Suspects—Nine (8 page)

“I see,” said Bobby thoughtfully, “I suppose it goes automatically to the Tamar children, if any. And Tamar's a Roman Catholic and can't divorce but if he separated from his wife, there could be no children and Renfield could borrow on his reversionary interest, most likely. A motive for trying to make mischief and letting Tamar know what was going on—if anything. Might be worth trying to make a bit on the side as well, or the money might be to divert suspicion.”

“It's rather horrid,” Olive said, wrinkling the end of her nose in distaste.

“I think I got the idea,” Bobby answered slowly, “that there's quite a lot that's rather horrid going on in the Tamar household. Know a Miss Maddox?”

“Lady Alice's niece. She's been to our place once or twice with Lady Alice. She's rather nice. She asked a lot of questions. Vicky said she thought she might have a touch with a hat and Vicky doesn't say that of many people. Never of me.”

“She's the girl I thought Tamar was trying to get off with. She knew all right and dodged him. He wasn't pleased. Unless he was just putting up an act so he could watch Holland Kent and Mrs. Tamar. You know, it looked to me pretty serious; Holland Kent and Mrs. Tamar, I mean. At least, on his side.”

“Isn't he supposed to be such a very self-contained person?” Olive asked. “Don't they call him the Present-Day Sphinx?”

“They're the worst sort when they go in off the deep end,” observed Bobby. “There's another complication. Miss Maddox—they call her ‘Ernie'?”

“Her name's Ernestine,” Olive explained.

“She had a young fellow with her, Judy Patterson. His name's Julius but he's got nicknamed Judy.”

“Who is he?” Olive asked.

“Got a bit of a reputation,” Bobby said. “Sulky-looking, but women seem to fall for him. Lives by his wits—cards and all that. He'll come our way sooner or later if half the tales told about him are true. Began to read for the law and then chucked it. I suppose he got to know Miss Maddox through Lady Alice.”

“Why? does Mr. Patterson know her?”

“There was a story in one of Lady Alice's travel books people didn't much believe. There were hints she had invented it. And then Patterson said he had been to the same place—he's done a bit of travelling—and he backed her up. I must say that this afternoon, considering the reputation he's got for making trouble, he seemed to be doing his best, to keep out of Tamar's way, though they both looked as if they didn't like each other very much. I hope he wasn't saving it up for another time. He looks a sullen, ‘bide-my-time' sort of chap.”

Olive looked suddenly interested.

“Perhaps he's the man Lady Alice was telling us a long story about,” she said. “Somebody she knew quarrelled with racecourse people and they talked about the awful things they would do to him. So he went to a place where he knew he would find them and he went in and sat down and put that big, broad-brimmed hat he always wears on the table and just waited. And when one or two of them began to try to pick a quarrel with him and be threatening, he picked up his hat and there was a pistol under it. He didn't say a word, just sat and looked at them, Lady Alice said, and one after the other they sneaked away. So then he put his hat on again, and his pistol in his pocket, and stood the waiter on his head in a corner, and went away, too. She didn't say why, I mean, not why he went away, that was sensible, but why he stood the waiter on his head.”

“I expect he felt he ought to tip him, but he hadn't any money, so he did that instead,” suggested Bobby.

“But that wouldn't make the waiter like not having a tip any better, would it?”

“Perhaps not,” agreed Bobby, who thought the story did sound as if the hero of it had really been Judy Patterson. It all seemed a little like his flamboyant personality, and Bobby knew, too, that he affected a big, broad-brimmed hat. “Do you know where it was?” he asked.

“Lady Alice said it was near the Tottenham Court Road. I thought they were all furniture shops there.”

“Not all,” said Bobby, for, indeed, the Tottenham Court Road neighbourhood is frequented by some of the most dangerous characters in London. “If it was Patterson, I wonder if he's got a firearms licence?”

Olive didn't know nor was she interested. She said uneasily,

“I hope there's nothing between him and Miss Maddox. She's too nice for a horrid man like that.”

“It's all full of gunpowder,” Bobby remarked.

He picked up the menu card and began to write on the back of it.

When he had finished he handed it to Olive who had been watching him uneasily. She read,

Having finished reading all this, Olive put the menu card down, looked at Bobby, and said,

“Oh, dear.”

“What I call,” said Bobby thoughtfully, “a pretty kettle of fish.” 

Then, to Olive's great relief, he tore the menu card into small bits and put them in his pocket, lest some inquisitive person should piece them together again.

Thereon they left the restaurant and for the rest of the evening no more was said of the tangled Tamar affairs into which the stolen-hat incident had given Bobby such unexpected glimpses.

A day or two later, on a Saturday, Bobby, calling at the little shop after his release from duty, found Olive and Vicky in deep consultation. It was long after closing time and the others had all gone home, but Vicky, though ready for departure, still lingered.

“Well, I'll be off,” she said when Bobby appeared. “I've got a date—two. I can't think which to keep.”

“Oh, Vicky,” said Olive reproachfully.

“I think,” decided Vicky, “I'll just go home and have a quiet time. Then they can't either of them be jealous of the other, can they?”

“Oh, Vicky, what a shame,” said Olive, still more reproachfully.

“Oh, no, why?” asked Vicky, surprised. “It doesn't do to let them get above themselves, does it? So long, Olive darling. Ask Mr. Owen what he thinks. There's a lot to be said on both sides.”

With which profound reflection she departed and Olive, looking after her, murmured,

“I wonder which date she'll keep in the end?”

“Both sides of what?” asked Bobby, little interested. “What did she mean?”

“Ernie Maddox, she's been here nearly all afternoon,” Olive explained. “She seems to think she might like to buy a share in the shop.”

“Tell her she can have the whole bally outfit,” said Bobby promptly, for his one wish was to see Olive clear of the business. “Has she got the coin?” he asked prudently. “If she has, let her have it for what you paid for it yourself.”

“There's a trustee,” Olive said. “She says she can get the money from him all right, she thinks, but she has to see him first.”

“Um-m,” said Bobby, doubtful, for he thought it possible the trustee might have such ideas as trustees are apt to have on such occasions.

“I don't know,” confessed Olive, “that it's worth as much now as when I bought it.”

“You mean,” said Bobby, “worth as much as you paid. New idea on her part?”

“I think so. She seemed interested before but not like that. Olive hesitated. “I think she wants—well, to get away.”

“Get away? Where? What from?”

“I don't know. I think she's frightened. She frightened me. It's Lady Alice, I think. She made me feel something's going to happen.”

“Oh, rot,” said Bobby, and as he spoke a newsboy came down the street.

They watched him. He carried before him a large placard. On it appeared in large letters:

“Why's that?” Olive asked. “It does make things so awkward if you have to buy things in Paris and you don't know what there'll be to pay.”

“Hitler's last speech, I suppose,” Bobby remarked. “I noticed this morning the exchange opened at one seven seven point seven five to the pound instead of the one seven five it closed at last night.”

“We shall get our things cheaper, then,” Olive remarked, “but I do wish they wouldn't. Why should Hitler's speeches make hats dearer or cheaper?”

But Bobby had no time, even if he had possessed either the inclination or the ability, to answer this question, for at that moment there appeared a second newspaper seller showing another placard, reading:

‘MYSTERIOUS MURDER

UNIDENTIFIED BODY ON

WEETON HILL.'

Bobby moved to the door and beckoned to the newsvendor. Behind him Olive said, as though she were speaking to herself,

“Lots of people go to Weeton Hill.”

Bobby bought a paper and he and Olive went back together into the little room behind the shop. A blurred line or two in the stop-press column announced the discovery of a dead body on Weeton Hill, ‘a well-known viewpoint', and added that identification had not yet been established.

“Doesn't even say whether it was a man or a woman,” Bobby remarked.

“Oh, it couldn't be Lady Alice, could it?” Olive cried as though Bobby's words had brought to the surface a thought of which she herself had hardly been conscious. “That couldn't have been why Miss Maddox was afraid? You don't think that?”

“I'm not thinking at all,” Bobby answered. “Nothing to think about at present, no bricks without straw, no think without facts. Only it's a bit—well, suggestive. Worrying. What made you think Miss Maddox was scared? Anything special?”

“No, I don't think so. No. It was just herself. She had a funny sort of look and she talked in such a jerky way. I thought it was cocktails at first. It is sometimes. There was a girl came in last week. She had been to a cocktail party and every hat she tried on she said she would buy—seventeen, and she only stopped because...”

“Because...?” asked Bobby.

Olive looked prim.

“It was awfully lucky,” she said, “Vicky got her to the wash-bowl in time. You know, I don't believe girls know cocktails are half gin.”

“You are sure it wasn't cocktails with Miss Maddox?”

“Oh, yes. I was a little excited at first. I was afraid perhaps Vicky mightn't be quick enough this time, but Vicky said it was all right, it wasn't that at all. Vicky thought perhaps she had been dangerous driving or dodging the lights and it was the police she was frightened about. Afterwards she said something that made me think it was Lady Alice, as if they had quarrelled rather badly. Only it can't have been that exactly because I talked about having to concentrate when you were in business and stick to it, and she said she was awfully business-like and we could go and ask Lady Alice if she wasn't. She said it was partly Lady Alice's idea, about going into business.”

“Was she here long?” Bobby asked. “Did you notice what time she left?”

“She was here all afternoon, nearly. Of course, we close early on Saturday, but she rang up to ask if she could come after lunch and I said I would stay in and Vicky did, too. We thought it might mean a good sale. We had some tea and then she went away and Vicky stayed to talk about it.”

“She doesn't live with Lady Alice, does she?”

“Oh, no, she has a flat of her own. Lady Alice would never have any one else sharing with her. I think it was all quite a new idea with Miss Maddox, I mean, not exactly new. As if she had been thinking about it in a vague way and then made up her mind all at once.”

“Something happened, perhaps, possibly the row between her and Lady Alice, if there was one. Anyhow, thank goodness, this Weeton Hill affair has nothing to do with us—outside Metropolitan Police limits. The South Essex police may call us in but very likely they won't. May be all quite simple and very likely there's no connection.”

But of that he felt no assured conviction and when he arrived home he was riot much surprised to find his landlady had taken a message for him from headquarters, requiring his immediate attendance.

He sighed, for it was bedtime, but started off obediently, and when he reached the Yard he found Inspector Ferris waiting for him, and in a bad temper because he had been so long in making an appearance.

“Out on the razzle, I suppose,” he grumbled. “You're to pack off at once. Case at Weeton Hill.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby.

“Dead body found there, murder suspected,” explained Ferris, fumbling with some papers on his desk and failing to find those he wanted. “Oh, yes. You reported a complaint, suggested blackmail—a Mr. Tamar. Weeton Hill was mentioned. You advised taking no action?” added Ferris severely.

“Yes, sir,” admitted Bobby, wondering if this meant a bad mark was going to be chalked up against him.