Callers for Dr Morelle

by Ernest Dudley

  She put on a short cashmere coat which had been lying over the back of a chair, and she slipped the gun into the right hand pocket and she switched out the light and quietly left the flat.

  She walked purposefully along Charlotte Street, the way she had taken many times before to the Black Moth, she and Julie. Until lately, when she had made her own way while Julie had been down at Lilac Cottage. Now Julie would not accompany her ever again.

  Julie with her amused laugh and inconsequential gossip, who would always pause to talk to any stray cat appearing out of the shadows, as one had appeared now, a thin-looking creature which shot across her path and into the road, escaping destruction by a swiftly-moving taxi by the merest tip of its crooked tail.

  She could feel the hard pressure of the revolver in her pocket as she walked on past the café on the corner where olive-skinned men lounged in the garish electric light over their cups of coffee. She passed a brilliantly-lit shop where a fat woman was sweeping up, a cigarette drooping from the corner of her mouth.

  Only subconsciously was she aware of what was happening about her. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the Scala Theatre, its foyer darkened, the bills outside announcing some musical play being performed there. Further on across the road a group of men rocked on their heels on the kerb outside a public house, deep in animated conversation. The lights of a restaurant flickered in red and blue above half a dozen cars, one of which drew off, its occupants in evening clothes.

  She passed the familiar scenes of broken buildings and empty spaces and masses of scaffolding reaching up to the night sky, rebuilding that was going on interminably. On either side as she passed ran the colourful miscellany of shops and offices, restaurants and cafés. Tailors and dry-cleaners, delicatessen-shops, jewellers and pawnbrokers. Now she was passing a German café, its windows packed with liver sausages and sauerkraut.

  On the other side of the road a taxi was pulling up before a Greek restaurant, and two men and two women hurried in to supper behind the pink-lighted windows. Names of half a dozen different nationalities adorned the shop fronts and café signs on either side of her. In an Italian coffee-bar the white blobs of faces in a golden haze beyond the windows bent over cups, or were illuminated for a moment in the flame of a cigarette-lighter. A car purred silently past, with a peaked-cap chauffeur at the wheel, its passenger a solitary figure deep in the cushions of one corner.

  Taxis hurried along picking up fares, or dropping them, at their different rendezvous. Dark-skinned men padded past her, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, and she could sense their black, bold eyes on her face, the aroma of their cigarettes hung on the air after them. She passed alleys and culs-de-sac where figures moved in the shadows, and where a stray cat or dog sneaked silently among the garbage.

  Overhead the night sky glowed with the reflection of the lights of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. Bits of newspaper and refuse littered the gutter and was strewn about the pavement, the variegated smells of cooking and rich spices came to her nostrils, but Thelma Grayson’s senses, while they registered all these sights and sounds and odours about her, retained them only briefly, her every thought was fixed upon the recent past. The Coroner’s pince-nez glinting in the morning sunlight. The faces of the jury as they sat listening to the witnesses following one another into the witness-box in that drab, bare room; Phil Stone’s troubled brow as he sat next to her.

  Phil had accompanied her to the cemetery at Little Tiplow, they had been the only mourners, though a few villagers had put in an appearance out of ghoulish interest. The funeral had taken place the next day following the inquest, a grey morning until the moment when the coffin was being lowered into the grave, when sunshine had suddenly broken through, bringing to life the flowers at the graveside, in all their colour and beauty. Flowers from Thelma and Phil, and from the girls with whom Julie had worked at the Black Moth.

  There had been a huge wreath of roses from Ray Mercury, which Phil had scowled at. Reading his unspoken thoughts Thelma had said to him: ‘Julie would have liked them in spite of everything, in spite of who sent them.’

  She recalled the savage intensity of his tone as he said to her later: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Was it for me to tell you about him? I wanted Julie to do that.’

  ‘That was why you wanted me to hurry down to the cottage?’

  ‘I felt that after she had seen you again it would work out all right for you both. I thought she had got over him, I never dreamed she would do what she did.’

  ‘He killed her,’ Phil had said, ‘he drove her to do what she did.’

  She had seen the expression in his face, an expression which had chilled her, and she had forced a note of calm and common-sense into her voice. It was when they were returning to London in the train three days after the funeral, the sunlight which had broken through in the morning had stayed to fill the sky, and the brightness of the fields and gardens racing past mocked their sadness. Phil was remembering the train journey he had made on that evening from London to Hatford, the excitement with which the prospect of seeing Julie again had filled him. He was remembering the vision of her face which had filled his mind. Now that picture was obliterated by that other face which try as he would he could not prevent returning to his mind, Julie’s face as he had last seen her.

  Hers and another face, Ray Mercury’s, soft and withdrawn and secret, as he had stood in the witness-box answering the questions put to him by the Coroner with an air of deepest sincerity.

  ‘You mustn’t feel that way about him,’ Thelma had said to him. They were alone in the compartment, sitting in opposite corner seats. She could see the whiteness of his knuckles as his fingers entwined in a tense grip. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘How can you defend him?’ he had said, his voice rasping. ‘I know I sound jealous of him. I admit it, I am. But it isn’t confusing me so that I don’t know she killed herself because he had let her down. It’s as obvious as hell.’

  ‘That isn’t true,’ she had tried her utmost to sound convincing. ‘She was infatuated with him, of course.’ She had broken off as she saw the spasm of anguish that twisted his face. ‘Oh, Phil, it was an infatuation, she didn’t love him, and if only you had been around it would never have happened.’

  ‘Why did she have to kill herself?’

  ‘That’s something we shall never know.’

  Phil had looked at her, but could read nothing that told him anything in the expression at the back of her eyes.

  A long silence had fallen between them as the train rushed on towards London, and they were left each possessed by their own thoughts, their faces turned unseeingly to the windows.

  Thelma had found herself recalling the incident last night, when she was at the cemetery putting fresh flowers on the grave, and she had been disturbed by the arrival of two visitors, a tall man and a woman, she had received the impression that the woman was small and the fluffy type. She had caught the glint of her horn-rimmed glasses in the reflection from the torch-beam which the man had shone on her. She recalled the man’s voice, quiet and incisive and the woman’s light and sounding a little timorous, as they had moved on. She was idly wondering who they were, and what they had been doing there at the cemetery at that late hour. Then her thoughts trailed off, to fasten to another picture, that of the smooth-faced man in the witness-box, and her grey eyes became veiled.

  Phil had shared her taxi, which had dropped him at his rooms near Baker Street, while she had gone on to Charlotte Street, Phil arranging to telephone her the following day, and arrange for them to meet. She had realized how lonely he was, and how he was numbed by the shock of Julie’s death.

  This was yesterday afternoon when they had come back to London. Following the funeral, Thelma had returned to Lilac Cottage where she had remained, tidying up, while Phil had stayed on at the Half Moon in the village, though he had called on Thelma for an hour or two each day at the cottage.

  Thelma had shut up th
e cottage with all its memories locked in it, not knowing when, she felt, she would ever be able to return to it. She had decided, she told Phil, that she did not expect to come back to Lilac Cottage for several months. They had driven over in a hired car to Hatford Station, where they had caught the train to Waterloo.

  Now Thelma found herself out of Charlotte Street, and crossing over to Bateman Street. She passed a bookshop, its windows packed with paper-backed novels in several languages. Romances in French, thrillers in German, and American-style dramas.

  Across the other side of the darkened street ran a length of corrugated iron fencing, behind which lay another gap which had been torn out of London by war-time bombs.

  She could feel again the hard pressure of the revolver in her coat pocket, and she directed her thoughts towards what lay ahead of her. A few yards away was the glitter and garish colours of night-time Oxford Street.

  So intent was she on the purpose for which she had set out, that she stepped into the gutter in Oxford Street, and only the loud hooting from a taxi caused her to draw back in time to avert an accident.

  Thelma Grayson paused and collected her thoughts focusing them on the present, and here and now, and she crossed Oxford Street and turned into Soho Street. The clamour and colour and movement of Oxford Street formed a brief distraction, but she was in a shadowed street again, and her thoughts turned inwards as before.

  She turned right into Soho Square, great trees overhanging the square through which glittered the lights of Hollywood film companies. She skirted the square and went down into Frith Street. Now the atmosphere was similar to that of Charlotte Street, except that there seemed to be a brightly-lit café or restaurant every step of the way. Here again olive-skinned faces peered at her, one man paused as he was smoking a long cigarette, made as if to move after her, but then he caught her expression and remained where he was.

  Women, heavily made-up and teetering on high heels, flitted in the shadows like vultures, groups of men hung about in the doorways of shops and office entrances.

  Now she was approaching the end of her journey and her pace slackened, the feverish suspense which had racked her began to fall away, now she knew she would have to whip her flagging spirits if she was to force herself to do that which she had set out that night to do.

  She crossed over and paused on the corner of Meard Street, and went a few yards along before she turned into another street, narrow and dark, where she saw ahead of her the familiar neon sign jutting out above the pavement. The shape of a black moth picked out in crimson neon, its eyes flashing on and off, and over it the name: The Black Moth in green and yellow.

  Cars and taxis were drawing up to set down visitors to the club, and behind the vehicles she could see the stalwart, saluting figure of the commissionaire in his opulent-looking uniform. Quickly she crossed over to the other side of the street, and made her way along, turning her face away from the club so that she might not be observed. She passed the club with its bustle of arrivals, then crossed back again to the same side. Facing her was an alley, black and cavernous, beyond it she knew was a yard, upon which opened an entrance to the Black Moth.

  She went quickly down the alley and into the darkness of the yard. Something slithered past her in the blackness, so that she halted, a gasp starting at the back of her throat and bitten off before she could utter it aloud. It might have been a rat or a cat; more likely a rat, she thought. She went on.

  There were no lights in the yard, only a glow from a window above her to the left, and for a moment she halted to get her bearings. She made out the iron staircase that led to the door to a passage, which in turn led to Ray Mercury’s private office, at the back of the club. She had the key to the door in the pocket of the blouse she wore. The revolver banged against her thigh, hard and sinister as she went up the iron stairs, the soft scuffing noise of her shoes was the only sound as she reached the door.

  Chapter Nine

  Next thing he had to do, Ray Mercury was thinking, was to get rid of him. He was smiling gently, while he was thinking, at the man who was opposite him. His eyes were smiling too at Luke’s little joke. So that Luke let the thin strip of moustache above his mouth curl back in a laugh. He was getting fonder of telling his jokes, and laughing more loudly at them, than anyone else.

  Yes, Ray Mercury was thinking, that was the next thing he had to do, get rid of Luke.

  He began to turn over in his mind what would be the best way, leaning back in the large padded chair behind his ornately carved writing-desk. Luke was pacing slowly up and down, casting an appraising eye at the richly furnished room that was the boss’s office at the back of the Black Moth Club; that was in between his jokes.

  Ray Mercury’s double-breasted dinner-jacket of midnight blue fitted perfectly, and his silk shirt with its turned-down collar was immaculately white. It was tough on him, he was thinking, eyeing Luke speculatively, that he’d been forced to use him this way with the Grayson girl; but he’d had to work quickly before she had time to open that pretty mouth of hers. Yes, it had been tough on him to have to do that, to make Luke a partner in a murder, and it would now be tough on Luke. Already he’d sensed the change in the other’s attitude, he seemed to have put himself on a basis of equality, instead of that of a well-paid henchman. Ray Mercury’s experience of men of Luke’s type warned him that if ever the time came he would try to do one of two things, either squeak to the police, or fix him, in a way that it would look accidental. Or that he had committed suicide, the way Julie Grayson had been fixed. He laughed mirthlessly to himself.

  Although his office was only a short distance from the head of the stairs leading to the club itself, no sound reached them, no sound of dance-music or anything. The door and walls were sound-proofed. Ray Mercury liked to have complete silence to think in, to plan and scheme.

  Now he watched Luke’s eyes as they took in the thick, deep crimson carpet, the sumptuous cocktail-cabinet, the television-set in the corner, the book-lined shelves, the gleam of highly-polished furniture, the aroma of his expensive cigar, all the trappings which went with the owner of one of London’s smartest and most luxurious nightclubs. Ray Mercury could see not only appreciation in the other’s eyes, those eyes that were like two bits of grey slate, but something else lurked there, envy and greed. And he knew that Luke was already fancying himself as the boss.

  As he sighed to himself, the crystal door-handle turned, and the door opened, and a woman came in.

  ‘Hello, Greta,’ Ray Mercury said.

  He did not often see his wife these days. She did not smile at him or answer him. She just stood there by the door glancing at Luke.

  ‘All right, Luke,’ Ray Mercury said.

  After a moment’s hesitation the other took the hint and with a smirk at the woman in the doorway, he went past her and closed the door behind him.

  Greta Mercury came into the room and he idly admired her graceful figure in the tightly-fitting dress she was wearing. Still a good-looker, he thought. Her hair, silvery blonde, still rippled down to her shoulders and was as lovely as it had been when she had first attracted him in Hamburg. That was where he had met her, just after the war had ended and he had been engaged in highly lucrative, if dubious and dangerous operations in that part of the world, her smooth shoulders rose white and rounded from the revealing dress.

  Maybe, he thought, her eyes, those strangely green slanting eyes were a little harder now. Maybe that the line about her mouth was a little tauter. But what had she to complain of? She had nothing to worry her now, she had done all right for herself, since he had picked her up in that Hamburg night-club, she ought to know that.

  ‘Hello, Ray,’ she said, speaking for the first time, in her hoarse voice, which had once excited him with its slow, controlled tone. Even when he had seen her quivering with fury and passion he had never heard her speak without the icy composure with which she spoke now. Only the green fires in her eyes and the whitening at the corners of her mouth betrayed her em
otions.

  He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t much to find to say to her these days. He tapped the ash of the long cigar into the big, gleaming ash-tray on his desk.

  ‘I’ve been thinking you don’t see me around so much,’ she said.

  ‘Come and have a drink now you’re here,’ he said.

  She shook her head. She moved forward towards the desk and he saw the glitter in her green eyes, like sunlight in an icy cavern.

  ‘I’ve been thinking lately,’ she said.

  ‘So that’s what’s been the matter,’ he said. He tried to make it light, but seeing the expression on her face he did not altogether succeed.

  ‘If you want to know something, you’re just a great big kid, who can’t help falling for the newest pretty shape and face.’

  So this was it, the familiar stuff. He shrugged his beautifully-tailored broad shoulders. ‘It’s the way I’m made,’ he said. ‘Anyway, is that all the conversation you have to offer? What are you worrying about? You have money, clothes, a lovely flat, you can go wherever you want to go, Paris, Cannes, Nice, you have the world at your feet; and yet you worry because now and again I like to play around with a new toy.’

  ‘That sounds all right to you from where you’re standing,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t make me feel so good. Because one of these days you’ll find a toy that you’ll want to keep for keeps. You won’t want it just for play-time only.’

  ‘I’ll never finish with you, darling,’ he said, and he moved round the desk towards her. He moved lightly, quietly, and his voice was soft as he stepped forward to her and his carefully manicured hands held her shoulders.

  It was strange, he was thinking, that she did not stir him any more; and he was thinking of those old days not so many years ago, he was recalling the fire that had been in her embrace. That strange icy beauty of hers was a façade behind which he had soon discovered lay smouldering volcanic flames. That was what had been the trouble, he supposed, the fire had burnt itself out too soon. Or maybe it was just that what had appealed to him then, now had no impact at all.