There were only two doors on the top landing. She opened one marked "Enquiries," and there without a doubt was Molly Pink. In a little room hardly larger than a broom cupboard she sat beside a gas ring sucking a sweet. A kettle hissed at Ida as she entered. A swollen spotty face glared back at her without a word.
"Excuse me," Ida said.
"The partners is out."
"I came to see you."
The mouth fell a little open, a lump of toffee stirred on the tongue, the kettle whistled.
"Me?"
"Yes," Ida said. "You'd better look out. The kettle'll boil over. You are Molly Pink?"
"You want a cup?" The room was lined from floor to ceiling with files. A little window disclosed through the undisturbed dust of many years another block of buildings with the same arrangement of windows staring dustily back like a reflection. A dead fly hung in a broken web.
"I don't like tea," Ida said.
"That's lucky. There's only one cup," Molly said, filling a thick brown teapot with a chipped spout.
"A friend of mine called Moyne..." Ida began.
"Oh, him!" Molly said. "We just turned him out of house and home." A copy of Woman and Beauty was propped open on her typewriter, and her eyes slid continually back to it.
"Out of house and home?"
"House and home. He came to see the partners. He tried to blarney."
"Did he see them?"
"The partners is out. Have a toffee?"
"It's bad for the figure," Ida said.
"I make up for it. I don't eat breakfast."
Over Molly's head Ida could see the labels on the files: "Rents of 1-6 Mud Lane."
"Rents of Wainage Estate, Balham."
"Rents of..." They were surrounded by the pride of ownership, property....
"I came here," Ida said, "because you met a friend of mine."
"Sit down," Molly said. "That's the clients' chair.
I has to entertain 'em. Mr. Moyne's not a friend."
"Not Moyne. Someone called Hale."
"I don't want any more to do with that business.
You ought to 'ave seen the partners. They was furious.
I had to have a day off for the inquest. They kept me hours late next day."
"I just want to hear what happened."
"What happened? The partners is awful when roused."
"I mean about Fred Hale."
"I didn't exactly know him."
"That man you said at the inquest came up "
"He wasn't a man. He was just a kid. He knew Mr.
Hale."
"But in the paper it said "
"Oh, Mr. Hale said he didn't know him. I didn't tell them different. They didn't ask me. Except was there anything odd in his manner. Well, there wasn't anything you'd call odd. He was just scared, that's all. We get lots like that in here."
"But you didn't tell them that?"
"That's nothing uncommon. I knew what it was at once. He owed the kid money. We get lots like that.
Like Charlie Moyne."
"He was scared, was he? Poor old Fred."
" Tin not Fred,' " he said, "sharp as you please.
But I could tell all right. So could my girl friend."
"What was the kid like?"
"Oh, just a kid."
"Tall?"
"Not particularly."
"Fair?"
"I couldn't say that."
"How old was he?"
" 'Bout my age, I dessay."
"What's that?"
"Eighteen," Molly said, staring defiantly across the typewriter and the steaming kettle, sucking a toffee.
"Did he ask for money?"
"He didn't have time to ask for money."
"You didn't notice anything else?"
"He was awful anxious for me to go along with him. But I couldn't, not with my girl friend there."
"Thanks," Ida said, "it's something learnt."
"You a woman detective?" Molly asked.
"Oh, no, I'm just a friend of his."
There was something fishy: she was convinced of it now. She remembered again how scared he'd been in the taxi, and going down Holborn towards her digs behind Russell Square, in the late afternoon sun, she thought again of the way in which he had handed her the ten shillings before she went down into the Ladies'.
He was a real gentleman; perhaps it was the last few shillings he had; and those people that boy dunning him for money. Perhaps he was another one ruined like Charlie Moyne, and now that her memory of his face was getting a bit dim, she couldn't help lending him a few of Charlie Moyne's features, the bloodshot eyes if nothing else. Sporting gentlemen, freehanded gentlemen, real gentlemen. The commercials drooped their dewlaps in the hall of the Imperial, the sun lay flat across the plane trees, and a bell rang and rang for tea in a boarding house in Coram Street.
I'll try the Board, Ida thought, and then I'll know.
When she got in, there was a card on the hall table, a card of Brighton Pier; if I was superstitious, she thought, if I was superstitious. She turned it over. It was only from Phil Corkery, asking her to come down.
She had the same every year from Eastbourne, Hastings, and once from Aberystwyth. But she never went.
He wasn't someone she liked to encourage. Too quiet.
Not what she called a man.
She went to the basement stairs and called Old Crowe. She needed two sets of fingers for the board and she knew it would give the old man pleasure. "Old Crowe," she called, peering down the stone stairs.
"Old Crowe."
"What is it, Ida?"
"I'm going to have a turn at the Board."
She didn't wait for him, but went on up to her bedsitting-room to make ready. The room faced east and the sun had gone. It was cold and dusk. Ida turned on the gas fire and drew the old scarlet velvet curtains to shut out the grey skies and the chimney pots. Then she patted the divan bed into shape and drew two chairs to the table. In a glass-fronted cupboard her life stared back at her, a good life: pieces of china bought at the seaside, a photograph of Tom, an Edgar Wallace, a Netta Syrett from a second-hand stall, some sheets of music, The Good Companions, her mother's picture, more china, a few jointed animals made of wood and elastic, trinkets given her by this, that, and the other, Sorrell and Son, the board.
She took the board gently down and locked the cupboard. A flat oval piece of polished wood on tiny wheels, it looked like something that had crept out of a drawer in a basement kitchen. But in fact it was Old Crowe who had done that, knocking gently on the door, sidling in, white hair, grey face, short-sighted pit-pony eyes, blinking at the bare globe in Ida's reading lamp. Ida tossed a pink netty scarf over the light and dimmed it for him.
"You got something to ask it, Ida?" Old Crowe said.
He shivered a little, frightened and fascinated. Ida sharpened a pencil and inserted it in the prow of the little board.
"Sit down, Old Crowe. What you been doing all day?"
"They had a funeral at twenty-seven. One of those Indian students."
"I been to a funeral too. Was yours a good one?"
"There aren't any good funerals these days. Not with plumes."
Ida gave the little board a push. It slid sideways across the polished table more than ever like a beetle.
"The pencil's too-long," Old Crowe said. He sat, hugging his hands between his knees, bent forward watching the board. Ida screwed the pencil a little higher.
"Past or future?" Old Crowe said, panting a little.
"I want to get into touch today," Ida said.
"Dead or alive?" Old Crowe said.
"Dead. I seen him burnt this afternoon. Cremated.
Come on, Old Crowe, put your fingers on."