John Creasey - Meet The Baron

“Just what happened when you slipped against the table?” he asked.

Lady Kenton clasped her hands together, and her expression was acid.

“Surely you’ve heard all that could be said about that?”

“It’s necessary,” said Bristow, “to check up on every statement, m’lady. A slight difference between two separate statements might mean a great deal. You appreciate that, I am sure.”

Her ladyship nodded now, as if to suggest that she fully understood the reason for the Inspector’s call, but didn’t consider it a sufficient one.

“I slipped,” she said.

“Against what?”

“The table, of course.”

Bristow accepted the words patiently.

“What made you slip?” he asked next.

“I don’t know,” said her ladyship. “I just slipped.”

“But it isn’t likely that you fell over without striking something first,” said Bristow.

“I stubbed my foot on the table-leg,” said Lady Kenton, bristling.

The Inspector rubbed his chin, and Lorna thought that he was beginning to feel exasperated.

“That was what I understood,” he said, “but I don’t quite see how it was possible, Lady Kenton. We have examined the table, and there was nothing projecting from it to cause you to stumble. It is a period piece, supported by a centre leg only,”

“It might have been the carpet,” said Lady Kenton, annoyed beyond measure at discovering that the policeman knew a period piece when he saw one.

“It’s parquet flooring,” said the Inspector, “and it was not carpeted that day,”

Her ladyship glared at him.

“Are you suggesting that I’m lying?” she demanded, and her voice sounded very strident in the small room.

Bristow’s doubts came back with a rush. His manner grew more placating than ever, but he was on the alert for the slightest slip she might make.

“Nothing of the kind,” he assured her quickly. “It is just possible that you slipped on the polished floor, m’lady.”

“It is,” snapped Lady Kenton.

“Yet you remember stubbing your foot against something,” persisted Bristow.

“Distinctly,”

“It wasn’t the carpet or a table-leg,” said the Inspector very carefully. “Can you remember . . .”

“It might have been Gerry Long’s foot,” said Lady Kenton, “or Mr Mannering’s. I really don’t think that it’s important, Inspector, and if you don’t mind . . .”

The Inspector accepted his dismissal without a protest.

He knew that Lady Kenton had the ear of a number of prominent politicians, and he did not desire to be rebuked for zeal in that quarter. If events developed to give him a substantial charge against her ladyship it would be a different matter.

But as he went into the street he was very doubtful whether he would ever have such a charge to make. It didn’t seem feasible that the frail, bad-tempered old woman could have organised a robbery of that nature; it seemed less likely that she could have sent that letter to the Yard. He did wonder, however, whether she was thinking of shielding someone else. That would explain a great deal.

As he hurried towards Scotland Yard in a taxi he felt more worried than he had been all day. The effect of that challenge in the Morning Star was exasperating him. The disapproval of the A.G. was unpleasant.

“I’ll get him,” muttered the Inspector — of the Baron — suddenly. I’ll get him !”

“I’ve a good mmd,” said Lady Kenton viciously, as the door closed behind the spruce figure of the detective, “to complain to Nigel about him. Asking me questions like that . . .”

“He obviously didn’t like the job,” suggested Lorna.

Lady Kenton looked placated, and managed a wintry smile.

“I really don’t know how I should have got on without you, Lorna dear. I’m sure I should have lost my temper, or something silly like that, and the next thing I should have known would be to find myself in a police cell. I’m sure something dreadful like that will happen one day.”

Lorna chuckled.

“That man would do anything,” said Lady Kenton, roused immediately. “I’m convinced he came here to try and trap me into making some admission. I can’t bear the man. He was almost rude to me several times when I was inquiring about my brooch, and I have never seen it since.”

Lorna sighed to herself. She had hoped that the brooch topic would not crop up, for once Emma got on to that and the inefficiency of the police she was non-stop; and the younger woman felt that her patience was at a low ebb that morning.

Lady Kenton really wearied of the subject for once, however, and after one or two almost habitual remarks deserted it.

Over a cup of coffee she inquired about Lorna’s painting. It was a subject the younger woman had wanted to introduce, but policemen and pearls had side-tracked anything but a crude approach. The opportunity made her feel more cheerful.

“I’m not selling a great deal,” she said slowly.

“Selling?” Lady Kenton looked at her sharply. “You don’t have to sell, do you? You do it for pleasure. Selling . . .”

“Of course I sell,” said Lorna. “I’m an artist, my dear, not an amateur. It isn’t the money that counts, but my ability to earn it is the test. . .”

Lady Kenton interrupted her with characteristic contrariness as she poured out another cup of coffee.

“It does count, Lorna, and don’t make the mistake that it doesn’t. Money matters. Your father will always tell you that, I’m sure.”

Lorna laughed, and regarded her cup.

“I know,” she said. “I refused an offer for a picture six months ago, and I’ve never heard the last of it from Dad.”

“Why did you refuse it?” demanded Lady Kenton.

The offer wasn’t big enough,” said Lorna. “It’s worth four hundred at least, and I was offered only two-fifty,”

“When you reach my age,” said her ladyship thoughtfully, “you will realise it’s never wise to refuse money. Tell me about the picture, my dear,”

Lorna smiled, and described it at some length. She was very nearly sure that Lady Emma Kenton had fallen to the bait, and that before the day was out the picture would be her property, and that Lorna would hold the Kenton cheque for three hundred pounds. Lady Kenton could never resist a bargain.

And Lorna Faundey badly needed three hundred pounds.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A CLOSE SHAVE

THE LETTER THAT MANNERING HAD SENT TO THE YARD HAD achieved its object, thanks to the carelessness of Wrightson and the wide-awake Morning Star man. It had cleared Gerry Long of suspicion in the robbery, but Mannering found that it was a question of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Inspector Bristow was undoubtedly worried about his failure on the job. His anxiety cancelled Mannering’s anticipated pleasure in a conversation with the policeman soon after Bristow had left Regent’s Park and Lady Kenton. It was impossible to revel in another man’s discomfort, and Mannering began to wish that he had never been approached by Bristow. He liked the Inspector, and he disliked the idea of stabbing the man in the back.

Before he left the Yard, however, he was more cheerful.

Superintendent Lynch, who was fond of saying that he had eyes at the back of his head, came into the office, nodded cheerfully to Bristow, shook hands with Mannering, and introduced himself.

“Been talking with the A.C.,” he told the Inspector. “I’m coming on the Baron job with you, Bill. I’ve told him that I think it’s a bigger problem than he fancies, and he’s in a better temper than he was yesterday.”

Bristow’s face cleared. Lynch looked placidly at Mannering.

“We have a dog’s life sometimes,” he said. “It’s all right when we’re going smoothly, but when Old Bill makes a slip or I come a cropper we get a proper shaking-up. But it all blows over. What’s your theory about the Baron, Mr Mannering?”

For a fraction of a second Mannering was afraid that he had given something away, but Lynch was reaching across the desk to help himself to one of Bristow’s cigarettes, and the moment’s respite saved Mannering from making a faux pas.

“I haven’t one,” he said, coolly enough.

“That’s an advantage,” said Lynch, looking at him through a haze of smoke. “I’m glad you’re helping, anyhow.”

They chatted for five minutes, but nothing of importance was mentioned. Mannering left the Yard, smiling cheerfully to himself. He went to Park Square, chatted for ten minutes with Gerry Long, who had recovered as well as had been expected, and who was sitting up in bed. Gerry was sorry for himself, and mad with himself. Mannering told him to forget it.

“It’s so darned silly,” said Long, “that I can’t think of any way of thanking you, Mannering,”

“The chance may crop up,” smiled the other.

He went to his flat, took the Overndon pearls from their hiding-place soon afterwards, and went to Aldgate. On the way — he travelled by taxi — he altered his appearance sufficiently to make reasonably sure that no casual acquaintance would recognise him. At a small barber’s shop in a turning off the High Street he waited for a bald-headed, jolly-faced man to waddle into the back-parlour which he had entered.

“Morning, Mr Mayle,” The bald-headed man wheezed the greeting cheerfully. He was tremendously fat, a fact emphasised by a pair of slacks let out at the waist with a material different in colour and quality, an Oxford shirt without buttons, opening to reveal an expanse of soft, dimply flesh, and a pair of carpet-slippers.

“Same as usual for you, sir?”

Mannering nodded, and smiled.

The fat man grinned, revealing teeth that were surprisingly white and strong. Mannering waited for him patiently, knowing that Harry Pearce could not be hurried. The barber did many things besides cutting hair and shaving week-old stubble. Mannering had been introduced to him by Flick Leverson, that philosophical fence who was now in gaol. Harry supplied all kinds of make-up, and even helped to apply it. He asked no questions, relied on the generosity of his customers for payment, and was not averse to doing a job for nothing. In that strange world of small thieves and petty rogues a man might be penniless one day and rich the next; Harry knew that his credit would rarely be stretched to breaking-point.

He knew Mannering — a Mannering disguised well enough to deceive the casual eye, or the eye of a man who did not know him in regular life — as Mr Mayle, and he appeared to accept the name for gospel. He supplied him with the rubber cheek-pads and the teeth-covering with which Mannering helped to turn himself into the swarthy, full-faced man who visited Dicker Grayson occasionally for the sale of stolen goods. Mannering had discovered that disguise was not so difficult as he had imagined, and the main essential was to act up to the facial alterations.

It was middle afternoon when Mannering reached the wharf in which Grayson worked. That pink-and-white doll of a man was genial and friendly. He knew that he could get good stuff from the other, and when he reached a fair price he knew that there would be no unnecessary haggling. They had now handled several jobs together to their mutual advantage.

Mannering adopted his usual methods.

He grunted in response to Grayson’s “How are you?”, slipped his rubber container from his pocket, upturned it, and let the Overndon pearls stream on to the desk, all without a change of expression.

Grayson’s smile disappeared. His eyes were very hard as he stared at the prize.