Sock her, Lou!’
The proprietor behind the bar, a slim Italian-looking fellow with sideburns, whom I had taken to be Luigi, came to intervene in a voice that was pure cockney London.
‘Nah then—break it up—break it up—You’ll ’ave the whole street in in a minute. You’ll ’ave the coppers here. Stop it, I say.’
But the lank blonde had the red-head by the hair and was tugging furiously as she screamed:
‘You’re nothing but a man-stealing bitch!’
‘Bitch yourself.’
Luigi and the two embarrassed escorts forced the girls apart. In the blonde’s fingers were large tufts of red hair. She held them aloft gleefully, then dropped them on the floor.
The door from the street was pushed open and Authority, dressed in blue, stood on the threshold and uttered the regulation words majestically.
‘What’s going on here?’
Immediately a common front was presented to the enemy.
‘Just a bit of fun,’ said one of the young men.
‘That’s all,’ said Luigi. ‘Just a bit of fun among friends.’
With his foot he kicked the tufts of hair adroitly under the nearest table. The contestants smiled at each other in false amnesty.
The policeman looked at everybody suspiciously.
‘We’re just going now,’ said the blonde sweetly. ‘Come on, Doug.’
By a coincidence several other people were just going. Authority watched them go grimly. His eye said that he was overlooking it this time, but he’d got his eye on them. He withdrew slowly.
The red-head’s escort paid the check.
‘You all right?’ said Luigi to the girl who was adjusting a headscarf. ‘Lou served you pretty bad, tearing out your hair by the roots like that.’
‘It didn’t hurt,’ said the girl nonchalantly. She smiled at him. ‘Sorry for the row, Luigi.’
The party went out. The bar was now practically empty. I felt in my pocket for change.
‘She’s a sport all right,’ said Luigi approvingly, watching the door close. He seized a floor brush and swept the tufts of red hair behind the counter.
‘It must have been agony,’ I said.
‘I’d have hollered if it had been me,’ admitted Luigi. ‘But she’s a real sport, Tommy is.’
‘You know her well?’
‘Oh, she’s in here most evenings. Tuckerton, that’s her name, Thomasina Tuckerton, if you want the whole set out. But Tommy Tucker’s what she’s called round here. Stinking rich, too. Her old man left her a fortune, and what does she go and do? Comes to Chelsea, lives in a slummy room half-way to Wandsworth Bridge, and mooches around with a gang all doing the same thing. Beats me, half of that crowd’s got money. Could have any mortal thing they want; stay at the Ritz if they liked. But they seem to get a kick out of living the way they do. Yes—it beats me.’
‘It wouldn’t be your choice?’
‘Ar, I’ve got sense!’ said Luigi. ‘As it is, I just cash in.’
I rose to go and asked what the quarrel was about.
‘Oh, Tommy’s got hold of the other girl’s boy friend. He’s not worth fighting about, believe me!’
‘The other girl seemed to think he was,’ I observed.
‘Oh, Lou’s very romantic,’ said Luigi tolerantly.
It was not my idea of romance, but I did not say so.
It must have been about a week later that my eye was caught by a name in the Deaths column of The Times.
TUCKERTON. On October 2nd at Fallowfield Nursing Home, Amberley, Thomasina Ann, aged twenty, only daughter of the late Thomas Tuckerton, Esq., of Carrington Park, Amberley, Surrey. Funeral private. No flowers.
No flowers for poor Tommy Tucker; and no more ‘kicks’ out of life in Chelsea. I felt a sudden fleeting compassion for the Tommy Tuckers of today. Yet after all, I reminded myself, how did I know that my view was the right one? Who was I to pronounce it a wasted life? Perhaps it was my life, my quiet scholarly life, immersed in books, shut off from the world, that was the wasted one. Life at second hand. Be honest now, was I getting kicks out of life? A very unfamiliar idea! The truth was, of course, that I didn’t want kicks. But there again, perhaps I ought to? An unfamiliar and not very welcome thought.
I dismissed Tommy Tucker from my thoughts, and turned to my correspondence.
The principal item was a letter from my cousin Rhoda Despard, asking me to do her a favour. I grasped at this, since I was not feeling in the mood for work this morning, and it made a splendid excuse for postponing it.
I went out into King’s Road, hailed a taxi, and was driven to the residence of a friend of mine, a Mrs Ariadne Oliver.
Mrs Oliver was a well-known writer of detective stories. Her maid, Milly, was an efficient dragon who guarded her mistress from the onslaughts of the outside world.
I raised my eyebrows inquiringly, in an unspoken question. Milly nodded a vehement head.
‘You’d better go right up, Mr Mark,’ she said. ‘She’s in a mood this morning. You may be able to help her snap out of it.’
I mounted two flights of stairs, tapped lightly on a door, and walked in without waiting for encouragement. Mrs Oliver’s workroom was a good-sized room, the walls papered with exotic birds nesting in tropical foliage. Mrs Oliver herself, in a state apparently bordering on insanity, was prowling round the room, muttering to herself. She threw me a brief uninterested glance and continued to prowl. Her eyes, unfocused, swept round the walls, glanced out of the window, and occasionally closed in what appeared to be a spasm of agony.
‘But why,’ demanded Mrs Oliver of the universe, ‘why doesn’t the idiot say at once that he saw the cockatoo? Why shouldn’t he? He couldn’t have helped seeing it! But if he does mention it, it ruins everything. There must be a way … there must be …’
She groaned, ran her fingers through her short grey hair and clutched it in a frenzied hand. Then, looking at me with suddenly focused eyes, she said, ‘Hallo, Mark. I’m going mad,’ and resumed her complaint.
‘And then there’s Monica. The nicer I try to make her, the more irritating she gets … Such a stupid girl … Smug, too! Monica … Monica? I believe the name’s wrong. Nancy? Would that be better? Joan? Everybody is always Joan. Anne is the same. Susan? I’ve had a Susan. Lucia? Lucia? Lucia? I believe I can see a Lucia. Red-haired. Polo-necked jumper … Black tights? Black stockings, anyway.’
This momentary gleam of good cheer was eclipsed by the memory of the cockatoo problem, and Mrs Oliver resumed her unhappy prowling, picking up things off tables
