Death of a Beauty Queen (17 page)

‘She was a good actress, then?' Ferris asked.

‘She didn't even know what acting was,' Miss Perry retorted. ‘She thought it was wearing a smart frock and turning up her nose at the audience. But she might have done well – she couldn't act, but so few actresses can. She had looks, but she thought a winner in Brush Hill must still be a winner in Hollywood, where they tell me even the kitchen-maids in cheap restaurants have all been beauty queens at home. What would have counted, perhaps, is that she knew what she wanted and could keep her head – and that's as rare as genius. None of the boys here ever got a thing from her – not so much as a kiss – nor would have till they had paid for it, cash down. And then as likely as not she would have bilked them – and never thought twice about it, either, for all she ever thought of was herself.'

In answer to further questions Ferris put, she agreed that Leslie had called for Carrie, in a taxi, on the night of the Beauty Contest.

‘Must have cost the boy a pretty penny,' she wheezed. ‘I don't know how he got enough to pay for it the time she kept him waiting. And then, when she was ready, she came back for her crocodile bag, because she thought it would hold her things better than the little bead one. That took her another ten minutes.'

Ferris made a careful note of this detail, and Miss Perry went on:

‘I always thought Leslie was the one that cared the most. But he hadn't a chance with her. He doesn't come into his money till he is twenty-five, and Carrie wasn't going to wait that long. When you are young, three years seem like three centuries, but when you're old they pass like three weeks or less.'

‘Then you don't think Mr Maddox really cared much about her?' Ferris asked, sharpening his pencil to make another note.

‘Yes, he did, but not like Leslie – not the same way. And it was Claude who was in the biggest hurry'. Leslie loved her the best, but Claude desired her the most. Only, once Claude had got her, he would have tired of her and gone off, while Leslie meant it for life.' She was musing again now, talking more to herself than to them. ‘Leslie was slow combustion,' she said, ‘burning slow but burning steady, and Claude was a fire in dry grass, blazing sky high while the fuel lasted – the fuel being always a failure to get just what he wanted just when he wanted it.' She took up her knitting again. ‘A spoilt boy,' she said. ‘Never denied anything either by himself or by anyone else, wanting what he wanted just when he wanted it, and for just as he long as he wanted it. A spoilt boy, that's Claude Maddox, but he wouldn't get what he wanted from Carrie, not till he had paid for it – and perhaps not then, unless he watched out very careful.'

‘There is Mr Beattie, too,' Bobby observed.

‘A nice boy,' she said. ‘I liked him best of all the three of them. He's the artist type, like the men I used to know in father's company – sudden and temperamental and generous, nothing mean or calculating about them. Do it first and think afterwards. But he was running after Miss Ellis. Carrie didn't like that. Not that she cared two pins for Roy Beattie, but she hated to lose him or any boy. Insulted she felt when a boy looked at any other girl, because that meant she wasn't quite all she thought.'

‘There's not much against him,' reflected Ferris, ‘except that he was on the spot – and someone had to be. Mr Sargent seems to have been a bit smitten, too. You knew Mr Sargent?'

‘A nasty little man,' Miss Perry said. ‘The real stage-manager type. But he didn't know Carrie. He was working up for a surprise. She was beginning to suspect he was just fooling her, and you weren't safe with Carrie if she thought that. Play her a dirty trick and she would play you a dirtier. Spirit all right, she had – lots of spirit. Never cared what she did to get even.'

Ferris thought that by now it was getting time to make his examination of Carrie's room and papers. So he disappeared on that task, and soon, for it did not take him long, came back with some letters in his hand.

‘She was busy booking her passage to Hollywood all right,' he said. ‘I found these put away in a drawer she had locked. One letter from one of the travelling agencies says they can complete all arrangements if she will call with remittance as arranged, when a berth will be reserved on the next steamer. All cut and dried, apparently, and there's a rough note of her reply saying she would bring the money next day – that's next day after she was murdered. So she evidently had the cash.'

‘But she hadn't,' protested Miss Perry. ‘I'm sure she hadn't. How could she? She had it all worked out – two hundred pounds was what she needed, and where was she to get it from? She said as much to me herself only a week ago.'

‘Two hundred pounds?' Ferris repeated, glancing at another paper he held. ‘Yes, that's the figure jotted down here – at the bottom of the copy of the note to the agency, saying she was going to call with the money.'

‘But she hadn't got it,' Miss Perry persisted. ‘She can't really have sent a letter to say she had. Why should she, when she knew she hadn't?'

‘If she was really engaged to Mr Maddox, couldn't he have promised it, or given her the money?' Ferris suggested.

Miss Perry began a scornful laugh that ended in a bad bout of coughing.

‘Not likely,' she said, when she had recovered. ‘Give her two hundred pounds for her to go off to the other end of the world with? Not him – not Claude Maddox. Leslie Irwin might, but never Claude. Besides, he hasn't got two hundred pence, let alone two hundred pounds, to bless himself with.'

‘I understood he came in for some money when he came of age?' Bobby said. ‘And then he seems to have a good position in his firm.'

‘Yes, and a good salary,' agreed Miss Perry, ‘but he's in debt all round. The money he got when he came of age he spent long ago, making a splash,' and Bobby remembered that was the third time he had heard this expression ‘making a splash' used with reference to Claude Maddox. ‘Anything he has left is locked up in shares he couldn't sell now except at a dead loss – he has the real gambler's instinct, and he'll never admit a loss because he is always so sure the luck will turn. So he always hangs on right to the end. No, he would never have given Carrie money to go and leave him, and, if he would, he couldn't, for he hasn't got it. Though he might have raised it by hook or crook to stop her going. It would have driven him half mad to think of her there, doing just what she liked, and him obliged to stop here. But not a penny would she have had to help her go.'

‘This young Leslie Irwin, could he have raised the money?' Ferris asked.

‘Why, he hasn't a penny,' Miss Perry answered, quite amused. ‘As articled pupil, he gets no salary. He's to follow his father as manager and secretary of the Building Society, but he isn't even one of the staff yet. People think he is, because he is there so much and sits in his father's office. But that's only so he can get to know all the ins and outs of the business. The idea is if he was given a regular post, then it would have to be a junior appointment, and when Paul retires there would be others on the staff senior to Leslie who might try for the managership. But if Leslie's brought in quite fresh, then it's an outside appointment and not a promotion in the staff over seniors. And, to make sure, Paul sees to it Leslie has all the confidential books in his charge, and all the threads of the concern in his hands, so if they try to appoint anyone else, they'll never get straight.'

‘Or Mr Beattie – could he have provided this money Miss Mears must have had from somewhere?'

‘He might,' agreed Miss Perry doubtfully. ‘I don't know, but it's hardly likely, is it? – now he's taken up with Lily Ellis?'

‘Or, Mr Sargent?' Ferris asked.

‘Sargent?' Miss Perry repeated. ‘Well, now you mention him, I expect he might have been willing to pay that much or more to get rid of Carrie. Carrie could be nasty when she wanted, and I know she was ready to let fly at him as soon as she was sure he had only been fooling her when he promised to get her an engagement. Yes, he might have raised the money – or promised it; he's better at promising than doing.'

‘That might be a good line to follow,' Ferris remarked thoughtfully. ‘It might be this way: Sargent promised her the money to keep her quiet. But he hadn't got it. So he knew there was bound to be a row, and that's why he arranged for her to have a room by herself, he could have a chance to quiet her down, or anyhow they could have it out by themselves. But, when the money wasn't there, she rounded on him worse than he looked for, told him straight out she would give him away to his wife, and perhaps other threats as well – when a woman goes it,' said Ferris profoundly, ‘she goes it. And he got mad, and the knife was lying there on the table same as that Ellis girl said, so he up and slung it at her, just to scare her, most like, and the point took her in the throat, and that was that, and murder done before you knew it. Take it from me, that's how the whole thing happened.'

‘I don't quite see why, if it was like that, her handbag should be missing,' Bobby objected.

‘He thought there might be something in it compromising, so he grabbed it before he ran.'

Bobby looked unconvinced. It was possible, of course. Even if there were no letters, Carrie herself might have written out a statement of their connection Sargent might not have wanted anyone to see. Yes, that was possible. He said:

‘What about the knife? Why should a knife like that be lying there? The staff have been questioned, and no one has ever seen any sort of knife in Sargent's office or in his possession.'

‘No, we've got to trace the knife,' Ferris admitted. ‘If we can, and if it's Sargent it's traced to, then, take it from me, it's a case.'

Miss Perry was a good deal impressed by this declaration. She evidently disliked Mr Sargent, and was quite ready to believe ill of him.

‘Nothing of the artist in him,' she said. ‘The pure manager type.'

Then, too, the personality of Inspector Ferris had its effect – his brisk and confident manner, indeed, persuading her to that offer of some tea before they went which Bobby's youth and supposed good looks had, contrary to Mitchell's expectations, not succeeded in obtaining.

Neither Bobby nor the inspector himself had had much time for rest or refreshment that day, nor any sleep the night before, but there was so much to do that Ferris was already phrasing a refusal when Bobby managed to whisper a reminder that Mitchell had said they were to try to get the old lady into as talkative a mood as possible. So Ferris turned his refusal into an acceptance, and Miss Perry, lifting herself with some difficulty from her chair, pottered about making the necessary preparations. While she was out of the room in the little kitchen across the landing that once had been a dressing-room when the house in more prosperous days had been occupied by a single family, Bobby repeated to Ferris the gist of the long story Miss Perry had told him. But Ferris was not much impressed.

‘Wasting our time listening to her, if all she can tell us is things that happened thirty years ago,' he grumbled. ‘If I had known that was all, we wouldn't have stayed. What we're up against is what happened at the Brush Hill Central Cinema. You keep that in mind, my lad, and don't go off on side-tracks about things that's been stale thirty years. Stale and dead – dead,' repeated Ferris, with a comprehensive wave of the arm.

There is a phrase ‘Being dead, yet liveth,' that at this flashed into Bobby's mind. But prudently he did not utter it. Instead he went on to tell of his interview with Maddox, of the curious incident of the engagement-ring found in the street by someone giving that name of ‘Quin' which had already appeared once before on the outskirts of events, and of the equally curious, but apparently unrelated, incident of the evident agitation Maddox had shown over Bobby's interest in his display of challenge cups.

That this was curious, Ferris admitted; but no more than Bobby could he see any possible connection between that agitation and the subject of their investigation.

‘Unless, of course,' he suggested, ‘there was something Maddox kept inside one of the cups he didn't want you to see. And that don't seem likely. But it isn't hardly possible for a sports cup won in South America some years ago to have anything to do with Carrie Mears's murder. I think we can wash that out – got to keep inside sense and reason. But this Quin business is a bit more than funny. It may mean something, though I don't see where it fits in. Nothing even to show Quin was the name of the party who was asking for Miss Quin before the murder happened. Lots of loose strings in this case that don't none of them connect,' he said, shaking his head gravely.

Miss Perry returned, a little exhausted, wheezing more badly than ever, but triumphant with the tea. In honour of the occasion she had produced her best china and her solid silver spoons, as well as some seed cake, preserved in careful wrappings for visitors, but that had, nevertheless, not entirely escaped the effect of the slow passing of the days. However, Ferris did not seem to mind; and, if Bobby practised a sleight of hand that transferred most of his share of the cake to his pocket instead of to his mouth, no one noticed. Once, it is true, he was nearly caught when Miss Perry, recovering with unexpected rapidity from a fit of coughing, turned round to offer him some more milk. He was only just able to avoid detection by displaying a sudden interest in the tea-spoons.

‘Fine old silver,' he pronounced, the first adjective being quite conventional, for there was nothing specially fine about their very ordinary make and workmanship, and the second being fairly obvious for long usage had worn them nearly smooth. He looked more closely at the one in his hand, trying to make out the hallmark and failing, so nearly erased was it by constant polishing. All at once he stiffened with sudden attention. ‘The initial,' he said, ‘is it a “Q”? It looks like a “Q”.'