Vicious Circle

by Douglas Clark

  “You didn’t ask dad a lot of searching questions,” said Tony. “If you had done he would have found it difficult.”

  “I’ll accept your word for that, Mr Kisiel. But we don’t normally harass those whom we interview, despite what you may have heard to the contrary.”

  “We get a bit narky with anybody who isn’t forthcoming or who tries to pull the wool over our eyes,” said Green. “We regard that sort of thing much as you would if some joker stopped you getting on with your job by breaking the cultivator or whatever it is you use for turning over those fields of yours.”

  Tony Kisiel nodded his acceptance of this point and asked: “Does that mean that you accept unreservedly what my father has told you?”

  “Why not? We knew he didn’t like the old woman and she didn’t like him. All we wanted to find out was why. Your dad has told us. If we hear anything from anybody else that doesn’t tie in with what he’s said, we shall come back and sort it with him. Check and cross-check until everything holds water, as you might say.”

  Tony Kisiel pondered this for a moment. “So you’ve finished with him for the moment?”

  “P’raps for good.”

  “I wonder,” said Masters tentatively, “if Mr Kisiel senior hasn’t finished his morning inspection of the plants, whether he would mind if I had a look round in his company?”

  “What for?” demanded Tony, suspiciously.

  “To get a few ideas,” replied Masters.

  “So you think there’s something here that . . .”

  “No, Mr Kisiel. I don’t think there’s anything here other than flowers. It’s just that I have a small garden in London which does not lend itself to normal cultivation. My wife is, however, anxious to make something of it by using the walls for creepers and pots for plants that will provide colour. I’ve often heard of these small enclosed areas being turned into miniature gardens but until this moment I’ve never met an expert who might be able to tell me how to go about it. I know there are books on the subject and television programmes, but they don’t seem to cater for our needs exactly.”

  “Come with me,” said Josef Kisiel. “We can talk as we walk.”

  “Are you going alone with him, Chief?” asked Reed.

  “If the D.C.I. wishes to come and Mr Kisiel doesn’t mind I think the party will be big enough. Too many big feet among the rows could cause havoc.”

  “In that case, Chief, do you mind if we take the car? I promised Mr Dean I’d try to keep him in the picture. If I went over now and reported, I wouldn’t have to bother later.”

  “Don’t be too long about it. We mustn’t take up too much of Mr Kisiel’s time.”

  *

  Josef Kisiel was knowledgeable and helpful. He questioned Masters closely as to the size of his garden, the height of the walls and nearby buildings so that he could get some idea of the problems of shade and sun. Then he spoke of the plants which thrived in shade, half-shade and those that loved the heat.

  As they went along he told Masters to make a note of their names together with those of plants which preferred north-facing walls and those which did best on warm, south-facing brickwork.

  After this he spoke of lime-haters and lime-lovers and how to treat the soil to accommodate each, pointing out that if separate containers were to be used, this would be easier for Masters than for most gardeners.

  He stressed the value of humus and peat; of bone meal, dried blood, nitrates, phosphates, potash, lime and other plant foods; and explained their uses and the little-and-often theory of plant chemical dressing. He was more than an expert, he was an enthusiast, too, and so he held the attention of his audience, answering their questions when asked and encouraging more.

  As they walked between the areas of plants in bloom, Masters asked him where he had gained his knowledge.

  “For one year in Poland at our agricultural school of Warsaw University, I studied at a desk. Then I worked for one year in the State Gardens near Lodz. I was to return to the university in the autumn when war began, so I did not complete. But here, they let me go to Glasgow when the war was over. For one year I attended, then, because I was married, I came back here. My Alice, she had been working, and I had saved and there was a gratuity. We bought a little bit of land. I was sold a Nissen hut from the airfield. I took it down into pieces and brought it back to put up in our field. It had partitions in it. My Alice and I, we lived in half of it. I did my work from the other half. The authorities did not like it, but others were doing the same. The work prospered. For many years there had not been seeds and plants. I grew them, and I grew our food to add to our little meat ration. It was a time to make money—no big bills for electricity and gas like now and only small rates because of none of the amenities in the hut. I could build a greenhouse and cold frames from waste material because there were no bricks—bricks and timber needed licences to use, even old materials, in those days. So we made a profit. And when the time came we could buy more land and more implements.” He shrugged. “You see what we now have.”

  “All very modern and bustling,” said Green.

  “Except for the jam jars,” said Masters, stopping and shading his eyes from the glare of the sun reflected by the rows of jars just ahead of them.

  “My lilies of the valley,” said Kisiel. “That is how we grow them in Poland. Under jam jars so that they are ready for the May-game.”

  “May-game? Merrymaking on May Day?”

  Kisiel nodded. “In Poland and Russia and even in France the people make more of May Day than the British. At one time it was not so. You had your May Queen, where we had our May Lady and you had your Maypole dance where we had our May-game. But you did not have lilies of the valley for good luck. You had your roses.”

  “That’s right,” said Green. “The flowers of Merrie England! ‘The May Queen comes, let her path be spread, with roses white and with roses red’. That’s a quote,” he added for Kisiel’s benefit.

  “I have heard it,” said Kisiel gravely. “The children sing it at their school.”

  They moved forward to the rows of lilies. “Many of these have gone to market,” said Kisiel. “Even in England people like them, but they don’t hold them in the same reverence as my people do.”

  “Reverence?” asked Masters.

  “We use many herbs and flowers for medicines. Every housewife used to grow them just as she grew sage and thyme and parsley. Before we had all the modern pills and potions the country folk brewed simples for all their ailments.”

  “I see. Now, about roses. Am I right in believing that if I buy those that have been brought-on in containers I can plant them at any time—not just in early spring or autumn?”

  “Quite right, Mr Masters. Buy a perfumed climber and plant it in a big tub so that you can lead it up the wall of the house to bloom outside the bedroom window of your wife. Each morning when she rises she will have the scent as she sits at her dressing table and in the evening it will come to her as she brushes her hair. It will be romantic for her, and for you . . .” He grinned widely. “What man does not want his wife to be romantic in the evening, eh?”

  “Sounds like good advice,” conceded Masters. “I’ll try it.” He turned to Green.

  “I could plant a rose in that small bed sheltered by the house-return at the back, Bill. I could train it on wires so that it would go up to the bedroom window.”

  “The bed where the winter jasmine is?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Yellow winter jasmine?” asked Kisiel.

  “My wife is very fond of it,” replied Masters. “She always hopes there’ll be some left for picking on Christmas Day for her table centre. So far we’ve always been lucky.”

  “How long is the bed?”

  “Five or six feet long, but no more than nine inches wide.”

  “And it carries only the jasmine?”

  “I shall put the rose in the end nearer the house.”

  “Good. But if your wife likes the little
yellow flowers particularly . . .”

  “She loves yellow flowers. Daffodils, for instance, are a great delight to her.”

  “Well, my friend, a plot as large as the one you have described is very big for just a winter jasmine, even with a rose at the end. And if your wife loves yellow . . . well, to follow the winter jasmine, why not plant a witch-hazel—a hamamelis to give it a more formal name? Witch-hazel produces little yellow flowers, too, in February and March, and then, you would still have room for a forsythia with its little yellow flowers to follow on after that. So Mrs Masters would have her little yellow flowers there for many months when there is not much else in bloom.”

  “I could put all these in the one bed?”

  “Why not? Feed them and they will grow.”

  “But I always thought forsythia tended to grow quickly and to take over?”

  “You would have to prune it, of course. Quite severely, perhaps. But they are good-natured plants. They do not take offence. They come back for more of such treatment.”

  They turned to head back to the now distant office.

  “Does Mrs Masters like reds and pinks?”

  “Flowers, you mean? Yes, I think so.”

  “I did not mean flowers exactly.” Joseph spread his hands. “You have a little box of a garden with high walls and a stone floor. All grey and brown. Flowers such as one would grow in a herbaceous border—stocks, aquilegia, petunias—are not possible. You can grow bushes—a few. Three yellow ones in one patch. But what about elsewhere? In two corners at the bottom of the garden? In one corner a tamarisk and in the other a dogwood. The tamarisk is pink, dusky pink, in the late spring before it turns green. The stems and branches and twigs, all bumpy with little buds and all dusky pink. And in the other corner a dogwood with a cluster of long, straight, bright red stems. Shiny red, in winter as well as summer. Colour all the year, Mr Masters. Beautiful to see.”

  “I don’t think I know tamarisk,” said Green.

  “It is sometimes colours other than pink,” conceded Kisiel. “But the pink is supreme. It is the dusky pink of a lovely Persian rug or whatever they are called nowadays. Nothing is the same as it was. Dutch cheese is now called Edam and I saw in a delicatessen last week they were advertising shoulder-ham. It is a contradiction. There are two hams on an animal, including man. And we sit on them. Shoulder ham! It is taking money by false pretences. But a housewife who would never pay as much for a hand of pork as for a leg will do precisely that if the same animal is smoked or salted and called ham. I do not understand it.”

  “I don’t either,” growled Green. “But you’re always coming across that sort of thing nowadays. My missus tells me that quite often you can pay more for a pound of something if you buy it in a big amount than you pay by buying it in a smaller one. Just the reverse of how things should be.”

  The conversation lapsed as they reached the environs of the shop and turned towards the office. Masters was evidently chewing something over in his mind other than flowers for Wanda’s garden, as his next observations showed.

  “Mrs Carlow has a sister, Frau Hillger.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Kisiel.

  “I’ve heard she has a character very different from that of her elder sister.”

  “True.”

  “Did your dislike of Mrs Carlow include other members of her family, Mr Kisiel?”

  “No. I like Margarethe and Marian. They are nice people. And their husbands, too. They are all friends of mine.”

  “Frau Hillger?”

  “She is not a friend of mine. But not because I feel any enmity towards her. It is simply that living in the same house as Mrs Carlow has prevented any sort of intimacy between us other than that of acquaintanceship.”

  Masters smothered a smile at the quaint but nevertheless descriptive way of making a point. “On the few occasions that you did meet Frau Hillger, what were your feelings concerning her? Were they neutral?”

  “Mimi is different from Elke. She is a pleasant woman. An ordinary, pleasant woman. People who abhorred Elke liked her.”

  “Were they alike in any respect?”

  “One had to look hard to find resemblances.”

  “Of any sort?”

  “Even their voices were different. Elke was guttural, Mimi is not.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You have not seen Frau Mimi?”

  “Not yet.”

  Kisiel stopped and looked up at Masters. “You are not conventional. I understood that policemen always go straight to the nearest relatives when a murder occurs.”

  “Murder, chum?” asked Green. “We do not even know whether this is murder or not.”

  “In that case, why bother me?”

  “Why not? You have a nice garden.”

  Kisiel gazed at him for a few seconds. “You English are all alike. You and Robert Bennett, David Whincap and Theo. You hide what you mean by saying something different.”

  Green grinned. “It’s safer that way. You chaps from the continent always show your feelings. No Englishman would announce he had prayed for somebody to die. When you do that, it makes us think.”

  “You would prefer me not to say what I think?”

  Green shook his head. “It’s the same difference, chum. Things always come out in the end.”

  They moved the last few yards in silence. As they reached the door of the office house, the Yard car drew up.

  “Chief!”

  Masters and Green turned as Reed hurried up the little path towards them.

  “Chief, there’s a . . .” Reed realized that Kisiel was still present, and paused in what he was about to say.

  “There’s a what?”

  “A message for you, Chief. Personal.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be with you in just a moment. Masters turned to Kisiel. “Thank you, sir. I’ve enjoyed our chat, I’ve enjoyed seeing your plants and, I hope, I’ve remembered your advice. But even if I haven’t, Mr Green will have done so, and he’ll recount it to my wife, word for word.”

  “I will see you again,” said Kisiel.

  “Was that a statement or a question?”

  “It was a fact. I shall see you again, I think.”

  “I see. Well . . . in that case, goodbye for the time being.”

  As they walked towards the car together, Green asked: “What the devil did the old boy mean by that, George?”

  Before Masters could give a considered reply, Reed, who had been waiting outside the car, said: “Dean’s received an anonymous phone call, Chief.”

  “About Mrs Carlow’s death?”

  Reed nodded. “He’d like to see you about it.”

  “We can’t stand about here. Get in the car and we’ll talk as we go.”

  “What did this mysterious caller say, lad?” asked Green.

  “Dean wrote it down—as best as he could remember. Evidently this woman rang up . . .”

  “What woman?”

  “This woman . . . a woman then. She rang up and asked to speak to Dean, so the girl on the switchboard put her through.”

  “Just like that? Without asking her name and business?”

  “The caller,” interjected Berger, who was driving, “gave her name and business without being asked.”

  “A bogus name?” demanded Masters.

  “Yes, Chief.” Reed had again taken over the job of raconteur. “She said her name was Mrs Leafe and she wished to discuss with Dean certain provisions of a will he was preparing for her.”

  “And?”

  “Well as the woman seemed confident and, I suppose, had the right sort of accent, and Dean hadn’t got a visitor at the time, the office girl put her through to the boss.”

  “In other words the girl thought she was a genuine client?”

  “That’s about the size of it, Chief.”

  “We know the form,” grunted Green. “Impudence and fortitude will get you anywhere, as my old mum used to say.”

  “That about sums it up, I suppose.”


  “Did Dean tell you what the unknown woman said?”

  “She alleged that Mrs Carlow had been murdered and that there was a cover-up.”

  “Nothing more? No names mentioned?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “Whose?”

  “Josef Kisiel’s.”

  “You mean this Mrs Leafe actually said that Josef Kisiel had murdered Mrs Carlow?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “Did the caller say how he had achieved it?”

  “No. She just said that Kisiel had always vowed to see her in hell . . . those were the actual words she used . . . see her in hell, and that now he’d done it.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes. The weather was so delightful that the car seemed a prison. Masters wound his window down and sat staring out. The new season’s green shone brightly, not yet dusty and stained by time. The houses, growing more numerous as they approached the town, seemed bright and cheerful with windows open and net screens just fluttering in the lightest of breezes. Multi-coloured garments hung on washing lines and small children played in gardens, enjoying the new freedom of being out of doors without coats. Their mothers were wearing summer dresses and displaying bare arms and legs that needed a few days of such weather to tone down the anaemic whiteness of the skin to the light tan that shouts of health and firmness of flesh.

  Green allowed Masters time to take this in and to think for a minute or two before asking: “Do we pay much attention to this, George? Poison tongue? It could be anybody in the district.”

  “Not quite anybody,” replied Masters quietly. “Somebody who knows Kisiel.”

  “And Mrs Carlow, Chief,” said Berger.

  “Not necessarily.”

  “No, Chief?”

  “Course not,” grunted Green. “Somebody who heard Kisiel shooting his mouth off at some time about the old frau. She needn’t have known Elke Carlow, but she remembered the name, and when the news of the death got about, put two and two together and made the usual five.”

  Berger grimaced. “So an enemy of Kisiel’s. He’s a decent old boy. He wouldn’t have made all that many enemies.”