The Toff and the Terrified Taxman Read online

  This time, Rollison’s smile was very warm and friendly and reassuring.

  “Has anyone told you lately how very pretty you are?” he asked, and when she didn’t answer he went on: “You really are, you know.”

  She managed to say: “Please—please let me go.”

  “But I need a talk with you.”

  “Please,” she begged.

  Slowly, he shook his head. She was as pretty as a picture, with violet eyes, glowing cheeks, a nice mouth and chin and a lovely complexion, and she was breathing hard, from running as well as from her fears.

  “We must talk,” he insisted.

  “Oh, please let me go,” she begged, almost in tears.

  “As soon as you’ve told me why—” he began.

  He saw her move and sensed what she was going to do, but could not dodge away in time. She kicked him on the shin, and it was like being struck by a pickaxe. Pain shot through him. He let her go and clenched his teeth, hardly knowing how to stop himself from crying out. The girl was trapped by parked cars, then pushed between two into the road and ran blindly.

  Someone screamed.

  Someone else cried out: “Oh, my God!”

  Somehow, these cries pierced Rollison’s anguish, and he opened his eyes and stared over the crowds, in time to hear the sickening thud of sound, to see the girl thrown into the air and then fall, spread-eagled over the front of the car, a small sports model painted dark green. The awful thing was that she was draped over it, a complete human being as far as one could see, but she must be smashed to nothing inside; she must be dead.

  A woman was sobbing.

  A man was calling: “Do something. For God’s sake do something!”

  Two others were moving slowly into the road. Some distance off, a policeman’s helmet showed. Close by, a dozen cars were drawn up behind the sports car, which had slewed across the road. A driver at the back out of sight tooted on his horn. A man cried: “Stop that fool making a noise!” A woman from one of the cars got out as a man moved more briskly into the road; both were purposeful as they approached the sprawled body of the girl.

  Pain still lanced through Rollison’s left leg and spread upwards through his body.

  The pointed shoe with which he had been kicked fell, slowly, from her foot to the roadway, and as it struck the smooth surface a red spot appeared near it. Just a small red spot; and another and another.

  A youth suddenly collapsed against the side of a car, his face waxen-white.

  A crowd had gathered, here and across the street; thirty, forty, fifty or more people, gaping. A motherly-looking woman bent over the youth. The woman from the car and the man from the pavement reached the girl and at last she was partly hidden from sight. What the older-looking man and woman did, Rollison could not tell.

  The policeman was drawing near.

  Rollison’s pain had become less acute, was more a dull ache except at the spot where the girl had actually kicked him; at that point it throbbed and throbbed. He felt a trickle of something run down his leg, and realised that it was blood. He could see more blood on the road surface beneath the girl. The policeman was now with the man and woman, and the man said quite distinctly: “She’s dead.”

  The hush was so great that the word sounded as if it were a trumpet call. “Dead, dead, dead.” Someone said: “Oh, God.” Two or three began to move on, glancing squeamishly towards the scene. An ambulance siren sounded: that had been very quick. Car engines started, too. A police car appeared from the other direction, and an officer got out and obviously began to judge the distance between the sports car and the nearest car parked against the kerb. There was a consultation, before two of the police and two spectators lifted a parked car a foot closer to the kerb, so that there was room to pass.

  Cars crawled by.

  The ambulance drew up, and ambulance men jumped down.

  A man was saying: “Ghastly. Absolutely ghastly.”

  The youth who had fainted began to retch, and the motherly woman said tenderly: “Now, now, you’ll be all right.”

  All this time, Rollison had stood with one foot raised off the ground, a hand on the wall, to support him. And while he had observed everything, one thing had held his attention more than any other, and one thing had appalled him. Others were staring as if they realised it, too.

  The driver of the sports car hadn’t moved. He hadn’t shown his face, hadn’t attempted to open the door. He sat back in his seat, one arm draped over the wheel. His tweed cap was set at a rakish angle over his right eye and covered most of his forehead and cheek; he had a pointed nose and a long and pointed chin.

  But this, which held Rollison’s attention most, was nothing compared with the appalling fact: he himself had sent that girl to her death. The phrase repeated itself over and over in his mind. He had sent that girl to her death. She still seemed in front of him, so pretty and charming, and pleading. “Please—please let me go.” And after a moment: “Please.” And when he had said that they must talk, there had been such anguish in her: “Oh, please let me go.”

  She had at last pulled herself away as if in a blind panic.

  Had he released her earlier or held on to her more tightly, she would be alive now. Alive. Breathing. Unbroken. Instead—

  The policemen and some of the passers-by had formed a cordon about the front of the sports car, and the ambulance men were moving the girl. A stretcher lay on the road, waiting. The woman who had gone to the car said in her clear, carrying voice: “It was instantaneous. Quite instantaneous.”

  “You see, love,” the motherly woman tried to reassure her newfound charge, “she didn’t feel a thing. Not a thing. You don’t want to take on so.”

  People began to move and talk, saying all the commonplace things, of how terrible it was, ghastly, horrible, poor thing, terrible...

  Policemen began to move about the people, asking questions. The remarkable thing was that the crowd began to thin out at once, only a few who had arrived after the impact lingered, and their voices made a refrain. “I didn’t see what happened ... I didn’t see a thing ... I didn’t come until later ... I didn’t see a thing.” The body was lifted into the ambulance, two of the men climbed in with it and the ambulance moved off. Traffic was now moving past the sports car, where two policemen were standing, hiding the driver from Rollison. The crowd was now drifting in all directions. Rollison moved his leg up and down, finding it very painful. He looked down, to find blood soaking his sock. He turned his back on the road and placed the foot of his injured leg on the step the girl had slipped on.

  Alive.

  He pulled up the leg of his trousers, and pursed his lips. There was a nasty little cut which had bled freely, and two streams of blood, coagulating at the edges, rolled down to the sock. He must get home and clean this up.

  A man exclaimed: “Mr. Rollison!”

  He turned round, to see a youthful policeman looking up at him, a pleasant-faced youth whose tall helmet simply served to emphasise how short he was.

  “Hallo,” Rollison said.

  “I thought I recognised you, sir! Did you by any chance see the accident just now?”

  “Yes,” answered Rollison. “I did.”

  The policeman’s eyes lit up as Rollison began to wonder just how much he should say. That the girl had been upstairs, listening at the Inspector’s keyhole? That he had chased her down the stairs, held her back, rejected her pleading? The youth took out a notebook.

  “Just what did happen, sir?”

  Rollison said slowly: “I was behind her, on these steps. She slipped. A man was passing and he and I saved her from falling.” He noticed the policeman was using shorthand and seemed to have no difficulty in keeping up with what he was saying. “When I let her go she turned and ran into the road.”

  “Ran, sir?”


  “Yes.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” Rollison replied.

  “Was there anyone following her?” asked the policeman.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Rollison said.

  “Did you see anyone chasing after her?”

  “No.”

  “But she ran?”

  “People are sometimes in a hurry,” Rollison pointed out drily. “You don’t have to be scared out of your wits to run across the road.” But she had been terrified and he had terrified her.

  “No, sir. Quite so. Was she alone, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know her, by any chance?”

  “No,” Rollison answered. “I had never seen her before.”

  The policeman folded his notebook and tucked it behind the small transistor radio already in his pocket, then said earnestly: “I’m very grateful. You do understand that you may be called to give testimony at the inquest, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Rollison said bleakly.

  “Silly question to ask you,” the young man admitted. He gave a kind of salute, then turned and walked towards a sergeant who was talking to a small group of people. He saw a taxi approaching, its hire sign alight, and waved to it. Soon, he was sitting back in a corner of the cab, feeling hot and cold in turn. He lit a cigarette, and placed the match carefully in an ashtray.

  He shivered convulsively.

  It would be a long time before he forgot the sight and sound of the ‘accident’.

  He muttered: “But for me, she would be alive.”

  That was both true and false, and he began to argue with himself, which was a good sign: he was recovering. He pulled up the trouser leg again, and tied a handkerchief round the calf, covering the wound and soaking up some of the blood.

  He hadn’t made the girl act as eavesdropper, and if she hadn’t been outside that door and guilty enough to run away she would still be alive. He had done the obvious thing; at least, the obvious and almost inevitable thing for him. He had wanted to know, needed to know, why she had been so intent at that keyhole. He hadn’t had any choice. Moreover, he had not bullied or struck her. In fact he had been pleasant; even amiable. She had been frightened because she had been caught, and that meant she had been frightened of someone else or else frightened of the consequences of what she had done.

  That ‘someone else’ was the real cause of her death.

  “Very rational,” he announced aloud. “I suppose it’s true and convincing, too. But—” He broke off, without uttering his thoughts, which were simply: If I hadn’t grabbed her and held on, she would probably still be alive. If I’d held on to her, she would be.

  The taxi swung too fast round a corner and Rollison had to cling to the safety strap to save himself from being flung against the other door. This was a day for accidents! Where was he? This was the corner of Piccadilly and Brook Street, he would soon be at Gresham Terrace, where he lived in the top flat of Number 25, known to his friends and the postal service as 25g, Gresham Terrace, London, W.1. He took a seven-sided fifty-pence piece from his pocket, a coin once hated but now quite popular, and handed it to the driver as they drew up outside the house.

  Gresham Terrace was its normal self.

  Apart from the rasp of the taxi engine and an echo of the driver’s ‘Thank you, sir’, there was little sound. A faint squeak sounded a few yards away, as a nursemaid pushed a baby carriage. The purring of a Rolls-Royce as an acquaintance of Rollison drove by. The sharp tapping of a woman’s feet, heels protected by iron tips.

  The dead girl’s heels had been of rubber; otherwise she would have made much more sound.

  He didn’t even know her name!

  He unlocked the front door and stepped into the wide passage which led up a flight of stone but warmly carpeted stairs; the carpet was new. As he closed the door, the hall and staircase seemed to go dark. His heart dropped as he stepped on to the bottom stair and fresh pain shot through his injured leg. There were four flights to go, and no lift. What on earth made him live at the top of a house where there was no lift? Habit? It certainly wasn’t convenience, and on this particular walk up every step hurt, until on the top flight he was glad of the handrail, both for support and for help in getting up.

  He was at the half-landing beneath his flat, with only a short half-flight to go when the door opened and a man appeared, while the voice of Jolly, his – the Toff’s – man sounded clearly.

  “I will tell Mr. Rollison the moment he arrives, sir.”

  Then the man who was leaving turned, and Rollison saw that it was old friend and yet old adversary, the man he knew better than any human being except his friend and factotum, Jolly.

  Superintendent William Grice, a senior detective at New Scotland Yard, turned and looked down at him; there was no pleasure, only sternness, in his gaze.

  Chapter 4

  Superintendent Grice

  Rollison, caught on the bottom step and gripping the handrail tightly, returned the Yard man’s stare without his customary pleasure, too. All he wanted to do was get into his flat and have the leg bathed. The proper salve would not only heal the ‘wound’ but would greatly reduce the pain. An hour’s rest would take away the slight nausea which lingered in his stomach and the headache which had started at the back of his head and spread until it was everywhere, particularly behind the eyes.

  The last thing he needed was a meeting with Grice in his present mood.

  Grice said in a voice as disapproving as his expression: “So you’re back.”

  “With luck I might even reach the top of the stairs,” Rollison replied, and flexed the muscles of his left arm and put his good leg on the next step.

  Grice frowned in puzzlement as Rollison climbed three steps this way, then came to rest. During the seconds which passed concern drove the other emotions from Grice’s face while Jolly, until then hidden from the Toff, moved forward, rounded Grice and hurried down the stairs. He did not speak, simply ranged himself on Rollison’s side, facing upwards, and steadied rather than supported him. Rollison had to make an effort with each step, but as he reached the top where Grice now stood in the front doorway, he essayed a smile; and it was bright and friendly, as if sight of Grice had for the moment driven pain away.

  “Hallo, Bill,” he said lightly. “A friend in need is a friend indeed, don’t they say?” He sounded inane, as he often did when making an effort to hide his feelings.

  “What’s happened to you?” demanded Grice.

  “I was hacked on the shin.”

  “Hacked?”

  “Kicked. And” – he had to grit his teeth before he could retain the light note while saying – “to make it worse, by a pretty young woman.”

  “Then no doubt you asked for it,” Grice growled.

  “If I may say so, sir, that remark was most uncalled for,” said Jolly. He gave Grice a long and reproachful glance, and Grice at least had the grace to colour slightly and to turn back into the hall-cum-lounge behind him. “Are you able to walk to the bathroom, sir? Or would you prefer to sit in the study or lie on your bed?” The tone of Jolly’s voice changed to obvious concern.

  “The bathroom, I think,” Rollison decided. “And then some tea and aspirins.” His look at Grice was friendly enough but not facetious. “It was a hell of a kick and a hell of a situation, and I don’t feel very good.”

  “I can see you don’t,” Grice said, with some sympathy. “Can I help?”

  There was a brief pause as Jolly closed the door behind them; then Jolly conceded that was a concession indeed; a declaration of peace.

  “If you would be good enough to put the kettle on for tea, sir, I would be grateful.”

  Grice turned away and disappeared along a passage which was nearly opposite the entrance door. Not far along the passage
was the kitchen, usually prohibited to all but Jolly and a few accepted domestics.

  Jolly and Rollison followed at a slower gait.

  Rollison was so annoyed with himself for feeling so bad from a girl’s kick, and curious about Grice’s presence, that it did not occur to him that, now he was in the flat, all the reasons for his staying here were evident. Apart from the fact that it was in the heart of Mayfair and so close to all the best cultural facilities, the flat itself was large and intelligently arranged. The one passage led not only to the domestic quarters including Jolly’s bed and bathroom, but also to a cloakroom. At the far end was another passage, leading right, to the main cloakroom and spare bedroom, each with its own bath; and this passage opened into the study-cum-living room, with a raised dining alcove at one end and windows opposite, across the large room. There was a second entrance to this room from the lounge-hall.

  All of this was furnished with masculine elegance, yet a woman could feel at home here; and some did.

  The shortest way to Rollison’s room was along the passage where Grice had gone. Very soon, Rollison was in his own bathroom, sitting on a stool, and Jolly was looking down at the wound.

  “That is very nasty, sir.”

  “Hardly crippling, though,” Rollison grumbled.

  “It caught a vein and the shin, sir, and—” Jolly broke off and busied himself with a bowl of water placed beneath Rollison’s outstretched leg, a sponge, an antiseptic which was as pungent as it was powerful.

  Jolly was both gentle and firm, yet his ministrations were painful. It was easy to see why. The kick, obviously delivered with great force, had not only cut but lifted the skin and what little flesh there was between skin and shin, for at least two inches, leaving it raw and ugly-looking. Jolly cleaned and had it ready for a salve before removing Rollison’s blood-soaked shoe and sock. Grice came in and watched, and as Jolly washed the dried blood, the detective observed: “She seems to have known how to kick.”

  “Yes,” Rollison said bleakly. “Yes indeed.”