Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal Read online

  Peter looked down again at the thin body in the garish, poppy-splodged housecoat on the tangled lilac sheets of the divan.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that should be easy. Have you got anything on her? Were those smart operators of the C.I.D. about to move in?’

  ‘No,’ Jack said. ‘Looked it up before I came away, me old beaut. Jack’s the boy for efficiency.’

  ‘And there was nothing?’

  ‘Not really. Some of the boys thought she was up to something, spot of the old procuring maybe. But there wasn’t a thing to go on.’

  ‘So your theory doesn’t look too bright, lad.’

  Jack shrugged cheerfully.

  ‘Dunno,’ he answered. ‘It still could be. Takes time for some of these rackets to show their lovely little heads. So she may have been busy at something for all we know. Someone may have been putting the black on the old trout. Anything.’

  ‘Seen the maid?’ Peter asked. ‘Funny, I know her quite well in a way, but I’m damned if I know what she’s called.’

  ‘Yep. She’s in the little bit of kitchen out there. Brewing up, I dare say. Couldn’t get much out of her. Just that she came in this morning and found old henna hair the way she is now.’

  ‘Really? The old duck always seemed chatty enough to me.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Chatty as all get out. But when you come to look at it: damn’ all.’

  ‘S’pose you’re right really. Great one for her aches and pains. Very smart on the weather. But not much else.’

  ‘Did you say she rang you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Peter suddenly smiled.

  ‘Dare say she didn’t much like the look of what the station sent round,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right by me, boy. They don’t have to like the look of it, not when they get to her age.’

  The door of the scruffy little room opened slowly. Outside in the corridor stood the subject of their conversation. If she had overheard their not precisely warm-hearted comments, she appeared to bear no ill will.

  Her immense body blocked the whole doorway. Indeed, it was a matter for speculation how she ever succeeded in getting the vast width of her hips in through the narrow gap to offer her mistress whatever ministrations she was accustomed to perform.

  ‘I made a drop of tea,’ she said. ‘It’s what you want at a time like this, that’s what I say. Nothing like a good cup of tea when there’s trouble. Sort of warms you.’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ said Jack.

  As there was no sign of the tea itself he moved forward to go to the kitchenette somewhere in the background. The enormous bulk of the maid wobbled round in front of him and set off along the narrow corridor, brushing the ill-painted pink walls on both sides with the vast delicately-flowered apron that covered her middle area. Peter followed.

  At the door of the kitchenette the old duck turned and contrived to pass two big cups of milky tea out through the gap where her pyramidal figure left a space. Jack handed the first cup to Peter and took the second himself. They drank.

  ‘Yes,’ said their huge companion, ‘I thought I might as well phone through to you, too, Mr Lassington. What I say is, when you’re dead you might as well be looked after by someone you know. It’d be more of a comfort like.’

  ‘Expect you’re right,’ said Peter.

  In the circumstances it was a judicious comment.

  ‘Yes. Well, I know what I should feel if I’d done it. And mind you, there’s many a time I’ve thought of it. I won’t hide that from you. Many a time.’

  ‘Have you now?’ Jack said.

  He grinned in unalloyed friendliness.

  ‘’Course I have. You don’t think my life’s been all roses and butter, do you? The trouble I’ve had in my time. First it was my figure was too good. Then it kept somehow going to pieces.’

  She took a swig of the milky tea with a gratifying slurp and contemplated those parts she could see of the figure that had so spectacularly gone to pieces.

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I dunno what made her do it in the end. ‘Course, she didn’t tell me everything. I knew that. Sort of close, she was. Always the same, even in the old days when we was girls together. Never told you everything she was thinking, she didn’t.’

  The milky tea was drained to the last milky dreg.

  ‘No,’ she went on, ‘now I’m different.’

  It took her some time to explain to her own satisfaction the whole extent of her differences from her late employer. When she had finished Jack cheerfully thanked her for the tea, made no comment on her psychological exposé, and announced that he might as well be pushing off.

  ‘I’ll come too,’ Peter said.

  ‘Ta ta, then, dear,’ said Fay Curtis’s ex-maid. ‘Be seeing you, I dare say.’

  She began manoeuvring her quivering bulk round to face into the little kitchenette. Peter and Jack walked back through the conscientiously sexy clubroom and past the flimsy door which divided its gaieties from the drab world outside.

  Peter puffed out a sigh.

  ‘How’s Sheila?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, she’s all right, boy. Mary okay?’

  ‘Yes. Much as usual. Kids all right?’

  ‘Kids. Don’t give me kids. I don’t know why we ever have them.’

  Peter laughed.

  ‘You ask Mary,’ he said. ‘You hear the way she goes on, you’d think there was nothing else in the world but having a family.’

  ‘Then you take my advice, me old darling. You stick to your guns. Keep off ’em. Once you start ’em, you might as well give up being married for all the joy you get out of it.’

  ‘You try and convince Mary of that, that’s all. Hey, you know old Fay had a daughter, don’t you?’

  Jack laughed.

  ‘It’s June,’ he said. ‘Her name’s June Curtis.’

  Peter looked surprised.

  ‘You mean the June I’ve heard you on about?’

  Jack linked his two forefingers tightly together and twirled them expressively.

  ‘That’s the one,’ he said.

  ‘And did you know who her Mum was?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Didn’t have a clue. Listen, lad, when I get stashed up with a female like June, you don’t think we discuss family trees, do you?’

  ‘No, s’pose not. And I expect she wasn’t too proud of her old Mum anyway. Might look a bit dicey for a future Miss Globe to have an old lady keeping a joint like Fay’s Place.’

  ‘You could be right. June’s certainly a good bet for Miss Globe, anyhow.’

  They reached the creaky old door to the street. Jack laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

  ‘Listen, mate,’ he said. ‘You know what she’s doing today?’

  ‘June? No.’

  ‘Miss Valentine contest.’

  ‘But that’s just round the corner. At the Whatsit Ballroom. The Star Bowl.’

  ‘Yes. That’s it. Look, there isn’t really any need for June to know about this straight away. I’ll be seeing her tonight after it’s all over. I’ll tell her then. But we don’t want her getting depressed. When she gives those judges the works, they want to be good and cheerful works. Means a lot, winning tonight.’

  ‘Yes, I know. The Star Bowl’s on my beat. Often stop outside and have a quiet read of all the posters. It’s a big step on the way to the Miss Globe show.’

  ‘You bet it is. And you know what that’s worth to the winner?’

  Jack winked.

  ‘All of twenty-five thousand nicker by the time she’s finished, my old beaut. So just get out of that girl’s way. She’s rarin’ to go.’

  ‘I’ll bet she is.’

  Peter looked out at the street. The rain knew its duty. England expects. It had not let up an inch.

  Peter turned up his collar.

  ‘Well, you going back to that cosy little C.I.D. office?’ he said.

  ‘Got to hammer out a report, boy. But, cheer up, you’ll make it there one day. Just when you’re going to retir
e.’

  Jack grinned like a savage and Peter dug him hard in the ribs. He stood on the rain-edged worn step as Jack, still smiling all over his face, plunged off in the direction of the station.

  He gave him a full minute to get clear and then turned and pushed the old purplish door open once more. With lips pursed as if to whistle he set off along the narrow grimy little corridor.

  2

  Police Constable Peter Lassington went quickly down the stairs of Fay’s Place – soon to be named something else in the unavoidable absence of the presiding nymph – through the clubroom with its patiently waiting glass-topped tables, past the once inviolable black and gold curtain and into the little, slatternly private world of the late Fay.

  ‘Hey,’ he called out. ‘It’s me. Me. Peter Lassington. There’s something I want to ask you. Just thought.’

  He advanced along the short corridor towards the kitchenette. The huge bulk of Fay’s maid emerged.

  Somehow she found room to get her great, fat-encased arms akimbo on her rolling hips.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  The consumption of another two or three cups of over-milky tea had not noticeably sweetened her views on life. Rather the opposite. There was a new aggressive note in her wheezy voice.

  Peter Lassington looked at her sharply.

  ‘Little thing I wanted to ask you,’ he said.

  ‘I thought there might be.’

  The coarse eyebrows in her narrowing forehead descended with dark meaning.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s no use you smiling like a bleeding crocodile. You can’t put nothing past me.’

  ‘But what do you think I want to put past you?’ Peter said. ‘I only came back just to ask something.’

  Her two bleary eyes looked from side to side.

  ‘What you might be wanting to put past me I wouldn’t rightly know,’ she answered. ‘But I warn you: I won’t stand for it.’

  ‘But listen,’ said Peter. ‘There’s only one simple question I’d like to ask you. It’s just that I didn’t want the other chap, Jack, to hear.’

  ‘I dare say you didn’t. There’s questions and questions.’

  There could be no doubt of the effect of milky tea in intensifying the elements of the suspicions in the old duck’s mind.

  Peter made an effort to keep calm.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to ask whether you knew anything about a note. A note she – A note Fay might have left.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Suspicions apparently confirmed.

  ‘Ah,’ she repeated. ‘He asked me that.’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘How should I know his name?’

  ‘The chap, the detective, who was here with me.’

  ‘Who else?’

  Peter looked disappointed.

  ‘And you told him you hadn’t seen a note?’ he asked.

  ‘’Course I did.’

  ‘Oh, well, thank you. Thought I’d just ask. There’s no need for the C.I.D. blokes to be first with everything.’

  He turned away.

  ‘You don’t think I didn’t know he was C.I.D., do you?’ the wheezy voice came from behind him.

  He looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘No, of course you knew he was C.I.D.’

  As he reached the end of the little, shabby, pink-painted corridor the sound of her heavy breathing was still audible.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t tell him any more than I had to,’ she said.

  Peter swung round.

  ‘You didn’t tell him any more than you had to?’

  ‘’Course not. C.I.D., see. You don’t think I’d go out of my way to help that lot? Not after all these years.’

  ‘No,’ Peter said.

  He checked a rising excitement.

  ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t.’

  ‘That’s why I rung you, see.’

  ‘Yes; I wondered about that.’

  ‘I knew you was a friend of Fay’s like. I knew that much.’

  ‘Yes. I was a friend of Fay’s.’

  ‘That’s why I rung you.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  For three or four long wheezing breaths she contemplated her own wisdom in making that telephone call.

  Peter kept looking at her.

  ‘And there was something you might have told Jack, if he hadn’t been C.I.D.?’ he asked.

  ‘Those bleeders,’ Fay’s ex-maid said.

  Peter waited.

  ‘Those bleeders. Nothing but chase, nothing but ask.’

  ‘Made your life pretty miserable at times I dare say,’ Peter put in.

  The bleary eyes darkened once more.

  ‘And so did you lot. In uniform or out, you’re all the same. Won’t let a poor girl get on with her job, always moving on, always ready to tally up another arrest at a poor girl’s expense. Never thinking what it meant in fines. Fines, fines all the time.’

  ‘Well,’ Peter smiled, ‘we have to do it, you know.’

  It worked.

  The eyes under the narrowing forehead lost their dark smoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you have to do it just the same as us, I suppose. We’re all the same under the skin. That’s what it comes down to. Under the skin.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell old Jack too much?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him about the letter Fay wrote, that’s what.’

  ‘Letter? What letter?’

  She shook her droopy bloodhound cheeks.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I knew something was wrong when old Fay took to writing a letter. She didn’t do that, not once in five years she didn’t.’

  ‘No, I suppose she wouldn’t.’

  But the reflective note was a mistake. It had the undesirable effect of setting the huge bulk of humanity off on a private reminiscent jag all of her own. A long, slow, silent reminiscent jag.

  After a clear two minutes Peter could stand it no longer.

  ‘This letter,’ he said, ‘what happened to it?’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  The dulled eyes lit up.

  Peter held his breath. But more prompting was evidently required.

  ‘It went in the post?’ he asked.

  A fit of puffy giggles emanated.

  Peter waited again.

  ‘In the post,’ he said at last. ‘She put it in the post?’

  ‘No.’

  A note of contempt.

  ‘You know old Fay. Wouldn’t stir out if she didn’t have to.’

  Just in time Peter checked himself from making a general observation about the late Fay’s dislike of leaving the close world of her own ‘Place’. Another period of reflection on general matters would be altogether too much for his patience.

  ‘You took it for her,’ he said. ‘You didn’t happen to notice who it was to, did you?’

  ‘I know who it was to all right.’

  Peter smiled.

  ‘Very natural to look,’ he said. ‘And who was it to, then?’

  ‘It wasn’t natural to look.’

  Peter held his face blank.

  The huge mass of human flesh in front of him plainly saw that she had achieved a degree of power. She savoured it.

  ‘You’d like to know all about it, wouldn’t you, Mr Nosey Parker?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing you’d like better, is there? Nothing you’d like better than to know just what name there was on that there envelope?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing,’ Peter said.

  To the forces of power submission is too often the only practical answer.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind knowing. I bet you wouldn’t, my lad. I bet you’d give a lot to know that.’

  Peter ran the tip of his tongue along his lips.

  ‘I’d give a penny or two,’ he offered.

  ‘Penny or two. I bet you would. You can spare it.’

  ‘Spare it?’

  ‘Yes. I bet you policemen get a fat wage packet come Fridays.’

  ‘Wages. Don’
t make me laugh.’

  ‘And pickings, too.’

  ‘What do you mean pickings?’

  ‘Motorists.’

  The bleary eyes rose magnificently to a definite gleam.

  Peter looked at her with momentary bewilderment.

  ‘Motorists?’

  ‘Yes. Pound note wrapped round the licence when you ask to see it. I know why you persecute the poor motorist.’

  A sudden uncontrollable fit of laughter swept over Constable Lassington.

  ‘You’ve been listening to the A.A. or something,’ he said. ‘The persecuted motorist.’

  She shifted her huge pyramid of flesh uneasily.

  Peter saw that the balance of power had turned. As accidents occasionally do turn it.

  He launched his attack.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘joking apart, who was that letter addressed to? Come on, now.’

  And Fay’s ex-maid came on.

  ‘Teddy Pariss,’ she said. ‘It was to Teddy Pariss, if you must know.’

  ‘Teddy Pariss, the dance halls’ owner? And posted last night?’

  ‘Ah, you don’t know everything.’

  Peter pounced hard on this trace of defiance.

  ‘Did it catch the last post? Yes or no?’

  ‘Didn’t catch no post at all, clever.’

  ‘Ah, you took it round for her, did you? Where did you take it?’

  ‘Where did you think I took it?’

  ‘I’m asking you where you took the letter.’

  Years of being at the wrong end of police questioning have their effect. Fay’s maid, Fay’s former maid, spoke up.

  ‘I took it round to that Star Bowl dance place. Where else? That’s one of his places, isn’t it?’

  ‘And when did you deliver it?’

  ‘Only this morning, if you must know. It was raining bleeding cats and dogs last night, so I says to myself “What’s the point of going round out of my way only to get wetter?” So I took it round this morning. Raining worse then.’

  She stood there in front of him wheezily contemplating the perversities of the British climate.

  Peter left her where she stood.

  But at the door of the clubroom he paused.

  ‘This’ll be one in the eye for Detective-Constable Spratt,’ he said loudly.

  Fay’s maid – now out of employment – did not appear to hear.