The Zig Zag Girl (16 page)

Elsie was having a bad day, said the Major, ushering Edgar to the now familiar rustic seat in the garden in Worthing. It was a humid day, hot without being sunny, and the sea was a pale band in the distance. The Major was sprucely dressed in shirt and tie, but, as he stretched out his legs, Edgar saw that he still had his slippers on.

‘I’m sorry to just drop in like this,’ he said.

The Major grunted. ‘Don’t worry. I expected you to come back.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes. Expected you to come back without Massingham. He’s a smart fellow, but he’s not one of us.’

‘One of us?’

The Major pointed to his regimental tie. ‘Services. King and country, that sort of thing. Massingham’s clever enough, but he’s a foreigner when you come down to it.’

‘He’s half-Italian,’ said Edgar. He wondered why it disturbed him so much to be classed in the same category as the Major.

‘Half’s enough. And the fellow’s a magician. The things he can do with a pack of cards. It’s indecent.’

Edgar remembered a trick of Max’s where he had substituted a picture of a naked girl for the Queen of Hearts and the Major’s apoplectic face when the offending image had been found in his breast pocket.

‘I really came to see you about Tony,’ he said.

‘Tony Mulholland?’ Was it Edgar’s imagination or did the Major stiffen slightly?

‘Yes. I spoke to Diablo …’

‘Oh, you tracked him down, did you? What’s the old rascal doing now?’

‘He’s staying with me at the moment.’

The Major gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Good luck getting shot of him is all I can say. Man’s a born scrounger.’

Edgar thought of Diablo, who had so far commandeered not just Edgar’s bed but his best dressing gown and exclusive use of the wireless. Any suggestion that Diablo might leave the house, even if only for exercise, had been countered by an airy wave of the hand. ‘Resting, dear boy. Just resting.’

‘Diablo thought you might have seen Tony quite recently,’ said Edgar. ‘I wondered why you didn’t mention it before.’

Major Gormley turned to stare at him. Despite the carpet slippers, he suddenly looked formidable, even intimidating.

‘What are you implying?’

‘Nothing.’ Edgar tried the soothing tone again. ‘When Max and I came to see you last week, you said that you hadn’t seen Tony in years. Diablo got the impression that you’d met him fairly recently. Given the manner of Tony’s death, I’m interested in any information about him. That’s all.’

The Major seemed to relax slightly, but his tone was still disgruntled. ‘I can’t remember every damn silly young toerag I meet. I might have bumped into Tony last year some time.’

‘Can you remember exactly when?’

‘Think it was about Christmas time. We had the tree up. Elsie likes it up early.’

‘Did he come here? To the house?’ asked Edgar, thinking that this was hardly ‘bumping into’ someone.

‘I think so.’

‘Why? Did you invite him or did he just drop in?’

‘Think he was just passing. Just wanted to wish us a happy Christmas.’

There was a brief silence whilst Edgar considered this unlikely possibility.

‘Diablo said you quarrelled,’ he said at last.

‘And you believe that drunken old fool?’

I’d sooner believe him than you, thought Edgar. Aloud, he said, ‘And you can’t remember what you talked about?’

‘Oh, this and that. You know how it is.’

‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’

That glare again. ‘I told you. I forgot. That’s not a crime, is it?’

Edgar said nothing. The bees buzzed in the hollyhocks. A neighbour’s lawnmower droned and whined.

Major Gormley broke the silence. ‘You married, Stephens?’

‘No,’ said Edgar, rather surprised at this conversational turn.

‘You were cut up about Captain Parsons, I know.’ The Major’s voice was surprisingly kind. ‘She was a beautiful girl.’

‘Yes,’ said Edgar, ‘She was.’

‘But take my advice and forget her. After all, Cosgrove did. Find a nice girl and get married. Chap needs a wife.’

Edgar looked across at the shuttered windows of the bungalow. Was the Major, a tired old man caring for his sick wife, really such a good advertisement for marriage? Well, maybe he was. A few years of nursing in return for a lifetime’s companionship. To his horror, he thought that he might be about to cry.

Luckily, the Major’s voice was harsh again. ‘Take Massingham, now. He’s a wolf, a womaniser. He’ll never settle down.’

Edgar thought of Ruby. Did Max really have no idea where she was? Had she really vanished, as a good magician’s assistant should?

‘Max has changed a lot,’ he said.

The Major stood up. ‘Men like him never change. Fancy a walk by the sea? We could even have a snifter at the golf club.’

Edgar could think of nothing he’d like less, but he
reflected that the Major probably didn’t get out much these days. He got up and followed the still-military figure towards the house. He’d have to think of some tactful way of mentioning the slippers.

*

Max was at the Theatre Royal. He was trying to talk to Roy Coulter about Ruby, but it was proving extremely difficult because Coulter was preoccupied by the next week’s bookings.

‘We’re doing an Agatha Christie,’ he said. ‘Pre-West End run. It’s a strange play. Called
The Mousetrap
. Ever heard of a name like that?’

‘Isn’t it from
Hamlet
?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Coulter. ‘I didn’t have the benefit of a classical education.’

Max wondered what sort of education Coulter was imagining. His boarding school – cold baths, endless team games, general sneering at anyone thought ‘clever’ or ‘foreign’ – could hardly be less like the Platonic ideal. But he said nothing and Coulter continued to discuss the play.

‘My bet is that it’ll only run a few weeks, never make it to the West End. Mind you, it’s an easy set, just a few bookcases and suchlike. But it’s not my sort of thing, people sitting round chatting, bang bang someone’s dead, who did it more chat, oh it’s the butler. It’s not like Variety, is it?’

‘Variety’s dying,’ said Max, getting out his cigarette case.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Coulter. ‘People will always love a good variety show. Dancing girls, a bit of juggling, a few magic tricks. That’s what people come to the theatre for.’

‘If you say so.’

Coulter looked up sharply. ‘You’re still all right though, aren’t you, Max? Still getting the bookings?’

‘I’m in Hastings next week.’ His two weeks’ holiday was almost over and they’d come no closer to catching Ethel’s murderer.

‘On the pier?’

‘Yes.’

‘Top of the bill?’

Max raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s all right then. There’ll always be a future for acts like yours.’

‘Tony Mulholland thought that television was the future.’

‘Don’t like to speak ill of the dead,’ said Coulter, ‘but Tony was an idiot. That act he was doing here. No jokes, no excitement, no
glamour
. That’s what the theatre’s about. Glamour.’

Max looked round the cluttered little room. Coulter’s desk fought for space between towering piles of packing cases and laundry skips. The only window was high on the wall and almost obscured by grime and seagull shit. He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again when he realised that Coulter wasn’t being ironical. Poor sod. He really believed in the glamour of showbusiness.

Coulter reached for a ledger on a shelf behind him. ‘Ruby French,’ he said, suddenly businesslike. ‘Here she is. Age twenty. We don’t have an address for her.’

‘Why the hell not?’

Coulter bristled. ‘She was paid by you, if you remember. As your personal assistant. She wasn’t on the books.’

‘Don’t you have a ration book? Passbook? Anything?’

‘She was meant to give us an address,’ Coulter admitted, ‘but she never did. Lovely girl though. Now she had glamour, if you like.’

‘She’s hardly more than a child,’ said Max. He didn’t like the way Coulter referred to Ruby in the past tense.

‘Not from where I was sitting,’ said Coulter.

*

It was late afternoon when Edgar left Worthing. The Major’s snifter turned into lunch at the club plus two or three for the road.

‘Won’t your wife need you back?’ asked Edgar weakly.

‘Oh no. Our daily woman will make her lunch and Elsie always sleeps in the afternoon.’

Edgar had surreptitiously substituted tomato juice for Bloody Mary, but even so he felt rather dazed as he headed back along the coast road. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling at all, rather it was a dreamy, dislocated state, as if he were off on holiday rather than pursuing a murder investigation. The police-issue Wolsey wasn’t the Bentley, but it was still a pleasure to drive, bowling along with the sea on one side and the solid villas and hotels on the other. He contemplated not going back to Brighton, just
carrying on up to London to question Bill, but he knew he should check in at the station. Maybe Bob or Max had managed to find Ruby.

Bob had left for the evening but a note, written in his clear schoolboy handwriting, explained that he’d had no luck in tracing ‘the lady in question’. He’d had more success with the landlady’s daughter though. On Edgar’s instructions, he’d gone back to question her again and clearly his fresh-faced charm had done the trick. This time the girl recalled that Tony had been visited by a man a few days before his death. This man was described as ‘quite old, at least thirty’. Edgar winced. Who could this ancient visitor have been? Bill? Someone from the theatre? Max, who could easily look thirty? But Max would have mentioned it if he’d been to see Tony. Wouldn’t he?

Edgar put the note in his pocket and set off for the Old Ship. It was still only six o’clock. Surely Max wouldn’t yet have set out to do whatever Max did at night.

He was right. From the lobby, he could see Max at the bar, cigarette and whisky in hand.

‘Hallo, Max.’

‘Evening, Ed. Want a drink?’

‘Just some soda water, thanks.’

‘Some whisky in it?’

‘Oh, all right then.’

Edgar sat down next to his friend. Outside he could see the lights going on along the promenade, the two piers shining like paths to nowhere. It was almost September. Soon the evenings would be getting dark and the killer
was still not found. He took a gulp of his drink and saw Max looking at him sardonically.

‘Have you fallen off the wagon?’

‘I saw the Major today. He forced me to have drinks at the golf club.’

‘I sympathise. How was the old fool?’

‘He admitted that he’d seen Tony. Said Tony had popped in around Christmas-time.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘No. Some rubbish about Tony wanting to wish them a happy Christmas.’

Max grunted. ‘I can’t quite see Tony as Tiny Tim.’

‘No, nor can I. The Major was holding something back, I’m sure of it. I’m just not sure what.’

‘Clearly Tony thought he knew something about the Magic Men. Maybe he was blackmailing him.’

‘About what?’

‘Didn’t the Major say that someone was a spy? Maybe Tony knew who that was? Maybe it was Gormley himself?’

‘I can’t see it. He’s got king and country stamped through him like a stick of Brighton rock.’

‘Classic misdirection,’ said Max. He waved his hand in a magician’s gesture. Suddenly he looked very foreign, and Edgar remembered what the Major had said to Max, the first time they visited him.
If anyone knows, it’s you.

‘Why would he mention it,’ said Edgar, ‘if he was the spy?’

‘Misdirection,’ said Max again. He seemed to be tired of the subject.

‘Any luck with finding Ruby?’ asked Edgar.

Max sighed. ‘No, nothing. They didn’t have an address for her at the theatre. I remembered her saying once that her flat was in a crescent. I’ve been to every bloody crescent in Brighton. Do you know how many there are?’

‘Have you asked your friend, the one she used to work for?’

‘I wrote to him today. But he’s touring, I had to write care of his management. God knows when he’ll get the letter.’

‘Did Ruby have a manager? An agent?’

‘No. I offered to introduce her to an agent, but she said that she wanted to be independent.’

‘She’s that all right.’

‘Yes she is.’ Max stared into his glass. Then he asked, in a tone that Edgar had never heard him use before, ‘She will be all right, won’t she?’

In his turn, Edgar tried to make his own voice authoritative and reassuring. ‘I’m sure she will. After all, she wasn’t in the photograph. It looks as if the killer is only after people in the picture.’

Max didn’t remind him that Ethel hadn’t been in the photograph either. Instead he said, ‘Did you tell the Major? About the photograph?’

Edgar sighed. ‘Yes. I tried to warn him, said he might be in danger and that I’d order police protection and all the rest of it. All he said was, “I’m not afraid. I’m an Englishman.”’

‘Idiot.’

‘I’m going up to London tomorrow to talk to Bill.’

‘Will you tell him that I told you about Tony’s letter?’

‘No. I’m going to wait to see if he tells me first.’

‘Better get him on his own then. He’ll never talk if Jean’s in the room.’

Edgar drained the rest of his whisky. ‘I need to see Jean. After all, she was in the picture too.’

*

It was nearly nine, but still warm when Edgar walked up the hill to his lodgings. He had to stop several times to get his breath back. He wasn’t fighting fit anymore. All that riding around in Bentleys and drinking in hotel lounges had made him soft. His legs ached and his right foot (the one with the missing toe) felt as if it were on fire. He inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs as his army PT instructor had taught him. ‘Breathe it in, lads, breathe it in. Fresh air won’t kill you.’ But this air felt soft and smoggy, as if it were filling his chest with cotton wool. Edgar continued on his way, trying to make his pace more military. He never thought he’d feel nostalgic for PT drill.

He wondered if Diablo would be in the flat. He even thought he might have left altogether, disappearing into the showbusiness half-life that had claimed him in Yarmouth, But, as he entered the front room, there he was, sitting on the sofa in Edgar’s dressing gown, eating potted-meat sandwiches washed down with beer. At least the beer meant that he had been out of the house that day. There were three empty bottles on the floor, one filled with cigarette ends.