Dictator's Way (10 page)

“But all that, very interesting of course,” Bobby said, “doesn't explain how it was some unknown person rang you up to tell you a murder had taken place.”

“Persistent, aren't you?” sighed Peter Albert. “Well, it's this way. Miss Farrar has been once or twice to Mr. Judson's parties at that Manor place of his. Olive and I are old pals – Dad did a portrait of her when she was two, sucking her thumb.”

“I wasn't,” said Olive dispassionately.

“It's in the Tate now,” Peter Albert explained, “but they don't show it. Because you can tell first guess what it is. Kid in blue with doll, sucking –”

“No,” said Olive.

“Not sucking her thumb,” agreed Peter Albert amiably. “Old fashioned, Dad was, and when he painted a frying-pan, it was a frying-pan he painted, not a symbolical pattern in green and gamboge of the frying-pan's ultimate reality. Good idea, though, because when it's a frying-pan, well, anyone can check up on a frying-pan, but when it's the frying-pan's ultimate reality, you have to open your mouth and shut your eyes and take what's given you. I daresay you know Judson's shows at the Manor have the name of being a bit hot? No business of mine –”

“None,” interposed Olive, though without resentment. “– but all the same I made a few inquiries on my own, meaning to head old Olive off if the shows were really what I heard. I asked quite a lot of blokes off and on, newspaper johnnies because they generally know all the worst, and at the club, and so on, and it must have been some bird like that who rang me this morning because he said: ‘That you, Albert?' – sounds like a waiter, doesn't it? Some day I shall put a ‘d' and an apostrophe before it and make the ‘t' mute – D'Al-berrr – sounds a lot better that way. ‘That you, Albert?' the bloke said. ‘You were wanting to know about Judson's shows? Well, last night he was done in there – at his place near Epping Forest. Found murdered.' Well, I was a bit bowled over. When I started to speak again, the line had gone dead. The other fellow had rung off. And that was that.”

“You have no idea who was speaking?”

“No, but I'll try to find out.”

“I hope you will succeed,” Bobby said, not without irony.

He had little faith in Peter Albert's story and he suspected the error in the identity of the victim had been made on purpose so as to avoid showing too much knowledge. He added slowly: “Any confirmation of what you have just told me, Mr. Albert, would be exceedingly welcome.”

“Do what I can,” Peter Albert declared. “Can't make any promises, but you may be sure I'll do my best.” Bobby nearly said: ‘Yes, but best which way?' Instead he asked abruptly:

“Do you know Mr. Macklin?”

Peter Albert shook his head.

“Never heard of him,” he said.

“Yes, you have,” Olive interposed. “I told you. I met him at Mr. Judson's – at least, if it's the same man. He's a partner or manager or something in Mr. Judson's business.”

“Oh, him,” said Peter Albert.

A waiter came up to their table. He had a photographic frame holding three cabinet photographs. Frail looking old people, man and woman, at the right and left, and in the centre a fat little man, though broad-shouldered, who was smirking into the camera, exactly as if he were asking it for its order.

“Mr. Troya's photograph, sir, you asked for,” the waiter said.

“The one in the middle, I suppose?” Bobby said. “Who are the old people?”

“Mr. Troya's father and mother, sir,” the man answered with a faint snigger as if all the staff found something amusing in their employer's devotion to his parents.

In fact, as Bobby knew, there is an exceedingly strong family sense among the Etrurians, stronger as it often is among the Latin races than in the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

Bobby showed the centre photograph to Olive.

“Is it anyone you know?” he asked, “anyone you have ever seen?”

Olive gave the photographs only one glance and then looked away, her gaze travelling down the long, crowded London street as though an urge were on her to take that way of escape. She drew a deep breath, but still did not speak, and Bobby gave the photographs back to the waiter.

“Thank you,” he said, and then asked if they had in stock any of those inexpensive Swiss cigars he had learnt were often smoked by hotel and restaurant workers of foreign nationality.

“I don't think so, sir,” the waiter answered, evidently again surprised by the question, “we aren't often asked for them. I could inquire.”

“Mr. Troya smokes them himself, doesn't he?” Bobby persisted.

“I believe he does sometimes,” the waiter agreed. “I could ask if there are any in the office,” he offered.

“Never mind,” Bobby said. “It's all right. Don't bother. You can take away the photo., too.”

The waiter retired, bewildered and uneasy. He did not know what all this meant, but he wondered whether it would not be better to look out for another place. With the police, one never knew. Both Olive and Peter Albert were looking surprised, too. Olive had even withdrawn her abstracted gaze from the street to bestow it upon Bobby, and Peter Albert was smiling more broadly than ever, though still there was no mirth in those watchful eyes of his.

“Quite in the best tradition of Hawkseye the detective,” he said chaffingly, “but I do wonder what Troya's cigars have to do with it, and why you lost interest in them all at once?”

“Hawkseye never explains,” retorted Bobby and turned to Olive: “I think,” he said, “Mr. Albert brought you here to-day to see if you could identify Mr. Troya as the man who annoyed you yesterday?”

“You seem to know it all,” Peter Albert grumbled.

Bobby continued:

“You recognized the photograph?” Olive agreed with a slight affirmative gesture of the head. Bobby went on: “Would you like to say how it is you happened to be there?”

“It was quite by chance,” she answered. “I like to get away for a drive sometimes – I don't often get a chance, there's the shop and there's going out, cocktail parties and all that. I have to go to them whenever I can. Advertisement. If there's a smart, new model I can wear, people may notice it, and if they do, it may mean sales.”

“I see,” said Bobby, and yet was not quite satisfied, for this aloof, silent girl with the pale face and the burning eyes did not seem to him exactly the born saleswoman type.

Indeed he found the idea of her frequenting cocktail parties in order to sell hats somehow vaguely displeasing. Wrong somehow, he felt. Nor could he rid himself of the impression that her mind was occupied with quite other things than the selling of hats, that into the framework of modern commercial publicity her eager and passionate personality seemed to fit but badly.

“Sometimes I feel I must get away from it all,” she continued, “and then I get out the car and drive fast – fast,” she repeated with a little catch in her breath, the first sign of any yielding to emotion he had seen in her. “One gets – away,” she said. “It was like that yesterday and then I remembered I had never been to Mr. Judson's place except at night and I thought I would like to see what it looked like in the daytime. That's all.”

“Ah, yes,” Bobby said and looked at her moodily. “I thought perhaps,” he said, “you knew the place pretty well as you seemed to spot that stand-pipe and the hose at once.”

“Oh, I just noticed them,” she mumbled. “That's all.”

It was possible, Bobby supposed. Possible, too, that her visit to The Manor had resulted merely from a sudden impulse of curiosity, but an odd coincidence that that impulse of curiosity should have occurred on the day and about the hour of a murder. And Bobby had a great dislike for coincidences. If they really happened, it was confusion. If they hadn't happened, then that was worse still.

“Bit of a novel idea,” Peter Albert interposed, “those parties in an empty house. Makes people talk no end. I've been asked myself what sort of a place The Manor is and so I asked Miss Farrar. I expect that's what made her think of having a squint at it in daylight.”

“Ah, yes,” said Bobby, thinking that once again Peter Albert had come to the girl's assistance.

He found himself wondering what connection there was between them. They were not married apparently, nor close relatives, and yet there was an air of intimacy between them as if they were very close to each other. Yet they exchanged no lover-like glances. Perhaps, however, that phase was over. Peter was talking again, a little as if he did not wish Bobby to spend too much time in thought.

“Any bit of novelty,” he was saying, “sets people talking like one o'clock nowadays when everything is exactly like everything else. I'm told the main street in Kamchatka is entirely occupied by Boot's, Woolworth's, and picture theatres showing Mr. Robert Taylor's last film.”

Bobby ignored this and said to Olive:

“Did you mention to anyone before you started where you were going?”

“I only thought of it afterwards,” she said.

Bobby got to his feet.

“You won't be leaving just yet, will you?” he asked. “I'll ring up, if you don't mind, and ask if they would like you to call at the Yard, if you can spare the time.”

He asked the waiter for the 'phone and was shown an extension in a small room on the same floor. There was no telephone directory visible so he asked for one, and Peter Albert, watching, saw it being taken to him.

“If he's ringing the Yard,” Peter Albert said slowly, “doesn't he know the number?”

Olive did not answer but after a time she said:

“He seems so ordinary and then he asks just the very questions you don't want him to.”

As a matter of fact Bobby had inquired for the directory in order to ascertain from it the private address of Mr. Troya. It was not far from the restaurant and Bobby, having made a note of it, rang up Headquarters, reported, and asked for instructions. They were given him to the effect that Mr. Albert and Miss Farrar were to be asked to come on to the Yard at once. His own proposal that he should proceed immediately to interview Mr. Troya was approved.

Accordingly Bobby went back, paid for his sherry, explained that he wouldn't have time to stop for his lunch, fortunately not yet ordered, and informed Mr. Albert and Miss Farrar of the official desire to interview them as soon as possible, if they would be so kind.

“Suppose we prefer to be unkind?” asked Peter Albert.

“We are hoping you won't,” Bobby answered blandly. “Any time round about three would suit. A little later if you like. Ask for Superintendent Ulyett and explain you are expected. Then you won't be kept waiting.”

“Aren't you coming, too?” Peter Albert asked. “Gyves upon our wrists, and all that?”

“We've hardly got that far yet, have we?” Bobby retorted.

“I suppose,” Peter Albert mused, “the idea is, you make your report afterwards, and then you check up and see if we've told the same story and if we haven't, then you've got us by the short hairs. Deep, eh?”

“But easily countered by the simple method of keeping to the same story,” Bobby pointed out. “If you do want to change it, please say so at once. And I would very strongly ask you both to be entirely frank and open. Oh, and we do like things confirmed. Red tape, I suppose. I expect if you told us two and two made four, we should send round to the appropriate expert to get it confirmed before we accepted it.”

“You don't think of getting signed and sealed certificates for everything you do,” Peter Albert grumbled. “I was busy all yesterday afternoon working out a cruise I have in mind, totting up the supplies I shall want, and so on. But I never thought of calling in a porter every half hour or so to testify that I was really there. Why on earth should I?”

“I know, it's often like that,” Bobby agreed.

“Look here, about this murder,” Peter Albert went on, “of course, Miss Farrar happened to be there and frightful bad luck, too, but you can't seriously think she did it – or Troya either. Hang it, why on earth should either of them want to do in poor old Judson?”

“I haven't the least idea,” said Bobby, and took his departure, more than a little troubled in his mind.

Miss Farrar could hardly be the actual murderer, he supposed, and yet there was that identity of time and place it is always so important to establish. The method, the blow on the head, suggested a man, certainly, but a woman can hit out, too, on occasion, and this girl gave an odd impression of the strongest passions in reserve. As for her own statement that she had only arrived a minute or two before Bobby got there and so had not had time even to enter the house – well, it does not take long to commit a murder. A margin of ten minutes would be enough; less, for that matter. It would be odd if times could be established with sufficient accuracy to prove an alibi for her, seeing she was admittedly so near when the crime was committed.

Bobby had the impression, too, that Peter Albert had been exceedingly nervous – more than nervous, afraid. That ready flow of talk of his, chatter almost, it had been, Bobby put down confidently as not natural to his character but a cloak assumed for the occasion. But then had that been for his own protection, or for Olive's, or perhaps for that of some third person unknown? A question with no answer as yet. Bobby frowned reflectively as he remembered that Peter Albert had claimed to have been at home all that afternoon, busy with his affairs, and yet emphasized that he had no witnesses to the fact.

Arrived at his destination, Bobby found Mr. Troya's residence to be situated in a quiet, old-fashioned street, once occupied by the prosperous business-man class but now showing signs of decadence as its former inhabitants died off and their successors preferred the modern flat or the country – with garage. There was already one ‘Private Hotel' in the street, and several of the houses showed by a diversity of window curtains that they were in the occupation of different families. Mr. Troya's was one of the more prosperous-looking establishments, and the maid who answered Bobby's knock explained that Mr. Troya was not well enough to see anyone, and that Madame had gone to town on business, and would not be home till late, but might possibly be found earlier at the restaurant.