The Tiger In the Smoke (10 page)

Campion's eyes had grown dark behind his horn-rims.

‘But who,' he demanded, ‘who in all that household could have smuggled that jacket out to Duds Morrison?'

Luke was turning papers out on his desk and he spoke without looking up.

‘Who could, except the girl?' he said slowly. ‘Either she, or that new chap of hers, who seems to have disappeared.'

‘You're wrong.'

‘I hope so.' He glanced up and smiled. ‘Perhaps it's a miracle.'

‘Perhaps there's another card in the pack,' said Mr Campion.

—

MRS GOLLIE CAME
into Luke's office as if she was hastening to the scene of some terrible personal disaster, or perhaps merely going on the stage. There was drama in every curve of her splendid young body, in the swinging sleeves of her camel-hair coat clutched tightly round her shoulders, in the turn of her beautiful neck. She was hatless and her well-dyed black hair sat neatly round her head in stiff waves which might have been fresh from the drier, but her fine eyes were ingenuous and her mouth, for all its bright paint, was kindly and innocent.

‘I had to come down myself, Mr Luke,' she began without preamble. ‘I saw him, you see and, I mean to say, you want to know, don't you?' She had a gentle voice and that kind of London accent which is like the waters of the Thames at the Pool, by no means unpleasant but the least bit thick. ‘I told Bill Slaney here I must come myself. “I'd better go down there at once,” I said. I mean, Bert and I want to help all we can, naturally. “It's not very nice for us,” I said, “right on our doorstep and in all this fog.” I mean, it gives you the willies, doesn't it? I mean, you don't feel safe. No one would. I shan't sleep, you know. I couldn't if you paid me. I shan't sleep a wink tonight and if I'd known what was going to happen I shouldn't have slept last night. And …'

‘You wouldn't look half so lovely now.' Luke's leer would have stopped a train and she paused in full spate.

‘I
beg
your pardon?'

‘That's right. You didn't come here to listen to that sort of thing, did you? You came to answer questions, didn't you? We can skip all that. So you shall. Sit down.'

He grinned at her, waved her into the chair before the desk and winked briefly at Campion.

‘Now,' he began, bending over the blotter without seating himself, so that he looked like some great horsefly spreadeagled there, ‘name, age, occupation: wife of licensee. Slaney, you've got all that engraved on your heart, no doubt, same as we all have.' He glanced over her head at the solid plain-clothes man and returned to the girl. ‘Okay, then, you saw the deceased, did you, duck? When?'

‘Well, I mean, I was telling you. You'll have to listen, won't you? I must get a word in, mustn't I? Fair's fair, I mean to say. It was just when we were opening.' Her voice was gentle, placatory, and never ending. ‘I was just getting my keys for the spirits when I looked round and there he was …'

‘How do you know?'

‘Well, I've got eyes, haven't I?' She had lost her sense of theatre and was on the defensive, but her wits were gathering about her. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Well, it was like this, see. Bill, I mean Mr Slaney, told me what he looked like. I mean he came in and asked me had I seen anyone like him in any of the bars today, and I had, so naturally I said so. I'm only trying to help, aren't I? Don't listen if you don't want to. Bert and I don't want to go into any witness-box. That sort of thing is not as good for business as you may think. But I did see both men. They came in …'

‘Both?' The circumflex accents which served Luke for eyebrows shot up on his forehead. Behind Mrs Gollie, Slaney signalled confirmation, and they let her flow quietly on.

‘I was in a hurry, see, so I didn't notice them particularly. I thought they'd come off a train. The lights were shocking. I told Bert so. He was farther along the bar in the saloon, and I called to him that I'd have to have bigger bulbs if I was to see what I was doing. All the time these two were talking. The other man – not the one who was killed – gave the order. Two small gins, they had.'

‘Were they alone in your little bar?'

‘I've just told you so. We were hardly open.'

‘Did they meet there or did they come in together?'

‘They came in together. I've said so. Oh
do
listen, Mr Luke. They came in talking very quietly, confidentially, as if they had business. Well, I know enough to stand back when I see that going on. I haven't been in what you might call my own business for five years without learning when customers want me and when they don't, so I just served them and went along to Bert for the bulbs. When I came back, I was just in time to see the smaller man – that's the one Bill asked me about, the one with the well-cut sports jacket, green pork-pie, and pale delicate sort of face – shoot out through the door, pulling his arm away from the other chap.'

‘Pulling?'

‘Yes, you know, shaking him off.' Her white elbow, round and milky, shot out from the folds of camel-hair with a jingle of gold bracelets. ‘The other chap started after him, remembered me, and shoved ten bob down on the counter. Then he went after him. All night I expected him to come back for his change, but he didn't come in.

‘Did you hear anything they said at all?'

‘I didn't, Mr Luke. It's no good me saying I did. I didn't listen, you see. Besides, there was such a row going on. Bert had the wireless in the saloon, listening to a play. There was a band in the street bawling. I was talking myself about the electric-light bulbs …'

‘In fact the place was the same old parrot house it always is.' Luke spoke without heat. ‘What did the second man look like?'

She clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘I wish I'd looked, but I never thought of a murder, see? He was tall and he was clean, sort of scrubbed looking. A thorough-going gentleman, if you can imagine what I mean. Might have been in the Navy. He smiled when he gave the order, but not
at
me. I might have been any sort of girl.'

‘Was he fair or dark?'

‘I couldn't say. He had his hat on. He'd got brown eyes, and although he was young he looked important. Respectable, that's the word I've been looking for. Respectable. I know I was surprised to see him run. It was like seeing him turn into an ordinary man.'

‘Not the usual Crumb Street type, perhaps?' murmured Mr Campion.

‘You've got it.' She shot him a surprised smile. ‘He wasn't. I mean there he was in a good dark overcoat, black hat and white collar. He wasn't this district at all.'

‘Formal clothes.' Luke scribbled on the blotter. ‘Why couldn't you say so before?'

‘Because I didn't think of them before.' Her voice was soothing and patient. ‘When this gentleman here mentioned Crumb Street I remembered why I thought he'd come off a train. He had a navy tie with two little stripes on it, very wide apart. Silver-grey and sort of puce and a little sort of flower with a bird's head coming out of it, very small, between,'

‘Had he though?' Campion sighed. ‘I wondered about that.' He leaned over Luke's shoulder and wrote on the blotter, ‘
Phoenix Rugger Club tie. Geoffrey Levett?
'

Luke stared at the scribbled words for a moment before he straightened his back and stared at his friend.

‘Get a-way!' he said softly. ‘You thought you saw him outside here this afternoon, remember?'

Mr Campion looked very unhappy. ‘It hardly proves – ' he began.

‘Lord, no. It doesn't prove it wasn't King Farouk, but there's a healthy supposition there. Hallo, Andy, what's that?' The final remark was directed to the clerk who was hovering at his elbow, his round face shining with excitement.

‘Going through the deceased's effects as directed, sir, this was in the wallet. Note the postmark, sir.'

Luke took the used envelope from him and turned it over. It was addressed to G. Levett Esquire at the Parthenon Club, but on the back an office address with a telephone number had been added in pencil. The postmark was unusually clear and the date was the current one. The letter had gone through the mail that morning.

Luke pointed to the pencil. ‘Is that his handwriting?'

‘I'm afraid it is. That's his own office address, of course.'

They stood looking at one another and Luke put the thought into words.

‘Why did he give him his address, and then run after him and – ? That won't wash, will it? I could do with a chat with that young man.'

‘Well, have I helped?' It was Mrs Gollie, glowing with excitement. ‘I mean I – '

Luke turned to her and stiffened. The door behind her was opening and a tall sad figure came quietly into the room.

Assistant Commissioner Stanislaus Oates, Chief of Scotland Yard, wore his honours as he wore everything else, gloomily. He had not changed since Campion had first met him over twenty years before. He was still the shabby dyspeptic figure, thickening unexpectedly in the middle, who peered out at a wicked world from under a drooping hat brim, but he brightened a little at the sight of his old friend and, after nodding to Luke who was standing like a ramrod, came forward with outstretched hand.

‘Hallo, Campion, I thought I might find you here. Just the weather for trouble, isn't it?'

A great reputation has many magical qualities: for instance, Detective Slaney got Mrs Gollie out into the C.I.D. Room without her uttering a single word, Galloway faded into the recess which contained his desk, and the three in charge of the case were to all intents and purposes alone in a matter of seconds.

Oates took off his ancient raincoat and folded it carefully over the back of a chair.

‘Superintendent Yeo is tied to his telephone, all his telephones,' he said, his cold eyes resting on Luke for a moment, ‘so I thought I'd slip down and see you myself, Charles.' He had a sad voice. The words came slowly, like an old schoolmaster's. ‘You may have a little more on your plate than you realize. How far have you got?'

Luke told him, reeling out the essential details with a minimum of gesture and the precision his training had taught him. The Assistant Commissioner listened, nodding gently from time to time as if he were hearing a well-learned lesson. When it was done he picked up the envelope and turned it over.

‘Humph,' he said. ‘He must have been waiting for Duds outside here. Probably kept an eye on the doors from the foyer of the hotel opposite.' Mr Campion spoke thoughtfully. ‘When we let Duds go, he must have followed him, taken him into the first pub, tried to get the tale out of him, failed, given him his office address, and then – what?'

‘Duds was windy because he wasn't on his own – wasn't working on his own, that is,' Luke supplemented, ‘so as soon as he got a chance he hooked it. Levett went after him, pausing to pay his score, which argues he wasn't fighting mad, and missed him because Duds doubled back up Pump Path. We know where Duds finished, but what happened to Levett? Where is he now?'

‘Your Superintendent would like to know that, because that apparently is what three-quarters of the people who are still influential in this bedevilled old town keep telephoning and asking him.' Oates made the announcement with a sour little smile. ‘Mr Levett seems to have planned quite an old-style evening: telephone calls half over the world, an after-dinner speech at a banquet, and a business interview with a gentleman from the French government in his flat after that. None of his friends can find him and they want to know why we can't.' He glanced at the clock over the desk. ‘He's staying out late, isn't he, for such a busy chap?'

Mr Campion slid off the table where he had been sitting, his hands in his pockets, his foot swinging.

‘Medical opinion, for what it's worth, is that Duds was kicked,' he said. ‘I don't see Levett doing that, you know, I really don't.'

Old Oates looked up. ‘Do you see him killing at all, Mr Campion?'

‘Frankly, no.'

‘But on the other hand, do you see him cutting all his appointments like this? They're important appointments, every one of them.'

‘It's odd.' Campion was frowning. ‘Geoffrey is a punctilious, solid sort of chap, I should have said. On the sober, stolid side. Unadventurous, even.'

‘That's what most people think.' The Assistant Commissioner's grey face was puckered into the faint smile which showed he was enjoying himself. ‘But he's not, you know. I've been hearing about him. He's Levett's Ball Bearings and one or two other very sound old-fashioned little companies, and he's a very rich man. But we don't like riches in this country these days, and what we don't like we get rid of. I've been making some inquiries tonight and I hear that when Levett came back from the war he found that after he had provided for all the people whom he felt had a genuine claim on his family and estate – his pensioners and so on – he found he had thirty-seven pounds five shillings and threepence per annum to live on himself after taxation had been paid. There were two courses open to him. He could spiv around with an army of accountants, looking for loopholes in the law, or he could gamble on the exchange. For two years and six months he was one of the biggest gamblers on this side of the Atlantic. He quadrupled his fortune. Then he stopped.'

Mr Campion's pale face showed no astonishment. ‘I'd heard that, but I'd also heard that his name was excellent.'

‘It is.' Oates was vehement. ‘I'm saying nothing against him. He's done nothing illegal and nothing reprehensible. Gambling is the only thing they don't call you to account for these days. It's not like working; you can be penalized for that. Gambling is respectable. I have two bob on the pools myself every week. I've got to think of my old age. My pension won't keep me. I only say that boy Levett is not unadventurous. He's not a man who doesn't take risks. For over two years he took risks all the time, and once you're used to taking risks you're used to 'em. The drawbridge is down. You're not impregnable any more.'