Bond Street Story (55 page)

He was in poor shape next morning. And the ride by Underground was poignant in the extreme. Everything all round him seemed so heartlessly normal. He didn't know what he had expected. But not this. He felt somehow that because of Mr. Bloot's disappearance the whole of London Transport should have been sombre and subdued. Either that, or talking of nothing else.

It was not, indeed, until he had actually reached Rammell's that there was any sign of awareness of what had happened. Then it all came on him in a rush. The doorkeeper was on the look out when he got there. Actually standing at the foot of the stairs waiting.

“Mr. Preece has been asking for you,” he said. “Straight away.”

Mr. Privett's heart gave a bump. This was it. They'd found the corpse. Either that, or Rammell's wanted him to take over the main foyer again.

And when he reached Mr. Preece's room he could tell that it was more than the front hall that was bothering him. Mr. Preece looked so pale and bloodless. And anxious. He was sitting there, tight-lipped, with his hands clasped on the blotter in front of him. In the easy-chairs on the other side of the desk two large, calm men were sitting.

Mr. Privett knew them at once for police officers. He had never seen police officers before, when not in uniform. At least, not to recognize them. But he supposed that it
was
uniform of a kind that they were wearing. The senior one, who had iron-grey hair cut rather short and parted low at the side, was wearing a blue suit and a blue overcoat. And the younger one, whose hair was inclined to be wavy, had on a sports coat and flannels and a grey, belted raincoat with one of those extra storm flaps to it. Mr. Privett felt his sick feeling come over him again. It was because the thought suddenly came to him that all over London there were other men, in pairs—one in blue cheviot, the other in grey gaberdine—out hunting Gus down at this very moment.

Mr. Preece got up as he entered.

“Ah, Mr. Privett,” he said thankfully. “So you've got here. You know about Mr. Bloot, of course. Being missing, I mean.”

“Oh, yes, sir. I know about that. I wondered if you'd heard anything.”

He paused, aware that two other lots of eyes were looking at him.

Mr. Preece squeezed the fingers of his two hands more closely together.

“I'm afraid not,” he said. “But these two gentlemen are here to help us find him. They're police officers.”

Mr. Privett turned and faced them.

“Good morning,” he said politely.

The grey-haired one leant forward.

“Good morning, Mr. Privett,” he began, and stopped again almost immediately. “It is Mr. Privett, isn't it?”

Mr. Privett swallowed hard for a moment.

“That's right,” he said. “Alfred Privett, 26 Fewkes Road, North-West ...”

But the policeman didn't seem interested in all that. At least not for the moment.

“Do sit down, won't you?” he asked. “I only want to ask a few questions to see if you can be of any help to us.”

“Be of assistance you mean?” Mr. Privett repeated dully.

The awful fear suddenly crossed his mind that perhaps they suspected him. Indeed, now that he had thought of it he didn't see how they could avoid it. They were bound to suspect everyone who had ever known poor Mr. Bloot. He could tell that they were sizing him up as he stood there. Seeing if he were the kind of man who would know about disposing of bodies and that kind of thing.

The inspector pushed a chair forward.

“When did you last see Mr. Bloot?” he asked.

Mr. Privett hesitated. He realized the dangers of giving false information. But he realized also how it might appear if he were the last person to have seen Mr. Bloot alive. He could practically feel the chill of the handcuffs closing round his wrists.

“The night before last,” he replied without looking up.

“And where would that be?” the inspector continued.

He had a quiet, naturally friendly-sounding voice. It was ideal for prompting.

“At home,” Mr. Privett told him.

“At Artillery Mansions, you mean?”

“No, sir. At my home. Number 26. Mrs. Privett'll remember. She heard him.”

The inspector held out a large silver case with an inscription of some kind inside the lid.

“Cigarette?” he asked.

Mr. Privett shook his head.

“I don't smoke, thank you, sir.”

The inspector snapped his case shut again. He realized that he would have to reassure this nervous little man in some other way.

“Don't you worry about what other people heard,” he said. “We can do all the checking up afterwards. Just you take things easy and tell us everything you can remember. What time was it?”

“About ... about ten-thirty.”

“What did he come round for?”

“Just for a cup of tea. Same as usual.”

“And did you give him one?”

Mr. Privett shook his head. This was where it was beginning to get difficult. He had already lied to Mrs. Privett, and now he had to make sure that it was the same lie that he was telling to the inspector.

“No, sir. He'd just had one.”

“So he just dropped in to say good night?”

“Yes, sir. That's all it was.”

“And how did he seem?”

“He was all right.”

“Not upset about anything?”

Mr. Privett was finding it physically difficult to speak.

“Yes, he was,” he said at last. “Very. It was on account of his budgies. You see, she'd let 'em out. That is, Mrs. Bloot had. On purpose. He told me.”

“Was that all?”

“Well, it was enough, wasn't it? He was very much attached to those budgies. They were like ... like children to him.”

“And she let them fly away? It was deliberate, you say?”

“That's what he told me.”

“Now why would she do a thing like that?”

“I just can't imagine,” Mr. Privett replied. “Really I can't. Not unless she wanted to hurt him.”

“Why would she want to do that?”

Mr. Privett shrugged his shoulders.

“I'm not married to her,” he said.

“You and Mr. Bloot are old friends, aren't you?” the inspector went on.

“He's my oldest friend,” Mr. Privett said proudly.

“And would you call his second marriage a happy one?”

Mr. Privett ran his tongue round inside his mouth.

“At first,” he said. “You ... you see she was younger than he was.”

“And had he got any other young lady friends?” the inspector asked quietly. “The kind that might understand him in time of trouble, I mean.”

Mr. Privett shook his head.

“He wasn't that kind of man,” he said firmly. “Mr. Bloot was good.”

The inspector was silent for a moment.

“I suppose you've no idea where he might be now?” he asked.

This time there was no hesitation. No swallowing.

“If I knew, I'd go to him,” he replied.

It was, from Mr. Rammell's point of view, the worst of all possible mornings for anything like this to have happened. Why Mr. Bloot of all people should suddenly start behaving like a runaway schoolgirl entirely passed his comprehension. As soon as Mr. Preece told him, he felt angry. Angry at the one moment of his life when all that he wanted was a little peace and quiet.

But there was more than Mr. Bloot on his mind now. There was himself. It was ten o'clock. And he was on his way round to Harley Street. To see his stomach man. For one of his periodical check-ups. The way he was feeling nowadays, he simply dare not miss it. As it was, he'd been living on nothing stronger than boiled fish and Melba toast ever since Tuesday.

Harley Street, except for the specialists themselves, is scarcely one of the more joyous thoroughfares of London. The houses, for the most part, are rather good. There is a restrained magnificence
about the whole terrace style. They must have been quite something. Once. But hardly now. That is because every one of them is so terribly sublet. It is the Gorbals all over again. Only with a separate brass plate for every tenant. Rented out in single rooms most of them. Nothing less. And, once you come to that, any neighbourhood has got the skids under it.

Because of the overcrowding, parking wasn't easy. Mr. Rammell's chauffeur had to stop right in the middle of the roadway. And Mr. Rammell knew what it would be like when he came out. Rollses and Bentleys everywhere. Patients trying to get in to see the specialists. Specialists trying to get away to see other patients. The ceaseless busy throb of a commerce where it is always boom time.

Even inside the houses, the unmistakable note of multiple tenantry was still apparent. The shared living-room, for instance. Mr. Rammell knew his community settlement waiting-cell absolutely by heart. The mock Chippendale chairs. The pictures of wild geese. The horse bronzes. The old copies of
The Tatler
and
Country Life.
The brass ash-trays.

The woman who showed him into this little snuggery was as familiar to him as the room. Practically on his own staff, as it were. He saw her about every three months. Had done for years. And the same thought occurred to him every time. Despite the white, surgical-looking overall and the low-heeled nurse's shoes, she looked more like a patient than one of the profession. Perhaps it was the air of suffering that she so resolutely bore. Or her pallor. Not that Mr. Rammell was in the least surprised by either. He wondered how his secretaries would look if he stuck them out in the hall, tucked into the scooped-out part under the staircase, with only a telephone and an appointments-pad for company, and the visitors' lavatory right there alongside the filing-cabinet.

It was while he was sitting in that awful waiting-room that he wished that somehow he could get to a telephone himself. A private one. He had been on to Mr. Preece twice already this morning. And the third time he had tried, he had just missed him. In the result, he had failed to deliver his most important instruction. Whatever had happened to Mr. Bloot, he wanted the name of Rammell's kept out of the papers. And, no mention of Bond Street, either. The disappearance of a six-foot shopwalker was the very last thing that he wanted to see publicized.

Then the nurse-patient returned and spoke his name. Mr. Rammell felt himself tightening up all over. It was the same on every occasion. This strangely nervous feeling. As though he were guilty of something and was about to be rebuked for it. If it had
been a magistrate and not a specialist in the other room, Mr. Rammell could not have felt more apprehensive.

Or more in need of him. As he settled himself in the period-reproduction chair—walnut, this time—he could hear his own heart beating. Right up somewhere behind his ears. And his breathing was in bad shape. From the way his chest was rising and falling he might have been running right up to the top of the house instead of simply coming in quietly from the next room.

“Well. And how are we feeling to-day?”

The same idiotic question that Mr. Rammell had heard a score of times before. It maddened him anew every time he heard it. As though any man in his senses would be there if he were feeling well. And the same infuriating plural. Not royal. Not editorial. Simply the old witch-doctor convention that they were both in it together, holding hands in a jinn-infested world, hoping that their squibs and rattles would keep the worst of the evil spirits from settling.

Not that anyone need have worried about Mr. Huntley Cary. He carried his own offensive aura of good health about with him. A large man, he had played rugger as a medical student. And he looked as though, between operations, he had somehow secretly contrived to keep it up. If not rugger, at least golf. Even squash, possibly. As soon as Mr. Huntley Cary came into the room there was a strong suggestion of cold showers and rough Turkish towelling. Mr. Rammell could hardly bring himself to look at him. Not that he was really any worse than the other sort. The thin, pale ones. Like gentlemen undertakers. With cold, spatulate hands. And gold-rimmed spectacles. And a tendency to grow roses. Or the mad land. Shaggy and intense, who didn't care so much for symptoms but wanted to know all about Mr. Rammell's secret fears, his night thoughts, his love-life. Or the Continental-émigré variety. Smooth-looking. Soft-fingered. Smilingly confident. Serene. With memories, cherished ones, of cases so much worse back in old Vienna. Mr. Rammell had tried them all. And he had come gradually to understand why his own G.P. in Belgravia, quite undistinguished looking and abysmally normal, had never been able to make the specialist grade.

Mr. Rammell was undressed by now, and Mr. Huntley Cary's strong, almost nailless fingers were prodding into him, pressing, squeezing, probing. Considering his size, he was astonishingly gentle. Mr. Rammell had to concede him that much. But it was only assumed, Mr. Rammell knew. Deep in that healthy, athletic, schoolboy soul of his, Mr. Huntley Cary was aching to get the wrappings off. See the wheels go round. Dismantle him.

“Nothing there,” he said at last, only partially managing to conceal the natural disappointment in his voice. “Not a sign.”

He stood over Mr. Rammell, wiping his hands on a small towel while he was speaking.

“Why don't you take things a bit easier?” he asked. “What about a sea voyage? Try a banana boat. West Indies. Go somewhere hot. So you won't want to work. Just sit around and relax. Teach yourself to be lazy.”

Mr. Rammell smiled grimly. He had heard it all before.

“Can't,” he said. “Not just at present. Too much on hand.”

“Well, that's all it is,” Mr. Huntley Cary assured him. “Nothing there that six weeks at sea wouldn't put right. Think it over. See if you can get away. And, in the meantime, leave it to other people. Sit back a bit. Above all, stop worrying.”

Stop worrying! Mr. Rammell was dumbfounded, absolutely dumbfounded, by the sheer imbecility of the remark. Because it wasn't as if he were the worrying sort at all. Never had been. It was simply that he was concerned about his health. Not for any foolish reason. Just because he wanted to be able to get on properly with his job. And how could he if he didn't know whether it was anything serious? For that matter, didn't even know how long he had to live. Wouldn't Mr. Huntley Cary do a bit of worrying himself if he felt a pain like a harpoon shoot through him every time he tried to eat a square meal?