The bar was rather a contrast to the rest of the establishment. It had got missed out when the wielder of plastic and chromium-plate had gone his merry way. It was quite a large place and its dim, parchmented lighting made it seem larger still. It was also irregular in shape. There were corners of it that tucked away, and other corners which had been given an inglenook treatment. Opposite the swing-doors ran the bar counter, its supporting shelves well fledged with opulent looking bottles, and to the left of the counter was a door marked ‘Private’. Further left again was a small exit door, leading probably into a side-street.
Gently eased himself through the swing-doors and stood still for a moment, adjusting his vision to the drop in candle-power. It seemed a fairly well-patronized place. Most of the tables and nookeries were occupied, and there were several customers perched on high stools at the counter. Also it seemed quiet in there, but that may have been due only to comparison with the racket going on outside the swing-doors.
He strolled across to the counter, where the blonde was taking charge of a noggin of straight gin.
‘Chalk id up, Artie,’ she crooned, ‘and no chiselling, mind.’
‘Who shall I chalk it up to?’ asked the ferrety bartender with a wink.
‘Don’d be cheeky, Artie — Louey don’d like it!’
She slunk away from the counter, and her eye fell on Gently for the first time. She recognized him, he knew — there was just that much of alert interrogation in her glance — and for a moment he thought she would say something. Then she shrugged a scantily-clad shoulder, gave her head a little toss, and swung away across the room to one of the nookeries.
Gently seated himself on a high stool and ordered an orange-squash.
‘Who is she, Artie?’ he asked the ferrety bartender.
Artie gave the squash-bottle a practised twist. ‘Don’t ask me — ask her,’ he retorted sullenly.
‘But I am asking you. What’s her name?’
‘It’s Frenchy — and I’m not her boyfriend.’
‘Her other name, Artie.’
‘I’m telling you I don’t know!’
‘She mentioned a Louey…’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘She spoke as though you knew him…’
‘Well, I don’t. He must be someone new.’
Gently drank a mouthful of orange-squash and appeared to be losing himself in contemplation of the fruit-scum collected at the mouth of his glass.
‘That’ll be a bob,’ said Artie, ‘if you don’t mind.’
Gently drank some more and was still interested in the fruit-scum. ‘You know, it’s amazing,’ he said casually, ‘the number of people round here who know me without me knowing them… you seem to be the fifth, Artie, by my computation.’
The ferrety one stiffened. ‘Don’t know what you mean by that…’
‘Never mind, never mind,’ said Gently soothingly, ‘we’ll go into it some other time, shall we?’ He slid off his stool and picked up the part-drunk glass of orange-squash.
‘Hey!’ clamoured Artie, ‘that’s still got to be paid for…!’
‘Chalk it up,’ returned Gently, ‘and no chiselling, mind. Louey don’d like it…’
He ambled over to a small table by the wall and pulled up a seat with better padding than the high stool. There were other eyes on him besides Artie’s; several customers at the counter had heard the conversation, and now turned to watch the bulky figure cramming itself into its chair. Not only at the counter either… out of the corner of his eye Gently could see Frenchy in her nookery, and two other figures near her. They were all giving him their attention…
‘’Ere!’ whispered a sporty-looking individual to Artie, ‘is that geezer a busy?’
‘Yard,’ clipped Artie from the corner of his mouth.
The sporty-looking type favoured Gently with a bloodshot leer. ‘Nice bleedin’ company we get here these days…’
Gently quaffed on imperturbably. He might have been entirely alone in the bar, so oblivious did he seem. He took out his pipe and emptied it with care into the ashtray; then he took out his tobacco and stuffed the bowl with equal care.
‘’E’s set in for the night,’ said the sporty-looking individual, ‘blimey, you’ll have to look sharp with them shutters at closing-time …’
‘Why don’t you offer him a light?’ quipped his neighbour.
‘What, me — and him a busy? Give us another nip, Artie… there’s a smell round here I don’t like…’
Gently, however, lit his own pipe, and having lit it he entertained his audience with a scintillating display of smoke-rings. He could blow them single, double and treble, with combinations and variations. He had infinite patience, too. If one of his airy designs went wrong he had all the time in the world to try it out again…
The private door beside the bar opened and a man in seedy evening-dress appeared. He was a heavily built type of about forty with dark hair, a parrot-shaped face, and little pale eyes set very close together, and he smoked a cigarette in a gold-plated holder about as long as his arm. Gently surveyed him with mild interest through a pyramid of smoke. Faces of that shape must at all times be rarities, he thought.
‘Oi — Peachey!’ yipped the sporty-looking individual, and made a cautionary face while he thumbed over his shoulder in Gently’s direction. Artie also hastened to breathe a word in the newcomer’s ear. The man’s two pale eyes reached Gently, paused and strayed uneasily away again. Gently’s own slipped round to Frenchy. She was sitting up straight and shaking her peroxide head.
‘Louey wants a fresh bottle,’ said the newcomer hoarsely, ‘gimme a white-label.’
Artie produced one from under the counter and handed it to him. He dived clumsily back through the door. Artie returned to his business of serving drinks without a further glance at Gently; there was an expression of satisfied malice on his face…
‘You loog lonely for a big man,’ said a voice at Gently’s elbow, and he turned his head to see that Frenchy had slunk over to his table. She was smiling, at least with her mouth. Higher up it didn’t show so much — by the time one got to her rather pretty warm-brown eyes it had gone completely. But she was smiling with her mouth.
Gently smiled too, somewhere between the South Lightship and Scurby Sands.
‘I’m not lonely,’ he said, ‘there’s too many people around who know me.’
Frenchy laughed, a throaty little gurgle. ‘Thad’s because the big man is famous… he geds his picture in the paper.’
‘You think that makes people notice? Such a bad picture?’
‘But of course… nobody talks about anything else except whad the police are doing.’
She pulled up another chair and sat down, not opposite Gently but to the side, where the table didn’t hide anything. She slid forward and crossed her legs. They weren’t terribly attractive, he noticed. The skin was a trifle coarse and the contours inclined to be knobbly — they were designed for strength rather than quality. But she managed them well, they were crossed with great competence. And the hobble skirt contrived to lose itself somewhere above the knee.
‘Id musd be exciding,’ she crooned, ‘hunding down a murderer…’
Gently breathed an unambitious little smoke-ring.
‘And difficuld too… especially one like this.’
Gently breathed two more, one exactly inside the other.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘where does one begin to loog if one doesn’d know his name…?’
‘What’s your name?’ inquired Gently suddenly; ‘all they call you round here is Frenchy.’
The brown eyes opened wide and the smile tailed off: but it was back again in a moment, and wider than ever.
‘Surely you don’d suspecd me, Inspecdor…’
‘I’m just asking your name.’
‘Bud why should you wand to know thad…?’
‘I’m curious, like all policemen.’
Frenchy seemed to consider the matter between half-closed lids. Gently stared at the table and smoked a few more puffs.
‘If you wand to ask questions…’ she began.
Gently favoured her with a glance.
‘There are bedder places than this to ask them…’
She leaned forward over the table and balanced her chin in the palm of her hand. In effect the green silk blouse became an open peep-show.
‘Afder all, it’s your dudy,’ she melted, ‘and you know when girls dalk the besd…’
Gently sighed and felt in his pocket for a match. ‘You’re not local,’ he said, ‘you’ve had West End training… who brought you down here?’
For a moment he thought her scarlet nails were going to leap at his face. They angled for a strike, and the brown eyes burned with the merciless ferocity of a cat’s. Then the fingers relaxed and the eyes narrowed.
‘You filthy b- cop!’ she hissed, all accent spent, ‘I wouldn’t let you touch me if you were the last bloody screw on God’s earth, and that’s the stinking truth!’
Gently shrugged and struck himself a fresh light. ‘Where do you live?’ he asked.
‘Bloody well find out!’
‘Tut, tut, my dear… it would save unnecessary police-work if you told me.’
‘Well I’m not going to…!’
Gently held up a restraining hand. ‘It doesn’t really matter… now about our friend with the beard.’
She stopped in mid-flow, though whether on account of his casual remark or not Gently wasn’t able to decide.
‘Where did you meet him — here or in London?’
‘Who?’ she demanded sullenly.
‘The deceased — the man who was stabbed.’
‘Me!’ she burst out, ‘what have I got to do with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ murmured Gently, ‘I thought perhaps that was what you came across to tell me…’
Frenchy riposted with a stream of adjectives that fairly blistered the woodwork.
‘Still, you might like to tell me about your movements on Tuesday night…’ added Gently thoughtfully.
There was a pause, pregnant but not silent — silence was a strictly comparative term when only a pair of swing-doors separated them from the uproar without — and Gently occupied it usefully by prodding around in his pipe, which wasn’t on its best behaviour. Over at the counter, he noticed, they were straining their ears to catch a word of what was taking place. And in Frenchy’s nook two figures in the shadows leaned intently in his direction…
‘You can’t drag me into this, and you bloody well know it!’ seethed Frenchy, with the aid of two other words. ‘I never knew him — I didn’t do nothing — I don’t know nothing!’
Gently tapped his refractory pipe in the ashtray and drew on it tentatively.
‘It’s true!’ she spat, ‘why do you pick on me — who’s been lying about me?’
‘Who might lie about you?’ inquired Gently absently.
‘How should I know? — anyone! A girl’s got enemies. And I’ve got a right to know, haven’t I? If someone’s been making accusations-!’
‘Nobody has accused anybody… yet.’
‘Then what’s it all about?’
Gently shrugged and forked about in his pipe again. ‘If you’re so far in the clear you shouldn’t be afraid to tell me what you were doing on Tuesday night…’
‘It’s got nothing to do with it — I can’t tell you plainer than that, can I?’
‘Of course, if it’s something you’d rather not officially acknowledge…’
Again the scarlet nails flexed and a flicker went over the brown eyes. But once more Frenchy controlled herself.
‘I haven’t got to tell you, flattie… you’ve got nothing on me!’
Gently nodded and turned out the fragments from his pipe. ‘Between nine, say… and midnight…’
‘All right, you bleeding copper!’ Frenchy jumped to her feet and raised her voice to a scream. ‘So he wants to know… he wants to know what I was doing on Tuesday night when someone was doing-in the bloke they found on the beach… I’m a naughty girl, and of course he picks on me!’
‘That’s right!’ bawled the sporty-looking individual, sliding off his stool, ‘you tell him, Frenchy, you tell him where to get off!’
‘He doesn’t know anything… he’s just picking on me… maybe he’s after something else too, the dirty so-and-so!’
‘He wouldn’t be the first, either!’
‘And now he’s looking for a chance to run me in… that’s what it is…’
‘Shame!’ welled up from all over the bar.
‘He comes from tarn just to pinch our Frenchy!’ yapped the sporty-looking individual.
‘They’re a dirty lot… there isn’t a man I’d call one amongst them
… they’re sent down here to find a murderer and all they can do is make trouble for girls like me.’
‘It’s all they’re good for, chasing-up women!’
Gently looked up mildly from the refilling of his pipe. ‘We don’t seem to be getting very far with what you were doing on Tuesday night
…’ he murmured.
Frenchy rocked on her heels, fuming at him. ‘I’ll tell you!’ she screamed. ‘I’ll tell everybody, and they can bear me out. I was right here, that’s where I was. I didn’t shift an inch from this bar, and God help me!’
‘It’s the truth!’ barked the sporty-looking individual, coming up, ‘we saw her here, didn’t we, boys?’
There was a unanimous chorus of assent.
‘And after half past ten?’ proceeded Gently.
‘I was outside playing with the machines.’
‘And after that?’
‘Christ, can’t a girl have any private life these days?’
‘What was his name?’ asked Gently amid laughter and jeering.
‘Jeff!’ shouted Frenchy, ‘come and shake hands with a chief inspector.’
Gently glanced sharply at Frenchy’s nook, where one of the two shadowy figures was getting reluctantly to his feet. He was a tall, well-made youth of sixteen or seventeen, not unhandsome of feature but with a weak, wide, thin-lipped mouth. He wore a Teddy boy ensemble of all one colour — plum red. It began with his bow tie and collar, descended through a straight-cut narrow-sleeved jacket and reached the ground via drain-pipe trousers and spats — a red of the ripest and fruitiest.
Gently eyed this vision curiously. It hovered uncertainly at some little distance.
‘It was him?’ inquired Gently, a shade of incredulity in his tone.
‘Of course it was bloody well him… they all have to make a start, don’t they?’
Gently beckoned to Jeff. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t indictable…’
The Teddy boy came forward, flushing.
‘Can you confirm what this woman says about Tuesday night?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Would you care to describe it… I mean, the relevant parts?’
‘There isn’t anything to describe!’ scowled Frenchy, ‘he met me in the bar, that’s all.’
Gently glanced at Jeff interrogatively.
‘That’s right… in the bar,’ he said.
‘And then?’
‘And then we went to her… place.’
‘Where is that?’
‘It’s a flat in Dulford Street.’
‘And you spent the night?’
‘I… actually… you see…’
‘Of course he didn’t!’ Frenchy broke in, ‘did you think I wanted his old man on my barrow? I turned him out at half past twelve… he’d done enough by then, anyway!’
There was a roar of laughter.
‘And who is his old man?’ inquired Gently smoothly.
‘He’s Wylie of Wylie-Marine.’
‘You mean that big factory on the quays near the station…?’
‘That’s right, copper,’ Frenchy sneered, ‘you’re good, aren’t you?’
Gently drew a few slow puffs from his newly-filled pipe. Most of the occupants of the bar seemed to have drawn closer to a centre of such absorbing interest. But the second figure in Frenchy’s nook wasn’t joining in the general enthusiasm. On the contrary, he had shrunk back almost out of sight.
‘And Bonce?’ inquired Gently, inclining his head towards the nook.
‘Bonce?’ queried the Teddy boy. He had stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and seemed to be screwing himself up to an air of toughness.
‘If you’re Jeff, I take it that your shy friend is Bonce. What was he doing while you were getting off with Frenchy here?’
‘Bonce!’ shouted Frenchy, ‘stop hiding yourself… the big noise is on to you too.’
All eyes turned towards the nook, where there was an uneasy stirring. Then there ventured forth a second version of the plum ensemble, shorter, clumsier and even more youthful looking than its predecessor. Bonce was no beauty. He had carroty hair, round cheeks, a snub nose and an inherent awkwardness. But he was sartorially correct. His outfit matched Jeff’s down to the tie of the shoes.
‘And what’s your name when you’re at home?’ queried Gently.
Bonce licked his lips and stared agonizedly. ‘B-Baines, sir,’ he brought out, ‘Robert B-Baines.’ He spoke with a Starmouth accent.
‘And where do you live?’
‘S-seventeen Kittle Witches Grid, sir.’
‘Well, Baines, you’ve heard the account of Tuesday night your friend has given… I take it that you can endorse it?’
‘Oh yes, sir!’
‘You came here with him, in fact?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘And you were with him until he departed with this woman here?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘All the time?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘Even when he was ingratiating himself with her?’
Bonce stared at him round-eyed.
‘When he was getting off, I mean?’
‘Oh yes, sir!.. I mean… no, sir…’
‘Well… which is it to be?’
‘I… I…!’ stuttered Bonce, completely floored.
‘And when they had gone,’ pursued Gently affably, ‘what did you do then… when you were left on your own?’
‘Don’t you tell him!’ screamed Frenchy before Bonce could flounder into a reply, ‘it’s all a have — you don’t need to tell him nothing.’
‘No, we haven’t done anything,’ blurted Jeff, trying to swagger, ‘you keep quiet, Bonce.’
‘He just comes in here trying to stir something up, trying to get people to say something he can pinch them for… that’s how they work, the bleedin’ Yard! I-!’
‘ CLOSING TIME!!!’ roared a stentorian voice, a voice which drowned Frenchy, drowned the jazz and rattled empty glasses on some of the tables.
Every head spun round as though jerked by a string. It was as though a bomb had exploded over by the counter.
‘ FINISH YOUR DRINKS!!!’ continued the voice, ‘ IT ’ S HALF PAST TEN!!!’
Gently peered round Frenchy’s shapely form, which was hiding the owner of the voice from his view.
‘ DRINK UP, LADIES AND GENTS. YOU WOULDN’T WANT ME TO LOSE MY LICENCE!!!’
He was an enormous man, not so much in height, though he topped six feet, but enormous in sheer, Herculean bulk. His head was bald and seemed to rise to a point. His features were coarse and heavy, but powerful. There was a fleck in the pupil of one of his grey eyes and he had, clearly visible because of the sag of his lip, a gold tooth of proportions to match the rest of his person.
‘ BREAK IT UP NOW, LADIES AND GENTS. YOU CAN STILL AMUSE YOURSELVES WITH THE MACHINES!!!’
About fifty, thought Gently, and still in good fighting trim.
The owner of the voice moved ponderously across to Gently’s table. He glowered at Frenchy and nodded towards the door.
‘Get out!’ he rumbled, ‘you know I don’t encourage your sort.’
Frenchy glared back defiantly for a moment, but she waggled off all the same; her parting shot was at Gently, not the gold-toothed one. It was unprintable.
‘ GET OUT!!!’ detonated the big man, and Frenchy got.
His next target was Bonce.
‘How old do you say you are?’
‘Eight-eighteen!’ burbled Bonce.
‘When was that — next Easter? Don’t let me find you in this bar again.’
‘B-But Louey, you never said anything before!’
‘ GET OUT!!!’
Bonce faded like a cock-crowed ghost.
Louey sighed draughtily. He picked up Gently’s empty orange-squash glass and gave it his sad attention. Gently looked also. The hands that held the glass were like two hairy grappling-irons. On one of his crooked fingers Louey wore an out-size solitaire, on another a plain gold ring engraved with a bisected circle.
‘’Night, Louey,’ leered the sporty-looking individual, passing by on his way to the door, ‘watch your company — it ain’t so healthy as it might be!’
Louey rumbled ominously and set down the glass again. ‘Can’t help it,’ he said, turning apologetically to Gently, ‘this time of the year you’re bound to get some riff-raff… the best you can do is to keep kicking it out.’
Gently nodded sympathetically. He found Louey’s gold tooth fascinating.
‘There’s girls like Frenchy… we know some of them, but there’s fresh ones come up every summer. If they don’t solicit you can’t make too much of a fuss.’
Louey permitted himself a searching glance at Gently.
‘And those kids… I suppose it’s asking for trouble to have an arcade next to a bar.’
Gently rose to his feet and felt in his pocket for a coin.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘I haven’t paid for my drink.’
‘Oh, never mind that!’ Louey laughed comfortably, easily, as though he felt Gently to be an equal. ‘Only too pleased to see you in here, Inspector… sorry if anything happened that shouldn’t have done
…’
‘You needn’t worry about that — it was nothing to do with you.’ Gently paused and looked into Louey’s deep-set eyes. They wore a deferential smile, but because of the fleck breaking into one of them the smile had a strangely hard quality, almost a sinisterness.
‘There’s only one thing bothers me,’ mused Gently, picking up his shilling and re-pocketing it.
‘And what is that, Inspector?’
‘The way everyone around here knows me on sight… you, Mr Hooker, amongst the others.’
There was a rowdiness now along the promenade. There were drunks and near-drunks, quarrelsome and loutish roisterers. Alcohol had been added to the heady mixture of humanity about its annual purgation… the beer had begun to sing, and the whisky to argue. And they were largely youngsters, Gently noticed, it was the teenagers who did the shouting and singing. Banded together in threes and fours they swaggered about the Front, stupid with Dutch courage: lords of a pint, princelings of Red Biddy. Did nobody spank their children these days?
A burly figure shouldered across the carriage-way and joined him on the pavement.
‘Have any luck, Dutt?’ inquired Gently with interest.
‘Yes, sir, I did, as a matter of fact.’
‘Well, go on… don’t spoil a good story.’
‘I stood where you told me, sir, and kept an eye on the bookie’s joint at the back. There wasn’t no lights on there, but about quarter of an hour after you went in again the door opens and out hops a bloke in a dark suit.’
‘Oh, he did, did he? I suppose he wasn’t a freakish-looking cove with a parroty face?’
‘No, sir, not this one. I got a good look at him under a street-lamp. He was about middling-size, dark hair, sort of slanty-eyed, and he’d got a long, straight conk. And there was a scar of some sort on his right cheek — knife or razor, I should say, sir.’
‘Hmm,’ mused Gently, ‘interesting. And did you tail him?’
‘Yes, sir — at least, I stuck to him all along the prom going south. But then he goes into the funfair and there was such a ruddy crowd there I didn’t stand a chance. So after a bit I gives it up.’
‘Ah well… we do our best,’ sighed Gently.
‘Do you think there’s a hook-up there, sir — have we got something definite?’
Gently shook his head sombrely. ‘I don’t know, Dutt, and that’s the truth. There’s some racket goes on there, I’m pretty sure, but whether it connects with ours is beyond me for the moment. Anyway, I threw a scare into them… I’ll tip off Copping to keep an eye lifting.’
‘The bloke I was tailing looked a right sort,’ said Dutt sagely.
‘There’s a lot of right sorts in there, Dutt,’ agreed his senior, ‘they’d keep the average policeman happy for weeks.’