The Allingham Casebook Page 5

  “Yes,” I agreed, very relieved. “Yes, I suppose it can.”

  They showed me out and that seemed to be the end of it. I’d had my lesson though, and I never opened my lips again on the subject to anybody. It quite put me off Louise and for a time I avoided her. I made excuses and didn’t go and eat with her. However, I could still see her through the window sitting at the cash desk and I could still see Adelbert peering at her from his doorway.

  For a month or two everything went on quietly. Then I heard that Violetta’s boy had got tired of the restaurant business and had taken a job up north. He had given the girl the chance of marrying and going with him and they’d gone almost without saying goodbye. I was sorry for Louise; I had to go and see her. She took it very well and was pretty lucky really, for she got a new waiter almost at once and her number one girl in the kitchen stood by her and they managed. She was very much alone though, and so I drifted back into the habit of going in there for a meal once a week. I paid, of course, but she used to come and have hers with me.

  I kept her off the subject of Adelbert, but one day near the Midsummer’s quarter day she referred to him outright and asked me straight if I remembered I’d promised to be witness on the next pay day. Since Violetta had gone she’d mentioned me to Adelbert, she said, and he’d seemed pleased.

  Well, I couldn’t get out of it without hurting her feelings and since nothing seemed to turn on it I agreed. I don’t pretend I wasn’t curious: it was a love affair without any love at all, as far as I could see.

  The time for payment was fixed for half an hour after closing time on Midsummer’s Day and when I slipped down the street to the corner the blinds of the Coq were closed, and the door was shut. The new waiter was taking a breath of air on the basement steps and let me in through the kitchens. I went up the dark service stairs and found the two of them sitting there waiting for me.

  The dining-room was dark except for a single shaded bulb over the alcove table where they sat, and I had a good look at them as I came down the room. They made an extraordinary pair.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those fat little Buddha gods whom people keep on their mantelshelves to bring them luck? They are all supposed to be laughing, but some only pretend, and the folds of their china faces are stiff and merciless for all the upward lines. Adelbert reminded me of one of those. He always wore a black dinner jacket for work, but it was very thin and very loose. It came into my mind that when he took it off it must have hung like a gown. He was sitting swathed in it, looking squat and flabby against the white panelling of the wall.

  Louise, on the other hand, in her black dress and tight woollen cardigan, was as spare and hard as a withered branch. Just for an instant I realised how mad she must make him. There was nothing yielding or shrinking about her. She wasn’t giving any more than she was forced, not an inch. I never saw anything so unbending in my life. She stood up to him all the time.

  There was a bottle of Dubonnet on the table and they each had a small glass. When I appeared, Louise poured one for me.

  The whole performance was very formal. Although they’d both lived in London all their lives the French blood in both was very apparent. They each shook hands with me and Adelbert kicked the chair out for me if he only made a pretence of rising.

  Louise had the big bank envelope in her black bag which she nursed as if it was a pet, and as soon as I’d taken a sip of my drink she produced it and pushed it across the table to the man.

  “Five hundred,” she said. “The receipt slip is in there, made out. Perhaps you’d sign it, please.”

  There was not a word out of place, you see, but you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. She hated him, and he was getting his due and nothing else.

  He sat looking at her for a moment with a steady, fishy gaze, waiting for something, just a flicker of regret or resentment, I suppose; but he got nothing and presently he took the envelope between his sausage fingers and thumbed it open. The five crisp packages fell out on the white tablecloth. I looked at them with interest, as one does at money. It wasn’t a fortune, of course, but to people like myself and Louise, who have to earn every penny the hard way, it was a tidy sum representing hours and hours of hard graft, scheming and self-privation. I didn’t like the way the man’s fingers played over it and the sneaking spark of sympathy I’d begun to feel for him died abruptly. I knew then that if he’d had his way and married her when she was little more than a child all those years ago he would have treated her abominably. He was a cruel so-and-so; it took him that way.

  I glanced at Louise and saw she was unmoved. She just sat there, her hands folded, waiting for her receipt.

  Adelbert began to count the money. I’ve always admired the way tellers in banks handle notes, but the way Adelbert did it opened my eyes. He went through them like a gambler goes through a pack of cards, as if each individual item is alive and part of his hand. He loved the stuff, you could see it.

  “All correct,” he said, at last, and put the bundles in his inside pocket. Then he signed the receipt and handed it to her. She took it and put it in her bag. I assumed that it was the end of it and wondered what the fuss was about. I raised my glass to Louise who acknowledged it and was getting up, but Adelbert stopped me.

  “Wait,” he said. “We must have a cigarette and perhaps another little glass – if Louise can afford it.”

  He smiled, but she didn’t. She poured him another glass and sat there stolidly waiting for him to drink it. He was in no hurry. Presently, he took the money out again and laid a fat hand over it as he passed his case round. I took a cigarette, Louise didn’t. There was one of those metal match stands on the table and he bent forward to take and strike one, I moved too, for him to give me a light, but he laughed and drew back.

  “This gives it a better flavour,” he said, and peeling off one note from the top wad he lit it and offered me the flame. I had seen what was coming so I didn’t show any surprise. If Louise could keep a poker face so could I. I watched it burn out though, and when he took another to light his own my eyes were on it.

  That having failed, he started to talk. He spoke quite normally about the restaurant business and how hard times were and what a lot of work it meant getting up at dawn to get to the market with the chef. And then how customers liked to keep one up late at night, talking and dawdling as if there was never going to be a tomorrow. It was all directed at Louise, rubbing it in, holding her nose down to exactly what he was doing. She remained perfectly impassive, her eyes dark like lead, her mouth hard.

  When that failed he got more personal. He said he remembered us both when we were girls and how work and worry had changed us. I was nettled, but it did not upset me much for it soon became quite obvious that he could not remember me at all. With Louise it was different, he remembered her all right, with something added.

  “Your hair was like gold,” he said, “and your eyes were blue as glass and you had a little soft wide mouth which was so gay. Where is it now, eh? Here.” He patted the money, the old brute. “All here, Louise. I am a psychologist, I see these things. And what is it worth to me? Nothing. Exactly nothing.”

  He was turning me cold. I stared at him fascinated and saw him suddenly take up a whole package of money and fluff it out until it looked like a lettuce. Louise neither blinked nor moved. She sat looking at him as if he was nothing, a passer-by in the street. No one at all. I’d turned my head to glance at her and missed seeing him strike the match so that when he lit the crisp leaves it took me off guard.

  “Look out!” I said, involuntarily. “Mind what you’re doing. Don’t be a fool!”

  He laughed like a wicked child, triumphant and delighted. “What about you, Louise, what do you say?”

  She continued to look bored and they sat there silent, facing one another squarely. Meantime, of course, the money was blazing. No one seemed to notice it but me.

  I was odd man out, the whole thing was nothing to do with me, perhaps that is
why it was my control that snapped. There was no reason why it shouldn’t, I mean.

  Anyhow, I knocked the cash out of his hand. With a sudden movement I sent the whole hundred flying out of his grasp. All over the place it went, the floor, the table, everywhere. The room was alight with blazing notes.

  He went after them like a lunatic, you wouldn’t have thought a man so fat could move so fast.

  It was the one which laddered my stocking which gave the game away. A spark burned the nylon and as I felt it go I looked down and then snatched the singed note, holding it up into the light. We all saw the flaw in it at the same moment. The ink had run and there was a great streak through the middle like the veining in a marble slab.

  There was a long silence and the first sound came not from us but from the service door. It opened and the new waiter, looking quite different now that he’d changed his coat for one with a dick’s badge on it, came down the room followed by Inspector Cumberland.

  They went up to Adelbert and the younger, heavier man put a hand on his shoulder. Cumberland ignored everything but the money. He stamped out the smouldering flames and gathered up the remains and the four untouched wads on the table. Then he smiled briefly.

  “Got you, Adelbert. With it on you. We’ve been wondering who was passing slush in this street and when it came to our ears that someone was burning cash we thought we ought to look into it.”

  I was still only half comprehending and I held out the pound we’d been staring at.

  “There’s something wrong with this one,” I said stupidly.

  He took it from me and grunted.

  “There’s something pretty wrong with all these. Miss Frosne’s money is safe in his pocket where you saw him put it. These are some of the gang’s failures. Every maker of counterfeit has them; as a rule, they never leave the printing-room. This one in particular is a shocker. I wonder he risked that even for burning. You didn’t like wasting it, I suppose, Adelbert. What a careful soul you are.”

  “How did you find out?” Louise looked from them to me. She was still dazed, but suspicious.

  Cumberland saved me:

  “We’re psychologists, too, Madam, we policemen,” he said, laughing. “In our way.”

  Little Miss Know-All

  Mr Albert Campion was drifting unobtrusively down the corridor towards Chief Inspector Luke’s room at the Central Office when he first saw Melanie, and he thought then that any young woman who could look quite so smugly pleased with herself was courting disillusionment.

  At that time, he was fully occupied with his own affairs, but he noticed her particularly because of her smile. A clerk in uniform was showing her out of the building and she was trotting a little ahead of him, her spiked heels squeaking on the stone and her round hips rolling in her tight skirt. Campion supposed she was about twenty-five. She looked curved, petite and purposeful and appeared to be struggling to keep her expression strictly non-committal, but just as she came up with the lean and elegant man, whose pale eyes were so misleadingly blank behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, her inner satisfaction bubbled over. The small mouth in her greedy little face widened suddenly and a grin of pure triumph appeared and vanished. Mr Campion glanced after her involuntarily and when he turned back he saw that Chief Inspector Charles Luke himself had appeared in his doorway and that he too was watching his departing visitor.

  The Chief’s dark face cleared as he caught sight of Campion and his welcome was cordial. The two were old friends and had worked together on many occasions and although Luke, who was a giant of a man, was inclined to dwarf the thinner, fairer, Campion, he never made the mistake of underestimating the intelligence which lay behind the other man’s gentle exterior. It was Mr Campion who mentioned the girl as they went into the office together.

  “A satisfied client, no doubt?” he suggested innocently.

  Luke’s face grew slowly savage. “I call her ‘little Miss Know-All’,” he said bitterly. “You recognise her, of course.”

  “Ought I to have done?” Mr Campion looked puzzled. “The face is vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. She makes me think of rabbit for some reason.”

  “Rabbit!” Luke’s laugh was hollow. “You’re on the track but a few thousand pounds out. That’s the fur coat girl, Melanie the Mink. Did you see her on telly?”

  “Ah!” The appropriate card in Mr Campion’s mental filing system popped up before him. “She won the main prize in the commercial quiz, the modern version of Kim’s game, what do they call it now?”

  “Line of Vision,” Luke said. “The players wander round a whole curiosity shop of unlikely objects for four minutes and are then blindfolded and put into sound-proof booths. The winner is the one who can list the most items accurately from memory. One week’s winner takes on a new team next session.”

  Campion nodded. “I remember it now,” he said. “The standard became amazingly high. She won, did she? Her observation must be phenomenal.”

  “She’s too clever by half!” Luke spoke bluntly. “She’s now set out to beat the police and as far as I can see she’s in danger of doing it. Frankly, Campion, I don’t quite see where to go from here.”

  Mr Campion bowed to the inevitable. He knew his old friend when he spoke like this. He sat down in the visitor’s chair and composed himself to listen while Luke strode up and down the rug talking like a dynamo.

  “Her name’s Melanie Miller, she works behind the Inquiries desk in Cuppage’s stores and until she won the Quiz no one had heard of her,” he said. “But she went through session after session beating team after team and finally she won the big prize which was a remarkable coat presented by a federation of the fur trade boys. It was an advertising stunt. The fur was crushed sapphire mink fully insured for eight thousand pounds, and she also made about four hundred pounds by posing in it for trade photographers.” He paused and smiled briefly. “She was expected to turn it in for cash. I gather she was offered four thousand and a coat in beaver lamb in exchange for it. But she isn’t that kind of girl. Her coat is insured for eight thousand pounds and she has a literal mind.”

  Mr Campion appeared interested.

  “She wanted to wear it, I suppose?”

  “She couldn’t wear it.” Luke objected irritably. “No one could wear it without stopping the traffic. It was an embarrassment on a bus and a liability in a café and as soon as they saw it the neighbours in Lilac Mansions, Plum Street, North-East, where she lives with her mum, started an agitation. They contended that its presence in the buildings constituted an invitation to burglary. If it was that which gave her the idea, I don’t know.”

  Mr Campion looked up in the midst of lighting a cigarette. “I remember now; I read it. She’s had it pinched, hasn’t she? Dear me, quite providential! How do you come to be involved, Charles? I should have thought you were a bit eminent for larceny.”

  “But not for adverse publicity,” said Luke grimly. “Nor do I care to see my chaps made monkeys of. Look here, Campion, we’re confronted with a tale which would make a child suspicious. The story is like a conjurer’s cabinet – there’s a hole in it somewhere, must be. But we simply cannot find it.”

  “Does she offer any explanation?”

  “Oh, she’s got a scapegoat, she’s not a fool.” Luke jerked his dark head. “I think that is what is making me so spiteful. It’s a mean explanation which we might fall for if we decided to be lazy. Little Miss Know-All doesn’t care whom she hurts.” He sat down on the edge of the desk and stretched his long legs out before him.

  “When she won the prize just over a month ago she did a very extraordinary thing,” he began. “Taking her coat and her four hundred pounds, she moved into a furnished apartment in a small block of mansion flats called Sweetwater Court, Knightsbridge. It isn’t at all what you’d expect, but very respectable and very dull. The doors are shut tight at eleven every night and a porter is on duty in the hall all day. She only took the place for a month – her story is that she just wanted to see
what it would be like to live ‘up West’ – but she appears to have chosen the block very carefully. At any rate, she went to an agency and asked them to find out if any tenant of Sweetwater would rent her a short lease of his apartment. They were not hopeful, they told us, but they did as they were asked and succeeded. Melanie paid over the odds, but she got what she wanted: an old resident with a flat on the second floor obliged her for four weeks at thirty pounds a week.”

  Mr Campion sat up.

  “How very curious,” he said. “You interest me, Charles. Was there nothing extraordinary about the block? No past history of crime there?”

  Luke burst out laughing. “You don’t miss much, do you?” he said. “That was the only possible reason I could discover for her picking it. This time last year there was an abortive attempt at daylight robbery there and the story made the papers. The girl’s memory is extraordinary, and she may have recalled it. Otherwise the place has a clean sheet. The tenants have been there for years and so has the porter. Yet the morning after the evening on which Melanie was seen to move in, coat and all, she struggled to the telephone to report that she had been drugged and robbed. A dirty glass on her table contained traces of chloral. Nothing but the mink had gone, but that certainly had vanished.”

  Mr Campion leaned back in his chair and blinked.

  “How nice and tidy,” he murmured primly.

  “Wasn’t it? It sounds as if we ought to have seen through that tale without any difficulty. That’s what we each thought until we came into it. Unfortunately, the story appears to be watertight.” Luke raised a long hand with the fingers outstretched and ticked off his points as he made them. “The coat was seen to enter the flat. The woman had no key to the main door – she had left the one the tenant had left her, with the agent ‘by-mistake-on-purpose’. The coat could not have been destroyed without trace or otherwise disposed of in the flat. It could not have been passed out of a window because there are only three and they are all of a patent type which permit ventilation without opening. It has been proved that these have not been opened for years. Finally, the blessed coat could not have been stuffed up a chimney because there are no chimneys, nor put under the floorboards because in pure exasperation I’ve had ’em up.”