Summon Up the Blood (11 page)

‘Yes, it seems that way.’

‘Does this information alter your plan in any way, sir?’ wondered Macadam. ‘This is a definite sighting, after all.’

Quinn’s answer was a polite command. ‘Sergeant Macadam, would you be so kind as to run after Mr Petter and ask him to return to the department for me?’

Developments. There were always developments.

But the thing was, not to lose sight of the plan.

Further conversation with Petter produced little else that was salient to the case, except an indication of the best day and time to visit the Greek and Roman galleries of the British Museum. That is to say, the best day and time for observing gentlemen who went there for a purpose other than admiring classical antiquities.

It wasn’t easy getting even this nugget out of him. Sensing the importance that the three policemen placed on his testimony, he clammed up entirely at first. His eyes widened in panic. His mouth – though it quivered occasionally – remained firmly shut. Quinn’s assurances only seemed to add to his fear. ‘It’s all right, Mr Petter. You’re not in any trouble. There’s no question of any action being taken against you.’

A high-pitched whimper was all that this tack elicited.

Sergeant Inchball gave vent to his exasperation by repeatedly banging the table with his fists. It was not an interview technique particularly well-suited to the timid artist. Quinn sent him away to see if he could procure some tea for their guest.

‘He’s frustrated,’ Quinn explained. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s his temperament. He’s prone to it, frustration. We all have our weaknesses, I suppose.’ If Quinn meant anything by this, it was not what Petter took him to mean. He realized he had made a mistake when he saw the terror flash in the young man’s eyes. ‘Take me,’ he added quickly. ‘I have weaknesses too. Oh, yes. What I could tell you about my weaknesses!’

‘What are they?’

Quinn looked over to Macadam, who shook his head warningly. The sergeant was probably right. To confess to an unfortunate habit of killing suspects would probably not help the situation. ‘Legion. You wouldn’t believe it. Sergeant Inchball’s weakness is he’s too easily frustrated. Sergeant Macadam? Well, he does like his motor car. It wouldn’t be going too far to say he loves it. Harmless. Harmless weakness. Most of them are. Now then, Mr Petter, you like to draw, don’t you? Not that that’s a weakness. It’s a great talent you have there, Mr Petter. Obviously you like to draw; you’re an artist. That’s your job. But you also do it in your own time. In your leisure time. You like to go to the Greek and Roman galleries of the British Museum to draw the statues. And I expect you’re very good at it too. I would very much like to see some of your drawings of ancient sculptures.’

Petter mumbled what Quinn understood to be an offer to bring in examples of his work.

‘No, no. That won’t be necessary. What I propose is that we go there, you and I, together one day. And you show me how you do it. I like to visit museums myself, so I would very much enjoy it. And if, while we’re there, sketching – I might even take a pad and stick of graphite along myself – if you happen to see anyone, any gentleman, whom you think you may previously have witnessed in the company of our unknown friend, I would like you to point him out to me. Discreetly, you understand. A nudge in the right direction. Do you think you could do that?’

The spasm that wracked Petter’s head was possibly an agonized nod of assent.

‘Now then, when do you think would be the best time to do this?’

‘To draw the statues?’

‘To draw the statues, yes. But also to see the gentlemen. The most likely time to see the gentlemen. That’s what I’m especially interested in, you see. We can draw the statues any time. They don’t come and go. They stay put.’

And so it was that just as Inchball was returning with the tea, Petter was finally able to divulge: ‘Saturday afternoon. The last hour or two before closing. The galleries are especially popular then.’

‘Bugger me,’ said Inchball. ‘I should go out of the room more often.’

A
fter lunch, Quinn took a stroll north to Wardour Street. He preferred to walk rather than take the omnibus or have Macadam drive him there, because it gave him a chance to collect his thoughts. Besides, he needed Macadam to get on with his own enquiries.

His route took him along Whitehall, past the great offices of state: the India Office, Foreign Office, Treasury, Admiralty, and the War Office. The imposing edifices loomed up around him, solid in their foundations, symbols of the unshakeable Empire. Of an enduring world, ordered and organized.

The day was fine. The pavements were drying out at last. Civil servants, errand boys, nannies pushing perambulators, ladies and gentlemen of leisure, tourists – all ventured forth with optimism and ease. Gone were the days of scurrying head-down between cloudbursts, it seemed.

He had placed the portrait Petter had drawn in a small gilt frame, which he felt weighing down the inside pocket of his jacket. His plan was to start his enquiries at one of the two bookshops Inchball had tipped him off about.

Inchball had spent some time ‘in Vice’. That was how he put it, as if
Vice
were a place. If it was, it was a place you never really left. Quinn recognized that his time working ‘in Vice’ had given Inchball an expertise that would be useful in the case. However, as the episode with Petter had illustrated, it had left him with an unsympathetic approach that was bound to alienate men they needed on their side.

The city grew distinctly more disreputable as he left Trafalgar Square behind him. Crimes that were unimaginable in Whitehall began to seem inevitable in the grimy backstreets through which he now wove.

With its French name –
La librairie des amis de la littérature
– it was little wonder that the bookshop had aroused the suspicion of a man like Inchball.

It was next door to a draper’s, into the window of which Quinn now pretended to gaze in order to observe the comings and goings at the bookshop for a moment or two before entering. He had not given a thought to the nature of the shop he had chosen as a decoy. But now it struck him that it was possibly odd for a man to appear so intently interested in the contents of a draper’s window.

Suddenly flustered, he looked beyond the bolts of cloth on display into the shop’s interior. He was surprised to discover that he was not the only male to evince an interest in drapery. In fact, the shop’s only customers were two men. They were standing very close to one another, so close that they appeared to be touching. They seemed to be engaged in feeling samples of cloth between thumb and forefinger. But some other business was being decided, he felt.

So
, thought Quinn,
this is what goes on in drapers’ shops.

Their faces were turned away from him, but it was clear that one of the men was considerably older, and stouter, than the other.

Quinn glanced uncertainly towards the bookshop, torn between implementing his original plan and exploring the potential new lead presented to him. Either of these men, the apparent renter and his likely client, might have been acquainted with the dead man.

He sensed an angry tension between them, despite the fact that their bodies were touching. Occasionally their gesticulations were angular and uncontrolled. It seemed increasingly likely that they were having an argument, albeit one conducted
sotto voce
; that what was being passed from mouth to ear in hot whispers was all recriminations, taunts and ultimatums.

He wanted to see their faces. His entrance, he thought, would precipitate a precautionary glance towards the door from them. It might also bring about their flight. If so, he would talk to the shopkeeper.

Somehow it did not surprise Quinn to discover, in the jangling of the shop door, that one of the two men – the older, stouter one – was the vociferous monocled baby he had seen at Count Erdélyi’s lecture. Pinky, he remembered the man had been called by his friends.

As he had anticipated, the men drew apart. Pinky fled the shop entirely. Quinn noticed that he was in tears. His face, which had shown a tendency to colour the previous night, was a lurid pink.
That explains the soubriquet
, thought Quinn.

Pinky’s young friend received his departure with a loud peal of laughter. He looked Quinn up and down before leaving at a languid dawdle, his laughter more brazen and loutish than ever.

Quinn found he had the shop to himself. There was a bell-push on the counter top. Its tart ping eventually produced an extraordinarily tall woman, somewhat overdressed for shopkeeping. She had long, glistening locks, which Quinn suspected of being a wig. She viewed Quinn haughtily through a lorgnette, but said nothing.

‘Good afternoon. I wonder if you can help me.’ Quinn paused, suddenly losing all confidence in the cover story he had concocted. It was too late, however, to come up with anything else. ‘I . . . this is a little embarrassing . . . it may sound strange. I hope you will forgive me, madam.’

The lady rippled her rather heavy brows indulgently.

‘I’m looking for a friend. An acquaintance, really. A gentleman I met . . . at the British Museum. I was in the Greek and Roman galleries.’

She nodded for him to go on.

‘He told me his name was Daniel but . . . I’m not sure he was telling the truth.’ Quinn smiled affectionately at the memory of a moment that had never happened. ‘We rather hit it off. But . . . he had to go. He seemed in some distress. He took his leave of me as if . . . Well, as if he was taking his leave of his oldest friend. Not of a stranger. For I was, really, a stranger to him. He said that I might look for him here. At your shop.’ Quinn ventured a brave smile.

The lady draper contracted her brows quizzically.

‘I confess I was curious. I wondered if there really was a draper’s shop at this address, or whether it was a fabrication. I began to think I had dreamt the whole encounter. When I happened to find myself in the area and caught sight of your shop, well, I determined to call in and satisfy my curiosity. For some reason, I have not been able to get the thought of that strange young man out of my head.’

The woman nodded, as if this was only to be expected.

‘And so, here I am!’

‘Daniel, you say?’ The voice was remarkably low, in a register more usual for a man than a woman.

Quinn hoped that he kept his surprise to himself. ‘That’s what he said.’

‘I don’t know no Daniels.’

‘Oh . . . I thought as much. We were standing in front of a frieze of lions. And when I asked him for his name, he hesitated. Then he caught sight of the frieze and grinned. “Daniel”, he said, just like that. I thought it was a little strange at the time.’

The draper shrugged.

‘I’m not surprised he lied to me. I had no right to ask for his name in the first place. But before he ran off, he gave me something.’ Quinn produced the portrait.

The draper took it and glanced at it quickly. She then regarded Quinn with a slower, more suspicious gaze through her lorgnette.

‘I had the impression that he was in trouble. That he believed that something terrible was about to happen to him. He said that he wanted someone to remember him as he was now. I don’t know why he gave it to
me
. It doesn’t make any sense, I know.’

‘His name isn’t Daniel.’

‘You
do
know him!’

The draper thrust the portrait away, as if she wanted nothing more to do with it. She turned her head away from Quinn, though she kept her lorgnette pointed in his direction.

‘Who are you, mister?’

It was disconcerting to be addressed by a lorgnette. ‘I . . . my name is Sallis. Quentin Sallis.’ It was the false name Quinn always used, an anagram of his own with the addition of the letters TEL. As Quinn’s middle name was Terence, which is frequently shortened to Tel, he found the pseudonym both satisfying and memorable. ‘I . . . just want . . . to know . . . that he’s all right. The young man. I felt I could have done more to help him. He ran off before I had a chance.’

‘Why did you want to
help
him?’

‘I don’t know . . . I was . . .’

The draper turned her head back towards Quinn, so that her eyes were on him again, enlarged by the lenses of the lorgnette.

Quinn looked down at the picture. ‘I felt that we could have been friends.’ He was surprised at the tug of wistful heartache in his voice. ‘I know what you’re thinking. If he didn’t give me his real name, why should you? But he did tell me to look for him here. I think that he wanted me to find him. Perhaps it was a test. He didn’t want to give . . . his friendship to me too easily, perhaps. That’s the only explanation I can think of.’

‘But his
friendship
is something you truly desire?’

‘Oh, yes. Truly.’

‘Jimmy. His name’s Jimmy.’

‘Ah, Jimmy. Thank you. You don’t happen to know . . .?’

The draper thrust her lorgnette forward, as if to parry further questioning.

‘Where I might find Jimmy? Where he lives?’

She shook her head forbiddingly.

‘Well, thank you, madam. I’m extremely grateful to you for your help.
Jimmy
. I can’t express to you how much it means to me just to know his name. Jimmy . . .’ Quinn returned the portrait to the inside of his jacket. ‘You wouldn’t know his surname too, would you?’

The draper shook her lorgnette in an agitated flurry.

Quinn bowed. ‘I am indebted to you.’

‘You could at least buy something! This is a draper’s shop, after all. Not an information bureau.’

‘Of course. I . . .’ Quinn cast about him hopelessly.

‘A gift for Jimmy, for when you renew your friendship.’

‘What an excellent idea! Thank you. What do you recommend?’

‘Some silk, perhaps?’

‘I’m entirely in your hands, madam.’

Now she handled her lorgnette rather as a scientist might a microscope, to observe an interesting specimen trapped in a glass slide. A smile that could only be described as flirtatious skipped across her lips. The low pitch of her voice disturbed Quinn. But that smile terrified him.