She may have ordered it then. I don’t think it arrived till the end of the interval.’
Giving her plenty of time to tamper with the amplifier extension. ‘Look, I want to get in touch with this Janine. Any idea where she lives?’
Anyone would have asked why Charles wanted to contact the girl, but Norman del Rosa wasn’t going to get involved. ‘I don’t know, Charles. I mean, I know where she was staying in Hunstanton, but she’ll have gone from there.’
‘Give me the address anyway. She must have told the landlady where she lived.’
Norman gave the information, again making no concession to curiosity. Maybe he regarded this as the price of Charles’ silence over his own sad little secret.
‘And if I don’t get any joy there, do you know who the group’s agent was?’
Again Norman obliged. Then, with ill-disguised relief, he put the phone down.
Janine’s Hunstanton landlady had stepped straight out of Your Favourite Seaside Landlady Jokes. As she fulminated down the phone, Charles visualized a McGill postcard figure, arms folded righteously beneath her enormous bosom, bottom thrust backwards with rectitude, body swathed in a print overall and curlered hair scooped up into a red print handkerchief.
Basically she was offended by his call. And she let him know it. ‘I keep a respectable private hotel and I don’t give the addresses of my clients to any Tom, Dick and Harry who phones up out of the blue. I’ll have you know, I only allow in a very respectable type of client. I don’t want you to think that I’m prepared to act as a mere convenience. I don’t set up assignations for girls who come and stay here. You ought to be ashamed at your age — chasing after young girls. She’s not been here for weeks, anyway. I know you dirty old men, pestering girls young enough to be your daughters. Well, I don’t keep a licensed brothel and — ’
‘Look, all I’m trying to do is to contact the girl to — ’
‘Don’t you come the heavy breather with me, my man. Oh, I know your sort. You think just because a girl’s a dancer, because she’s prepared, for her art, to show a little leg onstage that — ’
The pips went. Charles decided it wasn’t worth putting in more money.
He stood irresolute by the pay phone on the landing of the Hereford Road house where he lived. One thing the affronted landlady had told him was that he needed a cover. Unless he found some story to explain why he wanted to find the girl, all his inquiries were going to be met with the same suspicion. Maybe he even needed another identity to help him out. With a little bubble of school-boy excitement, he went into his bedsitter to look at his range of clothes.
The man who walked into the office of Alltalent Artistes in Berwick Street was wearing a trilby hat and a long beige mackintosh. The trilby dated from the days when men actually wore trilbies and the raincoat Charles had bought at a jumble sale during one of his economy drives and never worn because it was too big. He thought the image was not inappropriate to an insurance salesman. The potential shabbiness of the garb was offset, he felt, by a rather distinguished pair of silver-rimmed half-glasses and a slim black briefcase.
The girl in the hardboarded-off cupboard which served as reception was not impressed. She peered over her typewriter and the detritus of coffee-cups, publicity photographs and handouts that littered her desk. ‘What do you want? If it’s Danielle, French Model, that’s up two more floors.’
‘No, I wanted to come here,’ said Charles in the precise tones of an insurance salesman, innocent of any activities of French Models other than modelling Parisian fashions. He had worked quite hard on the characterization. He was using the voice he had developed for The Fireraisers in Newcastle (‘Had I not known it to be a good play, this production would not have convinced me of its merit.’- Hexham Courant.) And if he ran out of motivation or vocabulary for his character, all he had to do was to focus his mind on his son-in-law, Miles Taylerson, who was a rising force in the insurance world and spent all of Charles’ rare visits to his home trying to get his signature onto a policy.
Charles produced his carefully prepared identification routine. ‘I’m from the Eagle Crown Insurance Company.’ He didn’t give a name; there was always the danger he might forget it. ‘I’m trying to contact Miss Janine Bentley, whom I believe is a client of Alltalent Artistes.’ Maybe the ‘whom’ was a bit much. Still, the girl was not a discriminating audience.
‘Well, she doesn’t live here. Why don’t you try her home?’
‘I have tried, but had no success at the address where we previously had dealings.’
‘Hmm.’ The girl still looked at him askance. ‘I’ll go and tell Mr. Green you’re here.’
She edged round her desk and through a door in the hardboard partition. Opposite Charles hung a publicity poster for These Foolish Things. As when he had seen them on-stage, he was struck that Janine Bentley was the prettiest one. She intrigued him. There was a quality of innocence in her face that seemed out of place in a murder investigation.
The thinness of the hardboard which separated off Mr. Green’s office meant that Charles could hear exactly how the agent’s secretary described him.
‘There’s a funny sort of bloke outside trying to contact Janine.’
‘Oh yeah. Who is he?’
‘Says he’s from some insurance company.’
‘Legit?’
‘Dunno. Looks a bit weird.’
Weird? It is the actor’s lot to have his performances dissected by ill-informed critics.
‘You better show him in.’
The secretary came back into view and scuttled behind her desk as if Charles had rabies. ‘Mr. Green will see you. If you’d like to go in.’
Mr. Green was a thick-set man, whose nose appeared to have been the victim of cosmetic surgery. The disparity between it and the rest of his heavy features made it almost impossible to conduct a conversation with him without staring transfixedly at the little button in the middle of his face.’
Out came the identification routine again. Green looked at him in silence for a moment, assessing. ‘I gather you’re trying to contact Janine Bentley.’
‘That is correct, yes.’
‘Why?’
Still on prepared ground. ‘A couple of years ago I sold Miss Bentley a life-insurance policy. Linked in fact to our property fund, which, I must say is doing very well at the moment with the current upturn in property values. Well, there has recently been a slight change in our company’s manner of dealing with our clients’ investments and I wanted to discuss the new options available with Miss Bentley.’ Pretty damned good, Charles thought to himself.
Green still looked at him. ‘Janine never struck me as the sort of girl to go in for life-insurance.’
‘Oh really? We’re talking about the same Janine, aren’t we? The one who dances with These Foolish Things. She obviously behaves very differently with different people. I mean, she went into the whole business of insurance with me in great detail. Very mature, responsible young lady. You wouldn’t think it when you see her on-stage, all flashing thighs and carefree bounce. But I find a lot of my clients are like that. Whatever they’re like on the outside, sensible people do think about life-insurance. . I don’t suppose you yourself might be interested in any of the schemes that our company offers. .’ he added diffidently.
That was naughty. He shouldn’t have got carried away. But fortunately Green reacted just as Charles always did when Miles got on to his favourite subject.
‘I wouldn’t under normal circumstances give anyone the address of one of my clients. You know, there are a lot of strange people about.’ The agent paused and appraised Charles. ‘Middle-aged men, possibly not very happy in their private lives, who are often anxious to get in touch with my girls. They are, after all, attractive girls.’