The End Of Solomon Grundy (7 page)

“Good lord,” he said suddenly, and halted. Such out-of-date exclamations were not uncommonly used by him. “Speak of the devil. There he goes.”

“Who?”

“That old open Alvis. You can’t mistake it.” He pointed to the tail end of a car that, a moment after, turned a corner.

“Grundy, you mean?”

“I certainly do. I wonder what he’s doing round here at this time of night.”

Peter resumed his monologue. What Jack Jellifer saw on that September evening was to be the subject of argument later on.

Marion watched television, which she regarded as her secret vice, and then went to bed and to sleep. She was woken by something – what? – the sound of heavy breathing perhaps. She switched on the light. Grundy was getting into his bed. It was midnight.

“You’re late,” she said sleepily.

“Working.” He came over and kissed her on the cheek. She could smell whisky, rather disagreeable. “Night.”

“Night.” She turned away, and in five minutes was asleep again.

Body Discovered

Cridge Street is a narrow street of rather elegant terrace houses that runs off Curzon Street. Cridge Mews is, naturally, narrower still, a cul-de-sac of a kind not unusual in this part of London, containing some twenty garages with mews flats above most of them. The flats are small and, for the accommodation they offer, expensive. Most of them are rented rather than leased, and a continual flow moves through them of actors, actresses, dress designers, models, and others who are professionally involved within or on the fringe of the world of art. At nine-fifteen on Tuesday morning a cleaning woman named Mrs Roberts trudged on her bad feet into Cridge Mews, put her key into the door of No. 12, said good morning to the young chauffeur who was washing the Daimler outside, took in the milk, and puffed slowly up the narrow stairs.

“Miss Simpson,” she called in her hoarse voice.

“I’m here, Miss Simpson.”

She turned right into the sitting-room which, as so often, was in a mess, glasses on tables, cigarette stubs in ashtrays, cushions dragged off sofa on to floor, dirty knife and plate lying on floor, electric fire left on. Mrs Roberts grumbled subterraneanly about this as she opened the window, switched off the fire, took out dirty things to the kitchenette. Clatteringly, mutteringly, she washed up, and then went to look at the French clock in the sitting-room. It said twenty to ten, and that meant it was time for Miss Simpson to get up. “I sleep like the dead, Robby,” she often said. “But you’ve got to wake me up, I
want
to wake up, whatever I say, d’you see? So you just do it, and don’t mind me.”

Mrs Roberts went to the little passage at the top of the stairs and called her. Miss Simpson, she called, and not Estelle, although she had been told to use the Christian name. There was no reply, and no reply either when she knocked, even thumped, on the door. When she opened the door and saw what was inside, she began to scream.

She went down the stairs screaming, and almost fell into the arms of the young chauffeur, whose name was Harrison. He ran up the stairs two at a time after hearing what she had to say. Estelle Simpson lay on the floor in the bedroom, her face discoloured and her tongue hanging out. She wore nothing but a pair of frilly black knickers. The room was in disorder. Harrison stood looking at it for a moment, then went into the sitting-room and telephoned the police.

They arrived before half past ten, in the persons of a detective-inspector and a sergeant. During the course of the morning, as the case developed and its shape became apparent, reinforcements were called for and appeared, little men carrying black suitcases from which they produced odd pieces of apparatus, some of which looked as though they might have been useful to an astronaut in his space capsule, big men who carried photographic equipment, others who seemed merely to stand about gossiping at the door but were suddenly galvanised into action as their special skills were required. The men sniffed about over the flat like dogs, taking pictures, making chalk marks on the floor, covering surfaces with fine dust and then taking pictures of what appeared in the dust. The little flat had ceased to be the habitation of a human being who lived, was happy, suffered, had the right to say yes or no. She had become an object, something to be looked at and prodded by a surgeon, taken here and put there, speculated and joked about. And the place that had sheltered her, that too was now an object, one of interest simply because it might contain the answer to a problem.

The boss, the chief, the big noise, the man with the answers, in a word the super, arrived after these preliminaries had been carried out, as the star of a musical comedy appears only after a suitable introduction by the chorus and a song or two from minor members of the cast. His name was Manners and he belonged to the newer school of detective – superintendents, those who never eat peas with a knife. Jeffrey Manners had been to a good grammar school and a redbrick university, and he had chosen a career in the police quite deliberately because he thought it offered more opportunities to his particular talents than a job in a large corporation. Now, in his early forties, he was a slight, dark, handsome man with a certain aloofness that did not endear him to subordinates. He stood in the sitting-room and listened with a frown of concentration to grizzled, toughly amiable Inspector Ryan.

“Dr Worthy’s in there now, but there seems no doubt she was strangled. Marks on her throat. He didn’t wear gloves, but too confused to be any good for prints. Lots of prints around in the bedroom and here, but most of ’em are her own or belong to the cleaning woman, Mrs” – Ryan looked at his notes, – “Roberts.”

He took a breath and continued. “So, who was she? She’d been here four months. Mrs Roberts says she had some sort of a job modelling clothes, sometimes firms would ring up while she was here and make appointments for her to come along. No reason to doubt her, but not much doubt either that the girl was a bit of a tom on the side, like a lot of them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Did you see her knickers, sir?”

“Her knickers?”

Ryan had them brought in, and handed them to Manners. They were ordinary black knickers, but wording was printed on them in a pattern that ran upwards in a pyramid. The wording said: “Oh please do not touch me. Oh please do not touch. Oh please do not. Oh please do. Oh please. Oh.”

“Then there are these, sir. Found them in a drawer of her dressing-table.”

Manners looked at the photographs with distaste.

“These are not the girl herself?”

“No, sir. But a girl who keeps things like this in her dressing-table—”

“Yes.”

“At the same time Mrs Roberts says there was never a man here in the mornings and the chap who runs the garage down below, his name’s Seegal, says he doesn’t think she had men in during the day. So does the chauffeur, uses the garage, name’s Harrison. Of course we shall be asking other people in the Mews. It could be that she only receives in the evening. Or could be that she’s not a tom at all, just broad-minded.”

A tall man with a fine head of grey hair came into the room. This was Doctor Worthy, the Home Office pathologist.

“All pretty straightforward from the look of it. Manual strangulation from behind. Girl didn’t have much chance to put up a struggle. Wasn’t wearing shoes, so she didn’t even have a chance to kick out. No sign of sexual interference.”

“She still had her knickers on,” said Ryan, who liked a joke.

Manners said sharply, “Her clothes may have been removed afterwards. What about it, Ryan? Any sign of tears, anything like that?”

Ryan sobered at once. Manners, although polite, could be unpleasant. “Nothing like that, sir.”

“The way it reads, then, is that this was someone she was preparing to make love with,” Manners said in his unemphatic voice. “She’d undressed. Perhaps he had, we don’t know. Then he got hold of her from behind, strangled her.”

Worthy nodded. “It’s easier to strangle anybody manually from in front, of course. It’s possible that they fell to the ground and his grip shifted, but the main pressure was exerted from behind. Indicates a good deal of strength.”

“Time of death?”

“Difficult to be more than approximate. Say about twelve hours ago. Between nine o’clock last night and one o’clock this morning would cover it, with a preference for some time between ten and eleven. But that’s only a guess, mark you, picking out that hour.” He paused.

“Something else I ought to mention. I knew the girl.”

“You did?” Manners was not often surprised, but he frankly stared.

Doctor Worthy said rather awkwardly, “Only to say good morning, nothing more than that. I live just round the corner, in Charles Street, and I garage my car here. The young man who telephoned you, Harrison, is my chauffeur. Occasionally when I go out to dinner I bring the car back here myself, and sometimes I get it out myself in the morning. I’ve seen her – oh, not more than half a dozen times.”

“You haven’t seen any men here, or leaving the flat?”

“I haven’t seen a man around at all, although no doubt there was one. She was an attractive girl, full of vitality.”

“We think there was more than one.” Ryan showed the doctor the photographs.

“Yes, I see. You think she was a prostitute. I can only say I saw no sign of it. She spoke” –
He
had been about to say
pleasantly but without refinement,
but recollected that Ryan was not conspicuous for refinement, – “like anybody else.”

“I suppose it’s possible that Harrison saw more of her than you did.”

“Perhaps. Ask him by all means. But of course Harrison drives my wife as well, so he doesn’t have all that much spare time.”

He waved a hand and was gone. Ryan mimicked him, “‘Of course Harrison drives my wife as well.’ It’s that
of course
that gets me.”

“You’ve talked to Harrison?”

“And to Seegal, the chap who runs the garage. Got nowhere. But here are two interesting things, a letter and a postcard. We’ve got prints off them, the girl’s of course, and one or two others, rather smeary but they may be some use.”

Manners read the letter first. It was written in green ink on grey paper which was headed “Petersham Club,” with an address in Chelsea. The letter said: “Darling, Yesterday was wonderful. Missed you in the evening, though, what happened? Hope to be able to fix up something for you in the next few days. Ring me. T.” The letter was undated, and gave no indication of the day on which it had been written.

The postcard was on ordinary stiff white card, and the few words on it were in an upright, angular hand. They were: “Monday evening. Same time, same place, same object.”

The card was not signed, but at the bottom there was a rough drawing of a little figure. Manners turned it over, saw that it was addressed to Estelle Simpson at the address in Cridge Mews, and that it had been posted in London, WC, on the preceding Thursday afternoon.

“Well,” he said non-committally.

Leaves me to do the work, then takes the credit, Ryan thought without particular malice. “Both from boy friends, wouldn’t you say? One finding her a new job, the other arranging to see her on the night she was killed. Be nice to talk to that joker who signs himself with a little drawing.”

Ryan paused, laughed. “‘Same object,’ I like that. Suppose Mr Petersham Club found out that Miss Simpson had been having a spot of same object with Mr Drawing, he might not have been pleased.”

“Too much theory, too little fact,” Manners said, but he spoke mildly. “When we’ve finished here, try to find out who T is. But it’s the other one that puzzles me.”

“You mean, why sign with a drawing instead of a letter or a name? Kind of a code? Some special reason why he didn’t want to use his own name. That what you mean?”

“I don’t know. There’s just something – I don’t know.” Manners dismissed it, went into the bedroom, stood looking down at the girl now decently covered with a cloth, the girl who yesterday had been attractive and full of vitality and today was an ugly piece in a sordid puzzle. The bed was untouched, uncrumpled. Two detectives were systematically examining the contents of a wardrobe.

“Where were those photographs?”

Sergeant Jones, who was conducting the examination, answered. “In the dressing-table drawer, sir. Not even hidden.”

“And the letters?”

“Desk in the sitting-room, along with a lot of other stuff, mostly bills. Nothing else personal at all.”

“She was certainly attractive,” Manners said, looking at a head and shoulders portrait on the dressing-table.

He went on thoughtfully, “If the chap who sent the postcard killed her, you’d think he’d have looked round for it. It pins the day on him. No sign of a search?” Jones shook his head. “All right. I’ll talk to Mrs Roberts and the others.”

He talked to them, but got little information. Mrs Roberts obviously had no love for the police, and would say nothing more than that Miss Simpson had been a lovely lady to work for, never complained, was always grateful for what you did.

No men came to the flat, nobody rang up except firms who wanted Miss Simpson to model for them, and she could not remember any of the names.

Seegal and Harrison were more helpful. Seegal, small and swarthy, told them that he had a lease on a row of four garages in the Mews, three of which he rented out while he ran the fourth as a repairs business. He wiped dirty hands on a piece of waste, and talked about the dead girl.

“I saw her most days, except weekends that is, and she was a nice girl. Friendly, you know, you liked to talk to her. ‘Call me Estelle,’ she said. Nothing stand-offish about her.”

“Was she a prostitute?”

Seegal scratched his dark chin. “Well, I don’t know.”

Ryan said aggressively, “You told me she didn’t have men in during the day. You too, Harrison.”

The chauffeur, a big freckled young man, touched his hand uneasily to the peaked cap on his head, and looked appealingly at Seegal, who spoke again.

“You know how it is. She was a nice girl, you don’t want to make trouble, but – well, there were men called on her sometimes. Not many, often none at all. I don’t think she was on the game, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Some of them were arty types, they could have been to do with her acting,” Harrison said.

“Acting?”

“Yes, she’d done some acting. In the provinces and on TV. That’s what she said, anyway.”

“She didn’t tell you where? Any parts, any people she knew?”

Harrison said apologetically, “Afraid not.”

“And how long did they stay, these people who came to see her?”

The two men looked at each other. Seegal was their spokesman. “No special time, ten minutes, half an hour, perhaps two hours. We didn’t notice specially, you understand.”

“You confirm that?” Ryan said to Harrison.

“I just don’t know. Most days I’m not here more than an hour or two. I just know men did come to see her sometimes, that’s all.”

That was as far as they got. Seegal was doubtful whether he would recognise any of the men. They were mostly arty types, wore suede shoes and tight trousers.