‘They spent the evenings drinking and playing cards.’
‘What about Thursday night?’
‘It was just the same. The little bloke got up and went out at about half past eleven. The dark one said something to him and they all laughed like mad. The bar was closed, but they stopped there with a bottle of whisky between them.’
And he hadn’t come back, the little bloke, he hadn’t returned to pick up the jest and his glass again.
For a while the other two had taken no notice. They went on drinking and playing and smoking the Russian cigarettes which were temporarily in vogue with them. At one o’clock, however, they had sought out the night- porter.
‘A bit anxious they seemed, wanted to know if their pal hadn’t got back. No, I tells them, nobody hadn’t come in since midnight. They went into a huddle, talking low so’s I couldn’t hear them, then the rough-looking one went up in the lift. When he came back they both of them went out. I reckon it was near on two before I saw them again.’
‘Which way did they go when they left here?’
The porter sucked in his lips.
‘Towards Fenway Road, I think it was.’
‘And they returned from that direction?’
‘I couldn’t be sure. I’d got the kettle on, making myself a cup of tea.’
On returning they had put their question to him again. Now they were more than anxious, they were angry and apparently baffled. They remained another half-hour in the hall, conferring and casting black looks towards the door. Eventually they had given the porter a pound note and asked him to ring them if their friend turned up.
‘Only that’s what he didn’t do, nor I haven’t seen him since. The next day his mates booked out after lunch.’
In the morning they were having what sounded like a row in one of the bedrooms. The chambermaid had heard them at it and had caught a few phrases.
‘They was calling somebody a little rat and saying that wringing his neck was too good for him. “What are you going to do about the stuff in the bank?” says one. “-something leave it there!” says the other. “What else can we do?”’
‘That phrase… “wringing his neck”… you’re sure about that?’
‘Wring his neck or strangle him — it was one or the other.’
After breakfast they had been definitely off-colour. The routine of form-checking and bet-laying had gone quite by the board. The dark one had gone out, leaving his friend to bite his nails. When he returned, just at lunchtime, he had with him the noon edition of the evening paper.
‘They never had their lunch at all. I saw them sitting in the bar with the paper on the table. They weren’t talking, just sitting there — like as though something had knocked them all of a heap.’
And then, of course, they had gone, taking a taxi to the station; after paying their bill in one-pound notes, and ensuring that Taylor’s disappearance wouldn’t be prematurely reported.
Dutt had got hold of a timetable and was checking the afternoon trains. There’d been a London train at two fifteen, though the latest reports said they weren’t back in Stepney.
‘Do you do any racing?’
The manager looked startled.
‘Well, as a matter of fact…’
‘When was the last meeting at Newmarket?’
It chimed in exactly. It had been on the day when Taylor and his pals had arrived at The Roebuck. The booking had been phoned in, perhaps from the course; the elapsed time between booking and arrival coincided nicely with the times of the available train-service.
But what had occurred at Newmarket to send them hotfoot to Lynton
… floating, almost, in an ocean of bank notes?
A mighty day at the races should have seen them carousing at Stepney! Unless, for some reason, Stepney had become suddenly unhealthy for them.
And since the police hadn’t been looking for them, then it seemed to follow that…
‘Ring up Newmarket, Dutt, and see what’s been going on there. We’re looking for a recent theft of bank notes, at or just before the last race meeting.’
The manager had lit a cigarette with hands which were trembling. One knew what he was going to say almost before he opened his mouth.
‘I suppose there’s bound to be publicity, Inspector?’
Wasn’t that Lynton all over?
Gently grunted and turned his back on him — as though you could escape publicity in a business like this!
But there was nothing to be had from Newmarket, or nothing that looked like tying in. An empty house had been burgled a week before the races, a punter had been attacked and robbed as he left the racecourse.
‘How much did they get off him?’
‘Fifty quid, according to his statement.’
‘We’re looking for something bigger — probably several thousands.’
‘Sorry, there’s been nothing like that since a post-office van was held up four years ago.’
‘Did you recover any of the money?’
‘Yes, we got the lot.’
Yet they had had their money from somewhere… and that day at the races had been a crucial moment in the affair.
‘Shall we take a look at his things, sir?’
Dutt, as always, wanted to be getting down to the practical.
‘Yes, after which you’d better go to the station. There’s just one chance in a hundred that somebody will remember where our two birds booked to.’
Taylor had enjoyed the luxury of one of the best rooms on the first floor. It was large and looked across the car park and street to the Abbey Gardens. Adjoining it was a small private bathroom with a shower, and a separate toilet.
That Taylor’s belongings were still there was a factor made more important by the total absence of effects found on the corpse; while Griffin, for all his efficiency, had been unable to trace the reach-me-down clothes from which the makers’ labels had been ripped.
‘They’ve tidied the place up, sir.’
A lot of junk was lying about, but it had been put in order by the neat-handed chambermaid.
‘I’ll bet it was in a flipping mess when that geezer was living here…’
There was the portable radio, an expensive model with a chromium-plate interior; a table-lighter, a musical cigarette-box, a pair of Zeiss glasses hung carelessly from the bed-rail, a Leica that bore out the bartender’s estimate. The wardrobe was stuffed with clothes of a type likely to appeal to the heart of the little Stepney spiv. On a bedside cabinet lay a pile of magazines featuring pin-up photographs. Two pigskin suitcases, still with labels attached to the handles, stood side by side in a corner.
‘Went to town, sir, didn’t he?’
Gently lifted the lid of the cigarette-box and absently picked out a cigarette. The Russian…
From the interior of the box tinkled an absurdly slow and fragile rendering of ‘The Banana Boat Song’.
‘Here, sir — look at this!’
Ferreting in the cabinet, Dutt had found a brand new bank book.
‘Something new, isn’t it, when these blokes bank their pickings?’
It was indeed. Gently took it with interest. It was issued by the local branch of the Westminster, three days after Taylor had arrived in Lynton; sixteen hundred pounds had been deposited, though progressive withdrawals had reduced the sum to twelve hundred and eighty.
A bank account too… could that money really have been come by honestly?
‘This is a bit of a facer, Dutt!’
