Jimmy’s Mecca
A FULL quarter mile from the two-storeyed house, Wally Sloan was asked to pull into the cavern beneath the branches of a pepper tree and put out the lights of the car. The nearest street lamp was a hundred-odd yards away.
“If you are investigated by a patrolling policeman, Sloan, you must invent your own explanation,” Bony said. “It’s barely half past nine, and you may have to wait many hours.”
“That’ll be OK with me, sir. I’ll wait till the band plays.”
“Now, Jimmy, you and I will go to it. You others know what to do. Much depends on you. Be wary, although it’s unlikely that Tuttaway will be in the garden before you, and don’t interfere with him unless sure he is leaving the place.”
Crome crossed his fingers and, with Abbot and Luke, prepared to wait thirty minutes. Jimmy and Bony slid out into the void, and the car door was silently closed. Three minutes later they entered the lane passing the rear of Mrs Dalton’s house.
“I’m not as familiar with the grounds as you are,” Bony admitted. “But I have a general picture of the place. You take the left side of the house and I’ll take the right, and we’ll meet at the pine tree at the front. Clear?”
“Okay. What do we look for?”
“Anything unusual. First to survey. Second to plan. Third to operate.”
“Who’s the burglar, me or you?”
Bony chuckled and patted Jimmy’s arm.
“If ever we go into partnership, Jimmy, there’s no policeman living who would catch us.”
Jimmy was first to arrive at the trysting tree, and there he stood with his back to the trunk as he had done the previous night. It was so dark the ground was invisible and the house without form. Two illumined windows on the upper floor were like golden plaques. Waiting for Bony, he watched for him and flinched when a hand gripped his arm. The voice was familiar, like a voice in the memory.
“My side of the house is in darkness. There’s a tool shed and a kind of summerhouse. No one in them.”
“There’s a light in the kitchen on my side, and the blind’s down,” Jimmy reported. “I poked into the garage and made sure no one’s twiddling his thumbs in there. While I been here a woman passed across the blind in the right top room. Where we go from here?”
“You know the windows.”
“The window…”
Jimmy’s voice trailed into the dull ringing of the telephone within the house. Crome had said the telephone was in the hall. Bony waited. The bell continued. Light appeared at the transom above the front door. The ringing bell stopped. Neither man spoke until the hall light went out. Jimmy waited a half minute before saying:
“The window next the kitchen is easy. There’s another easy one on the other side of the house. That’s the one for me.”
“Which one round the corner?”
“Second.”
“I’ll make for it. Give me a minute before you follow-in case anyone should follow me.”
Jimmy counted the seconds before leaving the tree and proceeded by moving each foot low to the ground to feel for any obstruction. The clouds had switched off the stars, and it was a night such as Jimmy loved. Now, however, he wanted just a little starlight that he might be warned of the proximity of the man who had broken one glass knife and could have another he’d like to break. The distant street light beyond the front fence and the metallic glow of the mines in the eastern sector of the invisible sky provided no consolation. He was glad to reach the house corner and hug the wall till he came to the yielding obstruction which was Bonaparte.
“What’s in here?” breathed Bony.
“Lodding’s bedroom.”
“Howd’you know?”
“Saw it before she pulled down the blind. More’n once, too. The room to the front is a lounge. Beyond that is the hall, andt’other side of the hall is another lounge-where Crome and Pavier quizzed the old girl, you’ll remember.”
“All set, Jimmy. We’ll go in.”
To Bony it appeared that thescrewsman became part of the window. He heard no sound. Jimmy spoke:
“She’sjake.”
Bony felt the window. It was raised. Beyond he could feel a blind and lace curtains. He slid over the sill, stood within the room, waited. Jimmy entered. An alert dog might have heard them, but Bony doubted it.
Jimmy rearranged the disturbed blind, intending to leave the window open-a way of retreat-but Bony pointed out that because Tuttaway probably would examine all windows he must not discover that one open.
Jimmy had to admit admiration, and satisfaction, too, for and with his partner this night. Bony stood with him in the ink-black room, feeling the spirit of the place and what lay beyond it, sniffing the scents which can tell so much from so little.
The air was stale, to be felt rather than smelled. There were two distinct odours. Naphthalene and the perfume of cosmetics, and there was something neither could determine, a musty smell of decay beaten back by the perfume and the naphthalene. Silence, a slumbering silence, was undisturbed by the noise of the far-away mines, which could not penetrate these old stone walls and expertly fitted window. There was no light until a dull opaque disc marked Bony’s heavily shrouded electric torch.
The layers of the handkerchief were reduced until the disc emitted a short diaphanous beam without form. The beam moved. An easy-chair crouched like a petrified troglodyte to one side of a massive steel fireplace, blackly gleaming. A small table bearing an electric lamp and two books swung into being, and then the bed beside which stood the table, a three-quarter-size bed, made ready, as though for the woman who would never return.
The dressing-table appointments were expensive and in excellent taste. The chest of drawers and the wardrobe were old-fashioned and of rosewood. The clothing within appeared to be beyond the reach of policewomen and the wives of police inspectors. There was nothing of value to Bony in this room save the pictures on the walls. There were five, and all were photographic enlargements of a woman in period costumes.
“Passage outside this room?” Bony asked Jimmy, who had accompanied him on the tour of inspection.
“Don’t know. To the front is the lounge room the Lodding woman used. To the back two more rooms. Blinds are always down. Must be empty.”
“We’ll examine the lounge.”
Jimmy’s slim hand closed about the door handle, slowly turned it. The door was locked. Steel glinted in the other hand, and steel teeth entered the lock. The door was opened without sound. The passage waited, darkly.
Jimmy closed the door after them but did not re-lock it. Bony glided to the door of the lounge. It was locked. Again Jimmy turned a key and opened a door.
Their feet sank into thick pile. The torch revealed the gleaming outlines of polished wood and the pattern of upholstery, the shapes of small tables, a writing-desk. Glass protecting a large bookcase behaved like mirrors. Jimmy crossed to the windows to make sure they were thoroughly masked.
Yet another massive steel fireplace, the grate concealed by a low screen of floral design. Above the mantel stood the youthful Queen Victoria. She was like someone Bony knew but could not recall. The picture was in oils and unsigned. Against another wall stood either Empress Josephine or Madame de Pompadour, also in oils, and the face was like that of Queen Victoria, and yet different. The resemblance was in the eyes. Bony again looked upon Queen Victoria. Itwas the eyes. And at some time he had looked into those eyes. He was sure of it.
The eyes, he felt, watched him as he moved the torch beam along the books in the glass case, as he examined the writing-desk, as he explored the contents of the camphorwood chest set between the two windows.
Again he stood before Queen Victoria. There was something about her mouth too. Ah! The mouth resembled that of Mills’s drawing of the woman seen by Mrs Wallace. He leaned against the mantel, lowered the beam of his light, strove to remember, and the beam fell behind the fire screen to reveal the grate filled with coloured paper ribbons.
Among the coloured paper something gleamed like gold.
Bony removed the screen and the paper, disclosing a large tin. Jimmy held the torch, and when Bony lifted out the tin he saw it was fitted with a press-on lid. There was no label. The metal was quite clean.
“Open it, Jimmy.”
Jimmy removed the lid with his window-opener. The torch beam revealed its contents to be dark in colour, part powder, part lumpy.
“Cocoa?” guessed Jimmy.
“No, cyanide. Put the lid on.”
“ ’Struth! ’Noughto kill an army.”
The tin was put back among the paper and the fire screen replaced.
“We’ll go through the other lounge on this floor,” Bony said, and they passed into the passage which immediately gave entry to the hall.
Beyond the hall a second passage reflected light from the kitchen. It was sufficiently strong to reveal the carpet, the hat-stand, a Jacobean chest, a wall mirror, a small table bearing a bowl of artificial flowers, and the front and lounge doors.
Silently they crossed the hall, observing that where the staircase was flush with the wall it was blocked by a polished wood door. Four steps led to the door: noted by men who missed nothing. They stopped at the passage leading to the lighted kitchen. No sound came from the kitchen. No sound came from above. Bony estimated that from the hall to the kitchen was fifty feet, with one door to the right and two to the left.
Where was Mrs Dalton?
“Stay here,” he told Jimmy. “I’ll take a chance to see what is in the kitchen.”
Jimmy waited, seeing Bony steal along the passage to pause outside the kitchen door, edge round the frame, and enter.
The kitchen was roomy. The wood range was polished like ebony. The table was scrubbed white. The dresser was decorated with green-spotted china. The usual cupboard beside the range, filled with pots and pans. A tall cupboard contained brooms. The dresser was fitted with two drawers above a cupboard. One contained cutlery, table mats. The second drawer contained a meat saw, two butcher’s knives, and a butcher’s steel. The cupboard held two new buckets and six chaff bags. In another cupboard was a used bucket, floor polish, and mop heads.
The meat saw was brand new. The butcher’s knives were new. The steel had never been used. They were set out as though displayed in the window of a hardware store.
There was a scullery off the kitchen, but Bony could delay no longer and drifted back to Jimmy.
Together they ‘went through’ the second lounge, furnished formally and without the intimate objects found in that other lounge once occupied by Muriel Lodding. Leaving this room, they re-crossed the hall and sat in the mouth of the passage leading to the bedrooms.
“Just as well be comfortable while we wait,” Bony said. “Wish I could smoke. What do you think they would want with a butcher’s meat saw and knives?”
“Well, a butcher wants ’emto cut up carcasses.” Jimmy was silent for many seconds before gripping Bony’s arm and asking:
“Where was those things?”
“In a drawer of the dresser, laid out as though ready for employment. Never been used yet. Clean-and sharp.”
Silence again. Then Jimmy:
“Can’t get that stink.”
“I should know it.”
Again silence-a long silence. A board creaked and both men were on their feet. Another board creaked. Someone was coming down the stairs. The hall light blinded them, and instinctively they withdrew farther into the passage.
They heard the stair door open, and then they beheld Queen Elizabeth stepping down the hall-as though from a throne to forgive again her Essex. The years had ravaged her face, but the royal dignity was superb. She turned to the kitchen passage. In each hand she held a white Persian cat. She held them by their back legs. They made no protest. They were dead.
She could have taken the cats no farther than the kitchen, for almost at once she returned and mounted the steps to the door, closed it. The lights went out. A board creaked. Then another.
“Ninth and thirteenth treads, remember,” Bony murmured.
“Them cats dead-or me?” Jimmy asked.
Minutes passed-perhaps five-when again the first of two stair treads creaked.
“Hell! She’s coming down again,” Jimmy hissed.
The hall light flashed up. They heard the stair door open. They saw Marie Antoinette step down to the hall. She was magnificent. She carried in each hand a Persian cat, held them by the back legs. They were dead.
Marie Antoinette disappearedkitchenwards, reappeared without the cats, went upstairs. The hall was blacked out. Jimmy moaned.
“How many more?” he asked fiercely.
“Queens or cats?” countered Bony.
Prolonged silence, until Jimmy plaintively asked:
“Whatis this joint?” No answer from Bony. “I’ll tell you, then. Lunatics’ Retreat, that’s what it is. Do we have to stay?”
Further silence, this time terminated by knuckles upon wood. There was someone at the front door.