‘Made for a quiet Sunday, no doubt. And coming back to the main point—yes, I do think you’re being less than honest about the bracelet. Maybe it was stolen, but not the way you tell it.’
I began to move towards the door. If she could whack cushions with a wrist movement that Arnold Palmer would have admired, she could also throw things.
‘Thank you.’
‘Nothing to it.’
I put a hand on the door knob. It was a glass job with fancy brass filigree over it.
‘Do you do anything else except recovery work for insurance companies?’
‘Pay me the rate for the job and I do anything—except babysitting, unless they’re above the age of consent.’
‘Funny man.’
‘Humour is the oil that—’
‘Stuff it.’ The accent was strong this time.
‘As you say.’
‘I do.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Stankowski—and thank you for sparing me the time.’
‘It’s the only thing I give away . . . usually.’
I inclined my head a few degrees, butler fashion, opened the door and went out. I couldn’t make out whether she liked me or not. Anyway, it wasn’t a problem I was going to go to a psychiatrist about.
Outside the door, granite-faced ‘Will-ye-cum-in-the-noo’ was hovering. She steered me carefully past the semi-circular marble hall table and opened the flat door.
I said, ‘What’s her problem? Thinking that nobody will love her, except for her money?’
She said, ‘Ken this well, keep your gab steeket in guid company and gie your ain fish-guts to your ain seamaws.’ At least, it sounded like that.
‘You’re dead right,’ I said.
Dimble phoned just before five and said that nobody in the regular trade was handling a gold python arm bracelet at the moment. He would keep his eyes open and call at the end of the week for his money. I rang Hawkins and said that as far as I could tell—tell him, that was—Mrs Stankowski’s story of the arm bracelet was on the level. He said what level? Knowing where that would lead, I pretended that the connection was bad and rang off. Then I sat and thought a bit about Gloriana. Stankowski came too hard off the tongue, Her old iron-puddler of a father might have been a self-educated man, but so was I, having been to a Devon grammar school. ‘Her angel’s face as the great eye of Heaven shyned bright, and made a sunshine in the shadie place. . . . ’ Spenser. Well, I had an idea—which meant I was feeling better—that there were quite a few shady places about. If you were going to pick up a little cash or excitement there were no better spots than shady places. Cash, at the moment, didn’t too much interest me—though that would come naturally if everything else was right—but excitement did. It was better than strychnine glycerophosphate (0.0025 gr.) in the blood.
When I said good night to Wilkins she said, ‘Try to be nice to my sister when she’s here. She makes a great sacrifice to come.’
I said, ‘Is she bringing that basset hound with her?’
‘She has to, since there’s no one to leave it with at home.’
I went on thinking about the long, mournful streak of dog. I’d be tripping over it six times a day and, since it favoured my desk chair, sitting on it even more often. I will say this for it, though—no matter what the indignity, it never bit. Just looked at me with sad, reproachful, blood-rimmed eyes.
I had a couple of whiskies in Miggs’s office with him, on the way home. Behind his garage he had a small gymnasium. He had been a sergeant in the Commandos and for a couple of guineas a half-hour session gave work-outs to a mixed clientele, and taught some of them how to kill a man with bare hands—twenty different ways—in twelve sessions.
‘Manston,’ he said, ‘was in for a refresher today.’
‘I hope he dusted the floor with you.’
‘He did. He asked after you, health, finances and sex life.’
‘Tell him to keep away from me.’
Manston was an old friend of mine, though the friendship was usually in a bad state of strain. He worked in the same line of business, but in a much higher bracket. His monthly cheque came fat and regularly through the Treasury. He also knew thirty different ways of killing a man with his bare hands.
I took the Central Line home; home being a flat in a small street near the Tate Gallery.
Parked outside the house was a 1930 Phantom Two Rolls-Royce. It was ivory coloured and immaculate. There was a chauffeur, looking as though he were carved out of wood, behind the wheel. He wore a black uniform with tiny lines of white piping on collar and cuffs.
Mrs Meld, next door to me, and a great friend of mine, was leaning on her gate waiting for Mr Meld to come back with the supper Guinness in time to catch ‘Coronation Street’. ‘Gives a bit of tone to the place, eh?’ she said.
‘One of your rich relations?’
‘The only one with money in our family is my brother Albert. He keeps a whelk stall at Southend and drives a Ford Consul. No, it’s a visitor for you, Mr Carver. I let her in your place.’ She winked at me. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Not with a red-headed type. Otherwise you might be biffed over the nut with a bottle. She was carryin’ one.’
CHAPTER 2
Something Large and Bulky Fell Out
The flat consisted of a bedroom, a sitting room, bathroom and kitchen. From time to time, when I had had it, I had spent a lot of money on it. Mrs Meld came in and did for me in the mornings but somehow the place always looked untidy. From the sitting-room window, by risking a cricked neck, I could get a fair glimpse of the river.
When I went in there was no sign
