Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (3 page)

I could shove Bessie into the flat, lift my gear and walk out.

I could tell the men down below what had happened. They could ring Meals on Wheels or the Salvation Army to rescue the guy upstairs if they felt like it. Ferdy would be mad, but it was Ferdy’s fault anyway.

On the other hand, Ferdy could do me down with Natalie Sheridan.

It wasn’t likely. He enjoyed life, and it took a good push before he got the knives out. But everyone knew what happened then.

I didn’t want Mrs Sheridan put off me. I didn’t much want to walk round finding a bed. A free night upstairs had something to it. And sure as eggs, I’d have no come-on from the resident cripple.

I took the key and went up in the lift with Bessie. Someone had wiped off my lipstick from the mirror, and had written TA LOVE on the door. I read it.

Ferdy was a bastard, but I supposed I’d go along with it in the end, as per usual. Twenty-four hours was all he claimed the housekeeper needed.

I could stick it till lunchtime tomorrow. And if I could, the guy Johnson would have to.

I got to his door and nearly changed my mind when I heard the phone ringing behind it. But however feeble, the man could surely take his own calls, if I answered the doorbell and fed him.

I unlocked the door and walked in, shooing Bessie before me. I shouted. ‘It’s Miss Geddes back, Mr Johnson! You’ve got another palm for your parlour!’

I don’t know whether he heard me, but I could hear his voice on the phone, so I suppose he did. I shut the door and went to choose a bedroom. The one I’d used seemed to be the main guestroom. It smelt of Mrs Sheridan’s scent. It had a phone in it.

It struck me that I had some calls to make if I was staying in London. I picked up the phone, and found I was listening to Johnson’s caller.

It was a woman, and she was in the middle of reading a lecture.

‘Well, you can’t stay there, can you? If you don’t go back to your people, then you might as well come to us. Daughter Joanna would love it. She’s made you some rather drippy jam.’

Johnson’s voice said, ‘If I don’t go home, I’d have to go to the Judge’s.’

There was a silence. Then the woman said, ‘Yes, I see that. But it’s too much for Connie.’

He said, ‘I’ll get help for her. Really. It’s all right.’

‘And later?’ She still sounded doubtful. ‘Don’t you want to get away from those phones? Where’s
Dolly
?’

‘Still refitting.’

The woman said, ‘You could be in the Caribbean by the early summer. Why don’t we send Lenny down to sail her out? We’re not using him. He could take her to Tenerife and wait till you were ready. Or take her across himself with Raymond or somebody. You could fly over.

‘You know everyone over there. You could stay anywhere you want, or on board if you didn’t want company. I’ll tell Bernard.’

‘Something to look forward to?’ he said. The put-down in his voice was like the one I’d had.

There was another silence. Then she said, ‘Believe me, you won’t feel as tired as this all the time. All the same, I don’t know what you were thinking of, letting these people in. What’s she called, this girl Ferdy’s wished on you?’

‘I don’t know. Geddes, I think,’ he said.

‘And what’s she like?’

There was another silence. Then he said, ‘Small. Tough. Scottish. She’s listening to you.’

The bastard. I whipped the receiver away from my ear without thinking, and so missed the first half of a very smart leave-taking. I heard Johnson say, ‘It’s too much trouble for you. No, please don’t. But of course I’ll remember. Give my love to Joanna.’

Then the woman rang off, but he didn’t. He just laid the phone off the rest, so no more calls could get in.

It also meant that I couldn’t phone out.

As I’ve probably said, attack first is my motto. I got up and banged on the door of his bedroom. Why not?

I had credit cards and an account. I could go to a hotel. Pal Johnson wasn’t going to suffer, with his folks and the Judge and Joanna’s mother and all to mollycuddle him. So I walked into his room without waiting too long for a sniffy invitation. He wasn’t likely to be taking calls starkers.

Starkers he wasn’t, but the Owner of the Apartment he certainly was, sitting straight up in bed as if he’d money rammed into both pillows. On the bed stood the filing basket full of letters, florists’ cards and parcel tags, and beside it a tray of pens and paper and stuff he’d been answering with.

The phone was purring beside him on the table. I put the receiver back on its rest and said, ‘I have some calls to make. Do you want me here or not?’

‘It depends rather,’ he said, ‘on whether Ferdy comes back.’

A man of few words. What he meant was, he couldn’t be bothered to row, but he wasn’t going to lease 17
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as a knocking-shop.

I said, ‘There’s nothing for him to come back for. How long is your housekeeper taking?’

‘Till tomorrow night, I imagine,’ he said. ‘I should have asked Ferdy.’

The phone rang, and he looked at it. He didn’t pick it up. It went on ringing. I said, ‘I’ll go into the kitchen and whistle,’ but got no reaction. Against the ringing, he said, ‘Stay or leave as you like. You need a bed?’

The ringing came to an end, and he turned his head and unhooked and laid down the receiver. ‘I’m afraid that is essential,’ he said.

Behind the table, there was a telephone socket in the skirting. I got down on my knees and, pushing aside Bessie, who wanted to die for me, unplugged the cable. In two other rooms, the telephone started to ring again.

I got to my feet. Johnson pulled the blotter over his knees and picked his pen up, as if in return he’d unplugged me. I stood and looked at him sorting his papers.

I wanted to make calls and receive them from, for example, Ferdy or Natalie Sheridan.

The Owner wasn’t going to answer the telephone. Which, if I stayed, made me his personal answering service.

He had started writing again, and I might as well have been a pot with a Zulu in it. I walked out and into the studio. I sat down at the piano and treated it to a yard or two of punchy Scott Joplin, waiting for the ringing to end so that I could start to make my phone calls.

I stopped because my legwarmers had got stamped down to my ankles, and the way I felt about the tantalised fruits told me I was starving.

There was a phone in the kitchen. I had just got a pan out when the ringing stopped and I made a dive to unhook the receiver. The ringing started again as I did it, and a voice spoke before I could get the thing down. ‘Connie? Is that you? How is Mr Johnson today?’

This time, it was a man. I had the answer ready on tap. ‘Very much improved, thank you,’ I said. ‘It will be a long business, of course. But he’s making great strides now, considering.’

There were three more calls before I got all my outgoing ones.

One of them wanted to know who I was, and I told him I’d been sent by the escort agency.

I made an omelette and ate it with a glass of milk while I was talking. Then I made another omelette, plated it, and carried it through the hall, having taken the other two phones off their hooks.

I banged on the Owner’s door, and got an immediate answer. ‘Come in. You were good enough to answer the phone?’

I put the plate on his blotter and handed him a knife and fork. ‘It was an accident. Just folk with good wishes.’

‘Did they leave names?’ he said. He looked down at the plate and added, ‘Have you eaten?’ There were a dozen new addressed envelopes on the table.

‘I had the one I practised on,’ I said. ‘Did you want their names? There wasn’t a pencil.’

The Owner picked up the fork. ‘They’ll ring again,’ he said. ‘If you took their names, I could ring back some time. The only people I’d need to speak to are my own family. They’ll say who they are. And people called Ballantyne.’

He looked up and said, ‘Of course, I’m deeply obliged. If you have to go, would you be very kind and take Bessie down to the doorman? He doesn’t mind walking her.’

‘I’ll walk her last thing,’ I said. ‘And post your letters. I’ve got Ferdy’s key. Would you like some tantalised fruit from the box?’

You could see him think about it, but not for long.

‘Not very much. You have them,’ he said.

He hadn’t complained about the Scott Joplin, so I went and played some more, and fed Bessie and watered her, and then switched on the T.V. I’d noticed in the wee sitting-room. I remembered at the same time that, though I’d fed the Owner, I’d forgotten the liquids.

I rooted out a nice selection of bottles, and ice, and some big and small glasses, and carried it all to the bedroom.

The door was ajar, and behind it, Bessie lay on the rug, snoring heavily.

Above her on the bed, the Owner was sleeping too, on his face, with his bifocals thrown on the sheets anyhow. I put them where I left the whisky, and took a vodka for myself back to the sitting-room.

I used to be good at cartoons at college. After I finished my drink, I filled in time drawing Ferdy ogling Mrs Sheridan, and Mrs Sheridan dropping towels in front of the bug-eyed agency man.

The block and crayon came from the studio, where I’d found where Johnson kept all his painting things. They hadn’t been used for an age. The palette had lost all its stickiness and the rags were all hard.

There were two more calls. One was from Ferdy, roaring tight from a night-club, and bellowing housekeeper’s instructions about food, pills and Bessie. I put the phone down on him.

Later, I took Bessie out on the pavement and the security man held the door for me. Back in the flat, I left her to push her own way into the Owner’s room, having no mind to get mixed up with bedtime ablutions.

I found a box of chocolates and some grapes, and took them to the big bedroom.

There were no satin nighties or black lace undies in any of the fitted drawers, which was a pity. It made you wonder what Ferdy and Pal Johnson actually had in common, apart from short tempers. However, the beds were made up. They were new, too. The sheets had sticky corners where the price labels had been.

I was tired. I wakened four times: twice with burglar alarms going off in the Persian carpets and once because of some drunks. The last time, I couldn’t make out what it was, and then realised that it was Bessie not snoring. There was a light on under my door, and the sound of somebody chatting.

I could just make out that it was the Owner, moving about if not racing, and talking to Bessie. I took it that he had wakened up and was going to bed officially, without bothering to find out if the flat was crowded or not.

I had the feeling that, so far as he was concerned, we were all invisible anyway, with the possible exception of Bessie.

I was just dropping off to sleep again when the funny thing happened.

It began with a ring at the doorbell.

For a moment, I thought it was yet another bloody phone call. Then I came properly awake, and remembered it was two in the morning, and I was in a strange block of flats with a moody bastard, and if the doorbell rang, he wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I’d have to.

I got up, draped myself in the quilt, and marching out, put the hall light on. There was, I saw, a light under the Owner’s door. The doorbell rang again.

I walked through the hall, and stopping just short of the door, yelled through it, ‘What is it?’

A cockney voice said, ‘Mr Johnson? Security.’

After all the jokes down below, you’d think Security would damn well know Johnson couldn’t come to the door. I said, ‘What is it?’

Pause. No quick thinker, this voice. Then it said, ‘Are you alone, Miss?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Mr Johnson’s here, but he can’t come to the door. What is it?’

It was great news for two in the morning. He wanted to come in, because a man had been seen hanging about. A big fair man in black, lurking outside. By the fire escape leading to 17
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’s back balcony.

Damn Ferdy.

I wasn’t going to open the door at this time of night, whoever this guy said he was.

I would have to go and search through the flat myself. There was an umbrella stand under my nose with various sticks in it, and some pretty sharp knives in the kitchen.

I rather wished I was wearing something handier than a quilt, but if all else failed, I could smother the guy if I caught him.

I explained this through the door. It didn’t go down well. There followed a fairly noisy argument, with the security man standing outside demanding to get in.

It was cut short by the well-known crack of the Owner’s voice.

Propping up his bedroom doorpost behind me, Pal Johnson said, ‘Must we wake the whole building? Ask him his name. If it’s Ritchie Tiller, and he had a new grandchild last Tuesday, let him in.’

It was, he had, and I did. I waited, wrapped in my quilt, while Grandfather Tiller came in, properly uniformed, searched the apartment, and found nothing and nobody.

He refused a drink, apologised to the Owner and me for disturbing us, and went away.

Pal Johnson, getting up from the hall chair, was kind enough to thank me as well, before tapping his way to his room and shutting his door with a snap.

I watched him go. I didn’t get back into bed, although I put out the hall lights and my own. I sat in my doorway and waited. I was interested.

Johnson’s room was the only one the security man hadn’t searched. Naturally. Johnson had been awake ever since the intruder had been glimpsed, and in any case, had checked the curtains and cupboards himself.

So he said.

And since the security man believed him, the security man couldn’t know, as I did, that Johnson didn’t smoke cigarettes.

And wouldn’t therefore have wondered, as I did, about the smell of good cigarettes that had floated very faintly from the open door of Johnson’s room.

I waited a long five minutes before I heard the voices from behind the same door.

One was Johnson’s. The other man had a lighter voice, and seemed, keeping it low, to be trying to speak at some length, while Johnson kept cutting him off. They were quarrelling.

There was no doubt they knew one another. There was no doubt either that they were good at keeping their voices down. I crouched in my quilt at the door, and I still couldn’t make out the words properly. It was maddening.