Bobby wondered if there had been a touch of doubt and suspicion in her mind when her husband left her, apparently so abruptly, to speak to such a smart-looking stranger? Was it that had made the incident stay in her memory? And had his black looks, though impressing her so much, relieved her misgivings only slightly. Had she perhaps dimly perceived a certain inconsistency between his anger over the delayed repayment of a comparatively small debt and his customary liberality with his money-? Not that it seemed very helpful to know that the dead man had once spoken to a smartly dressed woman in this district. Bobby wondered if she could have been Mona Leigh, the only smartly dressed woman who so far in the case had been heard of as visiting this part of the town? But more likely to be some one entirely unconnected with recent happenings.
“Did Mr Porter say what kind of shop it was?” he asked.
“Well, he said if it had been nearer I could have taken it out in tea and sugar and such like, so it must have been groceries. Joking like, he was,” she explained. She paused and seemed to remember. “Joking like, he was,” she repeated; “but he won’t no more now he’s gone and been killed, will he?” Bobby did not answer, for there was none to make. She went on in a puzzled, hesitating voice as if something quite fresh had just occurred to her. “I’ll have to tell the children, and them that fond of him—ever so excited when he came home, and always with something for them.”
When they reached the little Kilburn house, Bobby told the nurse, still on duty, that Mrs Porter had better be put to bed again. He thought her on the verge of a fresh breakdown. She had been talking far too much, and was more than likely to collapse again as she began to realize more clearly her husband’s death and how strangely he had died. Didn’t the nurse agree that for the present she ought to be kept as quiet as possible; and wouldn’t a sedative of some kind, or even a mild sleeping draught, be advisable? However, that was the business of nurse and doctor. He went on to say that probably a fresh search of the house would be thought necessary. The officers in charge of the case would almost certainly want to do that in order to find out if anything had been taken, and also, though Bobby did not stress the point, to obtain any scrap of fresh information they could about a man who was so plainly leading a double life. Interrogation of Mrs Porter would have to wait for the time, though Bobby did not think it likely there was much she could tell. She seemed a simple-minded woman; the other side of her husband’s life had been kept carefully hidden, and she had plainly been willing to accept with complete trust everything he thought fit to tell her.
From Kilburn Bobby returned to the Angel Alley district. He had great faith—a faith tested and proved—in the local knowledge of the man on the beat. True, what Mrs Porter had said was vague enough. A doubtful hint at the best. But her story of the smartly dressed woman whose husband was a grocer owing money to the Joey Parsons-cum-Porter personality seemed on the whole worth some kind of an attempt at a follow up. ‘Real vexed’, Mrs Porter had said, almost as though the memory still frightened her, and had that ‘real’ vexation been for a reason more serious than a mere question of an unpaid debt? Bobby had drawn up a list of questions he wanted answered. They caused some discreet amusement, so much did they seem shafts shot at random into the blue. One, underlined, was a request to be informed of any (a) grocer’s (b) other—shop where an outstandingly smart young woman was employed. Another was for a list of shops suspected of being either engaged in unlawful activities or used as a cover therefor. A third was for any grocer’s shop about which anything in any way unusual had been noticed.
A net with meshes too wide, Bobby felt, to catch any worth-while fish. Only his authority and prestige persuaded the district G.I.D. to take it at all seriously. Nevertheless a fish was caught; and in a long report, which at least did credit to the plodding industry of the officers concerned, there was a reference to a grocer’s shop in a small side street off Emmett Street. It was a bad position, facing the blank wall of a warehouse. It was exposed to neighbouring energetic and well-established rivalry, and it had never done well. There had been rapid changes until some years previously when a Mr and Mrs Yates had taken it. They were still there. What puzzled the man on the beat, though, was the fact that the Yates seemed to neglect their business, were very unpopular in the neighbourhood, had acquired a reputation for being even more autocratic, overbearing, and generally rude to their customers than even the worst of war-time shopkeepers, and yet appeared to be making a very good living.
Bobby mused over this report for some time. The man who had made it happened to be in the station at the time, and Bobby asked him what Mrs Yates was like: did she in any way answer to the description of ‘a real tip topper’? The constable grinned broadly and replied that the woman was a notorious slattern, couldn’t even keep the shop clean, and, like her husband, spent far too much time at public-houses near.
“Open late, shut early, and close in the middle of the day for a lot more than an hour,” said the constable. “It beats me how they manage to carry on, even the way things are with every shopkeeper thinking it’s a favour to take your money.”
Bobby thought all this sounded interesting. What it all meant he could not imagine, but there certainly seemed matter for investigation. No telling what might lurk behind anything in any way unusual in a case that seemed to present so much that was much more than unusual. He borrowed a uniform man both as a guide and for effect and drove off to the address given. The shop presented a sufficiently forlorn appearance, grubby and neglected. The windows had plainly not been dressed for some time, and what goods were displayed seemed to have been thrown in almost at random. When Bobby opened the door, a jangling bell announcing his entrance, a frowsy, sullen-faced, elderly woman shuffled forward, looking distrustfully from Bobby to the uniform man and then back at Bobby.
“If it’s about them points,” she began, “we done our best and what I say is—”
Bobby cut her short, little interested in what she had to say about ‘points’, though he could well believe shops like these drove many food officials to a premature grave.
“Nothing to do with points,” he told her. “I take it you are Mrs Yates.”
“Well, what about it?” the woman demanded. “Suppose I am?”
Bobby turned to his companion.
“I’m not in uniform,” he said. “You are. Ask this lady to show you her identity card.”
She duly produced it, though sulkily enough. The constable examined it and passed it to Bobby.
“Apparently in order, sir,” he said.
“I see you don’t live here,” Bobby remarked. “Who occupies the premises over the shop?”
“It’s Mr Potter,” she answered. “He’s the landlord. We don’t have nothing to do with him except pay the rent, as we do regular as clockwork.”
“Is he married? Is there any one there now?” Bobby asked.
“We don’t know nothing about him,” Mrs Yates insisted. “We pays our rent, and that’s all. Sometimes he’s there and sometimes he ain’t. Travels in a big way for a big firm, so he told Mr Yates once.”
“See if you can get any answer,” Bobby said to the constable. “I noticed a side door.” To Mrs Yates he said: “Is your husband here?”
She shuffled off. He heard her voice in the back regions calling angrily for ‘Abel’ to come and talk to the gentleman instead of leaving it all to her, same as he always did. Mr Yates appeared, and proved to be a kind of masculine replica of his wife, though perhaps even a trifle more frowsy, more slipshod, more beery, more sullenly suspicious.
“What’s up now?” he demanded. “Funny thing if a bloke can’t earn an honest living without busies on his doorstep all day long.”
Bobby said he was sorry to trouble them, even though he didn’t notice any great press of customers at the moment. In any case, his own business was important. He produced the Joey Parsons photograph.
“Is this any one you know?” he asked. “Please look well before you say.”
&nb
sp; They looked at it and at each other and then at Bobby. His impression was that they had recognized it at once, but were hesitating whether to say so or to lie. Finally the man seemed to make up his mind that the truth would be safer. He said:
“Mr Potter, ain’t it, missis?”
“Couldn’t say,” she answered. “I ain’t hardly never seen him. It was always you paid the rent. It might be,” she added.
“Have you seen him lately?” Bobby asked.
They both denied it. Very often from one quarter day to another they never set eyes on him. He went and came by the side door, and they were in the shop. He might be in and out a dozen times a day without their knowing or any reason why they should. Sometimes they could hear him moving about overhead, but that was all. They couldn’t say when they had seen him last, but not for weeks. Nor did they know if he had visitors. There might be plenty after they had closed the shop and gone home. Nor did further questioning produce much more than professions of ignorance. Bobby gave it up. They might really know no more than they professed, had perhaps been careful not to know. In any case, there would very likely be occasion for further questioning, when there might be more to go on. For one thing was fairly plain: they would say no more than they were forced to. However, he did impress upon them that if Mr Potter returned he was to be asked to communicate with the police at once.
“Not that he ever will return, either here or anywhere else upon this earth,” Bobby said to his companion as they drove away. “But as soon as it is dark we’ll come back and see what we can find. Quite clear, I think, there are sufficient grounds for a breaking in.”
“Well, sir,” observed the uniform man, for this is rather a sore point with some of the police, “we could always ask a food inspector to come along. We may have to be careful what we do, but seems as if they can walk in anywhere they want any time.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ROOM OF THE SEVEN LUSTS
As soon as it was dark—for he had no desire to attract undue attention—Bobby set out again. This time he was accompanied by Inspector Hall, the D.D.I.’s chief assistant, Ulyett himself being still on the sick list, by a sergeant chosen because locks and keys had been his life-long hobby, and by the constable-driver of the car.
The Yates shop was situated in a side street, just round the corner from Emmett Street. Even in pre-war days the street lighting here had been bad. Then had come the black-out; and even now it was not much better, with the need for fuel economy restricting lighting to one lamp halfway down the street and with the high blank wall of the warehouse opposite throwing down its dense and obscuring shadow.
“Carefully chosen,” Bobby remarked. “Easy to slip into that side doorway of the Yates shop without being seen, and easy to hang about opposite in the shadows to make sure of not being followed. And yet there seems enough traffic up and down for there to be no likelihood of any one passer-by being specially noticed.”
“It’s a bit of a short cut,” the sergeant explained, “for people going shopping in the High Street.”
He was already busy on the lock. Yale locks are secure enough as a general rule. But there are ways of dealing with them, ways which are well enough known, but which perhaps it is better not to describe in detail. In a very few minutes the door was open and the three of them entered. Not till the door had been closed behind them did Bobby flash his torch to show steep and shabby stairs, covered by worn linoleum. Followed by his two companions, Bobby ascended them, and found them closed at the top by another door, strongly made, and, Bobby guessed, of more recent construction. It was not locked, however, and admitted to a small landing, dingy and dark, the wall-paper dirty, old, and worn. There was an aged hatstand—on it neither hat nor coat—and a still more aged umbrella-stand in which stood a smart silk umbrella, beautifully rolled, with a gold-mounted handle. They all regarded it with interest. An umbrella like that ought to be identifiable. From the landing there opened three doors. Bobby pushed back the nearest, and in doing so evidently operated a switch, for at once the room within was lighted by soft fluorescent strips that ran in wavy patterns here and there about the walls and showed a room furnished in a very extremity of a decadent and evil luxury.
“Gosh!” said the sergeant, and repeated: “Gosh!”
“Some style,” said the inspector, more restrained, as befitted one who felt himself marked for promotion.
Bobby, being more senior still, said nothing at all, but looked the more.
The room was large, covering as it did the whole of the shop below. The walls were decorated with a continuous painting of considerable artistic merit, or so Bobby thought at this first glance, and of that kind, nature, and species which second-hand booksellers describe as ‘curious’—in this case very curious indeed, and even meriting a stronger epithet.
“Gosh!” said the sergeant once again as he began to take in the full import of this mural painting.
The inspector followed Bobby’s example and said nothing, but he shook a gravely disapproving head over each fresh detail as he studied it with close attention in case a full report was required.
Not, by the way, until some moments later did they notice that the wavy fluorescent lighting gave in rather fantastic lettering the title and description of this remarkable work of art as ‘The capture and destruction of youth by the seven lusts’.
The furnishing of the room was unusual. It consisted almost entirely of low, luxurious divans and of cushions—innumerable cushions, piled high everywhere, on the divans, in the corners, everywhere, and all of a bewildering variety of rich and diverse colouring and material. There were also two or three cabinets in ivory and ebony, of extremely fine Chinese workmanship, and evidently of very considerable value. Museum pieces indeed. On the floor was a carpet into which the feet seemed to sink as though to the ankles. Bobby thought its value must run into the hundreds. The windows were covered by heavy curtains of a golden silk. An elaborate and expensive radio set and an equally elaborate and expensive cocktail bar provided an up-to-date touch, and the air in the room was heavy, lifeless, and scented.
“Some one with money to splash about,” said the inspector, dragging his disapproving eyes with difficulty from those abominable wall-paintings.
The sergeant, by the way, had lost even the capacity to say ‘gosh’ and could only stand and stare, though whether the sort of standing and staring that Mr W. H. Davies meant, may be doubted.
“Not only with money, but with the taste and knowledge to get what was wanted,” Bobby commented. He added: “Where did the money come from?” but expected no answer, nor received one.
He had noticed that a part of the wall-painting represented a door on which was a scroll reading: ‘Paradise enow: admission by ticket of leave only.’ It was perhaps the only bit of the whole work that, on grounds of decency, not of art, did not merit immediate obliteration; and even to this door the artist, by the surrounding pattern of peeping fauns and other inventions, had managed to convey a suggestion of still stranger things, upon which it opened. Bobby gave it a more careful look. He beckoned to the sergeant, still lost in a kind of hazy doubt and wonder. The sergeant came and looked where Bobby pointed.
“Gosh!” he said, reverting to his favourite exclamation he had picked up listening, as he always did when he had the chance, to the children’s hour on the B.B.G. home programme.
For the door showed a keyhole, a very realistic keyhole—so realistic, in fact, as to be real. The sergeant produced a fine steel instrument. In a moment or two he had the door open. Within was a small, luxurious bedroom, fitted up in the Louis Quinze style, all slender gilt and gay silk hangings. The carpet, Aubusson this time, was again a lovely thing. About the room small golden cherubs held golden candelabra before shining oval mirrors, and the air was even more scented, dull, and lifeless than in the larger room. In one corner there had been fitted up a small silver fountain, and Bobby guessed that the water was heavily perfumed when in action. In a large wardrobe was a variety
of both men’s and women’s clothing. Of the two other doors the room possessed, one opened on the drab and shabby landing they had already seen, and one admitted to a bathroom fitted up in equally luxurious style, with silver fittings to the porcelain bath and tiled walls showing mermaids disporting themselves in a fashion that made the shocked inspector look even more disapprovingly and closely than before.
Bobby left this room, crossed the landing, and opened the third door. Beyond was a long, narrow room of which the farther end seemed a kitchen, the middle portion an office, with filing cabinet, a typewriter and so on, and the nearer end arranged as for a conference with a narrow table, on it half a dozen writing-pads and stationery, and swivel chairs drawn up to it. Possibly to the more exotic rooms all visitors were not admitted. The room was lighted, though not well, by a window at the farther or kitchen end, and here Bobby noticed an arrangement of a pulley and rope. He went across to look more closely, and guessed that supplies—more than supplies, perhaps—came this way. Probably casual visitors were not much encouraged, even if they were only carmen or messenger-boys and so forth. Probably, too, it was not desired that the delivery of goods here should attract even the slightest notice. All packages could be deposited in the yard behind the shop, as though ordinary trade goods, and those meant for Mr Potter—otherwise probably Joey Parsons or Joseph Porter or the Rev Mr Brown, or plain Mr Brown of the city—could be placed under this kitchen window and hauled up. Exit and entry could also be effected in the same way, if necessary. Climbing either in or out by the aid of the lowered rope would be easy for any normally active person.
The House of Godwinsson: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 12
