Homicide House: A Mr. Pinkerton Mystery. Zenith Brown
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“ ’Ere you are, sir.”
It was a small airless cupboard at the end of the transverse hall opposite Mr. Pinkerton, ventilated by a pull-up oblong of glass set in the sloping roof. It had a bed and washstand with crockery basin and tall blue hot water jug, a chair, and a small table with a lamp on it, attached by a long cord to the single drop light from the ceiling. From Mr. Pinkerton’s room probably, Dan McGrath thought with a smile.
“It ain’t much,” Mason said. “Mr. Pinkerton’s opposite, next the bath and w. c. You share it with ’im—’im and the chef when ’e sleeps in. Chef’s got the best room. Got to mind ’im, sir.” He touched his temple significantly. “She’d not ask ’im to move out, not ’er, and ’im not sleeping in more than ’alf the time. Kid gloves is what she ’andles ’im with, ’im and the valet.”
Dan glanced along the hall at Mr. Pinkerton’s closed door. “This suits me dandy,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve made a lot of trouble.” He took a pound note out of his pocket and handed it to Mason. “Good night.”
He closed the door, tossed his hat and raincoat on the chair and went over to feel the bed. It was okay. For a moment he had an impulse to drop into it and sleep through the rest of his first night in London. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. Twenty-four hours from home in one sense, a lifetime in another, he had reached the first step to his goal more quickly by far than he had hoped when he stepped onto the plane, infinitely more quickly than he had despairingly thought as he stood in front of the ruined house that was the only tangible thread he had to lead him back to her. He hadn’t even known her name then, much less how to go about finding her, if she was still alive. Standing in front of the blasted remains of the house she’d lived in, the sudden agony of emptiness that hit him squarely in the pit of the stomach had been almost intolerable. Then the little guy had showed up. Showed up, and almost got kicked out of his room for his pains.
Dan McGrath glanced at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock—not too late, he guessed, to drop in on an old friend. He reached into his pocket to get a cigarette and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was a telegram from his father, delivered to him when the plane landed. He opened it and read it again.
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP. BUT IF YOU DECIDE TO LEAP ALL OUR BEST WISHES AND LOVE. DAD.
Something smarted sharply along his upper eyelids for an instant. He knew they’d hoped he’d marry the girl next door, and he would have, probably, if it hadn’t been for that night six years ago on the steps of the Underground. It was a long time for an image to hold, the image of a face white and tense at first, in the dreary darkness, crowded with people coming home from work, reeking with antiseptics and the heavy acrid odor of cordite and the pungent smell of human fear. With his arm around her he could feel the bursting beat of her heart, pounding through her blue coat under his hand—just a kid, scared out of her wits. It was a long time to hold the image of the dismayed widening of her blue-black eyes as she realized she was clinging to him and that he had his arm around her, and her sudden crystal peal of laughter when she let go and he did not. He remembered her voice and the warmth of her slight body as they sat close together until the all-clear sounded, the curly tendrils of her clean-smelling hair tickling his flushed cheek. And stumbling home with her after it was all over, to Number 22 Godolphin Square.
It was a long time to hold the image of love that was in his heart that night. There had been times when he thought he had lost it, and times when he no longer believed in its validity as anything but an adolescent dream. It was his twentieth brithday, that night, and he’d come to London from camp to celebrate, and found himself alone and homesick, homesick as hell. It was easy to say that was the reason he thought he’d fallen in love. And he could be all wet, of course. Six years was a long-time period. It was cockeyed to remember a kid’s conversation for six years. About her father, for instance. Her father had gone away, but some day he’d come back. She didn’t remember him, or wasn’t sure; she might only remember her mother telling her about him. But she was sure he’d come back to them—or, if he didn’t, she would go and find him when the war was over. And that night, he was going with her. They were going to search the world together.
It was all crazy. If her father had been gone that long without any word, he was dead, or had changed his name and disappeared. But at the time it had seemed a high and noble quest. It was crazy, but he remembered it, practically every word of it. And here he was back in Godolphin Square—twenty-six years old, and she . . . He didn’t know. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, that night, sixteen maybe. Here they both were, after six years. She was in the very house, down below, somewhere, in the dreary effluvia of boiled cabbage and brass polish and fresh paint that they hadn’t bothered to touch up the box room with. Or the little man had said she was.
Thinking of Mr. Pinkerton again, Dan McGrath went over to the door. There was someone in the hall. He had not heard the lift come up. It was probably the chef, or Mr. Pinkerton, going to the w. c. He opened the door, glanced out and closed it quickly.
It was a woman, coming out of Mr. Pinkerton’s room—or going into it, he couldn’t tell—dressed in something that looked very much like a wrapper and a nightgown, with a shawl about her shoulders. It was probably Mrs. Pinkerton. Nobody had mentioned a Mrs. Pinkerton, but if she was as pallid and self-effacing as Mr. Pinkerton, they’d probably not have bothered. He thought back suddenly. Miss Grimstead had only mentioned one of her people, not two, as going on holiday. He opened the door again. Whoever it was, he had scared her off. She was disappearing down the stairs, obviously frightened, clutching her shawl about her throat.
He shook his head, wondering a little, started to close his door again, and stopped. Mr. Pinkerton’s door, he saw now, was ajar, but no light shone out. It seemed a little strange. He hesitated, left his own door as it was and went along the hall.
“Mr. Pinkerton?”
He put his head into the room and spoke again. Mr. Pinkerton was not there. He glanced back at the staircase, pushed the door farther open to let in the light from the hall, and crossed the room to the rickety lamp on the table. The bulb was cold as he felt for the switch. He pressed it on and looked about him at a room nearly as bare as his own. A couple of Dresden china shepherdesses and a few photographs on the mantel were the only personal property he could see, together with a red-green woolen throw on the sofa in front of the open French windows. He looked beyond the sofa, through the windows, out onto the balcony ledge, and took two quick strides across the room. The little man was lying inert, crumpled up, his head against the lead drainpipe.
Dan McGrath said, “Good God!” He bent down quickly, picked Mr. Pinkerton up, carried him into the room and laid him on the day bed. He loosened the purple string tie and ripped open the narrow celluloid collar, opened the band of the shoddy grey trousers and looked about. There was no telephone and no bell, no bottle of whisky, no water. He dashed out into the hall, jabbed the call button on the side of the lift half a dozen times and dashed back. The little man’s eyes were open. He was staring blindly, his face suffused, trying to struggle upright.
“Take it easy, Mr. Pinkerton.”
“She mustn’t go,” Mr. Pinkerton whispered. He clutched at Dan’s sleeve. “Mustn’t go. Mustn’t go to Paris.”
“Okay, okay. Everything’s under control. Just take it easy. It’s me—Dan McGrath.”
As if the word had got through into his dazed semi-conscious mind, the little man sank down on the couch.
“Well get a doctor right away.”
He strode out into the hall, punched the bell violently again and came back. The little man looked pathetically different, lying there, without his brown derby hat. There was something else, Dan thought—his spectacles. The lozenge-shaped steel-rimmed job that made him look like a Dickensian gnome. Without them and the hat he looked indecently nude. Furthermore, he probably couldn’t see. Dan went over to the balcony, hoping the spectacles weren’t broken in his fall, and glanced along the narrow ledge. The brown derby had rolled along nearly to the drain. He retrieved it and looked about for the spectacles. They were nowhere in sight. He glanced down into the street—they could easily