Daisy Stitchford looked at the three policemen opposite her across the glossy table and ranged pink blotters over which the coveted title of Miss Valentine was eventually to be decided. She looked as if she had suddenly found herself as unclothed as the beauties rehearsing even at that moment for the contest to be held that evening, the feast of Saint Valentine.
And the three policemen looked put out in varying degrees themselves. Detective-Constable Spratt gaped. Constable Lassington’s deceptively pink and white face wore an expression of almost total bewilderment. Even Superintendent Ironside appeared not altogether to have expected Daisy’s sudden and vehement denial that she had been with her late employer, the resourceful Teddy Pariss, within the hour of his demise.
‘No,’ Daisy said once more, ‘I was not with Mr Pariss round about one o’clock. Whatever made you think I was?’
Ironside smiled with faint ruefulness.
‘You’ve no idea how confusing an affair of this sort is,’ he said.
Daisy glanced at him sharply through her bright spectacles.
‘Did nobody tell you that Mr Pariss had hung up his “Keep Out” notice?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Ironside gravely, ‘we had learnt about that. But I wasn’t sure that it would apply to someone like you.’
Daisy tossed her sparsely arranged hair.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you don’t think I participated in what went on when that notice was up, I should hope.’
‘Perhaps I could answer that more easily if I knew what did go on,’ Ironside suggested.
‘You haven’t learnt much, have you?’
‘We’re slow, dreadfully slow.’
‘Then I’d better enlighten you as quickly as may be. When that notice was hung on Mr Pariss’s door as often as not he had a girl in there. That’s the whole truth and the simple truth.’
Ironside smiled a little.
‘The simple truth,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s certainly simple. Even a policeman can understand that sort of thing. And as long as it’s the whole truth too, then we can begin to know where we stand.’
‘You can take it from me that it’s so,’ Daisy answered.
She seemed a little less aggressive and Ironside looked happier.
‘I’ve been Teddy Pariss’s secretary for more than thirty years, and I know what goes on,’ Daisy continued.
‘Yes,’ said Ironside, ‘but you’re reluctant to tell us, on the whole.’
‘There are things which I can see you have a right to know, and there are things which are no concern of yours.’
‘Yes, so you said. And I suppose there are some things which you’d be quite glad to tell us anyhow?’
Daisy’s bloodless lips closed tightly together.
Ironside leant towards her again.
‘When was it that you did see Mr Pariss for the last time then?’ he asked.
‘I saw him when he left the ballroom at about a quarter to one,’ Daisy replied primly.
‘I see. And when were you last in his office along the corridor there?’
‘I was in there first thing in the morning,’ Daisy answered. ‘I brought the mail along from the main offices and left it for his attention if he got round to it. There’s always so much to do when there’s a big contest on.’
‘Mr Pariss took a personal interest in the actual show then?’
‘He certainly did. Everything had to stop for that.’
The note of disapproval dropped like acid on to the carpet.
‘I see,’ Ironside said ruminatively. ‘And that was the only time you were in the office here all morning?’
‘No, I went in once more.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘A letter was delivered here for Mr Pariss. I took it and put it on top of the others, the ones I’d opened for him.’
‘A letter delivered here? Who was it from then?’
‘I don’t know who it was from. It was marked “Private” and naturally I made no attempt to open it.’
‘Naturally.’
‘I simply took it from the doorman, and, as I could see there was no point in disturbing Mr Pariss just at that moment – he was telling off one of the girls – I simply took the letter and put it on his desk.’
‘Unopened?’
‘I said unopened.’
‘I’m sorry, so you did. It’s just that I didn’t see an unopened letter anywhere in the office just now. I wondered what had become of it.’
‘I can’t help you there.’
‘No, of course not. I dare say it’ll turn up. And thank you for all the help you’ve given us.’
The superintendent rose courteously from his shiny leather chair.
Daisy stood up to face him.
‘I’ve given you what help I consider you’re entitled to,’ she said.
She marched out.
When the door had closed behind her Superintendent Ironside looked at his two temporary assistants. They seemed to think some sort of comment was expected.
‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘either Daisy Stitchford or Bert Mullens must be lying, that’s certain.’
Ironside smiled.
‘Oh, my good fellow. Lying? Certain? Well, which of them do you think it was?’
‘Mullens, I’d say,’ Jack answered doubtfully. ‘I mean, he’s the one who looks more like a liar.’
‘Yes,’ said Ironside with unexpected reasonableness. ‘T’d agree to that. Bert Mullens looks like a liar. And quite often when somebody looks like a liar, oddly enough they are one.’
He turned towards Peter.
Peter licked at his upper lip.
‘One thing I can clear up, sir,’ he said. ‘That letter she mentioned. It was there all right. I saw it myself when I was in with Mr Pariss. Only he’d opened it.’
‘Confirmatory evidence on behalf of Miss Stitchford,’ Ironside said. ‘It looks as though you chose the right horse, Spratt.’
‘Yes, sir. But why should Mullens lie about hearing her in the office there? He was definite enough about it’
‘Yes,’ Ironside said, ‘I did at least make sure of that. I may be thinking half the time about that country cottage I’ve bought, but I do remember essentials.’
‘But why did Mullens lie then?’ Peter said.
‘We have no proof that he did, Constable,’ said Ironside.
‘But I thought you agreed that Miss Stitchford wasn’t likely to be lying. And she said she was just in the ballroom.’
‘She said that.’
The two constables looked at each other. Peter spoke first.
‘You mean she may have counted on us not checking up on her, sir?’
‘Have you checked, Constable?’
‘Well, no, sir. Shall I? Now, sir?’
‘Yes,’ said Superintendent Ironside with immense gentleness.
Peter left the judges’ room, walked along the broad passage behind the stage till he got to the little corridor running up to the door leading to the ballroom. As he stepped through the full blare of the rehearsal met his ears again.
For the umpteenth time the tired old piano was nobly giving forth the tired old marching song of the unjudged beauties. For the umpteenth time the high-complexioned, check-waistcoated Mr Brown was shouting ‘Smile, dear, smile.’ For the umpteenth time the fat little frowsty man with the stop-watch clicked it and waited with pencil poised to record its verdict. At the judges’ table the huddled arbiters had sunk into deep apathy. The sponsors of girls fortunate enough to have them had given up urging their attributes and had retired to the pubs.
On the catwalk the last of the girls teetered on high white heels along the path of doom and regained the safety of the shallow stage. She evidently felt that this particular trial flight had been conspicuously successful. She looked round about with a confident smile.
Quietly the girl who had completed the circuit before her lifted up the spiky heel of her white shoe, swung round until it was poised over her more successful rival’s white toe, and brought the sharp steel spike down.
Hard.
There was an agonized yelp which momentarily attracted the attention even of the tired piano-player.
‘You bitch. You done it on purpose. When ever am I going to get another pair?’ shouted the attacked girl, a blonde with a slight tendency to rabbit teeth.
The aggressor, a languid brunette secretly very worried about her complexion, looked at her contemptuously.
‘That the only pair you got with you, is it?’ she asked.
‘’Course it is. They cost money white shoes like this do.’
‘Well, if you’re not going to lay out a bit you can’t expect to get nowhere, can you? I thought everybody had sense enough not to wear their finals shoes for rehearsals. Stands to reason.’
The languid brunette turned haughtily away.
The blonde’s eyes, under her thick-rimmed eyelashes, burnt with rage. She lifted her right leg and in a flash brought her own sharp stiletto heel down in the direction of the brunette’s left leg.
The leg was long and exactly the right shape, the shape the legs of the models in the magazines are. The brunette counted on her legs to do great things for her before the day was over.
The blonde’s heel caught her calf at just the highest point of its gently swelling roundness. It missed hitting fair and square but did leave a satisfactory long graze running down towards the instep. There was no bleeding but within seconds quite an ugly blue-black mark appeared.
Tears spilling over her eyes, the brunette turned.
‘I’ll teach you to do that,’ she screamed.
The blonde had had the foresight to retreat with great speed the moment she had struck her blow. But the steps at the edge of the stage proved too difficult to negotiate with her face kept towards the enemy. She faltered and the brunette was upon her.
‘Stop.’
The mottled-faced Mr Brown flung himself forward.
Just as the brunette’s claws were raised to strike he hurled himself into the gap.
‘Stop. Stop it,’ he yelled.
The two girls manoeuvred to get round him.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’ve asked for it, you dirty little tykes. You’re out. You’re disqualified. Leave the stage.’
Instantly the two embattled viragoes were transformed into scolded children.
‘It was her fault,’ said the brunette.
‘She started it,’ said the blonde.
‘Look, give us another chance,’ the brunette said.
‘Out. Out. I said out.’
But for all the passion Mr Brown succeeded in putting into the words neither of the two girls budged.
What Mr Brown would have done was destined never to be written in the book of fate.
From down below a plaintive voice called up.
‘Hey, am I going to get shots of this lot today or not?’
It was a duly authorized Press photographer.
The effect of his intervention was dramatic. All along the huddled line of beauties backs were straightened, smiles were fixed with a quick lick of the lips for instant kissability and a general breathed prayer of ‘Cheese’, guaranteed to set any and every mouth at its peak of seductiveness.
‘Oh, all right, all right,’ said Mr Brown. ‘But for goodness’ sake be quick about it.’
The photographer, a burly young man with a harsh Scots accent and a hairy tweed jacket, began busily clicking off shots and encouraging the girls to greater and greater efforts with simple badinage.
Peter saw that his opportunity to check on Daisy Stitchford had come. He went up to Mr Brown.
‘Could I have a word with you? From Mr Ironside.’
Mr Brown darted a glance to the right and a glance to the left.
‘What is it?’
‘Quite a simple thing. We’re trying to fix the time the attack took place. Miss Stitchford’s been able to help us to some extent but we’d like to make certain of the times she gave us. Did you happen to notice her here this morning?’
‘Notice her?’ said Mr Brown. ‘Listen, would you notice a ruddy cobra if it was sitting up there fixing you with its beady eye?’
‘Cobra, eh?’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Then tell me something. What time did she go from here round to Mr Pariss’s office?’
‘Go from here? Are you mad? She nipped out early on when someone brought her a letter or something, but she didn’t leave after that.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘No, I’m a liar. She did leave. Once. For a couple of minutes just after quarter past one, it’d be. She may not look it, but she’s human too.’
‘She’d have gone to the toilet near the dressing-room?’ Peter asked.
‘I didn’t follow her,’ Mr Brown said. ‘I’m not that curious.’
‘All right. But did she go out again?’
‘When she might have spotted one of us doing something Teddy Pariss wouldn’t like? Listen, mate, that bloody scorpion wouldn’t pass up a chance like that, not if the place was full of ruddy savages howling for her blood.’
‘What’s this about a scorpion?’
It was the piano-player. The amateur of Civil Defence.
Mr Brown turned to him.
‘I was just telling this chap about our lady friend,’ he said.
‘The honourable Daisy?’
‘The honourable D. He wanted to know if she left us on our own when Teddy turned it in just before dinner-time.’
‘Her? Leave us on our tod? Don’t be silly, mate.’
Peter decided to ignore the note of irreverence. It was apparent that Daisy had been speaking the perfect truth when Ironside had questioned her.
A phenomenon so rare that it deserves some mark of respect.
Peter walked quietly away.
Back behind the stage he found that Superintendent Ironside and Jack had moved back into the little office where Teddy Pariss had met his sad end.
‘Well,’ said the superintendent when Peter presented himself, ‘you’ll be pleased to hear that the doctor felt he couldn’t give us any more information about the body than that it had been killed between half past twelve and half past one. I trust you’ll be a little more precise, if not so scientific.’
Peter told him what he had learnt.
‘Well, then,’ Jack burst out, ‘what did Bert Mullens want to go saying he’d heard her in here for?’
Ironside turned to him with a smile beginning to play round his lips.
‘He didn’t say that, Constable.’
‘But–’
‘What he actually said was that he had heard Pariss talking to her. It’s quite important, you know, to listen to what people say.’
‘Well, all the same,’ Jack said, with muffled aggressiveness, ‘it isn’t much different.’
‘No? It seems to me it’s quite possible for our intelligent Mr Mullens to have heard his late employer talking to someone and to have assumed from the conversation that Miss Stitchford was the silent hearer.’
‘But still, sir,’ Peter said, ‘it doesn’t make a great deal of difference, does it? I mean, we do know that Pariss was talking to someone at quarter past one, so everything was normal then. And even after that June Curtis saw him.’
‘Excellently put, Constable,’ said the superintendent. ‘A really logical exposition. And one which serves to highlight the importance of an immediate interview with Miss Curtis.’
Suddenly he swung on his heel away from Peter and stood looking thoughtfully at Jack.
‘Look, sir, I do know the girl,’ Jack broke out at last. ‘Do you want me to report back to the station?’
‘Ah, no,’ said Ironside, ‘I think that would be a little extreme. We must do our best in other ways to avoid embarrassment.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack.
He looked at Ironside from under lowered eyes.
‘But I think the time has come,’ the superintendent went on in the same leisurely manner, ‘to abandon this business of keeping quiet about the sad event we’re investigating.’
He sat on the corner of the late Teddy’s little temporary desk and smiled.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I find the notion of those girls parading about vaunting their charms is beginning to be rather depressing after all. I think we’ll make our announcement and pack them off until this evening. There are times, even in this day and age, when commercial considerations must take second place.’
He stood up more briskly.
‘Spratt,’ he said, ‘I’ll get you to fetch your Miss Curtis while Lassington and I continue to look for that missing letter. To tell you the truth, I find it rather intriguing.’
‘But, look, sir,’ said Peter, with measurable temerity, ‘it isn’t so important any more to check up on what Miss Stitchford told us. After all, when we checked the times we found she was quite right, and in any case we know the killer couldn’t have got in till after June Curtis had left.’
‘Oh,’ Ironside said, ‘more cogent reasoning. Really, Constable, you’ll have to ration yourself. Especially as flaws are liable to creep in.’
Jack grinned. Peter frowned.
‘Flaws, sir?’ he said.
‘Yes, Constable. Such as assuming that whoever killed Pariss broke in to do it. Because, you know, they did no such thing. Not for one moment.’