Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘You don’t think a cheeky little thing like that Lindylou’s got a hope, do you?’ another failed beauty asked Ironside.

  ‘My dear, I’m a child in these matters.’

  ‘No. Not a hope. It’s all very well being clever and thinking you can make the judges take a bit of notice of you. Well, of course they do. They’re men, aren’t they? But in the end they won’t dare to give it her. You’ll see.’

  ‘I shall be more than interested. But what I was asking was whether you know how long she was away in the judges’ room at lunch-time.’

  ‘And she’s stupid with it Well, I ask you, wasn’t going in there a stupid thing to do?’

  ‘No doubt. But. . .’

  And once more patience was rewarded. As is not always the case.

  When the three of them came to compare notes it was evident that Lindylou had in fact been away in the judges’ room a good deal longer than was necessary considering that the judges had not been there.

  As they stood in the corridor outside the dressing-room finishing their discussion June came suddenly out of the double doors leading from the stage.

  ‘Is it over?’ Jack asked excitedly. ‘Did you get it?’

  June’s beautiful mouth tautened in an expression which could only be called unbeautiful.

  ‘He’s done it again,’ she said. ‘Got the damned judges to spend heaven knows how long making up their minds. We’re all to go back on stage in quarter of an hour. It makes me sick. Just because he wants to sell more of his bleeding drinks.’

  ‘And the other young ladies?’ asked Ironside.

  His sombre eyes were flicking up and down the corridor.

  ‘Went down front,’ June said. ‘Don’t know why. Meant to be not allowed.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ironside with sudden abruptness.

  He pushed past June and set off with long strides towards the pass-door. Peter followed. Jack stopped only to give June an encouraging squeeze round the waist.

  As soon as they got into the ballroom they spotted the third finalist, the charm merchant. She was being dragged, discreetly, away from a cluster of young men by the hard-smiling Mr Brown.

  But of Lindylou Twelvetrees there was no sign.

  14

  In the packed and happy throng of the ballroom they searched for Lindylou everywhere. They asked questions, remembering to be discreet however tempting it was to shout and hector. They got few answers. People had not come to the Star Bowl to be bothered by questions, however discreet, however insistent. They had come to pit their judgement against the judges’ in the great Miss Valentine contest and that was occupation enough for anybody.

  Ironside even enlisted the help of the band of reporters still waiting for crumbs to fall. But at last the truth could no longer be shirked. Lindylou had left. She had disappeared into the cold, wet, dark and pitiless night.

  Ironside, his craggy face bleak, admitted defeat and made for a telephone. He set the routine in motion. But it was plain from his manner that he did not expect it to be particularly successful.

  ‘Do you reckon she’s got clear away then, sir?’ asked Peter.

  Ironside smiled slightly.

  ‘Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid, my good chap. She’ll be picked up sooner or later. But it is a dreadful nuisance, there’s no gainsaying that.’

  When Mr Brown, the weight of the late Teddy Pariss’s legacy heavy on his shoulders, discovered that Lindylou was no longer with them he took it by no means as philosophically as Ironside. Unfortunately in the excitement of the moment he had omitted to make sure she was ready to come on stage before the judges’ verdict was solemnly announced. And the judges, perverse beings that they were, had happened to pick Lindylou as the ultimate winner, Miss Valentine herself.

  June Curtis, chosen runner-up and maid-of-honour, had stepped through the blue drapes to take her place at the right-hand side of the throne under the throbbing pink heart. There was a hush of pure expectancy. Lindylou’s name had rolled out. And nothing had happened. No wide-eyed, cheeky figure had come bouncing through the curtains.

  Naturally, quick as lightning, Mr Brown had made a joke. It had been well received. The orchestra had done its best with a second crashing set of chords. But still the curtains had remained obstinately closed.

  ‘Then I’ll have to go and drag her on,’ Mr Brown quipped.

  The audience applauded this admirable intention with gusto. But not all the good will in the world could produce Lindylou. The cold, wet, dark night saw to that.

  And so there had been a rather hurried announcement about a slight indisposition and it was widely agreed that the Miss Valentine Night had not ended quite as well as it might have done.

  Both Jack and Peter were depressed and on edge as they made their way once more back to the little office in which Teddy Pariss wearing an exuberant suit of Prince of Wales check had breathed his last. Even Superintendent Ironside seemed more sombre as he led the way in.

  The usually equable Jack was positively bad-tempered, a regrettable failing in a policeman.

  ‘And it’s bloody perishing cold,’ he snarled, really snarled, marching up to the double doors to the yard through which the rain-laden icy wind was energetically whistling.

  He brought the two doors together with an almighty crash.

  The superintendent turned on his heel as if the noise had been the last straw to tautened nerves.

  ‘Open them up again, there’s a good fellow,’ he said.

  Jack looked at him.

  But the superintendent’s face was set in an expression of resigned bitterness. It was plainly not a time to try him.

  Jack pushed the doors open.

  Without a word Ironside walked out into the long, high-walled yard. Peter and Jack looked at him.

  Outside the night was stonily appalling. Though the yard was faintly lit by the street lights over the tall, glass-topped walls, the steady battering of the insistent rain made it almost impossible to make out a thing. They saw the superintendent hunch his shoulders and look all round him. Then he squelched off determinedly in the direction of the lean-to shed formed by the end of the yard nearest them. For a few moments he peered at the shed like an angry schoolmaster confronting a blotted copybook. Then he apparently located the door and after rattling it bad-temperedly got it to open.

  ‘Damn,’ they heard him say in the chilly dark.

  There was a pause. Only the steady, truculent sluicing of the rain could be heard. Then came the superintendent’s voice again.

  ‘All right. You moved. I heard you. Come on out.’

  Peter and Jack looked at each other. Neither of them had ever before had to deal with a superior officer suffering from delusions.

  ‘Come on out, damn you,’ Ironside said loudly. ‘Come into the warm light where I can make a bit of sense of things.’

  Jack was grinning again now. But in perplexity.

  Suddenly two figures appeared at the door of the shed. The superintendent and Lindylou Twelvetrees. They walked sloshily through the rain and came in, Lindylou clutching the long skirt of her evening dress up round her knees.

  The superintendent held the door of Pariss’s office open for her. They all went in. Ironside bent and switched on the Wurlitzer electric fire.

  ‘We’ve still got to sort this thing out,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime we may as well get some comfort out of it.’

  True enough, within a couple of minutes the great waves of heat from the fire had transformed the little room into a slightly oppressive snuggery.

  Ironside turned to the distinctly sulky-looking figure of Lindylou.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Brown is not going to be pleased with you,’ he said.

  He sounded decidedly stern.

  But unexpectedly his words seemed to have exactly the opposite effect than might have been expected. Instead of being chastened, Lindylou sat up in the battered kitchen chair on which she had subsided.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.<
br />
  Ironside was undisconcerted.

  ‘Now that’s a thoroughly unhelpful way of addressing someone as ancient as I am,’ he replied.

  Lindylou pouted.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you say something stupid, what do you expect?’

  ‘You could point out to me, as gently as possible, just why you think I’m being so – so unintelligent.’

  She gave him the pitying look people see themselves reserving for lunatics.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I skip out of the way because of what I done to blasted Mr Brown, and then when you come along and drag me out all you can think of to say is “Mr Brown won’t be pleased with you.” What did you think he’d be? Delighted?’

  ‘Never mind what I think,’ Ironside snapped suddenly. ‘It’s what Mr Brown’s going to think that should be worrying you. And what you’re going to do about it.’

  The transparent bluff worked. After all, Lindylou was chiefly remarkable for lack of reasoning powers.

  She began now to sob.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she wailed. ‘If I’d known all the trouble it’d be, I wouldn’t have done it.’

  She groaned heart-rendingly.

  Superintendent Ironside’s heart showed few signs of being rended. He waited grimly.

  ‘Well,’ Lindylou went on, ‘I didn’t know I would ever really get into the finals. I mean, I might turn out to be the winner. And then what ever would I do?’

  Ironside was quick.

  ‘You’d better think fast, my girl,’ he said. ‘You did win, and mighty bad it looked when you weren’t there to sit yourself on that great big golden throne.’

  Lindylou stopped sobbing.

  ‘I did win?’ she said. ‘Really?’

  She began to giggle, stopped suddenly and burst into new floods of tears.

  The superintendent watched them flow. When he judged the time ripe he came and sat on the edge of the little desk near Lindylou.

  ‘You’d better tell me about it,’ he said.

  Through her sobs Lindylou told.

  ‘It was that foam rubber,’ she said. ‘I happened to have a bit, in the lining of my vanity case. To give it a sort of puffed out look, you know. And when they were all so horrid to me I thought I’d show ‘em. I’ll do better than you think I will, I thought.’

  ‘And so you used the rubber?’ Ironside said painstakingly.

  ‘Yes. I cut it in two and got it ever so nicely arranged down the front of my swim-suit.’

  Her face fell again.

  ‘I done it too well,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ironside, ‘you overdid things.’

  ‘I kept it there when the judges were looking at just the three of us,’ Lindylou went on. ‘And I was sure they’d spotted it. I thought that was why they said they wanted more time: to discuss about what to do with me.’

  A huge sob.

  ‘So I run off. First of all down on to the dance floor and then back again. And at last I hid in there.’

  ‘You’re a great one for hiding, aren’t you?’ Ironside said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Lindylou’s tear-stained face jerked round to look up at him. Suspiciously, with plain hostility.

  ‘This afternoon, at lunch-time,’ Ironside said.

  Lindylou looked at him.

  ‘In the judges’ room?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said implacably.

  ‘Oh, well, yes. I suppose in a way it was hiding. I didn’t think you’d realize I was in there so long. None of the girls did, thank goodness. It would’ve been rather awkward to explain.’

  Once more Ironside waited.

  ‘I mean, it was silly,’ Lindylou said.

  Ironside looked down at her gravely.

  ‘Well,’ Lindylou said, ‘I hadn’t never seen a mirror as big as that one in there. Not where I could be private.’

  ‘You’ve nothing like it at home?’ Ironside said cautiously.

  ‘No. Just a little scrap of glass on the mantelshelf. So when I got the chance to see the whole of myself. . .’

  She looked down at her neat little toes.

  ‘The whole of myself, like that,’ she said. ‘Well, I couldn’t resist it.’

  She turned her face up to Ironside again. It looked perky.

  ‘You’d better go home,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Mr Brown he’ll have to find himself a new winner. And I suppose I’d better tell those blasted newspapers. Otherwise you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of a manhunt in the morning.’

  ‘Well, thanks ever so,’ Lindylou said.

  Even a partial spectator would have had to admit that the gratitude was casual.

  She ran on tap-tapping high heels along the corridor, her big skirt billowing up. They heard her wrestle with the bar of the stage door and then open it.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called a sharp voice.

  ‘That’s Daisy Stitchford,’ Ironside said. ‘Lassington, nip out and bring her in here. I’d rather like a word with her.’

  Peter did as he was told. In spite of Daisy’s reluctance.

  ‘It’s all very well, Superintendent,’ she said as Peter ushered her in, ‘but it’s extremely late at night.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to keep you,’ Ironside replied, ‘but I feel that you would like me to let you know I unintentionally misled you this afternoon.’

  ‘Misled?’

  Through her polished little spectacles Daisy Stitchford, once mistress of the late Teddy Pariss, glanced sharply at the superintendent.

  ‘On the question of time,’ Ironside said. ‘I let you believe Mr Pariss was alive at twenty-five past one. I now find this wasn’t necessarily true.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to tell me, Mr Ironside,’ Daisy said tartly. ‘But I can’t see that it much concerns me. I understand from Mullens that he heard someone talking to Mr Pariss at quarter past one. It was quite that when I left the ballroom.’

  She turned primly on her heel and began to walk out.

  ‘No,’ said Ironside.

  She stopped and cocked her head on one side to listen to what he had got to say. However ridiculous.

  ‘To begin with,’ Ironside went on, ‘our information is that you left the ballroom at one-fifteen and not afterwards. And in any case I think you’ll find Teddy Pariss was dead long before Mullens heard him talking at quarter past.’

  15

  Peter and Jack stood with gaping mouths. No doubt alert members of the Metropolitan Police should not allow themselves to be seen so obviously and blatantly surprised. But then, on the whole, members of that force do not expect to have their superior officers take the ground from under their feet.

  Jack recovered first.

  ‘Look, sir,’ he said, ‘Mullens –’

  Ironside whipped round.

  ‘Oh, Spratt,’ he said. ‘And I might have been telling a lie for some special and devious purpose.’

  ‘But you weren’t, sir,’ said Jack, reddening.

  ‘Well, no, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Then what do you mean, sir? If I may ask,’ Peter said.

  He looked as put out, or more so, than Jack.

  ‘But the oldest trick in the book,’ Ironside said. ‘The big, fat tape-recorder. That was what Mullens heard. His late employer’s resonant tones coming out of that. No doubt dictating something. That was why he thought you were in here, Miss Stitchford. Put it on and we’ll see.’

  Jack went over to the tape-recorder. It was necessary to unplug the big fire to get it to go but eventually Teddy Pariss’s familiar, aggressive voice came bouncing out.

  ‘The main aim of my contests is dignity. This is what we put first. A real dignity. We want to make beauty contests as dignified and gracious as a royal occasion.’

  ‘You see,’ said Ironside gently, ‘there had to be some explanation for that fire being off. And when you come to think of it, it’s quite simple: someone used the time-plug from the fire for the tape-recorder. To confuse the issue. A dep
lorably silly trick. Bound to come out, you know.’

  He looked round at them all severely.

  ‘And why are you telling me all this?’

  It was Daisy Stitchford, sharp as an asp.

  ‘I felt I owed it to you,’ Ironside said.

  ‘It’s because you think I killed him, isn’t it? Well, answer me this. Why should I have killed him today? If I’d wanted to have killed him, I could have killed him years ago.’

  ‘Except for one thing,’ Peter Lassington said.

  All eyes turned to him.

  He swallowed.

  ‘Except that it happened to be today that Teddy Pariss’s old friend Fay Curtis took her life,’ he said. ‘Quite what it was she knew about you I can’t guess. But it must have been enough to stop you doing what you’d wanted to do for a very –’

  ‘Constable, Constable.’

  Superintendent Ironside sounded shocked.

  ‘We haven’t cautioned this lady,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t really go making allegations like that unless you’re prepared to tell her you have reason to believe she killed Pariss.’

  He wagged his head from side to side.

  ‘And, you know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think we really do believe that. Not with all the conflicting evidence we’ve had so far.’

  Peter blushed a deep pink.

  ‘Well,’ said Daisy Stitchford, ‘I shall remember this. It’s not only disgraceful, it’s entirely untrue. I don’t even know this person you talked about.’

  Peter said no more.

  Daisy looked round the little room in which her late employer, and former lover, had met his untimely end. Ironside, standing by the little desk with its overloaded array of luxury furnishings, looked back at her with mild interest. Jack, beside Peter near the door, pretended to be very busy examining the pattern of the cover on the late Mr Pariss’s well-sprung divan. Peter dropped his gaze and stared stonily at his shoes, which were notably pointed-toed for a policeman’s. The huge, flashy electric fire, slowly cooling after being unplugged, emitted every now and again a series of little ticking sounds, unaware of the part it had played in the drama, or so it seemed.

  ‘Then I’ll go,’ said Daisy. ‘Unless you’ve anything else you want to tell me.’