Beyfield looked at me. “I might have known it was you,” he said in disgust. “If you’re being funny, you’ll be sorrier than hell.”
“I’m not being funny,” I said coldly. “You’ll find a girl in there — she’s been strangled.”
“Yeah?” he said, looking at the house doubtfully, “How do you know?”
“I’ve seen her,” I said, pushing open the gate. “Suppose you look at her first and then we’ll talk.”
“You two guys stay here,” he said to the driver and one of the plain-clothes dicks. “Harris, you watch this bird and see he keeps with us.”
Harris, a short fat man with a red shiny face, anchored himself alongside me.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t do anything your ma wouldn’t like or I’ll slap you down.”
I was feeling too sick to trade wisecracks with him and I led the way up the cement walk. As Audrey and I had left the house we had slammed the front door, so I went along to the window, pushed it up and stepped inside.
“I’ll be interested to hear how you got on to this,” Beyfield said as he followed me over the window-sill.
I grunted, but didn’t say anything.
Harris crawled into the room behind us and turned on a powerful flashlight. “Ain’t this the house where we found that Kunz dame’s shoe?” he wheezed to Beyfield.
Beyfield said it was. “If a body’s here,” he said, “maybe this lug planted it.”
We went up the stairs, reached the landing, and I threw open the door of the room where I had found Marian.
“Take a look at that,” I said grimly.
The beam of the flashlight bounced on the opposite wall and then crawled down towards the floor.
“I’m looking,” Beyfield said, his voice suddenly hard.
But for the dust, the hanging strips of wallpaper, the pile of soot in the fireplace, the room was empty.
“Sit down,” Macey said, pointing to a chair opposite him. He was behind a big desk in his office on the third floor of police headquarters. I sat down.
Beyfield leaned against the door, took out a package of gum, peeled the paper from it and slid the strip into his mouth. He then hooked his thumbs in his belt and eyed me with blank, stony eyes.
Macey lit a cigar. He took his time about it and didn’t say anything until he was satisfied that it was burning properly, then he put his elbows-on the desk and glared at me.
“I don’t like private dicks,” he began, the jowls of his fat face red, “but when a private dick starts being funny, I know what to do with him. Don’t I, Beyfield?”
Beyfield grunted.
I took out a cigarette and set fire to it. “I can imagine how scared some dicks would be,” I said mildly, “but you don’t scare me, Macey. I’ve got too much on you to worry much about your threats.”
Macey showed his yellow teeth in a mirthless smile. “You think you’ve got something on me,” he said, pointing at me with the wet end of his cigar, “but you haven’t. We’ve got you, and unless you talk fast we’ll keep you.” He sat hack and regarded me for a long moment, then added: “No one knows you’re here.”
I thought maybe he had something. If these guys decided to knock me off— and if they wanted to there was nothing that would stop them — no one would know what had happened to me. I decided I’d have to play my hand carefully.
“So you found a body in 37, did you,” Macey said, “but it wasn’t there when my boys called? What’s the idea?”
“No idea,” I said. “The body was there, but while I was calling you someone took it away.”
Macey and Beyfield exchanged glances. “All right, someone took it away,” Macey said. “How did you find the body in the first place?”
I told him about the date with Marian French, how, after she hadn’t shown up, I went to her room and found the address of the house.
“She was on the floor with a cord around her neck,” I said. “I’d say she had been dead about four hours. The woman who rents her room said Marian received a phone call at five o’clock and went out right away. She went to meet her murderer.”
“You don’t think we believe this yarn, do you?” Macey asked, tapping ash into his wastebasket.
“I don’t give a damn if you believe it or not,” I returned. “I don’t expect you’ll turn the killer up — I’m going to do that — but I wanted to show you what’s happened to the other four girls who are missing.”
There was a long heavy silence, then Macey said: “What’s the connection between these four girls and French?”
“Suppose we put the cards on the table face up,” I said, shifting a little closer to the desk. “All you’re worrying about is the election. You want Starkey in office so you can feather your own nest.”
Beyfield pushed himself away from the wall, took a quick step towards me and swung at my head. By falling on my hands and knees as the swing started I made him miss. While he was off balance I skidded away from him, stood up and grabbed a chair. I held it so I could crown him if he came in. We looked murder at each other.
Macey exploded with a “Cut it out!” and stood up to thump his desk. “Sit down and shut up!” he bawled at Beyfield, who was breathing heavily, his face white with rage.
I put the chair down. “If you want a fight,” I said to Beyfield, “you can have it, but it’ll mean a long vacation in hospital for you.”
Macey bawled: “Didn’t you hear me? I said cut it out!”
Beyfield went back to the door and stood chewing and glaring at me. I shrugged, and went back to my chair. “Let’s be reasonable,” I urged. “I said cards on the table, but if you’re scared, then we’ll forget it.”
Macey settled down in his chair again. He rescued his cigar that had fallen on the floor, scowled at it and then at me. “Go on,” he said. “Shoot your mouth off if you want to.”
“You’re not trying to find the missing girls because you’re scared it’ll lead to Starkey. You think Starkey has knocked them off, and if you dig you’ll have to pinch him. As you want him as boss of Cranville you’re too scared to do anything about the case.”
His small eyes shifted away from me, but he didn’t say anything.
“Starkey didn’t kill Marian French nor did he have anything to do with the missing girls,” I went on. “It points to him, but someone’s framing him for it.”
There was an expression of cautious interest on Macey’s face now. “Go on,” he said. “What makes you think that?”
“Maybe you haven’t any more brains than a leg of mutton,” I said, “but you know about the Street-Camera business. You know that every girl who’s disappeared has had her photograph in the window of that Studio and you know Starkey owns the joint. You think the photos were a bait to get the girls to come to the shop, but it wasn’t. There’s someone in this town who is’ out to frame Starkey. Whoever he is works like this. For some reason I haven’t got around to yet, he decided to kidnap and murder a number of girls in this town. Maybe he reckoned that it would be one way to get rid of Starkey, maybe there’s some other angle to it. I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Anyway, this guy starts indiscriminate kidnapping. First he goes along to the Street-Camera Studio and finds out who’s photograph is on show in the window. The photograph is changed every four days, and he may have to go there a number of times before he recognizes a girl he knows. When that happens, he contacts the girl, kidnaps her, murders her and hides her body. He does that three times, then he sends pictures of the girls to Dixon, tipping Dixon off that Starkey is using the shop as a bait to kidnap the girls. He hopes Dixon will come out with the story in the Gazette and upset Starkey’s applecart. That’s what I mean when I say someone is framing Starkey.”