The Toff and the Terrified Taxman Read online

  “Bill,” said Rollison quietly into the telephone.

  “Yes?”

  “I have no idea what I’m supposed to know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “All the same it’s true,” Rollison insisted. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Whether you believe it or not, I’ve always been a step behind in this affair, whereas Kimber, Grice and Company think I’ve been a step ahead. There is one thing I haven’t told you.”

  “Ah!” cried Grice, in triumph. “I knew you were keeping something back! What is it?”

  “Watson uses the name of A. W. Grey and has booked on the Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry tomorrow night,” Rollison said.

  “Are you positive?”

  “Yes,” Rollison said, and at least Grice had the grace not to ask him how he knew.

  “Where is he now?” demanded Grice.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “Or the other missing Inspectors?”

  “I don’t know a thing more,” Rollison insisted, and as he pondered Grice seemed to bite on a retort, before saying: “Well, Kimber certainly thinks you do. Can’t you rack your brains to discover what it is? In all the years I’ve known you I can’t remember a time when you had information without realising what it was.”

  “I stand rebuked,” Rollison said. “Bill—”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know where Kimber and the girls are?”

  “We’ve no idea at all,” Grice assured him. “But what we do know is that Kimber was all set to disappear, and must have had a hiding place already prepared. Rolly, he’s done his best to make you out a bare-faced liar as well as to kill you. You must surely know why.”

  “Obviously, I should,” agreed Rollison forlornly, “but the fact is that I don’t. Have you heard about the tape-recorder played at the Blue Dog?”

  “Not only at the Blue Dog,” Grice told him. “One was sent here to me by a special messenger whom we can’t trace. At least three newspapers have received identical tapes, and the Globe appears to be eager to use theirs.” A rough laugh sounded in Grice’s voice, and there was a rougher note in his tone when he went on: “I’ll be at the office until midnight at least. Call me if you have a flash of memory, won’t you?”

  “The very moment,” Rollison promised.

  He rang off as the other grunted “Goodbye”, and replaced the receiver slowly and thoughtfully. Grice was not really convinced that he, Rollison, was not playing a double game, and when it came to the crunch this could mean lack of co-operation from the police. He must find a way to convince the Yard man. As that thought hardened, he heard Bill Ebbutt approaching, and a moment later Ebbutt, filling the narrow doorway, ushered in a girl the sight of whom gave Rollison such a shock that all thought of Grice and his doubts and suspicions were driven away.

  For the girl looked like young Daisy Bell come to life.

  There was no doubt at all: the likeness between this girl and Daisy was startling, and Rollison stood with his hand still on the telephone, heart thumping. As the girl came in, however, he saw that make-up skilfully covered the scars on her face. It gave to her attractiveness a slight artificiality; making her look rather like a doll. She caught the eye of Rollison on the instant and he could not make up his mind why she was so intent. She glanced once at Lil, and said in a husky voice: “’Evening, Mrs. Ebbutt,” but she did not stop moving until she came within a foot of the Toff. The scent of her make-up was very strong, but even at close quarters the appearance was perfect. The eye-shadow made her eyes seem very bright, reminiscent of her father’s.

  Ebbutt stood and Lil sat behind her.

  She said: “I hate you.”

  Rollison neither moved nor spoke.

  “I hate your guts,” she went on.

  “A lot of people do,” Rollison said quietly.

  “I would like to cut your throat.”

  “As many others would,” said Rollison. “What have I done to you, Violet?”

  “Oh, not to me,” she breathed. “That’s all you ever think about – what happens to you. You never think about other people, you’re just the bloody egocentric Toff. And you think other people are all the same. But they’re not. I don’t care a flicking curse about what happens to me, but you’ve lied to my Dad, you’ve made a bloody fool out of him.”

  She broke off.

  Tears were shimmering in her eyes. She spoke while hardly moving her lips, spitting the words out. Her hands were clenched by her sides; it was easy to believe that she would like to throw herself at him and beat and claw him about the face. She actually began to shake. Rollison saw Lil shift in her chair, saw her lips move as if she were about to interrupt, but Rollison raised his hand and she understood that he wanted to handle this by himself.

  “What about your father?” Rollison asked, very quietly.

  “As if you didn’t know!”

  “I don’t know of anything that would upset you like this,” he said, “unless Daisy’s death—”

  “You bloody liar! You know what you did.”

  “No, Vi,” Rollison said in a very gentle voice, “I may be all kinds of things but I am not a liar. I don’t know what’s happened. I was delayed coming to see him—”

  “Delayed! You stayed away, that’s what you did, to help the cops.”

  “I was kept back,” Rollison said. “Not by or for the police but by a man named Kimber.” He couldn’t tell this girl in her present mood, that for a while he had actually forgotten the appointment with her father.

  “All you do is lie,” she said flatly.

  “What happened, Vi?” Rollison asked, still gently. “If I know I might be able to help.”

  “Help him back inside, you mean!”

  Rollison pursed his lips, and moved past the girl to the Ebbutts’s. There was a great deal of uncertainty in his mind but he was sure that Violet Bell was genuinely distressed. Yet – she was wasting time, almost as if deliberately. Could she be fooling him? Could she want to keep him here for some reason he could not even begin to guess? He heard her turn round but did not look at her as he said: “I haven’t time to waste, Bill. If she tells you what’s happened, call me at my flat, will you?”

  “Glad to, Mr. R.” Ebbutt looked worried, nevertheless.

  “That’s all you can bloody do, run away!” screamed Violet. She sprang at Rollison who turned in time to push out an arm to save himself. But she struck out with the other hand and caught one of the scratches with her fingernail; it hurt, sharp, tearing. She flung herself bodily at him, striking wildly, until he managed to get both arms round her and held her tight. She writhed and tried to kick, but without much vigour, and suddenly she went limp in his arms, and began to cry.

  He remembered her father’s tears.

  He stood quietly holding her, not trying to quieten her sobs, not patting her or soothing her. Lil Ebbutt went out of the room, Bill stood by the door, his expression much less troubled. The tension easing from the girl somehow eased it from them all. Soon, Rollison moved towards Ebbutt’s big armchair, and lowered Violet Bell into it. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and placed it in her hands. Soon, she was dabbing her eyes and sniffing; then in a kind of defiance, gave an enormous blow, honking loudly. Suddenly she laughed in spite of herself at the unexpected sound, and Ebbutt also laughed. Rollison drew up a leather pouffe, brought back by the Ebbutts after a tour of the Middle East, and looked up at the girl.

  “I know,” he said. “I am hateful and egocentric. Most of the time I wish I wasn’t.”

  “You’re—you’re a beast!” she cried from behind the handkerchief.

  “Yes, of course. But what have I done this time?”

  “You must know!”

  “I’ve no idea,” he assured her. “You gave me half a clue just n
ow but not enough for me to build a case on.”

  She dabbed her eyes again and drew the handkerchief away. The eye shadow had smeared, so had her lipstick, and there were several smeared patches in the matt make-up. At one spot beneath her left cheek part of a scar had been uncovered. She looked at him searchingly, and said: “The police searched our house while Dad was here at the Blue Dog.”

  “Searched it? What for?”

  “They’ve always persecuted him and they always will.”

  “Only if he deserves to be persecuted.”

  “That’s a bloody lie and you know it!”

  “All right, Vi,” Rollison said. “There are bad policemen as well as good ones. Let’s not argue about whether your father sometimes asks for trouble, just tell me what happened tonight.”

  “You promised to come and see him at half-past nine.”

  “I know. I’m sorry—”

  “Oh, you half-wit!” Violet cried. “Don’t you know what you did to him today? Don’t you know he came to your apartment ready to kill you, he blamed you and the cops for killing Daisy. God knows how but you did something to him. You made him like you – you, a friend of the police, a copper’s nark, he liked you. And you made him begin to think that there were some decent coppers. That Grice, for one. I’ve never seen him like it before, and – and Mum’s been trying to make him see like this for years. Lately I have, too.”

  Rollison thought: Good Lord!

  Lil Ebbutt appeared with a tea tray but she made hardly a sound as she placed it on a table and sat down in an easy chair. Violet was staring with great intensity at the Toff, and he was suddenly and vividly aware of what she was telling him.

  She was nearly sobbing as she went on: “All he could do was hate, don’t you understand? Oh, not Mum and me and Daisy, there isn’t a kinder man alive – why, look what he did for me. He offered to send me to university, told me to study as long as I wanted to, nothing was too much trouble and nothing cost too much. But the police—” she drew in a deep breath, paused, and declaimed as if she were at a public meeting: “How—he—hates—the—police. He hates them – do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Rollison said, gently.

  “He blamed them for everything that ever went wrong in our family. For his troubles – and for these!” Without warning she scrubbed the left side of her face with the handkerchief until the make-up came off and the scars showed, livid.

  “Violet, they couldn’t—” began Lil Ebbutt.

  “Oh, yes, it was their fault, you don’t know anything about it! I was scared of a man who threatened to cut me up, and I went to the police and asked for protection. The next bloody night this happened, but they didn’t pin it on him. Protection! All they ever protected is their own backsides so they can sit down while they eat!”

  It must have been two or three years ago.

  It was likely that the police hadn’t taken the threat seriously, or that some officer detailed to watch her had been careless. Whatever the explanation it was easy to see how the wounding must have affected this girl, and how it had happened, how it had hardened the hatred which her father already had for the police.

  “Now can you really understand how much he hates the cops?” Violet choked. ‘And—and it was eating into him. He’d been bad enough before but he was ten times as bad after this happened to me. It didn’t matter what Mum and me said to try to make it easier, he—he had only to see a police uniform to start going pale. And he had this neuro-dermatitis, do you know what that is?”

  “A rash and itching due to nervous strain,” answered Rollison.

  “That’s about it,” Violet agreed. “Goes all red in big patches when he sees coppers sometimes, and if ever he got a chance to help a man get away from the police, he took it. It didn’t matter what Mum and me said, he took it.”

  “What about young Daisy?” asked Rollison.

  Violet frowned, and brushed dark hair back from her forehead.

  “Daisy was different,” she answered. “Daisy didn’t worry about anything but having a good time. That’s the truth. Dad was always worried in case she got into trouble.” Violet paused and then gave a shrill hoot of laughter. “Not that kind of trouble, Daisy and me always knew our way about! Trouble with the police, I mean. He has a kind of obsession, neurosis, call it what you like. He always thinks that if one of us girls got in trouble with the police they’d make it as hard as they could for us just to get back at him.”

  Ebbutt, quiet for so long, blurted out: “Crap, that is – cr”You can call it what you like but that’s what Dad thinks,” asserted Violet with great conviction. She looked more impressive now, with the make-up smeared and the scars revealed, than she had when she first came in. “And it didn’t matter what Mum or I said, it made no difference. He was eaten up with hate, he was getting worse all the time. When—when Daisy was killed, he nearly went mad.”

  Violet’s voice dropped to a whisper, and for the first time since she had recovered from her crying spasm she looked away from Rollison, and dabbed at her eyes. She soon recovered again, however, and went on: “Mum was home with him when we heard. She was cut up bad enough but she had to think about him, can’t you see? She telephoned for me at a friend’s place, and I was home within the hour. He was still on the rampage, we thought we’d have to get a doctor to him. Then someone else telephoned him and told him you were involved. He quietened down, then. I thought he’d decided to kill you, Mr. Rollison.”

  “Did you?” asked Rollison quietly.

  “Yes, I bloody did! We wouldn’t have let him out if we’d known for sure he was after you, but he seemed a lot better, and we went into the kitchen to make some tea. He slipped out.”

  She dabbed at her eyes again and was silent for a long time. Lil took the opportunity to pour out tea, and brought the tray to Rollison and the girl. Violet took a cup, splashed in milk, and went on with her story while holding the cup and saucer on her lap.

  “When he came back, it was like a miracle. It really was. I don’t know what you’d said to him. He’d been picked up by the cops and this Grice talked to him as if he was human. I tell you he was a different man, and he couldn’t wait to see you tonight. Made me stay in so that I could meet you, too. And – you didn’t turn up. You didn’t phone or do anything, you just let him down. He waited nearly an hour and came over here, and as soon as his back was turned the cops got into the house. They were still there when Dad got back. I—I’d been to see my boyfriend,” she went on, “I didn’t see any point in staying home, and I don’t like pubs. Mum came round for me, and told me what had happened, and I came straight to see you, Mr. Bloody Rollison Bloody Toff. I hope you feel proud of yourself.”

  After a long pause, she began to sip her tea; the cup and saucer trembled in her hand. Rollison sipped the strong, hot tea, watching her. He waited until she seemed to have control of herself again, and then asked: “Where is your father now?”

  “At home.”

  “Are the police still with him?”

  “Yes. Three of the so-and-sos.”

  “Have they found anything at the house?”

  “How the hell could they – there’s nothing there.”

  “Not even a guest or two hiding from the police?”

  “My God!” Violet exclaimed. “How did you earn your reputation? You don’t think he’d hide anyone in his own home, do you?”

  “Then where would he hide them?”

  She paused again and put her cup down sharply, leaned back in the chair and stared at him with her eyes narrowed to slits. Ebbutt, wheezing, downed his tea and whispered to Lil.

  “I gotta go and lock up.”

  “Don’t be long, dear,” Lil said, glued to her chair.

  “Not a sec longer than I can help!”

  Ebbutt went out of the room faster than he had mov
ed for a long time, making surprisingly little sound for so big a man. Lil moved to the girl and took away her empty cup, and Violet had not said a word when she returned with the refill. But as she took it, she said in a low-pitched voice: “So you’re clever. You think I’d tell you where he hides them, don’t you? Well, I won’t. I won’t do a thing to help you in your dirty coppers’ business, Toff. But if you’ve any decency in you, you’ll go and get the coppers off his neck. If you do he might listen to you, but if you don’t—” She drew in a hissing breath and then raised her voice and shouted: “If you don’t help him, I’ll cut your throat if it’s the last thing I do!”

  Very slowly, Rollison got to his feet, saying: “I’ll go and see him right away, Violet. I don’t know what I can do to help him, but at least I’ll try.”

  Chapter 18

  23 Quaker Street

  A police car stood outside Number 25 Quaker Street.

  A dozen or so people had gathered at a respectable distance; no one spoke. Now and again a distorted voice sounded over the walkie-talkie in the police car; now and again a car passed, people walked, or an aeroplane flew overhead so that the flashing green and red navigational lights were visible.

  Rollison and Bill Ebbutt turned the corner.

  Ebbutt had come to take Bell’s wife away, so that Bell and the Toff could talk together. A uniformed policeman moved from the doorway of the little house as they drew up, recognised Rollison, and drew back.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Good evening. Is Mr. Bell in?”

  “Yes, sir – but no one except the family is allowed in unless Mr. Grice or Mr. Hunter has given permission. Mr. Hunter’s in charge at Division, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Rollison said. “May I talk to Mr. Grice over the walkie-talkie?”