Hire Me a Hearse (10 page)

‘I've something to show him.'

Well, there was nothing Hazard could do about that. They talked about cricket and colour TV and the prospect of another interim Budget from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, subjects in which neither man
was specially interested, but the talk filled in a vacuum that could have become stifling in a very short while.

They had ranged over the three subjects and were back to cricket again when Drury came in. He showed his surprise at sight of the waiting visitor. When the two men had said good morning and asked after each other's health Bayliss took an envelope from his pocket. He watched Drury sit down, but kept the envelope in his hands, running a forefinger round the edge.

‘I think you'd better let me tell this in my own way, Superintendent.'

Drury gave the sort of shrug that conveys acquiescence and sat back.

‘Very well, I'm listening.'

Bayliss leaned forward and placed the envelope on the desk and kept his hand on it. He said, ‘When I came here before I had a letter addressed to Miss Haven in my pocket. I wasn't sure about sending it, and I still had to make up my mind when I left here. Before I arrived back at Lincoln's Inn Fields it was in the post. I received a letter from her after a
day's delay. I kept that reply until now. This is it.'

He tapped the envelope on his thumb. Drury didn't look at his desk. He was watching the chief clerk.

‘But now you want me to read it,' he said. ‘Why?'

‘Well, something's happened. Mr Porter has lost that package given him by Miss Haven to be opened in the event of her death.'

There was sudden stillness and quiet in that office. The first sound came from Bill Hazard when he took out a handkerchief as big as a bedsheet and blew his nose.

‘How do you mean lost?' Drury asked.

‘He went out with a client. When he came back he had lost his keys. We hunted everywhere, made inquiries of the restaurant where he'd lunched, tried tracing the taxi he'd used. No luck. Then this morning he came in and found the safe open and his keys hanging from the lock of the safe door, which was open. Only one thing was missing, that envelope with the green seal Miss Haven
had left with me to give him after she'd gone.'

Drury looked beyond Bayliss to his assistant. Hazard knew that kind of look. It was an invitation to wade in with any question he might have.

The big inspector asked, ‘Who was the client?'

Bayliss swung slowly round in his chair to look at Hazard. The chief clerk smiled.

‘An excellent question,' he said. ‘Janssi Singh. Mr Porter handles his affairs personally.'

‘He's a business man?'

‘You could call him that. He is a conjurer and uses the stage name of the Great Janssi.'

‘I've heard of him,' said Hazard. ‘He was on the London Palladium the other week, wasn't he?'

‘Very possibly,' Bayliss nodded. ‘He travels about a good deal with his act. But when I said you could call him a business man I was referring to his interest in a club. I think he holds the major financial interest, as a matter of fact.'

‘Which club's that?' Drury asked.

‘ ‘The Golden Pagoda', just off Soho Square.'

Bill Hazard said, ‘Well, I'll be damned,' and then his jaws clamped together so that they bulged over his collar. He was staring at the top of Bayliss's head and refusing to meet the challenging look in Drury's narrowed eyes.

Bayliss broke a fresh silence.

‘Perhaps you'd better read this now, Superintendent,' he said, tapping the envelope he had placed on the desk once more with his thumb.

He sat back and watched Drury pick up the envelope and draw from it the folded sheet of paper.

Wilma Haven had written:

‘Thank you for your letter, Tom Bayliss. It was very considerate of you to write me, and I know why. You were thinking of Jeremy. Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that occasionally. You were pretty outspoken, so let me be frank in my turn.

‘I'm not seeking to ruin Jeremy's career by a stunt in bad taste in which he will be snared. Rather the opposite. He is already snared. I have no proof. My one chance of coming by any is to go ahead with my own version of Russian Roulette, if that rings a bell with you. If it doesn't, never mind. I came in and saw Peregrine. I don't think he has ever approved of me, any more than you have, but I don't let it depress me. The best way of living with disapproval, I've found, is to ignore it, and if you can't do that — smile at it. It usually ends by disapproving of itself, but don't take my word for it.

‘As I said, I saw Peregrine. Because of my special relationship with him, as custodian of my parents' estate as well as mere trustee, I have always respected his position
vis-à-vis
myself. I have told him when I was about to kick up my heels, as he thinks of my performances. I told him this time of my idea for Russian Roulette and my hiring a hearse. Poor man, he was more disapproving than horrified, which is
a sad reflection on how behind the times he has drifted, though I must admit his legal advice has hitherto been sound. The best proof has been offered whenever I ignored it. And if you think that is another sad reflection I agree with you.

‘But to get back to your request. Don't come down to see me. It would be pointless, although you would mean well. I want to do this thing my own way. I feel I have to do it, and for more than one reason. But you would be right in thinking some of them focus on Jeremy. It is because of him I am going to do it this way. If things go as I hope you won't have to worry about much. If they don't, then I leave a thought with you. Why does Jeremy sneak up to London and visit the ‘Golden Pagoda'?

‘Of course if you have the answer to that already, come and see me by all means. You'll be welcome. But not otherwise.

‘Kindest regards,

Wilma Haven

It was a typed letter apart from the signature. Dury handed it to Hazard, who had come and stood by his chair. Nothing was said until the big inspector had perused the letter at this own pace. He remained staring a little hard at something in the end of it, then he folded it up and gave it back to Drury, who slid the letter into its envelope.

Drury pushed the envelope across the desk, but not quite as far as the chief clerk's clenched hand. The envelope remained between them. All three men stared at it.

‘You haven't shown it to Mr Porter?' Drury inquired.

‘No. He would have thought me interfering.'

‘Not even since the safe was found open and the letter with the green seal missing?'

‘That was this morning first thing. No.'

‘What have you done about that?'

‘I first rang Miss Haven. I didn't mention the open safe and the missing letter, and I didn't refer to Janssi Singh. I asked if she was going through with what
she had proposed. She said yes. I said did she know Jeremy had disappeared. She said yes and that you knew about it and probably had your own views.'

‘We were at Broomwood when Mr Truncard phoned her. About a baby.'

A brightness came and went in Bayliss's eyes, and afterwards they appeared dull.

‘He's married?' he asked.

‘Not to her — according to her,' Drury said quietly.

‘I don't get it,' Bayliss said, shaking his head and looking puzzled.

‘Frankly, nor do we,' Drury told him. ‘What else did you talk about?'

‘Nothing much. Oh, I did ask about this hearse nonsense. She said she had told Mr Porter when she was in that she had ordered it, but the undertaker had welshed on the deal — her phrase — when he read her advert. She had some bother getting fixed up again, but she finally managed it with — '

‘A Mr Thynne of Sevenoaks. The coffin will be there at ten tomorrow morning, only she thinks it will be there at eight.'

Bayliss's face knotted and his eyes became very small behind their down-drawn lids.

‘You've been very busy.'

‘We're always busy. You'd be surprised.'

‘I very likely would,' Bayliss nodded, opening his eyes wider. He picked up the letter, stuffed it in an inside pocket. ‘Well, keep this off the record, Superintendent,' he said.

‘If I can,' Drury replied gravely, but the words didn't sound hopeful. ‘Of course, there won't be any need if Mr Porter tells us his safe has been burgled.'

Bayliss stood up.

‘That's up to him. He might consider there's another explanation. That too is up to him.'

‘What kind of explanation?'

‘Well, there is a second key.'

‘And you have it. That it?'

The chief clerk shrugged with an exaggerated suggestion of indolence.

‘Appearances look bad if you come up very close, I admit, but there's something to remember.'

‘I haven't forgotten,' Drury told him.
‘She gave you that sealed envelope. If you'd wanted to take it that would have been the time, not afterwards — unless you wanted everything to point to this Janssi Singh.'

Bayliss had picked up his hat and was twirling it round in his hands as though not aware that he held it.

‘Why would I want to do that?' he asked, giving the words no subtle emphasis.

Drury played along because it was expected of him, and because there was still the possibility of shaking something else loose.

He said, ‘To help Jeremy Truncard in some way you haven't explained.'

Bayliss appeared to consider the suggestion. ‘That might be barely possible, Superintendent,' he said in that same unaccented tone, ‘if I knew what prompted Miss Haven to ask her question about the ‘Golden Pagoda'. You see, from where I stand, it appears slightly unreasonable to ask such a question without mentioning that her friend Vicki Seeburg is not an unknown visitor there,
which is something Miss Haven must know. She makes it her business to know such things. Don't you consider that omission odd?'

‘Very odd,' Drury agreed without having to think about his reply.

The chief clerk smiled.

‘I was sure you would. That makes me feel I did the right thing in coming here.' He paused to tap the pocket holding Wilma Haven's letter. ‘You don't want a copy?'

Drury shook his head.

‘Not now.'

Bayliss looked a little disappointed, but he said good day civilly and advanced on the door, which Bill Hazard hastened to open for him.

As the door closed Hazard turned and swore with considerable feeling in his tone. Drury regarded him with a bland look of understanding.

‘Don't let it get you, Bill,' he advised.

‘Hell, it's got me,' Hazard grunted.
‘Right up to here.' He held his left hand palm down and level with his mouth. ‘I spend damned nearly a whole day of the only life I'll ever have picking up what I can about a couple of gunks who used to be bouncers at the ‘Golden Pagoda'.'

‘The charming Claude and Cedric. Interesting.'

‘It's more than that. Flora roped them in, but Flora was passed on to Wilma Haven by Vicki Seeburg, who is known at that same Soho sex-spot. How does that make you feel? Does it leave you feeling we're making progress?'

‘Of a sort. But not in the direction I had expected.'

Bill Hazard pushed back his head and looked down his nose at his superior officer. It was a trick he had acquired when standing and considering something said by the other when seated. Several times Drury had felt constrained to tell him to stop looking like a damned ostrich trying to make up its mind which patch of sand to bury its head in. But he suspected that, somewhere inside that burly frame, Bill Hazard had feelings.
Drury didn't want to reach them when it wasn't strictly necessary. He liked his assistant too much for that.

‘I don't get it,' Hazard said.

‘I've been warned off Wilma Haven's friend Vicki.'

Hazard's head jerked upright on his broad shoulders. His eyes were suddenly sharp with suspicion.

‘The Commander wanted you.'

‘To tell me, Bill, the Foreign Office have been on to the Home Office. We don't do a thing to embarrass Miss Vicki Seeburg, who incidentally has diplomatic immunity.'

‘This case is about to grow a coating of dirt. I can smell it happening,' Hazard said with what for him passed as bitterness.

‘We also don't get in the way of, or trip up, a certain Daniel Paget. Danny is one of our own people posing as a security man.'

‘What kind of people is that, for God's sake?'

Drury grinned like a man in pain and determined to bear it.

‘He might be M.I.6, he might not. I don't know, Bill, and I don't think the Commander does. He was floated into the I.C. security network for a special reason. He suddenly took off with a man named Bateman who was keeping tabs on Jeremy Truncard.'

‘Hee-bloody-hee,' said Hazard quietly, from between rigid jaws. ‘That's our Danny boy, the one who's turned up missing.'

‘Somebody's really worried about him.'