Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal

by H. R. F. Keating

  Another giggle.

  ‘Well, he did look a bit put out like.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt. But what about the second time you were in there?’

  Lindylou looked down at the floor.

  ‘How do you know there were two times?’ she said.

  ‘There just were,’ said Ironside. ‘But what I want to find out is what the time was when you came out the second time.’

  ‘You must have been talking to that June Curtis.’

  ‘Well, what time was it you saw her, then?’

  ‘I dunno. Really, I don’t. I never do know the time.’

  She blinked her wide eyes up at Ironside. It looked as if she was trying to put over a whopper.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Well, that’s a change,’ she said.

  ‘And what were you doing in there anyhow?’ Ironside asked as he walked over to the door to let her out.

  Lindylou pouted.

  ‘I suppose I got to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘Oh, well, then. It was like this. Some of the girls told me there was only one way to make sure of doing well in a show like this, and that was to let the judges see you in the – Well, the way I was. They said they’d remember you again that way.’

  ‘I see.’

  Ironside turned to Peter.

  ‘Did you remember her again, Constable?’

  Peter blushed.

  ‘Well, sir. . .’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘To tell the truth, sir, it was a bit difficult to pick her out just now, when she’d got all her clothes on.’

  Ironside looked at Lindylou.

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  Politely he held the door open for her.

  ‘Well, bye-bye,’ she said to him.

  And out she went with a pretty little flounce.

  ‘You know,’ Jack said, ‘it could be true that business about what the girls said to her. I remember a story of June’s about how they told a little girl from the depths of Wales or somewhere that the way to win a contest was to put on her backless swim-suit the wrong way round. She did it too. And one threat to the circus girls left in a hurry.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Peter said thoughtfully, ‘there was nothing to stop Lindylou paying a call on Teddy as soon as June was clear. She could have even got out of the window next door and in at this one.’

  ‘What I want to know at this moment,’ Ironside said with a touch of grimness, ‘is just how that girl got past our friend Mullens without being seen. And whether any of the others did the same thing.’

  Jack and Peter looked at each other.

  ‘Come on,’ Ironside said, ‘we’ll talk to those girls to start with.’

  They tramped along the narrow corridor up to the manager’s office, turned into the wide corridor and waited while Ironside knocked on the door of the girls’ dressing-room.

  A chorus of twittering screams answered, but when after a discreet pause Ironside opened the door it was evident that there had been nothing much to scream about. The girls were almost ready to step out into the waiting world.

  The overwhelming impression at the door was of a mass of bits of the feminine, at their most blatant. Mouths, lipstick-shaped in screaming red, unlikely pink, heavy magenta, darted here, there and everywhere, pouting, smiling, sulking. Legs in shimmering nylon and tight-stretched ski-pants waved and flaunted. Blouses and hugging jerseys, A cup, B cup, C cup, advanced and flirted. Fingernails in every shade and circumstance of red flickered, pointed, lured and beckoned. Guaranteed personal freshness from spray, bottle and tube clashed and mingled all around.

  From the chaos Ironside brought order like a sedulous botanist in a wild garden. Inflexibly he set Jack and Peter to work, listing names and addresses, cross-checking from one to the other, making sure that each and every girl had been under someone’s eye during the whole possible time that Teddy Pariss was murdered.

  They waded through an immense mass of miscellaneous information on their way to sorting out the few clear facts they wanted.

  Jack had to adjudicate on a quarrel over whether Flaveen had or had not put grease on Carol’s comb, thus causing her blonde beehive to collapse in ignominy. But he learnt that Carol and Flaveen were inseparable and actually had been so for the whole time in question.

  Peter was treated to a long, anxious self-communion on the subject of swim-suits, whether percale cotton (which showed) or jersey (which clung) was likely to be the most effective, and whether, rules or no rules, it was worth, in the extreme urgency of the case, slipping just a tiny bit of sponge rubber in at the top.

  ‘I mean, I know there’s no point in cheating on the rule about no bones in the bra. I mean, I know if you use some really stretchy stretch elastic that does it just as well. But if you had my figure, what would you do? Honestly?’

  Peter asked her whether she had been the one to suggest to Lindylou her particular desperate expedient.

  She had not.

  A girl with heavy lipstick carried really very high above her hard little lips and black smudged with the grossest optimism above and below her sharp little eyes chose Superintendent Ironside as her father confessor.

  ‘Charm, and be natural,’ she said. ‘That’s my recipe. And I’m not in the circus for nothing. I mean to say, can you blame me if I told that silly kid she looked smashing? I don’t want her to stop wearing that ridiculous necklace.’

  She took a smudgy piece of cotton wool, dipped it heavily in a jar of face powder and dabbed with anxiety at a tiny group of spots under her left ear.

  Ironside looked on dispassionately.

  ‘Were you the one who put that idea into Lindylou’s head?’ he said.

  The charm merchant shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘There’s another silly kid. What do they want to come butting in for?’

  ‘So you did?’

  ‘Certainly, I did. Serve her right.’

  ‘Did you help her get past the stage-door keeper?’

  ‘Yes. Wouldn’t have been no good if she hadn’t got past him.’

  ‘How did you manage that now?’

  The hard, thin lips smiled. And were natural.

  ‘Easy. We all agreed to gather round him and ask him a lot of questions, like could we have a boy in. And while he was getting in a stew over that, Lindylou slipped along there. The silly little bitch, she never got caught.’

  ‘No, that’s certainly a great pity. Better luck next time.’

  ‘Next time? We’ve tried it twice. There can’t be a next time.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. We’ll just have to trust to charm in front of the judges then.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  She peered intently into the big mirror with its surround of glaring, naked light bulbs. The spots were invisible. Well, almost.

  And then it was all over. The girls streamed out and the three policemen sat and compared notes. The facts that had so painfully emerged were clear. Of all the girls only June and Lindylou had at any time been away from the others on their own.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ said Ironside. ‘We’ll have to make sure from Mullens whether the girls played that trick on him twice, or three times.’

  ‘I expect he’s still keeping guard in that box of his,’ Peter said.

  ‘Regular old sentry-go,’ grinned Jack.

  But when they left the dressing-room they found that things were not as they had fondly imagined.

  Bert Mullens was lying slumped on the floor of his little box in a decidedly ugly heap.

  11

  Peter and Jack raced each other to the glass-walled stage-door keeper’s box. They both managed to crowd in and kneel to examine Bert Mullens’s huddled body.

  Superintendent Ironside walked up slowly behind them. He stood watching at the door of the box. Peter pushed himself to his feet.

  ‘He’s not dead, sir,’ he said.

  Jack, still kneeling, looked up
.

  ‘Doesn’t even seem to have much wrong with him,’ he said. ‘Except that he’s flat out. Can’t get a glimmer of sense out of him.’

  ‘Well, suppose you use that telephone to call an ambulance,’ Ironside said. ‘The poor fellow seems to be in need of some sort of attention.’

  Jack got to his feet and put the call through. Ironside knelt for a moment to make his own examination.

  ‘Dear me, yes,’ he said. ‘He’s certainly not bothered by anything very much at the moment.’

  Before he scrambled up he took the precaution of placing a fist in the small of his back where the arthritis lurked.

  ‘I’ve been taking a look round, sir,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t see any sign of a pill box or medicine bottle.’

  Ironside wagged a finger at him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I knew when I asked to have you to help me that I’d chosen a lad of intelligence and resource.’

  For an instant Jack lost his grin.

  ‘How does all this fit in, sir?’ he asked Ironside. ‘It’s a bit of a puzzler to me, I admit.’

  ‘There’s something to be said for confessing ignorance, I suppose,’ Ironside replied.

  They waited for something more.

  Nothing came.

  With wholly commendable promptitude an ambulance arrived clanging and shrieking at the stage door, and soon the still totally unresponsive form of Bert Mullens, listener at doors and recorder of vital statistics, was carted off.

  ‘So,’ said Ironside as the ambulance doors closed, ‘and what did you make of the smell on his breath?’

  Jack’s face fell. Peter’s face fell.

  ‘You mean, alcohol? He’d drunk himself stupid?’ Peter said.

  ‘People do that,’ said Ironside.

  Jack frowned.

  ‘Well,’ he said with unshaken cheerfulness, ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ Ironside said, ‘there are a good many things in this business one doesn’t understand. There are moments when I wish I’d started my retirement last week. Why should I beat my brains out for Teddy Pariss?’

  He looked gloomily down.

  Suddenly he shot a glance at Peter.

  ‘What is particularly puzzling about the case?’ he said.

  Peter thought.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he answered, ‘there was that phone call I got when I was at home, the one telling me that someone was doing the safe here.’

  ‘Splendid, Lassington. I thought you might have forgotten all about that.’

  Peter looked rueful.

  ‘To tell the truth, sir,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if it had been forgotten. There’s been plenty of other things to think about.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Ironside agreed. ‘We’ve been presented with a mass of information one way and another. However, much of it though passionately interesting is obviously scarcely relevant. It’s the relevant items that worry me.’

  ‘Such as?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Such as the fire that wasn’t on, Constable Spratt.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. There is that.’

  ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s a fact that I’m not. I mean, it’s only a fire that someone didn’t switch on. I can’t see there’s all that much to it.’

  ‘No? Yet it’s a very odd circumstance. Teddy Pariss, the comfort lover. The big, specially bought fire. And no attempt made to use it.’

  ‘All the same, sir,’ Jack persisted, ‘it’s a pretty small thing.’

  ‘Oh, yes, small enough. And in the end it may turn out to be just some ordinary oversight. But in this trade the thing to look out for is the deviation from normal. The little thing that oughtn’t to have been done and was, or ought to have been done and wasn’t.’

  He swung round to Peter.

  ‘Tell me about that phone call, Lassington.’

  Peter gathered himself together.

  ‘Well, there wasn’t much to it, sir,’ he said. ‘The wife answered it first, as a matter of fact. And when I went and picked up the receiver a voice, a man’s voice I didn’t recognize, just said that someone was doing the safe here at that moment.’

  ‘Would you recognize the voice again?’ Ironside asked.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. It was sort of hoarse, that’s all. He only said about half a dozen words before he rang off.’

  ‘Have you got any friends in the criminal fraternity?’

  ‘Well, sir, yes. I mean, it’s a good thing to know what’s going on, isn’t it?’

  ‘Provided you’re aware of the dangers, there are advantages, yes.’

  ‘Well, I do know one or two snouts, sir.’

  ‘Was this one of them?’

  ‘Not so far as I can tell, sir.’

  ‘You say your wife took the call first?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then I think I shall give myself the pleasure of calling on the good lady.’

  ‘Mary, sir?’

  ‘If that’s her name. We’ll go now. You told me it was only two or three minutes away.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then a word to the Yard to tell them where I’ve gone, and we’ll be off.’

  But they were not off.

  ‘Superintendent. Superintendent.’

  From round the corner of the little passageway leading to the ballroom itself Daisy Stitchford had come.

  Superintendent Ironside stopped, turned and stood looking at her. She came clickety-clicking along towards them, eyes behind polished spectacles darting and peering.

  The superintendent let her come.

  ‘Superintendent, a word with you, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly. Shall we step in here?’

  Ironside politely held open the door of the empty judges’ room. Daisy marched in, took a quick look round at the shiny veneered table and the row of unsullied pink blotters, and – her inventory completed – turned to the superintendent. Peter and Jack slipped quietly in behind her and stood bulky but unobtrusive with their backs to the wall near the door.

  ‘Now, is there something I can do for you?’ Ironside said.

  ‘There is. You can hear me out in silence.’

  ‘I shall try.’

  Daisy Stitchford pursed her prim little lips together as if to concentrate herself.

  ‘You warned me not long ago,’ she began, ‘that I was wrong to withhold information from the police. At the time I decided I would follow my own counsel. Now I have decided to tell you something.’

  Ironside let his grave gaze flick away from Daisy’s face to snap a warning glance at his two impetuous helpers in case they should jump in with questions about why such a resolutely made-up mind had been changed in such a short time.

  Daisy gave a little dry cough.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I knew Teddy Pariss better than a secretary should, no matter how many years she’d been with him.’

  She looked at Ironside possibly expecting to find him betraying curiosity. Had she known him longer she would have known better.

  ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘if you must know, I was Teddy Pariss’s mistress thirty years ago.’

  Her desiccated form straightened.

  ‘I was the longest lasting of them all,’ she said with a little jet of pride. ‘Teddy wasn’t a man to stay faithful to a woman. He was through with most of them in a week. But he wasn’t through with me. I was his for two whole years. Two years.’

  She looked round through little pebble-lensed, bright spectacles as if she expected someone to challenge such a daring statement out of hand.

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘for two years. And at the end of it I knew too much for Master Teddy. Much too much.’

  The fiercely jutting little round chin dropped.

  ‘So he made me his secretary,’ she said. ‘You see, he had his hold on me too. So he used me for all those years. And precious little he paid me.’

&
nbsp; The corners of her mouth turned down.

  Ironside continued to look at her gravely.

  ‘He used you,’ he said. ‘And you used him. Isn’t that it?’

  ‘Used him? Used Teddy Pariss? You haven’t got an idea.’

  ‘Ah, I think you misunderstand. I’m afraid I didn’t think of you as exactly ruling that masterful figure. But I did think of you as using the influence your position gave you.’

  From behind the glint of the highly-polished spectacles came a shrewd look of appraisal.

  ‘I did my job,’ Daisy said.

  ‘And I’m sure you did it to perfection,’ said Ironside.

  Daisy’s hackles unexpectedly rose.

  ‘Don’t you think I liked that man,’ she snapped. ‘I worked for him because I had to, and for no other reason. But I hated him. Hated him.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Ironside.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Oh, I realize it’s hardly sensible to confess to hating a man who’s had a knife put in him, but I confess to it.’

  ‘There’s the time element,’ said Ironside mildly.

  ‘The time –? Oh, you realize that I know I can confess to hating Teddy in safety. Well, he was killed when I was in the ballroom with dozens of people to witness it. Yes, I know that. And I’m thankful for it. I’ve had the last trouble I’m going to have from Teddy Pariss.’

  ‘We must certainly all hope so,’ said the superintendent.

  Daisy looked at him as if she was by no means sure whether to say thank-you or to fly off the handle.

  A condition frequent enough with those who had the misfortune to have many dealings with Charles Ironside.

  Who now smiled.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t really ever expect anyone to pay attention to my little sermons.’

  ‘What sermons?’ Daisy asked, deciding definitely to be irritated.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t remember: I preached you a few words on the desirability of telling everything to the nice, kind policeman.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  Scorn came easily to Daisy.

  ‘That,’ she repeated, ‘you don’t think you’d have made me change my mind if I hadn’t wanted to, do you?’

  Ironside appeared to consider this. Daisy did not wait for a verdict.

  ‘I thought over what you’d been asking me,’ she said, ‘and I realized that from the times you’d mentioned I couldn’t possibly be suspected of killing Teddy. So I decided to tell you before you came poking and prying round trying to find out.’