The Studio Crime (14 page)

He knocked as he spoke, and the door was opened with extreme celerity by a golden-haired young woman wearing the crimson doublet of a mediaeval page. Her long slim legs were encased in parti-coloured tights of green and black, and as if living up to her clothes she stood jauntily with her feet planted apart and one large, capable hand resting on her hip. As she saw that Hembrow was not alone her eyebrows shot up under her thick, straight, golden fringe.

“Good evening, Inspector,” she said demurely, and with the sound of her voice, nasal, harsh and with the indescribable drawl of the would-be refined, the illusion created by her appearance broke and vanished. It was not a figure from some old tapestry come alive, but a well-set-up, coarse-featured little Cockney dressed to go to a ball. The room into which she led them would have effectually destroyed the illusion, anyway. Miss Shirley's notion of domestic beauty and comfort seemed to comprise little but rose-coloured lamp-shades, gilded mirrors and cushions of rainbow hues. The place reeked with scent and cigarette smoke with a soft, persistent undertone of fried food.

“You must excuse my clothes,” said Miss Shirley, hoisting herself gracefully on to the top of a small grand piano, where she sat swinging her legs and smoking. “I'm going to the Albert Hall. An artist friend lent me these clothes.” She contemplated her shapely legs complacently. “Do I look nice in them, do you think?”

She asked the question in a naive, child-like tone that seemed devoid of all coquetry, and gazed earnestly at Christmas. Most rare in a grown woman, she had eyes of a true, clear blue, making no concessions to grey or green. Their effect was quite dazzling, used thus in a wide, earnest stare. John made the appropriate reply, but Hembrow cut his compliment short.

“Miss Shirley,” he said abruptly, “you know, I think, what it is I have called here about?”

She blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at him through it.

“Well,” she said gently at last, “I can guess. It's about poor Mr. Frew. Won't you sit down, Mr. Hembrow? And—and you?”

She looked shyly at John from under her thick, light lashes. It was plain that, though she had no illusions about Hembrow, she regarded John as a possible victim to her blue eyes. Sitting down obediently on a black divan littered with multi-coloured cushions, he saw plainly enough her coarse lips, her low forehead, pointed jaw and large ugly hands, yet had to admit her grace and bold boyish charm. He profoundly pitied the weak, romantic Greenaway, caught in the stream of a vitality such as this.

She fidgeted with a ring on her finger and murmured: “I'll tell you anything, Inspector. I don't know anything really. I—”

“Just answer my questions, please, Miss Shirley, and try to be as accurate as you can. At what time were you in Madox Court last night?”

“I left here at about twenty minutes past seven. It was twenty to eight when I got there, I suppose. One couldn't walk fast in the fog.”

“Did Mr. Frew expect you?”

“No. I wanted to see him about the ball at the Albert Hall to-night. I'd asked him to take me, you see, and he said he wouldn't. But I thought if I gave him a last chance, he might—well, he might alter his mind.”

“Did you see anybody in the courtyard or in the entrance hall?”

A faint flush appeared in Pandora's cheeks. She said resolutely:

“Yes, I did. I saw Ernest Greenaway in the courtyard.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“No. I don't think he knew I saw him. He was standing beside the clump of bushes near the doorway. It was very foggy. I didn't know he was there until I nearly touched him going past. I was frightened.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No, I kind of gasped, because I was startled, and then I saw who it was and hurried in.”

“You saw who it was and hurried in,” repeated Hembrow thoughtfully. “Why, Miss Shirley? I understand that you and Greenaway are old acquaintances.” The colour deepened in Miss Shirley's cheeks.

“We—we quarrelled,” she said at last. “He was jealous of all my other friends. I'm frightened of him. He has such an awful temper. Often he's threatened to do me in, and himself afterwards. I don't suppose he meant it. But you never know with that sulky kind of man.”

“I see. And after you were in the building?”

“I met Father Greenaway in the hall. We didn't speak. We're not on speaking terms, owing to this row with Ernest. I went up to the flat.”

“And how long did you stay in Mr. Frew's flat?”

“How long?” echoed the girl. “Why, I didn't go into the flat at all!”

She spoke with a defiant air, as if she expected to be disbelieved, but Hembrow was unmoved.

“How was that?”

“I knocked on the door, and Mr. Frew called out to me to go away. He said he was busy and he'd ring up in the morning. I felt a bit annoyed at being spoken to like that, so I didn't say any more.”

“It was unusual, then, for Mr. Frew to shout through the door instead of opening it?”

“Well, he never did it to me before. I wouldn't have stood it.” She tossed her head indignantly, and then as if suddenly regaining her sense of humour, smiled at herself and reaching a long arm across the piano, took another cigarette and lit it from the stump of the last.

“And you went away directly?”

“Yes.” Then she hesitated. “Well, almost directly. My—my shoelace had come undone, and I stopped to do it up.”

“Didn't know ladies ever wore lace shoes in these days,” remarked Hembrow casually.

She looked at him meditatively through the smoke, and then suddenly laughed.

“Oh, all right! Have it your own way! I stopped to listen at the key-hole, not to tie my shoe-lace.”

“Why?” asked Hembrow sharply. “Did you suspect that there was something wrong?”

The girl laughed, rather harshly.

“Not in the way you mean. Just thought I'd like to know who it was that Gordon didn't want me to meet.”

“And did you find out?”

“I found out it wasn't a woman. D'you know,” she went on meditatively, “I've always fancied Frew had a wife knocking about somewhere, for all he made himself out to be a bachelor. I once picked up a book to look at in his studio, and it had one of these little pictures inside the cover that people stick in books to show who they belong to. ‘Ex Libris Phyllis Frew,' it said.
I
asked him straight out if it was his wife.”

“And he denied it?”

“No, he didn't!” She smiled reminiscently. “He said it was like my blasted impudence to inquire into his private affairs, and he'd thank me not to paw his books about without his permission. He wasn't a bit upset, really, though. He grinned. He was like that. The worse language he used, the more amiable he spoke. When he was really angry, he didn't say anything.”

Hembrow made a careful note of this little reminiscence. “And now, Miss Shirley, will you please tell me what you heard while you were—tying up your shoe-lace?” Miss Shirley laughed.

“Oh, let's call a spade a spade!” Then a puzzled look came into her blue eyes. “It's difficult,” she murmured. “I didn't really hear much, and nothing that seems to make sense. You see, when I found that it was a man I didn't stop to listen much.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“No.”

“Would you recognize it if you heard it again?”

“Lord, no, I shouldn't think so! It was just an ordinary voice, a nice voice, a gentleman's voice, I should think, not loud or—or anything. Not so loud as Mr. Frew's. I don't think I heard anything it said. Just a buzz.”

“Did you hear anything that Mr. Frew said?”

“Well... I heard him laugh out loud, very jolly, like he always did when he was suddenly amused. And I heard him say: ‘You've mistaken the date, old man!' And then the other man spoke, for quite a long while, but I couldn't catch what he was saying.”

“Could you tell from the sound of his voice whether he was angry or amused?”

“Oh, I don't think he was angry! Unless he was like Mr. Frew, and spoke gently when he was annoyed. And then I heard Mr. Frew laugh again, and he said—he said—”

“Well?”

The girl looked uncomfortable.

“It sounds so silly, and you'll think I'm making it up. But I did really hear it, I can swear.”

She looked appealingly at Christmas, as if imploring him, at least, to believe her.

“Well?” said Hembrow patiently. “You heard him say?”

“Well,” said Pandora, dropping her voice artistically to a mysterious whisper, “he said something I couldn't hear at first, and then he raised his voice, and I heard him say quite clear: ‘A coffin for one!'”

She looked from Hembrow to Christmas with large round eyes, evidently much intrigued by what she had overheard and anxious to see what impression it made on them.

“When I heard poor Gordon'd been killed, I thought of it at once,” she murmured. “It seemed so—well, as if he knew what was going to happen.”

Christmas wondered for a moment whether the love of sensation had not, after the event, created these sinister words out of some quite ordinary half-heard sentence. Then he dismissed the idea. Pandora Shirley, whatever her faults might be, seemed to him an eminently clearheaded young woman.

“Yes,” she went on, “that's what I heard. A coffin for one! He said it out loud with a kind of ring, and laughed. And then the other man said something, and I heard Gordon say: ‘Oh, have it your own way, but I thought it'd save argument!'”

“And then?” asked Hembrow.

The girl looked at him, rather disappointed at his stolid reception of her report.

“Well, then I came away,” she replied in a rather injured voice. “I went downstairs. I met Ernest's father in the hall, and we—we just passed the time of day.”

“You said,” interrupted Hembrow stolidly, reading from his notes, “‘Hullo, Daddy! How's your blue-eyed boy? Give him my love, but not my address.'”

The girl giggled, swinging her long legs to and fro.

“Doesn't it sound silly when you read it out like that?”

“Yes, that's what I said. It got my goat the way he looked at me as if he was trying not to see me!”

“Doesn't Ernest Greenaway know your address?

The girl looked troubled and defiant. She frowned, and her blue eyes seemed to go black under the heavy fringe that covered her eyebrows.

“Yes, of course he does. That was just a joke, a manner of speaking. I wish to goodness he didn't know it!”

She stared broodingly across the room, her face set in sullen lines that robbed it of all charm. Then she stirred suddenly, shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

“Well, what's the use of worrying?” she demanded of the world in general. “A short life and a gay one, eh?” She looked mischievously at John, slipped down from the piano and walked restlessly over to the hearth.

“I have a few more questions to ask you, Miss 
Shirley,” said Hembrow. “What did you do when you left the building?”

“Went straight home like a good girl and spent the evening altering this dress to fit me,” she replied promptly. “If you don't believe me, ask Maidie Hally who lives in the top flat. She was here helping me all the evening.”

Inspector Hembrow used his note-book for a few moments while the girl waited, facing him defiantly. Then he shut the book deliberately and remarked:

“How is it, Miss Shirley, that though you never entered Mr. Frew's flat last night, this handkerchief of yours was found in the dining-room?”

The girl looked blank for a moment, then flushed up.

“It isn't mine!” she said immediately, without looking at it. ‘‘Or if it is I must have left it there the day before.”

“It was crumpled into a ball, and quite damp when I found it. You had been crying, had you not, Miss Shirley?”

“I tell you it isn't mine!” cried the girl indignantly. “Crying! I haven't cried for ten years. I didn't cry when I heard about Gordon this morning, and he was a good friend to me! What d'you take me for? I tell you I didn't so much as put my nose inside the door last night!”

“No need to be so indignant,” said Hembrow calmly. “Take a look at the handkerchief, Miss Shirley. P is your initial, is it not?”

“Yes.” Still hot-eyed and angry, she scrutinized the small square of cambric. “It isn't mine,” she said, but with less assurance. “At least—”

“Well?” 

“Oh, how should I know! I've got dozens and dozens of handkerchiefs! People keep giving them to me! I—I don't know whether it's mine or not! But I didn't leave it there! I swear I didn't! You can't mix me up in this! I swear—”

She looked wildly round, and suddenly to his immense embarrassment Christmas found her clinging to his hand and sobbing.

“I—I liked Gordon,” she sobbed incoherently. “I didn't want him to die! I—I liked him, I tell you!”

As suddenly as she had begun to weep she left off, and releasing John's hand, got up from her knees and dried her tears.

“Has it got my laundry-mark?” she asked, fairly composedly, but with a catch in her breath. “It's F27 in ink.”

“There's no laundry-mark,” replied Hembrow. “But it appears to be a new handkerchief.”

“I did have a dozen new hankies given me about a fortnight ago,” said the girl unsteadily. “I don't know. It may be mine....”

She went to the mirror over the mantelpiece and began to repair the damage her tears had done to the rouge and powder on her face.

“I wasn't there, Mr. Hembrow,” she said at length. “That's all I can say. I wish I had been. I wouldn't have thought twice about knifing anyone who tried to do poor old Gordon any harm....” Her eyes began to fill again, but she blinked away the tears and smiled determinedly. “But what's done's done, and watering people's graves don't bring them to life again.” She stood a moment hand on hip looking at the carpet, then roused herself and shrugged her shoulders. “Well,” she said cheerfully, “we've all got to die some day. What difference does it make?”