Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘I want you to tell me exactly what you did while you were in the judges’ room,’ Ironside said.

  He slipped from his pocket a note-book and made a good deal of fuss about turning up a particular page. Standing behind him Peter could see what was written there.

  Measurements taken at bust, waist and hips. Ideal considered to be bust and hips of equal size. Why?

  One-piece bathing costumes obligatory. Strong ruling against any form of bones or padding. Elastic material acceptable.

  Skin complaints: pruritus, eczema, seborrhoea, acne, psoriasis, urticaria.

  Advantages: immediate prize up to £2,000: possible advertising offers, chance of becoming prime figure in large-scale campaign: films, commercial and entertainment (Are the two the same?): club entertaining, £80 a week offer.

  ‘Look,’ said Lindylou, ‘I told you. I told you before. What you want to hear it all again for?’

  ‘Perhaps you weren’t telling the exact truth,’ Ironside said.

  ‘Why not?’ said Lindylou. ‘Just because I happen to be attractive to men you think I’m a bloody liar.’

  ‘Ah, now, that’s interesting,’ Ironside said. ‘You’re attractive to men, are you?’

  ‘’Course I am. I’m not bad, you know.’

  She wiggled.

  ‘I rather think you are bad.’

  ‘Bad? Me? Why? What do you mean?’

  Something of her assurance dropped away and lay broken on the floor.

  ‘It’s bad to tell lies,’ Ironside said.

  Lindylou stuck her nose in the air.

  ‘Oh, lies,’ she said. ‘That. And anyhow what lies have I told? Go on, you prove I told a single lie.’

  Ironside reached behind him to the shiny, battered sideboard and picked up the photograph.

  ‘How about this?’ he said.

  Lindylou looked at the photograph. Its tin frame, silvered over, had a line of rust running up from the bottom left hand corner.

  ‘What’s a lie about that?’ she said.

  ‘You tell me, Linda.’

  ‘Oh, the name, you mean. Well, of course, I was christened Linda. But I call myself Lindylou. Have done ever since I was twelve. It’s more sexy.’

  ‘But I asked you to give me your name. Not what you’d like to be called.’

  ‘Can’t see that it matters.’

  Lindylou, or Linda, shrugged.

  ‘I’ll tell you why it matters,’ said Ironside. ‘It matters because I’ve no doubt now that all you’ve told me so far is just the same. What you’d have liked to have happened, not what did.’

  Linda, or Lindylou, jumped off the arm of the sofa. Her glance went willy-nilly to the door. Peter, standing behind the superintendent, was within a yard of it, heavy and impassive as only a police constable can be.

  ‘I never,’ Lindylou said. ‘I tell you I never. Every word that I told you, except about my name, was God’s truth.’

  ‘Then suppose you tell it to me once again. And this time be careful.’

  Lindylou, crestfallen at last, began her recital.

  ‘Well, the girls told me I ought to go in and show myself to the judges like I said.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She looked at the threadbare piece of carpeting on the floor.

  ‘With nothing on.’

  ‘Good.’

  Ironside put a tick beside the first item in his note-book, the one about measurements.

  ‘So we fixed up how I was to get past old Bert at the door. And then all the girls went out; and I took off my things. Then I peeped out of the door.’

  ‘Could you see Mullens’s box?’

  ‘Well, not really. Because of all the girls crowding round him, you see.’

  Ironside ticked the second item. One-piece costumes obligatory.

  And soon he had ticked every item on the page and a good many more on the next one. Because Lindylou’s story hardly varied in a single particular from what she had told them before.

  At last Ironside stood up, thanked Lindylou and clumped heavily down the uncarpeted stairs. Peter followed.

  Only when they were back in Teddy Pariss’s office did Ironside comment.

  ‘You can only go on asking them,’ he said. ‘The idea is that they break under the strain before you do. Though I don’t think they should try it out with a poor old broken-down hack who can only think of that cottage in the country and all those rabbits waiting to be bred.’

  ‘Doesn’t there come a point where you just have to give up?’ Peter asked.

  Ironside’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘Give up? Give up? What’s this? A distressing lack of optimism in one so young.’

  ‘But all the same, sir,’ Peter said earnestly, ‘there are crimes, murder cases, where the record is closed eventually.’

  ‘Very true.’

  ‘I mean, I know there are cases where the police – where we know who the murderer is but can’t prove anything.’

  ‘A shocking and deplorable state of affairs.’

  ‘But it does happen, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes, if you insist on it, it does happen.’

  ‘Well, it looks to me, sir, as if that’s what it may be like this time. I can’t see us getting anywhere much further. Not after many more sessions like Lindylou just now. And in the end we shall just be left with Jack.’

  ‘Yes, I do believe you may be right,’ Ironside said, pushing back the late Teddy’s heavy chair. ‘The time has come to see your friend Jack.’

  He stood up abruptly, thrusting the chair across the square of thick carpet.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘let’s go and talk to Jack.’

  20

  Peter Lassington looked at Superintendent Ironside as if he were-seeing him for the first time, and as if a human being was something totally extraordinary.

  Ironside stood calmly where he was, perhaps recording the effects of his claim about Jack. His craggy face, with the jutting thick grey eyebrows, looked mildly curious. His eyes were sombre but alive and active.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘you seem surprised.’

  Peter did not at first answer. The pink and white colour of his face, always a little unsuitable for a policeman, came and went.

  ‘I don’t quite know what you mean, sir,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Don’t you? I should have thought it was a plain, simple sentence. I suggested that we should go and talk to your friend Spratt. Until we do, we’re unlikely to clear up this business. And after all we’re both being paid to do that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, ‘I know that Jack will have to be found. But all the same I don’t quite see how you’re going to do it.’

  Ironside permitted himself a slight smile.

  ‘It’s on the cards I won’t be able to do it,’ he said. ‘You know how it is, I dare say. One makes a series of what one supposes are rational deductions. And one hopes that at the end the answer will prove to correspond to reality. But that’s always an abominably chancy business.’

  Peter relaxed a little.

  ‘Then where do you think he is, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ Ironside said. ‘I made an initial premise that something in particular must have sent him off. Now, so far as I know there was nothing to have done that. He’d been trailing round with me all day. I’d see what he’d seen. There was nothing to make him go suddenly off like that.’

  ‘I’m not so sure you’re right, you know, sir,’ Peter said tentatively. ‘I mean, the way I look at it is that by late last night it had become pretty obvious that we’d come up against a blank wall. So that we were bound to look for new lines, and, once we’d started to do that, it wouldn’t be long before Jack came under pretty heavy suspicion.’

  ‘You think that, do you?’ Ironside said. ‘Well, I didn’t. I reasoned otherwise. I reasoned that he must have been sent off. But by just such arguments as you’ve been putting, Constable Lassington.’

  His voice grew hard at these last w
ords.

  Peter looked at him warily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ironside, ‘I thought he must have talked to somebody. And who more likely than his best friend? It was pretty unfortunate that people kept mentioning that you and he were such friends. I couldn’t have escaped thinking about it.’

  ‘But, sir –’

  ‘Oh, come, my good chap, there’s no need to look so worried. After all, friendship is generally considered quite an estimable quality. So much so that it confuses people when they find tear-aways exhibiting it. But that’s another matter.’

  ‘Look here, sir,’ Peter said, ‘are you making out that I helped a murder suspect get away?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ironside, ‘since you ask, I am,’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘It’s a serious matter, of course. You’ll be subject to disciplinary proceedings. But there’ll be people who think none the worse of you for that. So cheer up, my good fellow.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Peter. ‘I deny it absolutely.’

  ‘Do you? Well, perhaps I’d better go on with my chain of reasoning. And we must hope for your sake that it’s as fallible as such things usually are.’

  Peter glowered.

  ‘Now,’ said Ironside, ‘suppose for the sake of argument that your friend Spratt was persuaded into believing that things looked so bad for him that the only thing to do was to go into hiding. Well, now, he’s a policeman: he knows what a hue and cry we make when one of our number goes astray. He’s a pretty good idea that he’ll have a poor chance of getting clear away. Unless he has help. Unless he has an intelligence service of his own.’

  Ironside nodded towards Peter.

  ‘I’m referring to you, of course, my good chap.’

  ‘Sir, I didn’t –’

  ‘No, no. I know. That’s your case. At present. But let me have my say. You see, we go on from having an intelligence source to the necessity for keeping in close contact with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t see why I have to stay and listen to all this. I’ve said it’s nonsense. If you want to act on it, act on it. But until you do, I’m going to ignore it.’

  Peter turned to the door.

  ‘No, no, my good fellow. You can’t go giving warnings to Spratt now. It’s too late, you see.’

  ‘All right, then,’ Peter said furiously. ‘If you think you know where he is, why don’t you go and get him? He’s run off, hasn’t he? It’s your duty to get hold of him.’

  ‘A timely reminder,’ said Ironside.

  He swung round and was out of the door of the little office before Peter had entirely realized what was happening. As soon as he did he leapt after him.

  Ironside was tugging open the double doors leading to the long yard.

  In the bright capricious sunshine the place looked if possible even more depressing than it had in the pouring, cold dutiful rain of the day before.

  Ironside looked up and down its whole length. A sparrow was perched on the rim of one of the two oil drums.

  ‘Pattern, you know,’ he said. ‘An idea gets put into your head, and you follow it through. It seems very clever at the time, but it forms a pattern. Lindylou hides here and . . .’

  He was at the door of the lean-to shed. He jerked it open.

  Jack was standing there, grinning foolishly.

  ‘Ah, there you are, sir.’

  The voice came from behind them, from the open double doors.

  Peter Lassington wheeled round as if a ghost had spoken. But it was only a rather podgy-faced man of medium height wearing a beltless, drab mackintosh and a green pork-pie hat. Superintendent Ironside did not seem at all alarmed at his appearance. And Jack was still too busy sheepishly grinning to react at all.

  ‘Ah, it’s you, Sergeant Frollet,’ Ironside said. ‘I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to.’

  ‘I’m hardly done with the Jeymer Avenue case as it is, sir,’ Sergeant Frollet said.

  ‘No break? No time off?’ Ironside said. ‘Dear me, how badly they treat you.’

  Evidently Frollet knew the superintendent. He answered by simply smiling enigmatically.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Ironside, ‘does this visit mean you got what I wanted?’

  ‘Oh, I think so, sir.’

  Frollet’s face stayed totally impassive, but the words nevertheless exuded confidence.

  ‘Isn’t that splendid?’ said Ironside. ‘Such energy, such determination.’

  Sergeant Frollet remained unmoved.

  ‘But will he talk, my good Sergeant?’ Ironside said. ‘Will he stand up in court?’

  The sergeant pulled a face.

  ‘You’ve put your finger on it, sir, as per usual.’

  ‘Well,’ Ironside said, ‘you’d better go and see what you can do about it, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Frollet with a heavy sigh.

  And he turned and walked off down the corridor and round the corner in the direction of the stage door.

  Ironside looked from Peter to Jack and from Jack to Peter again.

  ‘A replacement for the unfortunate Sergeant Milk,’ he said. ‘And not before time, too. I couldn’t go on for ever working with two totally inexperienced men, could I?’

  Jack suddenly flashed out his old happy grin.

  ‘Especially when one of them made a damned fool of himself scuttering off in the middle of the case, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ironside. ‘We’d better go inside for you to explain yourself.’

  He led the way. He did nothing directly to imply that Jack was under escort, but the fact remained that by a half-second’s hesitation as they reached the doors into the building he effectively made sure that Jack was in no position to cut and run for it.

  Once they had got into the office Ironside picked up the telephone.

  ‘Give me a line, please,’ he said.

  Jack looked at Peter with a raised eyebrow, Peter looked away.

  The click of the connexion being made was audible in the total silence of the little office. Ironside dialled. They were able to hear the phone at the other end ringing and ringing. Patiently, ex-pressionlessly Ironside waited. At last a voice, a woman’s voice, answered.

  ‘Mrs Spratt? This is Superintendent Ironside. I’d like you to come down straight away to the Star Bowl ballroom. You know where it is? Take a taxi. Your husband’s here.’

  He put down the receiver. There had scarcely been time for Sheila Spratt to reply.

  Jack was no longer grinning.

  Ironside sat down in Teddy Pariss’s padded black leather chair. It was a long time before he spoke.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last, suddenly breaking the silence, ‘I’d like that explanation, Spratt.’

  ‘Sir.’

  It was Peter Lassington.

  Ironside turned his sombre face towards him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but there’s the matter of whether it’s right to ask him any questions. I mean, there’s the Judges’ Rules, sir. Ought he to be asked anything when he’s on the point of being charged? I honestly feel, sir, I can’t stand by and see that happen.’

  A slow smile worked its way over Ironside’s face.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I see it is indeed time I went down to Essex and started presiding over the affairs of rabbits. To have been warned by a constable that I am in danger of exceeding my powers, it’s a bad moment.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Peter said, ‘but honestly I thought it was my duty.’

  ‘And honesty, as I’m always saying,’ Ironside replied, ‘is by far the best policy.’

  ‘All the same, sir, I’m sorry.’

  Ironside’s smile suddenly turned sharply wolfish.

  ‘However in this case there’s no question of making a charge,’ he said.

  ‘No question?’

  Peter looked comically incredulous.

  ‘No, Lassington, when all’s said and done, you must let me conduct this investigation i
n my own way and using my own judgement, however doddery I appear to be. No, at present I am not considering a charge of murder. That may come, and sooner than you think likely. But for the moment I’m concerned with dereliction of duty by a police officer. Well, Spratt?’

  The face he turned to Jack had lost all trace of any smile, wolfish or otherwise.

  Jack took a deep breath.

  ‘I can see now, sir,’ he said, ‘that I was a fool, a bloody fool.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ironside. ‘Go on.’

  Jack looked from side to side. Looked at Peter, looked at the window.

  ‘It was like this, sir,’ he said. ‘I’d got caught up with June, June Curtis. She means everything in the world to me. She’s going to go places, sir. She’s going to end up Miss Globe, I know that. And I want to be right there with her, sir. I can think of nothing else. She’s all that I’ve ever dreamt of. And I don’t care how wrong it is or anything, I’m going to go with her. And everything and everyone else can go to hell.’

  ‘A romantic notion,’ said Ironside. ‘And of course highly praiseworthy as such. We’re taught that the world’s well lost for love. We must try to be tolerant when we see the actual process going on. Though, of course, you’ve committed a number of offences against regulations.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take my punishment for them, sir,’ Jack said. ‘But I may as well tell you now, I’m resigning from the force at the first chance I get. I’m finished with all this.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you must be. However, let’s deal with less grandiose matters for a few moments. You’ve told us, in eloquent and heart-touching terms, of your attachment to Miss Curtis. You are aware of the course of our investigations. What made you suddenly take to your heels in that way?’

  ‘Well, sir, I was hanging round the place pretty well at the time of the murder.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ironside, ‘I knew that. Your Inspector Hammersby said he’d met you at the door when I first had the pleasure of your acquaintance.’

  ‘So you knew, sir, all along?’

  ‘The fact was put under my eyes. I could scarcely not have known.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, I looked at it this way. Things seemed to have got to the point where you were bound to take a fresh look at all the facts. I mean, none of the people who’d first come under suspicion had cracked up or anything. And I thought that as soon as you looked round again you’d realize about me.’