Читать книгу Boomerang - Sydney J. Bounds - Страница 6

CHAPTER THREE

MISS EATON AGREES

Wilfred and Hilda Keller were taking lunch in the dining room of the Harbour Inn. The tablecloth was white and starched, the glasses sparkled in a beam of sunlight, and the cutlery gleamed.

When the door opened. Hilda said, “Oh, dear—one of your party has just come in.”

Wilfred glanced around. “It’s not George. Jim’s all right.”

Fletcher crossed to them, smiling easily. “G’day, mate. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Keller. Thought I’d have a change from sandwiches today—d’you mind if I join you?”

“Take a seat,” Wilfred invited.

“What’s on the menu?”

“We’re having the fish,” Mrs. Keller said. “It’s caught locally, and I always think it makes such a difference to the flavour when it’s fresh.”

As the waitress appeared, Fletcher ordered. “I’ll take fish—and a pint of lager to go with it.” He turned to Wilfred and made a face. “I got stuck with George—that bloke gives me the needle.”

“An oaf,” Hilda remarked.

“Not a pleasant type,” Wilfred said absently, glancing through his sketchbook.

“D’you mind if I take a look?”

“Of course not, Jim.”

Fletcher turned the pages slowly, studying each charcoal sketch in turn.

“Yeah, you’ve got something all right. I was admiring your pastel of a rock formation yesterday, and I said to myself, that bloke’s got it.”

“He’s very good,” Hilda purred, while Fletcher paused at a black-and-lndigo study of some fishermen’s cottages. “Nice, very nice. “D’you sell much of your work. Wilfred? Ever had a West End showing?”

“Only when my wife’s paid for it.”

“I was happy to do that,” she said quickly.

Fletcher drank his lager as the fish arrived. “What you need is an agent. Someone to push your work—make a name. After that, it’s easy.”

Hilda Keller paused over her food. “You seem to know something about it, Mr.—?”

“Fletcher’s the name. Yeah, I suppose I do—there’s no point in false modesty. I’ve been at it a few years, talking on radio, demonstrating on telly, all around the world. Say, I might be able to fix something for Wilfred. Give him a hand, like....”

* * * *

In the kitchen at Porthcove Studios, Joyce Willis, the cook, flushed with anger as she prepared dinner with Val’s assistance.

“That Bullard person’s never satisfied, is he? No matter what the menu says, he wants steak when we serve fish, and curry when lamb’s on. I don’t know why you let him get away with it, Mrs. Courtney, I really don’t. He’s a pain in the neck.”

Joyce slammed down a saucepan on the stainless steel table.

“Yes, well,” Val said mildly. “I might agree with you—in private—but he is paying, you know. And we do try to give satisfaction.”

Joyce sniffed expressively.

“Satisfaction, is it? That one? Never! No matter what you put in front of him, he’ll want something different. No matter what I cook special for him, he’ll complain. You ought to send him packing, that’s what. I hear things, you know—he’s upsetting everybody.”

She chopped onions rapidly with a sharp knife.

“Mind your fingers,” Val said. “Just try to stay calm.” She sighed, and wished she could send George Bullard packing.

George Bullard moved quietly along the passage in the annexe towards the room that Linda shared with Duke Dickson. Lucky man, he thought enviously; too young to know what he’d got there, too young to appreciate her.

He’d seen her arrive back from the harbour and heard her splashing about in the bathroom, but he wasn’t sure if Duke was in their room or not. Nothing ventured, nothing seen, he told himself.

He paused with his ear against the door. He heard small movements but no voices. He turned the handle and opened the door without knocking.

Linda lay on the bed wearing a pair of bikini pants and smoking a cigarette. When she saw him, she put out her tongue.

“That’s rude,” he said.

A voice came from behind the door. “Seen all you want, you dirty old man?”

Bullard flushed. “I just came to see—”

“I know what you came to see,” Duke said contemptuously. “You can look, and that’s all you can do. Now beat it.”

He gave Bullard the finger.

As Bullard closed the door and went back to his own room, he heard Linda laughing.

The air was still warm and scented with blossom. The sky was cloudless. Margo and Sammy strolled side by side in the grounds of the studio after dinner.

“I’m beginning to wish I’d never come,” Sammy said gloomily. “George never lets up, does he?”

Margo made a rude noise.

“Ignore him, Sammy. If you let him see he’s getting you down, he won’t stop. Ignore him and he’ll get tired of baiting you and go away.”

“I wish he would. Permanently.”

They walked slowly in a companionable silence, then Margo said. “It’s not only George. It’s this heat wave—we’re just not used to this kind of weather. Everyone’s on edge.”

They circled the goldfish pond set in the lawn and admired the roses. Margo was looking thoughtful.

“Penny for them,” Sammy said.

“Do you sometimes wonder about Jim?”

“The Aussie? He seems all right.”

“I wonder about him. He tells a good story, but doesn’t he lay it on a bit too thick? I wonder if he’s really been outback.”

“It’s a thought,” Sammy agreed. “But does it matter? Where’s the harm?”

Val Courtney relaxed in a comfortable chair in the private sitting room upstairs. She sipped at a glass of white wine and Mozart played softly in the background. Her husband, Reggie, sat opposite, cupping a tumbler of whisky.

It was what they called the quiet hour, before going to bed, when they could forget the day’s cares and unwind. But not tonight.

Keith Parry paced restlessly up and down the carpet between them, waving his arms dramatically.

“I’m fed up with Bullard, I tell you. He’s upsetting the students and ruining my course.” His voice rose shrilly. “The only time I can get any teaching done is when he’s not around. When he’s there, he destroys the friendly feeling I try to build up with the party.”

Reggie sipped his whisky. “A nasty piece of work, all right. Luckily I don’t have much to do with him, but I’ve heard him a couple of times.”

Parry shuddered.

“I get him all the time. He’s a menace, and I’m not sure I can take much more. He poisons the atmosphere.”

“Oh, I expect you’ll manage, Keith. You usually do.” Val forced a smile. “You’ve had difficult students before.”

“Difficult, yes. But no one like Bullard—he’s impossible. I swear he enjoys making trouble. I’m convinced he came here only to cause trouble.”

“That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?” Reggie protested. “I mean, he wouldn’t know anyone before he arrived, would he?”

Parry stopped pacing to brood. “He might. I don’t know. I thank my lucky stars I’ve never encountered him before. He’s a sadist—I’ve never had such an unhappy week.”

Val said, “He’s managed to upset Joyce as well. If she leaves, we’re really in trouble.”

Parry began to pace up and down again, then turned to face her. The Mozart recording came to an end and his high-pitched voice sounded twice as loud in the silence.

“You’re the brains of this outfit, Val. It’s up to you. You’ve got to do something to stop him, or this studio is finished!”

* * * *

Miss Isabel Eaton sat in a swivel chair with her feet on the desk and contemplated her legs below the hem of a brightly coloured dirndl skirt. They reminded her of a pair of hockey sticks.

She poured liquid from a square bottle labelled Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey into a tumbler and sipped. The label was genuine.

At her back, the window was wide open and the dust and heated air and traffic noises of Grays Inn Road came in. Her small office on the third floor smelt of stale cigarette smoke, and the building cleaners had firm instructions not to disturb the layer of dust on a rusting green filing cabinet.

A cigarette burnt itself out in a metal ashtray. Miss Eaton didn’t much care for smoking but it helped the image she was trying to build up. There was a cigarette burn on the desk and the metal waste bin, ex-army supplies like the filing cabinet, overflowed with junk mail. Everything about the shabby office was a pose.

She picked up a much-thumbed copy of Death Wears Red Garters, a favourite Sam Pike novel, and read:

A man came through the door with a gun in his hand. It was a big .45 automatic. There was a streak of red flame and a slug blasted over my head.

Suddenly there was the smell of fear in the room, like sludge from a sewer.

I dived across the blonde on the bed—she was a genuine blonde, I noticed in passing—and slammed into the mobster. He bounced off the wall and slumped to the floor....

The obligatory blonde; the real life of a private eye was never like that. Miss Eaton reflected sadly. She never ended up in bed with a hunk of man, nor had she ever been slugged in a dark alley or fired a shot in anger.

The telephone rang and she put on her tough American voice to answer.

“Eaton Investigations.”

“Belle? It’s Val Courtney. Val, from St. Agatha’s—the name was Forbes then. Remember?”

Middle-age dropped away from Miss Eaton along with her tough accent. St. Agatha’s College for Young Ladies, gym tunics and the class bell, hockey and sausage-rolls in the dorm after lights out....

“Of course I remember, Val! How are you? Are you in London?”

“I’m harassed, and speaking from Porthcove in Cornwall, along the coast from Penzance. My husband, Reg, and I have a studio here, and we need advice. I read somewhere that you’re running a private detective agency and thought you might know the answer.”

“Glad to help an old girl.”

“We’ve got a problem student—George Bullard by name—a most obnoxious person who upsets everyone. I’ve asked him to leave and he simply laughed at me, and I’m at my wit’s end.”

“I’ll soon get rid of him for you,” Miss Eaton said.

She had a vision of getting out of London in a heat wave to a cool breeze off the sea.

“Oh, I do hope you can.”

Miss Eaton said. “Nothing to it. I’ll run down and sort out this Bullard for you.”

* * * *

“You what?”

Reggie Courtney looked at his wife in astonishment. His voice was unusually sharp.

“A detective? Coming here? Why on earth did you do that?”

They had met at the bottom of the staircase in the hall. Val coming down to go to the kitchen, Reggie coming in from the garden and going upstairs to wash.

‘’You heard what Keith said. He wanted me to do something about Bullard.”

“That’s true. But he didn’t mean you to call in the police. You know Keith—he’s artistic, he dramatizes. One awkward student won’t ruin us.”

“Well, Bullard refused to leave. And Belle isn’t police—she’s a private investigator.”

Reggie relaxed but still looked doubtful. “She might upset the students, all the same. Nobody likes a snooper. Don’t forget they’re our bread and butter.”

“I’m sure they’ll be as pleased to see the last of Bullard as I’ll be.”

“I don’t doubt that, but—”

“I was at school with Belle. She was always reading those dreadful American stories about private eyes and finding out things for us. I’m sure she’s very good, and won’t upset anyone.”

Reggie Courtney sighed. “And she’s coming?”

“Yes. You’ll see, she’ll know how to handle George Bullard.”