Requiem for a Dummy Read online

  Peter was dressed and ready for school by 7.30. It wasn’t his favourite place in the world to go, but after all he had experienced in his short life it was tolerable at worst and sometimes quite enjoyable. As a small London school, it was filled with pupils not unlike himself, orphans or kids with only a mum or a dad at home, a parent who wasn’t prepared to see their youngster being sent off into the country supposedly for safety’s sake. Peter had been an evacuee and sent down to Devon. He had hated it. There in the country he had been the oddball orphan with the funny accent and ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes, the target for bullying and abuse. The other kids had made his life a misery and the grown ups had been oblivious to his torment. In the end, he’d run away and come back to the city to be with Johnny, his one-eyed friend. It was Johnny who had rescued him from all that evacuee nightmare and he, along with Nurse Susan McAndrew, had taken the place of his phantom parents. He’d never known his dad and he’d run away from his neglectful mother a couple of years before. She was barely a memory now. It was a part of his life that he avoided revisiting.

  Today Peter was ready for school much earlier than normal. As a rule he was like Shakespeare’s schoolboy – a snail to school – but today was Thursday and this was special. It was the day when he could call at the newsagent’s shop on his way to school and buy his weekly comics. This little venture was funded by Johnny who understood his joy and fascination with his picture papers; in fact they would sometimes read them together. Peter took Radio Fun and The Beano, mainly because his pals at school did, but his real top two favourites included Tiger Blake Weekly featuring his all time hero, the dare-devil adventurer, Dennis ‘Tiger’ Blake in a complete story in every issue. There was more writing in this paper than the others. It wasn’t really a comic as it was packed with tiny print and the pictures were only used as illustrations to the text. It took Peter nearly a week to finish this one. But he delighted in savouring the exciting stories. It seemed that every week, Tiger Blake came near to winning the war as he cracked another Nazi spy ring or parachuted into Germany to rescue an Austrian scientist and his secret formula which would ensure success for the allies. Then came his best comic of all: Charlie Dokes’s Fun Paper. This contained cartoon capers of many of the radio favourites along with two strips featuring ‘the woodpecker’s friend, Charlie Dokes and his pal Raymond Carter’. They were great fun and Peter read these first. Peter was also an avid listener to the wireless and he chuckled with delight every Wednesday night at 8.30 as he listened to Charlie’s antics in the ‘Okey Dokes’ radio show.

  The Horner Sisters, Edith and Martha, who looked after Peter and in whose house he lodged, knew by now that on Thursdays he would be ready for school a good half an hour earlier than usual so that he could race to the newsagent and have a read of his comics on the way to school. It amused the spinster sisters to see the eagerness with which their young charge downed his breakfast in order to speed off to the newsagent. On other weekdays, sometimes they had to call him down more than once and prise him from the house with moderate force to be sure he reached school on time.

  But not on Thursdays.

  The sisters had grown very fond of Peter. They had, by accident, become like surrogate aunts to him, part of the small circle of adults who cared and shared responsibility for the boy. They did more than house and feed him; they gave him a real sense of stability and domestic comfort. For the first time in his life he felt safe and loved. In return, he was no real trouble to the sisters and although he behaved as all twelve-year-old boys did, harbouring a few naughty traits, he also had a shy, polite manner and a surprisingly mature consideration for others that was endearing. As Edith Horner doled out his comic money, she observed that, ‘Charlie Dokes is on at the Palladium in the West End. You ought to ask Johnny if he can get you seats.’

  Peter felt a tingle of excitement. ‘Crikey,’ he exclaimed, his eyes widening with pleasure at the possibility of seeing Charlie Dokes in the flesh … as it were. ‘That would be super,’ he said, pocketing his comic money.

  Peter felt sure that he could persuade Johnny to take him. He was well aware that in certain situations he had ways and means of manipulating his best friend – for that’s how he viewed Johnny – into doing things. It certainly was not the case with Nurse McAndrew: she was more wary and canny. Peter liked her a lot, but he knew that she was much more strict and censorious than the relaxed and malleable Johnny.

  The thought of sitting in the stalls of the Palladium and seeing Charlie Dokes on stage put an extra spring in Peter’s step as he made his way to school, via the newsagents.

  ‘You were very energetic last night,’ observed Evelyn Munro with a sly grin as she applied her make-up in the dressing-table mirror.

  The man in the bed behind her stirred, propped himself up on the pillow and reached for a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table before replying. ‘The same could be said for you, sweetie.’

  ‘Always happy to oblige a real man.’

  ‘Thank you ma’am,’ He gave a mock salute, before lighting a cigarette. ‘Old Carter not servicing you as you would wish, then?’

  Evie pulled a face in the mirror. ‘You could say that,’ she said, without a trace of embarrassment.

  ‘I don’t know how you put up with him. Why don’t you ditch the creep?’

  ‘Because of my career, darling,’ she replied with an affected flourish. ‘I’ve had more work and attention than ever since I’ve been on the show and I know it’s because old Raymond has been putting good words for me with various producers. Just being seen around him gets you noticed. With any luck, I’ll be on at the Palladium with him before the end of the run. I’ve sown the seeds. A suggestion here a hint there. Playing on his vanity.’

  ‘Honey, you should get top billing at the Palladium just for sleeping with the fellow.’

  Evie smiled. ‘Once I’ve really established a career for myself, that’s when I can give Raymond the boot and then it’ll just be you and me.’

  ‘How cosy,’ said the man without emotion, as he blew a series of smoke rings into the air.

  Evelyn turned around and faced him, her face suddenly serious. ‘You know that’s what I really want, don’t you? And you’re the man to help me. You will, won’t you?’ There was a note of desperation in her voice now.

  ‘Of course I will,’ he replied absentmindedly, as he studied his hands. He flexed the long fingers and smiled at the memory of the satisfying task they had performed the previous night.

  NINE

  * * *

  It was around nine in the morning when I wandered into Benny’s café. It was wonderful to be back in familiar surroundings with the buzz of normality around me. Wartime normality that is. I was famished and desperate for some grub washed down with a mug of steaming hot dark-brown tea. Trade was brisk and the place was crowded. Benny was scuttling around the tables, like a man with his pants on fire, delivering breakfasts to his customers and scooping up dirty plates with practised aplomb. In recent months his trade had increased so much that he’d found it necessary – much to his own chagrin – to take on some help in the kitchen. ‘Now I’ve got staff to pay for, my profits will plummet,’ he moaned to me. His ‘staff’ consisted of a plump jovial lady of some seventy years called Doris. I never learned her second name and I don’t think Benny did either. Doris appeared one day almost like a fairy godmother and she stayed. Now I reckoned Benny couldn’t do without her. She became the heart and the engine of his establishment. As for Benny’s profits plummeting, the reverse was the case. He never discussed anything as vulgar as finances with me, but it didn’t need a business expert to see that the café was on the up and up. With Doris in charge of the cooking, the quality of the meals had improved also and the news got around. Even with the deprivations of rationing she could turn out a very decent shepherd’s pie and her scones were a delight. However this morning I had my mind on eggs and bacon.

  Benny saw me enter and hover by the till. With a broad grin, he wa
ved me to a corner table. As I sat down, he flapped the tablecloth with his tea towel, sending a shower of errant crumbs flying into my lap rather than dispersing them.

  ‘Johnny, my boy, good to see you,’ he greeted me, oblivious that he had littered me with breakfast detritus. He leaned forward, a concerned look replacing the grin. ‘But you look pale and decidedly thin. You need building up.’

  This, I knew, was a none too subtle reference to the fact I’d not been in the café for nearly a week. As a friend of the old fellow, I was expected to support his establishment by visiting it every day. Size-wise, he wanted me to be Oliver Hardy, but I was more content as Stan Laurel.

  ‘I’ve been up half the night …’ I said, by way of explanation of my peaky features.

  ‘I knew you looked poorly. Malnutrition is just around the corner.’

  ‘On a case.’

  ‘Ah, so now you’re an all-night detective.’

  ‘Seems like it. So I’d appreciate tea and a plate of your finest bacon and eggs.’

  ‘I got a few mushrooms I could slip on there too. Help prop open the eyelids, eh?’

  I flashed him a toothy smile and he gave me a friendly squeeze on the shoulder before bustling off to the kitchen. I sat back in my chair and lit up a Craven A, suddenly feeling very tired, the hours of lost sleep overcoming me. My limbs ached and my head throbbed. I just wanted to sleep for ever, or at least forty-eight hours. But I knew I couldn’t. As I watched the smoke from my cigarette corkscrew its way lazily to the ceiling I forced myself to review the night’s events.

  After I’d telephoned David, Raymond Carter had contacted his manager Larry Milligan to give him a potted version of events. I could not help catching the gist of their conversation. I could not help it because I made a point of staying in the room and listening. It seemed that Milligan was not pleased with the news. He was angry with his client for keeping him in the dark about the telephone threats and Carter’s attempt to get Keating the sack. I couldn’t catch everything that Milligan was saying on the other end of the phone, but from Carter’s glum expression and his halting delivery which was being interrupted on a regular basis by the voice at the other end growing ever more strident, it was obvious that Milligan was in the process of blowing his top.

  But then again, Milligan could be a good actor.

  As he put the telephone down, Carter looked at me glumly and announced, ‘He’s coming over now. I’m afraid he doesn’t really approve of you.’

  I shrugged and gave a tight grin. ‘Very few people do.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care what he says. I want you to stay on the case. Especially now.’

  He cast a glance towards the hall door, beyond which was the still cooling corpse of Arthur Keating.

  ‘That’s fine by me, but you realize that ungainly bundle of trouble, I refer to your unwanted parcel out there, has put the kibosh on our little scenario where I was to play the role of your unassuming nephew. Now I’m going to be your private detective. That’s going public. Sadly, people are very wary of the breed and tend to clam up and hold back. It just makes getting at the truth a mite more difficult.’

  Carter said nothing. But the sigh which caused his body to shudder was eloquent enough.

  Milligan arrived before the police and taking time only to throw me a sour glance set about interrogating his client. He was a big, well-groomed man, with luxuriant hair neatly swept back and glossy with pomade. I reckoned that although he couldn’t have reached the age of thirty yet, his sideboards and the neat Clark Gable moustache were touched with grey. He had an assured manner worn almost like a lapel badge which seemed to say I can cope with anything you throw at me and if it gets too tough, I can walk away from all this. Check my contract.

  Although Milligan must have dressed in a hurry, he was immaculately attired in a well-cut three-piece brown tweed suit with a yellow silk tie and matching pocket handkerchief. There must, I suggested to myself, be money in this managing business. I looked down at my own crumpled pinstripe affair with some dismay. More money than in the detective game anyway.

  He took a quick look at the corpse of Keating in the hallway. He gave a cry more of disgust than dismay and returned to the sitting-room. Slipping a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket and lighting up a small cigar, Milligan paced the carpet while he continued to question Carter about ‘this most unfortunate affair’.

  ‘And you have no idea who might be making these threats? Or why?’ he asked.

  Carter shook his head.

  ‘No man is without enemies, Raymond. There must be someone you’ve upset in the past.’

  ‘Not enough to want to kill me because of it. It’s quite clear that whoever murdered Keating did it in order to drop me in the dung. It takes a peculiar … a strange mind to carry out such a plan. It suggests insanity – wouldn’t you agree, Mr Hawke?’

  We’d been over this ground between the two of us before Milligan arrived. To my mind insanity was too easy an answer. There was cunning and cold-bloodedness here which required a clever and determined mind rather than a mad one. But Mr Manager was right, whoever had killed Keating and dumped him on Carter’s doorstep had a deep hatred of the ventriloquist.

  I shrugged my shoulders in response to the question and then realizing that perhaps this wasn’t an adequate response, I added, ‘It’s possible. But madmen are usually more obvious. I suppose you have no idea who might want to harm Raymond, do you, Mr Milligan?’

  He raised an eyebrow in surprise – surprise I suspect, that I’d had the nerve to address him directly.

  ‘Of course not!’ he snapped, and puffed peevishly on his cigar.

  ‘That was rather a quick response. You said yourself that no man is without enemies. For example, there must be many jealousies in the world of show business….’

  ‘Well, yes there are … but it’s a big leap from jealousy, or harbouring a grudge against a particular artiste, to actually committing murder.’

  ‘But some do make the leap.’

  ‘Maybe, but I know of none. My client is well respected in the profession.’

  Milligan had changed his tune very quickly. Only moments before he was badgering Raymond Carter to come up with a name of someone who might have it in for him. Now I was getting the public face, the official stance, in readiness no doubt for the police and possibly the Press. Something told me that I did not like Mr Milligan terribly much.

  He loured over Carter in the armchair like defending counsel. ‘What we have to make sure is that the police do not link you publicly with the murder. It could do you irreparable harm.’

  ‘That’s easier said than done,’ I suggested. ‘The dead body is here in the house.’

  Milligan groaned. ‘If only you had phoned me first,’ he said.

  ‘What good would that have done?’ asked Carter.

  ‘We could have moved the body. Thrown it in the river or something.’

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ I said.

  Milligan threw me a dirty look, but I didn’t catch it.

  At that moment there was a heavy hammering on the front door in accompaniment to the bell ringing insistently.

  It was the police in the shape of Inspector David Llewellyn, Sergeant Sunderland and two bulky constables. I obliged with the introductions. David nodded briskly, very much in professional mode and not at all like the relaxed drinking pal I was familiar with. Without further ado, he pulled back the sheet and examined the body, coming to the same conclusions as I had that the fellow had been strangled.

  ‘OK, lads, take him out,’ he instructed the constables. ‘We’ll get him to the Yard for a proper medical examination.’

  The two uniformed officers carried the body out from the hall to the waiting vehicle.

  ‘Right, Mr Carter, I think it’s time we had a little chat. I want to hear all about it,’ David said, leading the pale-faced ventriloquist back into the sitting-room.

  Sitting with his hands resting limply in his lap and
staring at the carpet, Raymond Carter recalled the events of the past few days, the phone calls, the message on the script and finally the discovery of the body. David listened intently, while Sunderland made notes. When Carter had finished, David chewed his lips for a while digesting the information he’d been given and then he turned to me. ‘What’s your take on this?’

  ‘The obvious scenario. Someone’s out to damage Mr Carter’s reputation,’ I said simply, not wanting to discuss my ideas on the case in any detail in front of my client and particularly his pompous manager.

  With a sudden movement, David rose to his feet. ‘Right, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to come down to the Yard with us to make an official statement, Mr Carter, and then, for the moment, you’ll be free to go.’

  Before Carter could respond, Milligan chipped in, ‘I’ll need to come along, too, to protect my client’s interests.’

  A ghost of a smile softened David’s features. ‘You can bring the ruddy doll as well if you like,’ he said, nodding towards the chair in the corner where Charlie Dokes was sitting, an unnerving silent witness to all that had taken place in the room. As I gazed at that immobile wooden face with the knowing eyes and malevolent fixed grin, I fully expected it to make some sarcastic comment, but for once Charlie remained silent.

  While Sergeant Sunderland escorted Carter and his limpet manager to the police car outside, David and I had a few quiet words together.

  ‘You reckon he’s telling the truth, eh?’ my friend asked.

  ‘About the body, certainly. Only an idiot would dump his murder victim on his own doorstep. I know a clever idiot might do it to put us off the scent, but I don’t think that this is the case here. Carter has much more to lose than gain by Keating’s death.’

  David nodded in agreement. ‘You say that he’s telling the truth about the body, implying that he wasn’t about the other things. What d’you mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But it stands to reason that if someone is desperate to hurt you, desperate enough to murder, you would have some idea who it might be. It can’t be a complete stranger, can it? There must be something in his past. Someone …’