The Pig-tail Murder Read online

  He settled comfortably in his corner and surveyed Ingrid admiringly. She was a young woman of statuesque proportions, with the profile of a Walkyrie. Knowing that his eyes were on her she thrust her lower lip forward, turning the corners of her mouth down.

  “I thought you had forgotten all about me.” She spoke with a slow and careful enunciation. “It is a long time.”

  “Yes,” Bellamy answered amicably. “Long time no see.”

  Ingrid lit a new cigarette from the stub of the one she was just finishing.

  “Why did you ask me to meet you here?”

  Bellamy waited while the waitress set up a cup of coffee and a glass of water in front of him. He unwrapped the sugar from its paper and dropped two lumps into the cup.

  “You heard about Della, of course.” He was staring into the black liquid as if waiting for the lumps to rise to the surface again.

  “Della?”

  “Della Morris. She was murdered. It was in the papers. Big story.”

  A plume floated towards him as she exhaled.

  “I – I don’t know about anyone called Della Morris. I never read the papers anyway. They are too depressing.”

  “My mistake,” Bellamy said sarcastically. “I thought she was once a pretty good friend of yours – while you were still stripping.”

  “No – no, she wasn’t. But I might have heard the name, now that I come to think of it . . .”

  Bellamy picked up his spoon and began to stir his coffee thoughtfully. Through her smoke screen she studied him anxiously.

  “Ingrid.”

  “Yes?”

  Bellamy suddenly looked up at her and smiled.

  “I reckon I’ve been a pretty good friend to you one way and another . . .”

  “Yes. Yes, you have . . .”

  “I fixed your labour permit, remember?”

  “Of course I remember. I was very grateful.”

  “Was?” Bellamy was still smiling. “I hope you still are, sweetie.”

  “Yes,” Ingrid said carefully. “I am still grateful.”

  “Then stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”

  Ingrid started as if she had been slapped. Bellamy’s smile had abruptly vanished and his voice was like a whiplash.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “All that about the shop. That job of yours is a front. It always has been. I know what you’re up to, sweetie. You’re back on the old beat.”

  “No, Fred. That’s not true.”

  “Oh, yes, you are. Only this time it isn’t a beat, it’s a phone number. And that plushy flat of yours. Don’t tell me your wages as a shop assistant cover that. The rent is paid by whoever you’re working for – you and the rest of the girls.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Bellamy saw that he had thrown her into a panic. He followed his advantage up rapidly.

  “You know what I’m talking about all right.” He leant across the table, lowering his tone, but keeping her fixed with his eyes. “I’m talking about the murderous bastard who’s running this call-girl outfit.”

  He saw her eyes widen and once again deliberately changed his tactics. He gently took hold of her wrist. Her hand felt cold and he could feel it shaking.

  “Ingrid, you’ve got to tell me who he is. Can’t you understand that I’m not trying to run you in? It’s your safety I’m worried about.”

  “I suppose it was Della’s safety you were worried about too. Look what happened to her.”

  “So you do read the papers after all?”

  Ingrid’s flash of spirit subsided quickly.

  “No,” she said dully. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know who this man you talk about is. Honestly, Fred, I don’t know . . .”

  Bellamy stared at her for a minute half in pity half in exasperation. Then he shrugged and slowly released her wrist.

  “All right, sweetie,” he said, placing a florin on the table and reaching for his hat. “You don’t know anything.”

  She did not turn her head as he stood up and walked out of the coffee bar. She had to wait for five minutes before the trembling stopped and she felt ready to face the woman at the cash desk.

  Chapter Two

  The opalescent red Mercedes 250 SE swirled neatly round Sloane Square and took its place in the single line of traffic moving westwards along the King’s Road in Chelsea. At the wheel Mike Hilton tried to master his feeling of impatience. It was a lovely sunny summer’s day and his whole afternoon had been wrecked. He had planned this afternoon’s golf with Brian Rutland a good fortnight ago and the whole thing had been cancelled at the last moment; Brian had phoned him at Wheeler’s to say that he had to go out to London Airport to meet an important American customer who had just announced his arrival. If he could get home in decent time there was just a chance that he could pick up Ruth and they could both go out and have a bathe in the Smithsons’ new swimming pool. He knew she’d enjoy that. They had not been doing much together lately. It would be a diplomatic move, and might promote slightly better relations between them. Last night’s row had been the worst yet.

  He started to move his hand towards the horn button to try and chivvy the driver in front, who was trying to turn right and being infuriatingly courteous to all the cars coming the other way. Then he thought better of it. He had already learnt that with a car as obviously expensive as the Mercedes you had to watch your Ps and Qs. All the other road users were instinctively against you and if you put a foot wrong they were down on you like a ton of bricks. He tried not to think of the traffic and to master his bad humour by watching the scene on the sidewalk.

  In the middle of the afternoon the pubs were closed but everything else was on the go. There was a boutique specialising in the latest fashions for the younger woman. Girls of all ages from fifteen to forty were swarming round it like bees at the blossoms on a Bougainvillaea. Farther on an art gallery was staging an exhibition of pop art. The exhibits had been cleverly constructed from bits of metal rescued from car breakers’ yards and rubbish dumps. One of the Espresso coffee bars had set a line of tables out on the pavement and at first glance the effect of the coloured umbrellas was almost continental. But the customers sitting at the tables could not help looking self-conscious and unnatural with their luke-warm, non-alcoholic drinks. Highly polished copper and brass kettles, warming pans, horse brasses, saucepans, jelly moulds glittered on the front of an antique dealer’s shop, and on the advertisement board outside a newsagent’s neat little cards advertised everything from a self-contained basement flatlet to a Swedish girl who was seeking a new job.

  A businessman clad in the regulation uniform of the City – dark grey suit, white shirt, black shoes, bowler hat and umbrella, seemed as out of place walking along the King’s Road as on the highway from Tobruk to Benghazi. Mike followed with his eyes a girl who was progressing along the sidewalk more or less level with his car. She wore a very short but full mini-skirt which flicked from side to side with each step. She was one of those girls who can make a virtue of the necessity of walking, artfully turning the heel inward with each stride, so as to swing her buttocks to and fro with a natural and liquid rhythm. A tactful bleep from behind reminded him that the traffic ahead had moved on.

  The automatic transmission of the Mercedes made this creeping game less irksome. Mike’s car surged forward a couple of hundred yards and stopped with its nose a foot from the back of a bus. A youth in a Union Jack shirt clattered down the steps and jumped off, almost prostrating a mother with a small child who was trying to persuade the infant to mount. She was a little on the portly side but that did not prevent her from wearing a pair of extremely close fitting scarlet stretch-pants. Over her king-size posterior the stretch was extended to its utmost.

  Mike began to think about Ruth again. Ruth was a bit on the broad side but she would insist on trying to wear the sort of fashions that are designed for the match-stick figures of modern model girls. She was intensely sensit
ive about her appearance and resentful of any suggestion that she might be too old for that kind of thing. Mike had dropped a hint on one or two occasions and it had not gone down at all well. After having her baby Ruth had never recovered her shape.

  Finally Mike managed to get past the bus and actually touched thirty during the next hundred yards. Even that speed was enough to have the wind rush past his ears. With the hood lowered he’d been feeling the full heat of the sun. He was forty feet from the zebra crossing when he spotted the girl waiting at the kerb. He took one quick glance in his mirror and then gave his disc brakes a chance. There was just the faintest little squeak of rubber as the low car squatted just three feet short of the crossing. The girl stepped off the kerb.

  She was wearing a trouser suit, which had been tailored by a cunning hand. Its slightly manly style merely served to accentuate her very evident femininity. It was in the fashionable violet shade, and flared out at the hips and the ankles. On her head she wore a floppy peaked cap set at an outrageous angle, and in her arms she carried a white Persian kitten, which set off her slightly severe costume more effectively than any piece of jewellery. As she passed in front of Mike’s car she turned, looked straight at him and gave him a smile which contained much more than the usual cool ‘thank you – for nothing’. Her head and features were up to the standard of her figure. She was wearing a pig-tail of richly auburn hair which she had slung over the front of her left shoulder. Her mouth was full and wide, the eyebrows high and arched. The bone structure of her face was bold and pronounced, giving a strong curving line to her jaw. As for her carriage, it was superb – graceful without being ostentatious, feminine without being sensuous.

  Traffic was piling up behind him. He had to move on. As he accelerated gently away he bent his head to watch her in his driving mirror. She was crossing the pavement, extracting something, maybe a key, from her handbag, and going up to the side door of a pub which Mike had visited a few times. It was called ‘The Four Poster’.

  Near at hand a car horn shrieked. Mike looked ahead to find that a delivery van had charged out of a side turning to squeeze into a gap in the traffic coming towards him. The driver had banked on Mike seeing him and braking. He did brake, but he also had to steer hard to his left. In doing so he caught the handle of a fruit barrow and sent several hundred-weight of apples, pears, oranges, melons and pineapples cascading over the King’s Road sidewalk.

  It was nearly two hours later that a thoroughly bad-tempered Mike turned in at the entrance to ‘Tall Trees’. The barrow incident had taken up a maddening amount of time. The owner of the fruit barrow had been remarkably friendly about the whole thing, especially when Mike had offered to pay him the full value of his barrow-load. Long and rather beery confidences and reassurances (“I know I can rely on you to do the right thing, guy”) had seemed better than legal action, and Mike had swallowed his impatience. What really irked him was that the front nearside wing of the Mercedes was badly dented, and he had not even got the number of that blasted delivery van.

  Mike had bought ‘Tall Trees’ for himself and Ruth to live in when they were married. It had been the most expensive house in a luxury ‘development’ on the outskirts of Belford. The developer had used a first class architect and made good use of the natural woodlands in which these dozen or so prestige houses had been built. Each one enjoyed complete privacy and gave the illusion of being set in the heart of the country.

  At thirty-five Mike was already a rich man. His father, after paying for his education and securing him a place in the family firm of stockbrokers, had died, leaving his only son a cool hundred and fifty thousand. Mike had inherited not only his money but his father’s instinct for the market, and after some shrewd investment had increased his private fortune to something nearer a quarter of a million. He had long since dispelled the suspicion with which members of the firm had at first welcomed him. He had proved that he had a good nose for the market and was an expert at handling the clients. What was more, with his brilliant games record – he had played golf for Cambridge – he had innumerable friends in the sporting world and had brought a lot of new business to the firm.

  The drive of ‘Tall Trees’ was curved to give the illusion of length and add to the privacy of the house. It had been surfaced with a tarmac composition the same colour as a hard tennis court. The house always gave him pleasure as it came into view. It was low and rather eccentrically shaped. The architect had made subtle use of natural Cotswold stone and cedarwood. The fencing close to the house, and the wood-work over the covered way leading from the garage to the house, were painted sparkling white. Backed by the greenery of the woods and with the light of the now lowering sun filtering through the foliage, ‘Tall Trees’ looked as if it had been there since the woodland first grew.

  Mike swung the Mercedes round the broad apron in front of his residence and ran it into the garage. He noted that Ruth’s Lotus Elan was still there, so at least he had not missed her. Feeling for his latchkey he walked along the covered way, or ‘cloister’ to use the architect’s pet expression, from the garage to the front door. The hall, when he entered it, was cool and fresh with the scent of flowers.

  Mike parked his golf clubs in the stand in the downstairs cloakroom, washed his face and hands in cold water and straightened his hair. Then he felt human enough to face Ruth. He walked through the hall to the flight of three steps that led down into the sitting room.

  “Ruth! Are you there, poppet?”

  Mike was allowed to call Ruth ‘poppet’ only in private. The word was strictly forbidden when others were present.

  “Ruth, where are you?”

  The house felt empty. His voice echoed through the hall and up the stairs. He went to the French windows and took a few steps out into the garden, calling her name. Ruth was not a keen walker. It would be unusual for her to go out without the car.

  He went up the stairs two at a time. To the left was the nursery wing, its door now locked. Neither he nor Ruth ever went in there now. They just tried to pretend that what had been Jill’s part of the house did not exist. Once, when Ruth was out, Mike had unlocked the door and tiptoed round what had been his daughter’s bedroom. But the sight of the gay wallpaper, the cupboard still stocked with her toys and the miniature four-poster bed with its frills had given him such a painful constriction of the chest that he had gone out quickly and never returned.

  The bedroom suite consisted of their big airy bedroom, Mike’s dressing room and two separate bathrooms.

  He walked through the bedroom, where the twin beds were still pushed close together, and into his own dressing room. The letter was propped in front of the mirror, on the chest where he kept his hair brushes, comb, nail file and stud-box. Ruth’s handwriting.

  It was terribly eloquent, that simple rectangle of pale blue paper bearing his Christian name in his wife’s writing. Whatever message it contained seemed to be shrieking at him from inside the expensive and slightly perfumed covering. Gingerly he picked it up and held it in his hands as if he were estimating the physical weight of its contents. To open it required as much effort as diving off the ten-metre board at an Olympic swimming pool.

  He stood irresolute for several minutes, gazing out through the window at the garden below.

  There was the quixotically shaped lawn which led the eye away into paths that meandered off into the woodland. And there was the oak tree – the oak tree which had been so carefully preserved. The big branch which had supported Jill’s swing was bare now. About three months after Jill died Mike had surprised Ruth in tears under the oak and next day, without saying anything, he had climbed the tree and cut down the swing.

  As he watched, a jay burst screaming out of the oak and fled noisily into the wood. With an abrupt gesture Mike thrust his forefinger under the flap and tore the envelope open.

  ‘Mike —

  I don’t like farewells and this is not intended to be a good-bye letter. It’s just to stop you worrying or trying to find
out what has happened to me. Don’t try to follow me. I’ll write you in a day or so.

  Believe me I am only doing this because I am sure it is the best way out for both of us.

  Look after yourself.

  Love,

  R.’

  He did not really take it in till he had read it three times. Even then, though he grasped its meaning, he could not bring himself to believe that this was happening to him.

  The letter, he felt instinctively, was something he must preserve carefully, like a piece of Ruth which was all he had left of her. He folded it, put it back in its envelope and placed it carefully in his breast pocket alongside his wallet. Then he pushed open the door that led into the big bedroom where Ruth kept all her clothes.

  The enormous walk-in cupboard which filled one whole side of the room and housed her wardrobe was open. A suitcase which had been considered and rejected lay open on the floor. Her shoes lay in a disorderly pile on the carpet; she had obviously scooped the whole lot out and sorted through them hastily to find the ones she wanted. Her dressing table, set close to the double-glazed picture window, seemed to have been stripped. Usually it was crowded with bottles, jars, sprays and the myriad implements which a woman needs to handle the complicated business of making her face up. Now the glass top was almost bare, except for a scattering of spilt face powder. Ruth might have decided to travel light but she had not stinted herself on beauty aids.

  The ashtray on the breakfast table was loaded with the filter tips of the cigarettes she used. At least she had been distressed enough about leaving her home to chain-smoke while she packed. He picked the ashtray up and put the palm of his hand under it. The porcelain was still slightly warm.

  That faint touch of warmth on the palm of his hand somehow broke the cocoon of unreality in which Mike had been floating. Suddenly he felt that same painful constriction of the chest that he had experienced when he had gone into Jill’s room. This time was different, though. He could do something about this. Without thinking he had begun to move fast out of the room. He ran down the stairs two at a time, his brain racing ahead of him. If Ruth’s car was still in the garage there was a pretty good chance that she had decided to go by train and used a taxi to get to the station. He knew there was a good train at four forty-three from Belford to Waterloo. Unless British Railways decided to be bang on time for once there was just a chance that he could make it.