At Morning Tea
THE DESK was littered with sketches of women. Among them were three full-length coloured drawings of a woman in a grey suit and wearing a small grey hat with the brim turned up all round. In each picture the face was different. There were several sheets of paper, each having half a dozen feminine faces presented at every angle, some with spectacles, many showing the eyes peering above the spectacles. David Mills had done an excellent job, and Bony was pleased, for in every sketch Mills had depicted the probable age of the possible poisoner.
There were three girls who might recognise in one of these sketches a living woman. They were Mary Isaacs, the cashier at the shop, and the waitress at Favalora’s Cafe. If only one of those girls could say: “That picture is like the woman,” then the entire police personnel could be put to hunt for her.
It was quarter to ten. Bony rang Switch and asked to be put through to Superintendent Pavier’s secretary. Almost at once a strange voice said:
“Policewoman Lodding.”
“Oh! Miss Lodding,” Bony exclaimed, and mentioned his name and rank. “I haven’t been presented to you. You have been away ill, I understand. May I come and talk to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bony hung up, a quirk at his mouth. The voice was coldly efficient, not unlike Pavier’s voice. Recalling Crome’s impolite description of Policewoman Lodding, Bony left his office for her domain.
She was not quite as the sergeant had labelled her, and she stood as Bony approached her desk, flanked on one side by a typewriter and on the other by a card-index cabinet. In height she was above average, Bony estimated five feet eleven inches. Instead of uniform she was wearing a navy-blue pleated skirt and a tailored white blouse. Her hair, as black as Bony’s, was dressed severely, which accentuated the sharp lines of the cheek-bones. The complexion was sallow, entirely unadorned. The mouth was not inviting, and the dark brown eyes held nothing akin to big velvety pansies. A female iceberg-aged forty winters.
“I am Inspector Bonaparte. Happy to meet you, Miss Lodding.”
He smiled, with calculated attempt to melt the ice, and almost succeeded. She could not prevent the flash of interest in her eyes, and in that split second he thought he saw a different woman.
“Anything I can do for you, Inspector?”
“Well, yes, there is. Miss Ball told me that you prepared the morning and afternoon teas. That is so?”
Her voice was pleasing, and Bony waited for it.
“Very few young girls can make tea properly, sir. I generally do it.”
“Well, the situation is this, Miss Lodding. I am going to have a party this morning. Three young ladies from whom I am hoping to receive valuable assistance are calling on me. I want them to be perfectly at ease, to have no feeling of being within the clutches of the law.”
“I could see to it, Inspector.” The dark brows lowered a mere fraction. He thought they were hostile to his suggestion. They were not. “I’ll have Miss Ball take in the tea when required. Having been away, I’ve a great deal of work to catch up on. You understand?”
“Quite. And thank you.”
Policewoman Lodding made to sit down, and Bony, feeling a little chilled, left her. He found Senior Detective Abbot with Sergeant Crome and invited them to his office where he showed them the sketches and explained their purpose.
“I assume there’s an official car available?” he asked Crome.
“ ’Fraidnot, sir. One’s being overhauled, the other’s out.”
The sergeant detected the hardening of the blue eyes.
“Hire a car,” Bony ordered crisply. “Go with it to Goldspink’s shop and fetch Mary Isaacs and June Way, the cashier. Be extremely tactful. I have a great liking for both those girls, and I won’t have them being made nervous.”
“Whatd’you think I am?” grumbled Crome.
“A policeman. You look like a policeman and you speak like one. Wholesome young women are not accustomed to being dragged by a policeman to a police station. I’ve already contacted Mrs Robinov, who will give you her blessing. Now, Abbot, you go and get another car and call at Favalora’s Cafe for Miss Lena Martelli. Favalora will not oppose. Behave nicely. Rely on your personality. Bring those three young women to this office, and ask Miss Lodding to have them given morning tea. I’ll see them individually. You, Crome, can be with me. Abbot can entertain them. Clear?”
Crome blinked, grinned. Abbot, a fair-haired man in his early thirties, chuckled. He was liking it. It was time someone stirred up this ‘jug’. Who was to pay for the hired cars didn’t matter just now.
In his own office, Bony rang Metter’s Grocery Store and asked for Mr Mills.
“Morning, Mills! Inspector Bonaparte speaking. Thank you so much for your sketches. They’re splendid. Just what I wanted. You’d do more?… Good! By the way, d’you think you could obtain leave of absence for a couple of hours this morning?”
Mills said he thought he could, the manager being ‘pretty decent’.
“Then come along as soon as you can. Bring a newspaper with you and wait patiently in the public office till I call for you.”
Having instructed the duty constable to see that Mr Mills was made comfortable, Bony fell again to studying the sketches. With clipping scissors he cut each sketch from the several sheets. There was a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth and a glistening of the deep blue eyes. Trying to find one woman in a city of twenty-eight thousand people, a woman no one could remember clearly, no one could positively describe… He couldn’t even be certain that it was a woman who had dropped cyanide into two cups of tea. It could have been a man disguised as a woman.
An aboriginal tracker was told whom to track. A bloodhound was given a piece of the hunted one’s clothes to smell. To him they had given nothing of the poisoner save a few miserably vague details of age and dress. And then had the effrontery to expect results in five minutes. Hurry up, Bony, and catch this poisoner before he cyanides another elderly bachelor. We’ll catch hell if you don’t. And if he failed? Only scorn, only contempt for his mid-race. No longer any recognition of his achievements. For him one failure wiped out all successes: for the full-white, one success wiped out all failures.
“The girls are here, sir,” announced Sergeant Crome.
“I’ll see Mary Isaacs. Have Miss Ball bring her a cup of tea in here.”
Crome vanished. Bony could hear feminine voices next door. There was theclop-clop of high-heeled shoes outside his door, and then he was smiling at Mary Isaacs and welcoming her. He was pleased that she smiled at him and then at Crome, who brought in a chair for himself.
“Your boy friend has done a great job for me, Miss Isaacs, and I have to thank you for persuading him to do it. All this is his work.”
“He was a bit difficult at first, Inspector,” Mary said, and flushed.
“But you managed him, eh? You women!” chuckled Crome, and Bony’s estimation of the sergeant rose two pegs.
“Oh yes. You see, we hope to be married some day. And David’s tremendously keen to get on.”
“Well, he’s gone quite a distance already,” Bony told her. “Now I want you to look at all these pictures and just see if any one of them reminds you of someone, and that customer in particular. Please don’t hurry. I can understand why you are doubtful that if the customer should enter the shop again you wouldn’t recognise her, so don’t force your memory. Look at this coloured picture. It’s a credit to your David.”
The girl accepted the proffered water-colour and instantly exclaimed:
“This looks like Mrs Jonas! Doesn’t it, Mr Crome?”
“Yes, something like her,” Crome admitted, adding to Bony: “Mrs Jonas is one of my neighbours.”
“But it wasn’t Mrs Jonas who was the customer. I should have known if it was,” declared Mary.
“Well, this one?”
The girl studied the second picture and then put it down, saying it didn’t remind her of anyone. The sketches which followed were also discarded, and then one of a woman’s face in profile puzzled her.
“Something like my aunt Lily,” she said. “Not much, though.”
Another sketch was thought to resemble Mrs Robinov before she dressed for the shop. Crome sat beside her, keenly interested and yet saying nothing, giving her mind every chance to function.
Miss Ball came in with the morning tea, and Bony hastily cut off the work. They chatted over their cups, Mary telling them more of David’s plans, of her hopes, and her work at the shop. Then the empty cups were pushed aside, and she was brought back to the task.
Again she looked over all the sketches, and finally she placed the three full-length water colours side by side and gazed at them beneath a puzzled frown. Crome was silent. Bony barely moved. Memory! Was it being stirred to activity?
Mary Isaacs laughed, and, although disappointed, Bony delighted in the music of it.
“Of course! Now I see. Just what a man would do, isn’t it? Draw pictures of a woman in outdoor clothes and not give her a handbag. You wait till I see him.”
Bony almost spoke. He watched the vivid face drained of merriment, saw the dark eyes lose expression, and gain it. Her voice was so low that he barely caught the words.
“The handbag! I remember that woman’s handbag. I remember noticing it when Mr Goldspink was talking to her. Something red about it, and I hate red.”
Bony waited. The girl stared at him, and then at Crome. Crome waited. After what appeared a long interval Bony asked:
“Can you now remember the customer’s face, her clothes?”
Mary shook her head and then exclaimed:
“But I remember the handbag. I can see it now. It was a faded navy-blue suede bag with red leather drawstrings. It was squarish in shape. I’ve never seen one since that time Mother gave me a bag like it to play with when I was very little.”
“What are drawstrings?” asked Bony.
“You pull them out to open the mouth of the bag, and you pull them close to shut it, and the strings become loops to carry the bag with. Oh, I remember that bag. I’d know it again. I’m sure I would.”
“Well done, Miss Isaacs,” Bony said warmly. “You couldn’t tell me anything about the customer’s hands, I suppose.”
“No. You see, she was wearing gloves.”
“What type of gloves-colour?”
“They were like her bag, old-fashioned, navy-blue cotton,” replied Mary, and Bony added to his notes. Without looking up he said:
“Crome, fetch Mr Mills. He’s waiting in the public office.”
They sat, Bony and Mary, and each face bore a tiny smile of triumph. Youth looked at the man who seemed ageless, on whose dark countenance was not one line and in whose dark eyes gleamed dauntless courage that began before him and would live after him. And matured man looked upon youth with warm approval of human beauty and the spirit which bore it aloft like a banner.
Crome and Mills came, and Bony made the younger man sit at his place at the desk.
“I’ve been extremely careless, Mr Mills,” he said. “When giving you the particulars of the woman I omitted to tell you she had a handbag.”
“Course she’d have a handbag, David,” interposed Mary. “You should know. You’ve often enough asked why I carry one.”
“I ought to have known,” Mills was contrite. “I could paint one in easily enough.”
“So I thought. The point is, when. Mary says the bag must be navy-blue, faded, with red drawstrings.”
“Do it in a few minutes when I get home to my brushes and colours, Inspector,” asserted the young man.
“You haven’t dismissed that taxi, Crome?”
“No, sir. You told me to keep it.”
“You go with Miss Isaacs and Mr Mills in that taxi, and Mr Mills at his home will paint in the handbag.” Bony profusely thanked the artist, saying:
“Miss Mary will give you instructions about the bag. She’ll tell you about the gloves I want you to put on the hands. I’d like both of you to promise not to say anything of this to anyone.”
They were eager in their assurance, and Mills said they should be back before noon. Crome asked:
“Will you see the other girls, sir?”
“No, not till this afternoon. Have Abbot escort them back. Bring them again at three o’clock. And don’t look at me as though you think me clever. I forgot about that handbag. And the gloves.”
Bony sat again at his desk. He might have progressed farther than he was thinking. He might be given time enough to find that woman and discover cyanide in the blue handbag. The menace was real. It hung over Pavier like a ton weight suspended by a fine wire from the ceiling of his office. It kept Crome awake at night and ringed the man’s eyes with red. It haunted Abbot despite his youth and small degree of responsibility. Cafe proprietors were worried by lack of custom, for men and women hadn’t forgotten.
He slipped the residue of Mills’s sketches into a drawer and drew to himself a writing-block. For a moment his pen hovered above the paper, then he wrote:
“To Sergeant Crome. Instruct all men in all branches to look for an elderly woman. Tall. Walks with slight stoop. Carries navy-blue handbag with red drawstrings. Might be wearing grey suit, grey hat, and shabby navy cotton gloves.” The pen stopped, and Bony scowled. Now he was up against police procedure, that hateful thing which often balked him and which often he had spurned and triumphed over. If the bag was spotted, there might not be cyanide in it-then the arrest of the owner would create an uproar. He wrote, therefore: “Woman must be permitted to return to her place of abode that she be identified-unless identification obtained earlier. Important: woman’s suspicions must not be aroused!”
Signing his name, he left the memo on Crome’s desk and went out to walk up and down Argent Street. He could think clearer when in motion. How often had Time been his cherished ally? Time wasn’t his ally now. Time was a Thing disguised as a human being who carried between thumb and forefinger a pinch of cyanide.