The Crimson Ramblers Read online

‘You heard what Andy said. It’s not our affair and he doesn’t want to get mixed up in it,’ said Tony.

  ‘But the girl was killed — it’s murder,’ protested Sharon.

  ‘Sharon’s right, Tony,’ said Vera. ‘We ought to have told that policeman all we know.’

  ‘We don’t really know anything,’ said Tony.

  ‘You know about that horrible fat man,’ said Sharon.

  ‘A fat man?’ said Vera sharply.

  ‘Yes — like a great slug. What’s his name — Beatal...?’

  Vera caught her breath with a sudden hiss and her face went white.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Tony.

  She recovered herself quickly.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It — it was the name. I’ve always been scared to death of beetles. Come on, Sharon. Let’s go and get changed.’

  They came out into the passage to find Beryl talking to a tall, thin, elderly man with grey hair and gold pince-nez. She looked round as they came out of the dressing room.

  ‘Oh, here’s Miss Lee now,’ she said. ‘Vera, somebody wants to see you.’

  ‘Me?’ said Vera in surprise.

  ‘Miss Lee?’ said the elderly man with a smile. She nodded.

  ‘My name is Hargreaves, Miss Lee — Wilson Hargreaves.’

  Vera’s face changed.

  ‘You were expecting me, I think,’ he went on, still smiling pleasantly.

  ‘Yes, I was expecting you,’ she said. ‘Tony, can I use your room for a minute? Sharon wants to change in ours.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tony.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Vera gratefully. ‘Will you come in here, Mr. Hargreaves?’

  She opened the door and he went in. She turned to the others.

  ‘Don’t wait for me,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some business to talk over.’

  ‘Who was that I wonder?’ said Beryl curiously when she had gone.

  ‘Mr. Hargreaves!’ said Sharon.

  ‘I know, but what’s he want with Vera?’

  ‘Perhaps she’s found a sugar daddy,’ said Sharon.

  ‘More like the family solicitor,’ said Tony.

  ‘Oh, do you think somebody’s left Vera a fortune?’ cried Beryl.

  ‘I should say it was very unlikely,’ remarked Tony. ‘Still you never know. Hurry up and change, Sharon. I’ll wait for you at the café opposite the pier. You coming with us, Beryl?’

  ‘Where’s Andy?’ asked Beryl.

  ‘He’s — well, he’s busy...’

  Beryl sighed.

  ‘Oh, well, I may as well have tea with you, then,’ she said.

  *

  Inside Tony’s dressing room, Vera faced the elderly man with the gold-rimmed pince-nez.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Beautiful weather but the nights are treacherous,’ he remarked.

  ‘You can always stay indoors after sunset,’ she answered.

  ‘Correct,’ said Mr. Hargreaves briskly. ‘Now, Miss Lee, I think you have something for me. A small packet.’

  ‘I was told you would be coming,’ she said.

  ‘You have the packet?’

  ‘Not here...’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I thought it was safer to keep it at my lodgings.’

  He nodded appreciatively.

  ‘That was sensible,’ he remarked. ‘You have carried out your instructions admirably.’

  ‘I wish I knew a little more about it,’ she said.

  ‘There is no reason why you should.

  You were required to do a certain thing — you have done it. So far as you are concerned the matter is at an end, or will be when you have placed the packet in my hands.’

  ‘I didn’t bargain for murder,’ she snapped.

  His face hardened.

  ‘What do you mean — murder?’ he said curtly.

  ‘A girl’s body was found under the pier this afternoon,’ she answered. ‘She’d been strangled.’

  ‘I know nothing about it,’ he said smoothly. ‘If you are wise, Miss Lee, you will know nothing about it either. Now, as soon as you are ready, we will go and complete our transaction...’

  Anthony Wayne got back to the Dome early that evening and he was making-up when Billy burst into the dressing room.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘The girls and I tried to find a place for tea but everywhere was jammed packed tight,’ said Tony, ‘so they went back to their digs and I came on here. Have you heard about all the excitement?’

  ‘Which lot of excitement are you talking about?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Good grief! Don’t tell me there’s more than one,’ exclaimed Tony.

  ‘There is, you know,’ said Billy. ‘Not so serious as finding that poor woman’s body, but jolly queer all the same. Vera’s had a burglar.’

  ‘A burglar?’

  ‘Fact,’ said Billy. ‘I’ve just left her. She’s awfully upset. Somebody went to her digs during the matinée — it’s one of those places where the front door is always open, you know the kind of thing? They got into her room and turned the place upside down.’

  Tony looked interested.

  ‘Do they know who it was?’ he asked. ‘Some little sneak-thief, out for anything he could pick up, I suppose.’

  ‘Was anything stolen?’

  Billy shook his head.

  ‘No. According to Vera there wasn’t anything worth stealing. Nobody saw anyone. The landlady was down in the basement and the other lodgers were all out. None of the other rooms were touched, though. Queer, eh?’

  ‘Very queer,’ said Tony, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Very queer, indeed.’

  ‘We seem to have landed in a hotbed of mystery and mayhem. I say, you and Andy must have been right about that girl in the basket last night.’

  ‘I’m afraid we were,’ said Tony.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing you know,’ said Billy, his usually sunny face clouded. ‘She was such a pretty girl...’

  Andy came in. He looked very white and rather shaken.

  ‘How did you get on, Andy?’ asked Tony.

  ‘It wasna a pleasant experience,’ said Andy. He sat down in a chair with a sigh of relief. ‘I popped into the pub over the road for a brandy before I came in.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked Billy. ‘With Superintendent Halliday to the mortuary,’ said Andy.

  ‘Good Lord. No wonder you wanted a brandy!’ exclaimed Billy.

  ‘Aye. I wouldna like the experience often.’

  ‘Was it the girl?’ said Tony.

  Andy gave a little shudder.

  ‘You couldna tell,’ he said.

  ‘What made you go? Do the police know that you found the girl in the basket?’ asked Billy.

  ‘No, I didna tell them anything about it.’

  ‘What made them come to you, then?’

  ‘They found a scrap of paper with my name on it in a pocket of her suit,’ said Andy.

  ‘How on earth did that get there?’ demanded Billy.

  Andy shook his head.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell them about finding the girl in the basket?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Because then we’d all have been involved,’ answered Andy. ‘They might even suspect that one of us had something to do with it...’

  ‘I’m not sure they wouldn’t be right,’ put in Tony.

  ‘Somebody pinched that packet out of this room — and it wasn’t Beatal...’

  Billy stared at him.

  ‘Stole the packet?’

  ‘Yes. Sometime during the show last night,’ said Tony.

  ‘Anybody might have come in. The stage door’s always open during the show. It couldna have been anyone in the company. Ye had the packet before we went up for the finale and there was no opportunity afterwards.’

  ‘Why should any of us want the thing?’ demanded Billy.

  ‘Why should anybody want it?’ said Tony.

  ‘Aye,’
said Andy. ‘It must be very valuable. I still think it was Beatal who took it.’

  ‘Then why did he bother to talk to me in the café?’

  ‘Do you think he killed the girl?’ said Billy.

  ‘He’s capable of anything,’ answered Tony. ‘The question is — when could he have killed her?’

  ‘It must have been between matinée and the evening show,’ said Andy. ‘There’d have been nobody here then.’

  ‘Why should she come here at that time?’ said Tony.

  ‘To get the packet from you,’ said Billy. ‘But surely she wouldn’t have come until later,’ said Tony. ‘She knew I was bringing it back with me from my digs. She must have known there’d be nobody here at that time...’

  ‘Aye,’ said Andy slowly. ‘But she was wrong. There was somebody...’

  ‘Yes.’ Tony’s voice was very grave. There was somebody — waiting...’

  6

  Just outside the town of Westpool there is a group of bungalows near the edge of the cliff that can be rented furnished for the season. The rents are high but the bungalows are comfortable and sufficiently far apart to insure privacy.

  In the living room of one of these, Mr. Wilson Hargreaves was pacing up and down restlessly. He looked both annoyed and worried. Lolling in an easy chair was a dark-haired, middle-aged man, with a hard face and a cynical twist to his thin mouth. He looked the type of man who could be very unpleasant if things did not go the way he wanted them to.

  ‘You’re quite sure,’ he said, not for the first time, ‘that this girl isn’t pulling a fast one?’

  Hargreaves pulled gently at his high-bridged nose.

  ‘Why should she?’ he asked.

  ‘Never mind why. Are you sure she isn’t?’ snapped the other.

  His voice was harsh and metallic.

  ‘All I’m definitely sure about, Renton, is that the packet has disappeared,’ admitted Hargreaves.

  ‘The whole thing sounds phoney to me,’ said Renton.

  ‘Do you have to use these beastly Americanisms?’ said Hargreaves irritably.

  ‘Why not?’ said Renton. ‘They’re expressive.’

  ‘I find them extremely irritating,’ said Hargreaves.

  Renton shrugged his broad shoulders.

  ‘Sorry,’ he grunted. ‘I’ll anglicise it, if you like. Did someone really steal that packet from her lodgings, or is she making up a story to account for not handing it over to you?’

  ‘There’s no reason for her to do that,’ said Hargreaves. ‘She didn’t know what was in it.’

  ‘She only had to open it.’

  ‘Even then she wouldn’t realise its value.’

  ‘She would if someone had put her wise.’

  ‘There may be something in that,’ agreed Hargreaves thoughtfully.

  ‘When there’s a question of something like two million pounds involved, there may be a great deal in it,’ said Renton. ‘What was the idea of choosing this girl, Lee, in the first place? A singer or something in a cheap little concert party...’

  ‘That was the idea. Nobody would be likely to suspect her.’

  ‘Somebody obviously did.’

  ‘Yes, it went wrong somehow. The plan was to concentrate the attention on the other girl, Jill Manners, who was carrying a dummy packet exactly like the real one. She didn’t know it was a dummy.’

  ‘That’s were it came unstuck. She got scared of something on the train and chucked the packet into the very compartment where the Lee girl was travelling with the rest of the concert party. A case of putting the cat in the aviary with a vengeance.’

  ‘She wasn’t scared for nothing,’ said Hargreaves. ‘Her body was pulled out of the sea this afternoon. She’d been strangled.’

  Renton sat up quickly.

  ‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘Beatal’s work, I suppose?’

  ‘Or the other lot,’ said Hargreaves.

  ‘We don’t know who they are...’

  ‘No, I wish we did.’

  Renton got up. He walked to a table containing drinks and poured himself out a stiff whisky. At one gulp he drained the glass of neat spirit.

  ‘We’ve got to find that packet, Hargreaves,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to. We can’t let a fortune slip through our fingers at the last lap.’

  ‘We’re not going to,’ replied Hargreaves grimly. ‘The question is — where is it?’

  At precisely that moment, in the sitting room of his suite in one of Westpool’s luxurious hotels, Simon Beatal was asking the same question. He was sitting, clad in a flowered silk dressing gown, with a big-bowled brandy glass beside him, talking to the thin-faced little man who had visited Howard Gilbert.

  ‘The question is — where is it?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A difficult problem, Chives, but not unsolvable. To an intelligent man, sir, nothing is insurmountable. Let us look at the thing logically.’ He paused to take a sip of brandy. ‘The packet was in the possession of Mr. Wayne up to the time they made the discovery of that unfortunate girl’s body in the basket. While they were — er — engaged on the stage, I, with your invaluable assistance, sir, removed the body from the basket and substituted the dummy from the waxworks.’

  ‘Why you took the risk of doin’ that, I don’t know,’ interjected Chives.

  ‘The answer is surely obvious, sir,’ retorted Simon Beatal. ‘Had the body remained there, these concert party people would have been forced to send for the police. I had already informed them the girl was my niece. I could not fail to have been dragged into the inquiry that followed. The substitution of the dummy made the whole thing ridiculous. Nobody would have believed their story of a dead body in face of it. A simple example of forethought, sir.’ He gave one of his jerky laughs, and Chives stared at him.

  ‘You must have got ice in yer veins,’ he said.

  ‘Merely the proper control of the emotions, sir,’ said Beatal. ‘To continue our reasoning. Nobody from outside came in at that period to take the packet. I was, myself, considering searching for it but I judged, correctly, that there would not be time. Therefore, either it is still in Mr. Wayne’s possession, and he was lying when he told me it was not, or some other member of the concert party stole it. You agree, sir?’

  ‘It sounds reasonable,’ admitted Chives.

  ‘The next step is to discover which of these conclusions is the right one, sir,’ said Simon Beatal.

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  The fat man took another sip of brandy.

  ‘I am giving the matter a great deal of consideration, sir,’ he answered. ‘I shall shortly reach a decision.’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Chives.

  ‘There is a time for thinking and a time for action, sir,’ answered Simon Beatal. ‘That will be the time for action.’

  *

  Sharon came out of her dressing room fumbling with the hook at the back of her dress. As she walked towards the steps leading up to the stage she met Andy and Tony coming down.

  ‘It’s a good house, isn’t it, Andy?’ she said.

  ‘Packed like sardines,’ answered Andy, rubbing his hands.

  ‘Let me do that,’ said Tony seeing her still fiddling with the back of her dress. ‘Keep still.’ He deftly fixed the hook. ‘There you are.’

  She smiled brightly at him.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What are you doing after the show tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Is that a prelude to an invitation,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well? Go on — tell me the rest,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a dance at the Blue Grotto. I thought perhaps you’d like to come...’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Well, get changed as quickly as you can after the finalé,’ he said. If we hurry we can get away before the others.’

  ‘I see — just a deux?’

  ‘Strictly.’

  ‘All right. I’ll be ready.’ She waved her hand and hurried up the steps to the stage.

&nbs
p; He went along the passage towards his dressing room and met Andy coming back.

  ‘Ye know about the new finalé we’re trying tonight?’ said Andy, adjusting the false nose he had been to get.

  ‘Yes, don’t worry,’ answered Tony.

  Vera came out of her room and Andy stopped her.

  ‘Dinna forget the new finalé,’ he said. ‘I’ve told the others.’

  ‘Right oh,’ she said.

  ‘It makes a difference to your position, you know,’ he said. ‘Ye’ll no forget that?’

  ‘No, all right,’ she said absently.

  He looked at her critically.

  ‘Are ye feeling all right? You don’t look too well...’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache, that’s all,’ she said.

  ‘That business at your digs — it upset ye, maybe?’

  ‘It did rather,’ she admitted.

  ‘It was lucky ye didna lose anything,’ he said with a sudden keen glance. ‘Ye might have had something there that was very valuable.’

  He hurried away and she looked after him suspiciously.

  There was something in the tone of his voice that made her feel uneasy...

  *

  The Blue Grotto was packed. It was so unpleasantly packed that after half an hour of attempting to dance on the crowded floor Tony and Sharon gave it up and came out into the moonlit coolness of the summer night.

  ‘Phew!’ said Tony, wiping his perspiring face with his handkerchief. ‘I feel as if I’d had a Turkish bath.’

  ‘It was a bit warm,’ said Sharon who looked surprisingly cool.

  ‘Stifling! I ought to have guessed it would be crowded,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Pity. It was a first-class band, but no room to dance! All you could do was stand still and shuffle. I’m awfully sorry Sharon.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Tony. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘What shall we do? Try somewhere else?’

  ‘I don’t suppose any of the other places will be any better,’ she said. ‘Let’s go for a walk along the beach. It’s a lovely night.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Tony enthusiastically. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better. Which way shall we go?’

  ‘Do you think the pier will still be open?’ asked Sharon. ‘I’d like to pop into the Dome. I left the key of my digs on my dressing table.’

  ‘The pier will be open,’ said Tony. ‘But I’m doubtful about the stage door...’