‘Emerald? You can’t possibly mean that burglar, or whatever he is, who keeps running away?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, yes — that is who we do mean. This is a nice flat you have here.’
‘A dump, nothing but a dump.’
‘How many rooms?’
‘Three rooms, bathroom and kitchen. Why?’
‘I just wondered, ‘m; I’m looking for a place myself. I hope you don’t mind my calling on you like this. It’s a routine business, you understand. I’ve no right to —’
‘Oh, I quite understand, Mr —’
‘— Detective-Inspector Turpin, ‘m.’
‘Turpin!’ Cigarette began to giggle. ‘No relation to the famous Dick, I suppose?’
‘Well, I don’t know, ‘m. Nobody ever told me anything about it. Well, I’m glad this business is all over. I hate disturbing ladies.’
‘Have a drink, Turpin?’
‘It’s a little early, ‘m, but I wouldn’t say no. I’ve been up since four o’clock this morning.’
‘Whisky, gin, or sherry, Dick Turpin?’
‘Well, what are you having, ‘m?’
‘Whisky, if you will, Turpin.’
About three-quarters of an hour later the detective-inspector said: ‘The caretaker tells me there is a flat going. I wonder if you’d mind very much if I just sort of took a kind of look, sort of.’
Cigarette said: ‘The house is yours, Dick Turpin. The house is yours, Dickie-boy. Come and look .. here you are in the lounge. Well, there is a bit of a dining-room, and quite a nice bedroom. Most important part of the house, don’t you always think? Here, see?’
Turpin saw the disordered bed. On the floor, on the lefthand side, lay the lower half of a pair of small-sized pyjamas. ‘How are the bathrooms?’ he asked.
‘As you see,’ said Cigarette, pushing open the door; and there was a battered tube of shaving cream and a razor.
At about half-past eleven Turpin said, casually: ‘He won’t be back in a hurry, though.’
‘Who d’you mean?’ asked Cigarette, snarling.
‘You know who I mean. I mean Chicken Eyes,’ said Turpin, suave as death. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting you a ten- pound note the Chicken won’t be back this side of lunch-time. I happen to know that he won’t.’
‘And how do you happen to know that he won’t?’
‘That who won’t? Who won’t what?’
‘This Chicken, or whatever you call him.’
‘Ask Millie Cloud,’ said Turpin, chuckling.
‘And who the devil may she be?’
‘Ask Chicken,’ said Turpin, breaking into a hearty laugh, and filling the glasses.
Twenty minutes later she said: ‘You’re a liar, a liar, a liar! A dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty liar! There isn’t, there isn’t — ISN’T any Millie Cloud! I can prove it, prove it, PROVE it!’
‘All right, then, I’ll bet you twenty-five pounds.’
‘There isn’t any other woman, d’you hear? There isn’t, isn’t, isn’t any other woman! Wait and see.’
‘All right, I’ll wait and see,’ said Turpin, refilling her glass. ‘Do you mind if I use your telephone?’
‘Use whatever you bloody well like.’
Turpin dialled. Cigarette remembers that she heard him say: ‘… Oh yes, O.K. … right you are, George … yes, stand by, George. Yes, George … no, George … yes, George … goodbye, George?
Two and a half hours after that Chicken Eyes Jack Emerald escaped for the last time. He was a sure-footed man and confident of himself on a parapet. But he had had an almost sleepless night, and made one false step. That was enough: he fell six storeys, landed flat on his back on the pavement, bounced, and that was the end of him.
The papers called it a ‘death-leap’. It was nothing of the sort. Emerald had told Cigarette, one night, that a fortuneteller had predicted that he would die through being struck by a ball. (He had been something of an athlete once.) Cigarette wrote the story in the
The Chicken Eyes Emerald affair took up most of the national front pages, squeezing the mystery of Sonia Sabbatani into the corners of the newspapers.
The police were not sorry for this: they did not know where to look for the murderer.
But Asta Thundersley raged like a raving lunatic.
BOOK TWO
