently, it’s all very realistic, according to the girl who almost died. The right rope, the binding of the wrists, the hood. Only difference, he used a stool rather than a trap-door.’

  Suddenly Diana gave way.

  ‘Oh God, no, not any more ...’ she wailed. ‘Don’t say any more. You don’t need to, Please ...’

  Tracy went over and put an arm round her shoulder.

  ‘All right. I promise I’ve nearly finished.’

  She looked up at me, her eyes now glazed with tears. ‘What else do you want to know?’

  ‘You knew all this about Seagrave, didn’t you? That’s what made you first suspect your sister’s death wasn’t an accident, wasn’t it?’

  There was a pause, then, staring into space, she replied, as if talking to herself.

  ‘My sister liked being dominated. Always did, right from a child. I could never understand it. She used to fantasize about being taken prisoner ... didn’t really matter who it was. Early on it was Zulus and African tribes. Then it became Arab slave dealers, sheiks and all that Valentino-type nonsense.’

  She took the Sobranie from her holder and looked for somewhere to stub it out. Tracy went out to the landing and got an ashtray.

  ‘I’m sorry, Johnny, I should have told you about all this, I suppose, but I felt too ashamed somehow. I felt ashamed when I went along with it all, when I was with Seagrave, the tying up, the submission, the debasement of his weird fantasies. I hated doing it, but I thought I was in love with him, you see. If I didn’t go along, I’d lose him to another girl who would.’

  ‘What happened?’ Tracy asked softly.

  ‘He ran off to another girl, anyway. All my pretence, my patience ... my abasement was in vain. I hated him after that. Not for leaving me, but for making me go through all that for nothing ... nothing.’

  She sat slumped in her chair, her body limp and her eyes wide but seeing nothing.

  I waited for a moment, then said, ‘You think he played hangman with your sister that day and it went wrong or he took it too far, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘So he covered up the accident with that Isadora Duncan stunt?’

  She pressed her eyes tightly shut. ‘She was always daring him. To do this, to do that. Right from the start. She loved the power her money gave her.’

  Tracy moved back to sit on my bed. ‘What did you feel when you first heard your sister had met him down here? Couldn’t you have warned her about him?’

  She hesitated for a moment, then replied, ‘Oh, surprise, but nothing more really. I didn’t feel envy, if that’s what you’re thinking. And I had no wish to punish my sister for having him, you must believe me. I just felt, well, he might be just the kind of man who could supply my poor sister’s crazy needs. She’d had quite a few boyfriends before, you see, and she ended up despising every one of them.’

  She sighed and turned away. ‘She was never really a happy person, my sister. Never. I’ve wondered at times whether she would ever have been really content with anyone. She was more like two people than one — loved the power her money and beauty gave her, yet craved somehow to be at the mercy of others.’

  My head suddenly began throbbing like a Junkers Jumo Diesel and I put a hand to my bandage, anxious now to get to my last two questions.

  ‘That morning we first met, Diana, over at your house. Seagrave was leaving just as I arrived, remember?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘He didn’t come just to give you some of your sister’s effects, did he?

  She suddenly sat up straight in her chair and became a little more the Diana Travers I knew. Maybe she was just glad she no longer needed to feel guilty about what she had kept from us.

  ‘He came to warn me.’

  ‘About what?’ I asked, but I really knew the answer.

  ‘About going to the police about my suspicions. You see, the evening before, I had plucked up courage to tackle him about my sister’s death and he had denied everything. He said, if I went to the police, he would say I was just a jealous woman, who was trying to take revenge for his preference for my sister.’

  ‘That all?’ Tracy asked, echoing my own thoughts.

  She shook her head. ‘All right. He said he would tell them that I was weird. That I loved being tied up and forced him to carry out all those things, when we were together years ago. He said he would drag my name so deep in the mire that I’d — these were his very words — drown in the spit of society’.

  ‘So you didn’t call the police, but a private ...’ I pointed to my bruised optic ‘... Black Eye.’

  Diana Travers got up from her chair and stood with her back to me at the window.

  ‘I have another confession to make, Johnny.’

  ‘Go ahead, but you don’t need to make any more, Diana. I’ve more or less got the picture now.’

  ‘Not quite,’ she went on, talking to the garden outside. ‘Of course I wanted to see justice done — for my sister’s sake. But at the same time, I was desperately afraid of what Michael might do if he heard I had got in some high-powered private detective from London.’

  I forced a smile. ‘I guess I was ideal for you. Just starting out. No track record, no experience, no clients, no reputation, no London base — and maybe no talent.’

  She immediately turned round and came over to my bedside.

  ‘No, Johnny, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just a sop to my —’

  ‘— conscience. Okay, Diana, sorry to raise it.’

  She took my hand. ‘No, I did and do want to find out the truth. I just didn’t want Michael to drag my name in the gutter. So I thought using an unknown like you ...’ She looked at me with a half-smile. ‘Now I’ve confessed it all to you two, I somehow don’t mind so much any more. Funny, isn’t it? The thing you dread most sometimes turns out to be not so dreadful after all.’

  ‘It’s not dreadful at all, Diana,’ Tracy sympathized. ‘Now how about my going downstairs and getting us all a stiff drink? I have a feeling we could all do with one.’

  Nobody demurred, but after she had left the room, Diana said urgently, ‘Johnny. He tried to kill you today. My God, I would never have got you involved in all this if I’d known. You see, I never dreamt Michael would turn out to be a real killer — I mean, as opposed to ... sort of accidental. But if he and that terrible friend of his have done away with that dancer girl and Henry Swindon, then Michael has traded in play-acting executions for the real thing.’

  She squeezed my hand hard and I saw her eyes were moist onc
e again.

  ‘And now you, Johnny. Is he ever going to stop? It could be me next — any of us. You’ve go to pull out, Johnny. Now. Before it’s too late. I’ll ring Michael and tell him you’ve dropped the case. Then I’ll go away somewhere. We’ll leave all the rest to the police.’

  I thought for a moment, then said, ‘I agree with one thing: you should go away until this whole thing is over. I hate to tell you, but you were right about that blue sports car yesterday. It was following you. I’ve discovered who owns it — Tom Dawlish. Have you got somewhere to go?’

  ‘I suppose so. An old school chum of mine, who now lives in France, has been badgering me for ages to visit her. I said I might go this year, and I could probably put the visit forward.’

  ‘Whereabouts in France?’

  ‘Near LeTouquet.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Ring her and ask if you can come right away. Le Touquet has got an aerodrome, so you could even fly over.’

  She looked a little surprised at my suggestion.

  ‘You think it’s that urgent?’

  ‘I think it’s that urgent.’

  ‘But that still leaves you, Johnny. And look at you. You’re not well enough to —’

  ‘Don’t be fooled by the forehead, Diana. By the morning, I’ll be right as rain and raring to go.’

  I smiled to myself at my optimism. Right then, I felt like the burnt out hulk of the Hindenberg at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

  Luckily, it was at this point that Tracy returned with a tray full of Dutch courage. My own battered senses were shouting ‘Enough, enough’, and I guessed, after our inquisition, Diana’s feelings were not so very different.

  Tracy handed me a Scotch. ‘Hair of the dog,’ she grinned.

  I could have done without her reminder. For the same mangey cur had contributed to my almost getting killed that afternoon. It was a mistake I have never made when flying. And from then on, I was never to repeat it when at the wheel of a motor.

  *