“Or just a boy friend?”
“I’ve talked to one of his friends who lives next door, and I’ve seen his brother, who lives in Tooting. At one time Brown had a different fancy every few nights, but he’s been steady on Eve for some time. His friends thought he was making a mistake. She isn’t popular . . . too expensive.” After a pause, Turnbull asked: “Are you going to see her?”
“I am,” said Roger.
“Room for me?”
“Why not? But I want another look round here first. What did he have in his pockets?”
Turnbull pointed to a bamboo table on which were a variety of oddments, some taken from the dead man’s pockets, and some from drawers in the old-fashioned dressing table. There were two photographs of Eve
Franklin, one a snapshot of her dressed in cheap, tawdry clothes; the other a recent studio portrait which showed her as she had looked at the Silver Kettle. There were no letters from her; in fact there was not a letter of any kind, but there were betting slips, several copies of
“Wonder if he played that?” Roger picked up the case, and asked casually: “Has the sax been tested for prints?”
“It’s so dusty I didn’t think it worth while,” answered Turnbull.
It would have been easy to say: “Everything’s worth trying.” Instead, Roger opened the case. The saxophone was bright and shining, as if it had been well tended.
“We’d better find out if he ever played in a band; Eve used to sing with a third-rate dance band, remember.” Roger tossed a cigarette stub out of the window. “We certainly shan’t get much more from here.” He looked up as Symes came back, obviously empty-handed. “Any luck?”
“They all say they didn’t hear a thing, sir.”
“Keep at it, especially among people who live near by,” urged Roger. “Tell the ambulance men to get the body away, then you stay on duty outside. We want the name and address of anyone who comes to visit Brown, especially of anyone who’s already heard that he’s dead. All understood?”
“I won’t miss anything,” Symes promised.
“Handsome,” said Turnbull, as they drove back to the Yard, “I’ve got this Raeburn bug even worse than you. Sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“Thanks. Where now?”
“I want a word with Gubby Dering,” Roger said.
The pathologist was at the large laboratory with several other white-coated men, busy at Bunsen burners, tripods, burettes and evil-smelling liquids, testing bloodstains, oil stains, some pieces of fabric, and—where Dering was concerned—the organs of a dead child.
“Hallo, trouble?” greeted Gubby. “I’m told you’ve a carbon-monoxide corpus on the way.”
“I’d like to find evidence of culpable homicide, too,” Roger said.
“Bloodthirsty devil,” growled Gubby. “You’ve got murder on the brain. But you didn’t come in to tell me to look for signs of violence. What exactly do you want?”
“Some blood,” said Roger.
“Eh?”
“Blood—human blood, preferably, in a small container which I can slip into my waistcoat pocket and open easily.”
Gubby looked at Turnbull. “Never follow his example,” he advised. “He’s daft.”
“My state of mind apart, can you find me what I want?” asked Roger.
“There’s some blood we were testing from that arsenic job; we’ve finished with it,” said Gubby. “I can make you a thin glass phial you can break easily enough. Or a small bottle.”
“I’ll have the phial,” said Roger.
Outside, with the phial in his pocket, he looked at Turnbull. “Got the idea?”
Turnbull looked fierce. “No, but let me keep trying. We’re going to see Eve, are we?”
“Yes, and we’re going to act dumb with her—for a start, anyway. I’m taking that line with all of them.”
“Why?”
“I think they’ll be eager to underestimate us,” answered Roger, quietly. “We’ve got to make them slip up, somehow.”
Billinger Street, where Eve Franklin lived, was only a few minutes away from Brown’s apartment. The street was very much the same as Flodden Road, but the houses were larger and most of them had been recently painted. The wind blew straight up the street, and a few dead leaves floated from nearly bare trees.
As the ear slowed down, a little man came out of one of the houses and walked away quickly, glancing once or twice behind him.
“He came from her house,” Turnbull said quickly.
“Never mind about him,” Roger said. “We’d rather see Eve alone, anyhow.”
