by Basil Copper
No Flowers for the General
Basil Copper
A Mike Faraday Mystery
© Basil Copper 1967
Basil Copper has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.
First Published in 1967 by Robert Hale Ltd
This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Enter Dame Dora
Chapter 2
Careless Driver
Chapter 3
A Case for Sheriff Clark
Chapter 4
The Seed Business
Chapter 5
Compost
Chapter 6
Mannlicher
Chapter 7
The Bowman
Chapter 8
The Palisades
Chapter 9
Two-Handed Showdown
Chapter 10
How Lucky Can You Get?
Chapter 11
Encore for Ice-Picks
Chapter 12
Electric Chair
Chapter 13
Three from Cuba
Chapter 14
Death of a General
Chapter 15
Friendly Town
Chapter 1
Enter Dame Dora
I was driving north. It was a biting cold day in November and the flurries of rain which starred the windscreen looked like they might turn to snow before long. The Buick’s bonnet had ice on the front of it which didn’t help the heater’s function any, and I was already regretting my mission. It was a ninety-mile drive to where I was going and the woman who had sent me hadn’t exactly impressed me as a model of clear-eyed sanity.
Not that she was round the bend; but her eccentricity was noticeable and my throat still ached from the pressure of her knee. That sounded like a pretty funny sentence as I repeated it to myself and I laughed out loud before sobering down. I switched on the radio then; it helped on winter drives and I didn’t want any passing patrolman wondering about a guy who cracked jokes with himself.
The Buick had a disconcerting rumble somewhere in the chassis and I didn’t put the pedal down too hard in case one of the tyres was acting up; there was little traffic on the turnpike but all the same I wasn’t keen on taking a header into an oncoming car. Dance music mingled with static came through on the radio and made the monotony bearable. It was nearing dusk and the stark outlines of the winter trees on either side of the straight four-lane carriageway, made a spiky frieze for my thoughts as I drove.
There was a black shadow in my driving mirror and a brief blip of headlights; I pulled over to my nearside and the low-slung, black Bugatti went by in a crackle of exhausts. He blipped his lights again as a courtesy; the blue smoke from the exhausts looked already frozen in the cold air before it dispersed. He disappeared down the infinity of road in about nought seconds flat. I smiled to myself in the mirror; that would have been me once.
Not now. Not any more. Not with these roads. Or with this car, come to that. I slowed down again, saw the lane behind was clear and helped myself to a cigarette. I lit it from the dash lighter and flared out the smoke with satisfaction; as I put the pack down in my pocket, my finger touched the soft bulk of the shoulder holster webbing. The Smith-Wesson cradled in it, was almost unnoticeable, the weight was spread so evenly.
Not that I was likely to need it. This wasn’t specifically that sort of job but you never knew. I pulled over to the centre of the road; a few cars were travelling in the opposite direction, pretty fast, despite the conditions. One or two of them even had their sidelights on. The day was burning out in a smoky sunset beyond the jagged points of the hills; presently another light flared beneath the sunset and I swung off the turnpike, on across the hard shoulder and into the clean shaved parking lot at the side of the dinette.
The red neon lighting spelled out Dino’s in the amber dusk. I tooled into the lot, killed the motor and finished my cigarette. I checked my baggage, made sure the car was locked and walked on over towards the main doors of the diner. The Bugatti was parked near the entrance. The driving seat was empty; I leaned down and looked at the licence sticker on the windshield. No reason really; just part of my job. Being just naturally curious helps too. The car was registered to a character called Nelson Holgren. His address was in L.A. I went on over to the door of the diner, pushed it open and went on in.
A TV set with a thirty-inch screen was fixed above one end of the long, plastic-topped counter; a blast of sound came out of it. On the screen flickering blue figures went through the motions of a girlie show. No-one took any notice of it. The man behind the bar nodded pleasantly. He had a long, dead face; shoulders that sloped narrowly like coat-hangers and a faded blue bow tie spotted with grease. His hands were clean though; I’ll say that for him.
‘What’ll it be, mac?’ he said in a voice in which years of hash-slinging hadn’t entirely erased the human element. I ordered coffee, toast and orange juice. I went over into one of the booths at the corner of the room where I could watch the parking lot and the thin rain beading the windows. It looked colder than ever outside. But in here it was pretty warm and before I started on the food I took off the white, belted raincoat I was wearing and stashed it on the booth bench.
There were only about half a dozen people in the place this time of the afternoon and they were minding their own business. The nearest was a distinguished-looking, middle-aged man with white hair who might have passed for Otto Kruger on his night off. I figured he might be Mr Nelson Holgren — the owner of the Bugatti. I got outside the food, watched the rain and pondered the exciting life of a P.I.
So far it had been a pretty peculiar day. And it looked like being more curious before I hit the sack tonight. It started in the morning. It was around eleven a.m. Business was great. I leaned back with my heels in the usual rut on my broadtop and took an inventory of the cracks in the ceiling. This soon palled and I shifted my position and started an intensely absorbing game of noughts and crosses with myself.
Stella had gone out to do what she called shopping and my last cup of coffee had been at nine a.m. This brought up a crisis of interests; whether to hoist my can in the air and make for the partitioned-off alcove where we did the brewing-up or to break-out my track suit and do a steady trot round the block. The central-heating in our building should have gone out with the Taft Administration; some people said it had. Anyways, it had its on-days and its off-days. This was one of the latter and the temperature felt like it was only a degree or two over zero.
I was seriously debating whether to shut up shop for the day and leave a note for Stella but I was glad I didn’t in the end. To break the monotony I walked around the room a bit, put the milk on to boil and amused myself by standing at the window looking down at the boulevard. It had come on to rain again and figures in slickers and long plastic boots shone phosphorescent through the downpour. I watched the ballet of umbrellas for perhaps five minutes or so and then went over and made my coffee. I cupped the warm beaker in my hands, inhaled the fresh grounds and sat down at my desk. It was just then that the phone rang.
‘Faraday Investigations.’
‘This is Dame Dora Shouthat,’ said a woman’s voice pompously.
‘I don’t know any Dumb Dora,’ I said cautiously.
‘Dame Dora,’ the voice corrected me in tones like chipped ice.
‘And I’m Kublai Khan on my days off,’ I said, lowering my guard. It was all of six weeks from Christmas but maybe the funny boys were
starting in early this year.
‘I’ll give you just fifteen seconds to sober up,’ said the voice, ‘and then I’ll do my best to see your licence is withdrawn. I’m the President of the Olde Englishe Tweed Company.’
‘What can I do for you, madam?’ I said, changing my tone rapidly.
‘If you’re a detective agency start detecting,’ she said in a voice that would have made pickles taste like molasses. ‘Be over here inside a quarter of an hour and I’ll tell you how.’
I got over there fast.
*
But first I checked with Charlie Snagge. He was an old friend at the County Sheriff’s Office who had often been useful. He was useful this time too. I expected him to scream when I mentioned Dame Dora’s name but he only shifted the gum to the other side of his mouth. I could hear that clear from where I was sitting.
‘She’s all right,’ he said after he swallowed two or three times.
‘President of the L.A. Chamber of Commerce this year. What’s she done? Passed out stewed at the Mogambo?’
He started snittering. He sounded like he thought it was funny. When I’d seen Dame Dora later I thought it was funny too. But I didn’t laugh till then.
‘Just checking,’ I said. ‘She sounded like she lost a few ball bearings here and there.’
‘She’s English, ain’t she?’ he said. He had a point. I thanked him and hung up. Then I left a note for Stella and drove across town.
The Olde Englishe Tweed Company was on one of the big boulevards in the ritzier part of town. The entrance doors seemed to be made of eighteen carat gold. There were small, severe windows on either side of the entrance, carpeted with red velvet. There was nothing in the windows but a chunk of marble apiece and a yard or two of tweed draped over them. But the way they arranged it made it look like the cloth cost about fifty bucks a millimetre. By the time I got out I figured that price was somewhere about right.
A commissionaire with an epauletted coat and a fine line in fierce stares opened the door for me with a beautifully controlled manner just this side of insolence. Inside, the place was full of glass cases, dresses, bolts of cloth and wall-to-wall snobbery. The commissionaire jerked a white-gloved thumb when I asked for Dame Dora; I felt like a third-class citizen before I had walked five yards.
I blipped the buzzer of the elevator and waited. Instead of a lift cage there was a box of polished pine which gave off the tang of varnish. Everything looked expensive. A girl in a Paris-cut suit looked at me mournfully from under her eyelids as she sagged gracefully against a counter. I didn’t smile back. I felt like she might have charged me for it.
I went up three flights like the commissionaire had told me and got out in a corridor lined in natural wood; ceiling lights recessed flush with the wood gave off an even glow. The elevator wasn’t manned, and after a moment the doors slid to by themselves and there was a whine as it went away. I went on down the corridor which was floored in mink, judging by the feel of it.
Typewriters were pecking from behind the doors and I could hear the chink of cups. I stopped at the end door of the corridor. It had stencilled on it in gold; Knock and Enter, so I did just that. It was quite a big lay-out. I fought my way across the carpet, which threatened to engulf me, to a railed-off area behind which were half a dozen desks. The walls were in quiet pastel shades and done up with big photographic blow-ups of Scottish scenery; where the tweed came from I supposed, though some of the shots looked more like whisky distilleries.
The typewriters stopped as I came through the door. There were about six girls, all young and nice-looking. The one nearest to me sat at a bigger desk than the others, which had three grey plastic telephones on it. She seemed to be in charge. She looked about twenty-eight; was tall and well-proportioned and wore a bell of gold hair about her face that looked as if it was real. She smiled, revealing seed-pearl teeth and put one of the phones back on its cradle.
‘I’m Patti Morgan,’ she said.
‘That’s nice,’ I told her.
She smiled again. I noticed all the other girls were sitting watching us. It was a bit unnerving if you let that sort of thing throw you.
‘You must be Mr Faraday,’ she said.
‘How did you guess?’ I asked.
‘She’s already asked for you twice,’ she said. ‘I think you’d better go in.’
She jerked a well-manicured finger in the direction of a frosted glass panel set in the side wall of the office, just past the desk. She got up to open the gate set in the railing and held it wide for me. I caught her perfume as I brushed past. It smelled in keeping with the high tone of the rest of the place. The glass door had PRIVATE: PRESIDENT painted on it in gold on the frosted panel. I tapped on it and waited. The blonde job was on the phone behind me.
‘Mr Faraday for you, Dame Dora.’ She nodded and waved me forward. I pushed open the door and went in. I don’t know what I expected but she had tweed written all over her. It was a big room and I couldn’t pick her out at first. The whole place seemed to be heaped with yards of cloth; two big windows faced on to the street and the winter light spilled in and was lost in competition with the neon tubes. Then I remembered that they had to have good light for comparing shades of material.
Colour wash sketches of fashions were stacked on tables and around the walls; there were a few good pictures hanging here and there but they didn’t make out too well with the competition from the other stuff. There was another big desk set down in the middle between the two windows. An electric fire in which imitation logs burned made a point of warm light in the wall that overlooked the boulevard.
Dame Dora Shouthat was a magnificent specimen when I got to see her. She had a pair of shoulders on her that made Camera look like Toulouse-Lautrec. Her irongrey hair was drawn back in a bun from a face that would have stopped a Bronx bar-tender in his tracks. Her fingers stuck out in front of her like bundles of sausages at a pork butchers. Her breasts were like bollards that the Queen Mary could have tied up at. Amazonian wasn’t in it.
In front of her was something that looked like a scale model of Vimy Ridge. I found out later it was her hat. It sported a pin as big as a knitting needle. I bet she used a baseball bat for a cocktail stick. The rest of her was mercifully hidden behind the desk. She was studying a jazzy lay-out some dreamy artist had cooked up, depicting females with sixteen-inch waists and forty-five-inch busts, dressed in a few square millimetres of chiffon.
‘Planning to take up modelling?’ I asked with what I hoped was a roguish leer.
‘Don’t be impertinent, young man,’ she boomed. I regretted my foolhardiness. I guess bell-tents were more in her line. She regarded me sceptically and waved a pencil as big as an umbrella.
‘Sit down and keep quiet for a moment,’ she said.
I dropped into a padded chair and put my feet down among piles of fashion magazines that littered the floor. Seen close up Dame Dora seemed even more alarming. To make matters worse my chair was lower than hers. I felt like Gulliver. In Brobdingnag of course.
She put down the lay-out at last and studied me. Fullface, if you could forget the rest, she had steady brown eyes that were full of humour. A smile was fighting to get out at the corner of her mouth.
‘Identification?’
I passed her the copy of my licence in the cellophane window of my billfold. She studied it for a moment and then handed it back. She seemed satisfied.
‘I hear you’re in a discreet line of business, Mr Faraday, and can be trusted.’
I didn’t contradict her. She frowned momentarily and ferreted about on the desk. Presently she came up with a powerful-looking black cheroot. She lit it with a chromium-plated lighter shaped like a knight in armour she took off the desk. It smelt like a cross between deadly nightshade and an opium-smoker’s pad. She offered me one from a well-filled sandalwood box.
I shook my head. ‘No thanks. I wouldn’t want to be ill at the start of a case.’
She disappeared behind a pall of smoke a
nd when she re-emerged she seemed to have made up her mind.
‘Your fees, Mr Faraday?’
I told her. She hunted around among the junk on the desk and wrote on a slip of paper. She tossed the cheque across to me. ‘There’s a two hundred dollar retainer.’
‘To do what?’ I said.
‘I want you to find this girl,’ she said. ‘She went missing two weeks ago.’
She handed me a slip of pasteboard. It was a photograph taken from her staff records. The upper half of the card was occupied by the photograph, the lower by typed statistics. The picture was a good, sharp one and showed a lively-looking girl of about twenty-five with fair hair trained back in a rather severe style over her ears. She wore a tailor-made suit and the smile on her face was natural. Her looks weren’t exactly hard to take.
The record card told me all I wanted to know. Her name was Carmen Benson, the address was a private hotel for women only, over on the other side of town. The card said she was employed as a private secretary by the Olde Englishe Tweed Company. I took the card and put it inside my wallet and put the whole thing in my jacket pocket.
‘Anything wrong here at the office?’ I said.
Dame Dora shook her massive head. ‘Nothing like that,’ she said. ‘Carmen had been with me more than two years. We worked very closely together …’
I looked at her sharply but her face told me nothing. I wouldn’t have said she was the sentimental type. Dame Dora blew acrid smoke out of her nostrils and disappeared from view again. When she came into focus once more, she went on, ‘Something’s badly wrong. She left L.A. to spend the week-end with her people as usual. That was on the Friday night. She never showed up on the Monday and we haven’t seen her since.’
I took the liberty of lighting a cigarette. I was searching around with the spent match in my hand when she passed over an ashtray as big as a trash-can lid.
‘You checked with her parents and the hotel, I take it?’ I said.
