Chapter 14 A Favour #2
“Were you coming out of her flat just now?” a suspicious Miss Norris asked, and Flynn held up the key that Archie had provided him with to prove legitimacy.
The key trailed its own questions in its wake now.
How did Archie come to be in possession of it?
Had he been given it by Delphine, or had he stolen it from her?
The sight of the key didn’t seem to quell Miss Norris’s suspicions; if anything, it seemed to propagate them further.
Congratulating himself for thinking so nimbly on his feet, Flynn took the No Job Too Small card from his pocket and flashed it briefly in front of his questioner’s eyes, relying on the thick-lensed spectacles that she was wearing to help his sleight of hand.
“George Smith,” he said, returning the card to his pocket. “Detective Inspector George Smith.”
“Oh dear. Has something happened?”
“No, no, just a routine enquiry, madam,” Flynn said, borrowing his script from Vigo.
“Well, that’s a relief. I’m afraid I have to go, Inspector, I’m rather late for my bridge club.”
“I must be on my way too. My wife’s made a shepherd’s pie that’s got my name on it. I don’t want it to get cold.”
He gave her a few minutes to go down the stairs and leave the building—she was frustratingly slow—using the time to light a cigarette and try to calm his racing heart.
Was Archie the “ex” that Hetty and Margot had speculated about and the flat in Half Moon Street their “love nest”?
Was Delphine Archie’s jilted mistress, seeking revenge by blackmailing him with obscene photographs of his wife and her priapic lover?
There were certainly weaker motives for getting rid of someone.
Is that what Archie had done—“got rid of” Delphine?
Murder most foul. Was that Hamlet? Did it matter?
And was the chaotic state of the flat caused not as Flynn had surmised by an untidy occupant but a terrible struggle? He had a sudden overwhelming conviction. Delphine Dubois was dead. And she had died here in Half Moon Street, by Archie’s hand.
He had barely put a foot on the pavement outside the building before he was confronted by a wiry scrapper of a man who said, “Give me the photos, pal.” He spoke in a guttural gnarl—Glaswegian, by the sound of him.
“Let me pass,” Flynn said.
“I’ll let you pass when you give me the photos, pal.”
“The photos?” Flynn said innocently. “What photos?”
“Don’t give me that fucking shite—just hand them over.” The man held out his hand, rather like a menacing schoolteacher demanding the return of contraband.
“Or?”
“Or I’ll kick yer heid in.”
Flynn tried to jink him, but his assailant grabbed him by his jacket and held on. What followed was more of a scuffle than a brawl, and before either of them managed to land a decent punch or kick anyone’s heid in, they were brought to a halt by the appearance of a uniformed policeman.
He identified himself as “Constable Hopkins.” (Flynn imagined Denholm saying, “Oh, like the poet?”) “Ladies, ladies,” Hopkins said, “stop this right now or you’ll find yourselves in the back of a Black Maria.”
Flynn’s antagonist looked shame-faced and said meekly, “Sorry, Constable.” Pure play-acting, Flynn thought irritably.
He supposed he should be grateful though, as it seemed to mollify Hopkins, who took his notebook out slowly (he was the ponderous sort) and said, “I shan’t be charging either of you with causing an affray, because luckily for you my shift’s about to finish and I’m not going to stay on just to process a pair of drunken nincompoops. ”
Flynn didn’t think he’d ever been more sober in his life, but he let the slur pass.
“I’ll take your names and addresses though,” Hopkins said. Flynn sighed impatiently, but his adversary wore an almost blissfully tolerant expression. Flynn experienced a strong desire to kick his heid in. His name was Arthur Stamp, he said, and gave an address in Charing Cross.
“And your name, sir?” Hopkins said to Flynn, who hesitated for a brief second before saying “George Smith,” employing his useful alter ego—demoted now from detective inspector to civilian—along with an invented address in Fitzrovia, all written down achingly slowly in the constable’s round, utilitarian hand before Hopkins concluded, “You’re free to go, the pair of you. I’ll be keeping an eye on you, though.”
Stamp was quick on his feet and was already off the blocks and sprinting away when Flynn, in an instinctive reflex, patted his jacket pocket.
To his horror, he found that the photographs were gone—finessed by Stamp.
All that posturing, the threats to kick his head in, had been nothing other than the deflective ruse of a skilful pickpocket. The sleight of hand of a magician.
Flynn set off after him in what he already knew must be a hopeless pursuit.
A dog decided to join in whatever game it thought was being played and ran alongside him, down Pall Mall, barking all the while.
It wasn’t long before the dog realized it had better things to do with its time.
When an out-of-breath Flynn reached the address in Charing Cross that Stamp had given, it proved to be a bombed-out building.
Stamp—or whatever his real name was—had been no casual thief.
His target had been the photographs. Stealing them on someone else’s behalf, presumably.
Not Archie’s—that was Flynn’s assignment.
So who else might want them? Flynn was a robber who had been robbed—hardly something you could report to the police.
—
“Stolen? What do you mean, stolen?”
“I mean stolen, Archie. Said his name was Arthur Stamp, although I doubt it.”
“Never heard of him.” Archie looked suddenly sickly, his mouth slack, his eyes rheumy and rimmed red from drink.
He already had two empty, sticky glasses on the table in front of him.
“I don’t understand. You stole them and then someone stole them off you?
How do I know if you’re telling the truth, Flynn?
You might simply have kept them to use against me yourself. ”
“That was a risk you took anyway. And to be honest, Archie, I don’t give a fig whether you believe me or not.
You didn’t give me the full story about Half Moon Street, did you?
Didn’t tell me you were sending me to Delphine Dubois’s flat.
Delphine Dubois who is missing. Delphine Dubois whose disappearance the police suspect I’m involved in.
” A furious Flynn grabbed Archie by his lapels and hauled him out of his seat. “Was Delphine Dubois your mistress?”
Archie gave a bark of cynical laughter. “God, no, she was a nightmare of a woman. A virago. One doesn’t take a mistress to be harried from pillar to post. You’re choking me, old man.”
“All right over there, gentlemen?” the landlady asked. “Do I need to fetch Norman up from the cellar?”
Flynn let go of Archie. He had no idea who Norman was, but he reassured the landlady that he didn’t need to be fetched from the cellar. The landlady returned to polishing glasses.