One Shoe Gumshoe

"OK, he's all of those, how can you tell?"

"The burr walnut hall stand is a thing of beauty that no-one would notice, covered as it is in a number of thick coats, which befit a man who is used to Californian sunshine. There are a number of men's shoes in the rack, mostly size 10, except two, one, the oldest and most worn, is marked size 11, presumably the American pair that Mr Gold wore travelling light across the Atlantic, and an Italian pair size 44.5, possibly bought here from old stock from before the war, or more likely brought over from the States in his luggage. I also noted that there was only one pair of carpet slippers, left handily by the door, so he could slip them on immediately he came in, to prevent soiling his carpets, also indicating a man living alone and cares about his living space. He has a linen doily on the back of one of the easy chairs, to protect the leather from hair oil staining. A woman would have placed the doilies on every chair not just one, for appearances sake, so no woman lives here, I think. Unless, of course, he lives with a bald man, who might be in his forties, who prefers thick socks to carpet slippers."

I grinned, expecting Mary to go along with the joke about Gold and Cavenagh, but she looked quite thoughtful for a moment, smiling wanly, then looked up and pointed to the kitchen.

"I'll make a start in here, then," she said as she strode off to the kitchen.

I surmised that her emotions were still too much on edge for my humour.

I climbed the stairs to the bedroom level. I opened the first door on the left and it turned out to be the bathroom. It was a modern room, the sort of bathroom that appears in Ideal Home brochures, a plumbed-in ceramic bath with taps, an internal water closet and a sink with hot water from an Ascot heater and cold water taps. There was even a new hot water radiator in the room, probably run off a boiler built in behind the fireplace in the sitting room. It was presently cold.

Spread over the radiator was a soiled hand towel that looked out of place, while other bath and hand towels were stacked neatly on a shelf next to the sink. The soiled hand towel was bone dry, so hadn't been used in at least one or two days.

The room opposite the bathroom was a small bedroom, containing a single bed, a completely empty but well-made walnut burr wall closet and another wall radiator.

I took note of the new electric light switches, which looked recently installed. Also, halfway up two of the walls, there were two wall-mounted electrical points, for the insertion of a two-pronged electrical plug, for the convenience of plugging in small electrical devices. I possess an electric iron at Mrs McPherson's boarding house, which I use to iron my shirt collars, which I have to plug in through a Bakelite adapter-connector, to the overhead electric light; an unfortunate inconvenience as it means I can only iron in the daylight, or attempt the task completely in the dark! The single bed looked as pristine as when it arrived from the showroom. I doubted anyone had ever slept in it.

The second bedroom next to the small bedroom was larger and contained a double bed, however, an inspection of the double-width wardrobe revealed no sign of any clothes. Both bedrooms so far were completely unadorned with any decoration.

The third bedroom was different. It had clearly been occupied, although neatly tidy. It was decorated with prints of Pacific island seascapes adorning the walls, and the double bed was made up. But the bed had not been remade with any care, which was again out of place with the neatness I associated with the occupier.

But what completely arrested my attention as soon as I saw it on the bedside table, was a silver-framed photograph of a much younger but easily recognisable famous and glamorous actress, one Miss Marcia la Mare. It was signed. I picked up the heavy silver and glass object and looked closer.

It read, "To my dearest sweetheart, with all the love I have to give. May we cherish each other for ever, yours always, Mary."

There, positive proof that this was the missing actor Bradford Gold's flat, and that he was either recently in residence, expected to return soon, or been abducted.

Knowing Mary, even from our short acquaintance, her husband would never have left here willingly for a whole month without taking the picture with him that he had clearly brought over all the way from the United States. The other thought occurred to me that he might have left it here when stationed in East Anglia; this was his property, his permanent home in England where he could return to on leave.

The digs in the East End was probably only somewhere to stay while he was working on whatever case he was doing for the Secret Service.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ENCOUNTER WITH CURLY CAVENAGH

MARY sat down on Gold's bed with me to survey what we had collected from our survey of the two-and-a-half floors of the flat, it really wasn't much at all. There was an empty trunk and two suitcases in the unfurnished bedroom up in what was once the loft; they were locked but I opened them and they were indeed empty.

All we had gathered was the framed photo, of course, a diary, a pair of reading glasses and an unmarked cigarette lighter that Mary thought she recognised.

"If you think I look really young in that photo, you are right, I was only 17 and we had been engaged a matter of weeks. We had to part our separate ways, each to a different film location, so he asked me for a photograph, I had a pile of them for publicity purposes. I put that message on it and he bought the frame while — what was that?"

We could hear heavy boots coming up the steel steps outside. Mary ran quickly to the small back bedroom, that had the single bed and empty double wardrobe in it. The window there overlooked the outside door to the flat. I followed a moment or two after her.

"It's the big man with the bald head!" she hissed, "What'll we do?"

''It's your husband's home, Mary," I said, "You have every right to be here."

"That's all very well, Edgar, but he carries a gun, has threatened Gus with violence, and he may have had something to do with Brad's disappearance."

She was right of course.

I said, "You stay in this bedroom, and I will go down and confront him."

"Do you have your gun?"

"No, I only take it when I am expecting trouble."

"We're in trouble now, Edgar, and I know you're a brave man but if he shoots you, he will have to shoot me, too, as a witness."

"All right," I decided, "you stay here and I'll gather the stuff from the master bedroom."

"No, Edgar," she put a hand on my arm, "I'm lighter on my feet and quicker. I think he is only here to collect his rent from the barber and to make a cup of tea. He may not come up here and has no reason to enter this unused bedroom."

Then she was gone.

Within a minute she was back with the diary, lighter and eye glasses and we stood behind the door, listening. The bedroom was close to the stairs, the walls quite thin, so if you were quiet you could hear the man, who we assumed was Curly Cavenagh, banging about in the kitchen.

"He's filling a kettle with water," in a low whisper, Mary kept up a running commentary of Cavenagh's movements and actions. "Now he's turned on the gas and struck a match. The gas is lit and that 'clunk' was the kettle being put on the hob."

She turned and looked at me. "While you were up here, I looked in the pantry, as you suggested, but there was nothing in there. I don't think Brad ever cooked anything while he was here, he always preferred eating out to home cooking." She smiled at that. "Even when he was living with his parents they dined in style because they always had one of the two chefs they employed on hand in the house who cooked everything. They never even had to put the kettle on for tea! Anyway, the sink had two teacups in it, and two spoons, no saucers. I expect Cavenagh will make his usual cup of tea, and leave. I doubt that he will even wash up, as there are six cups in that set."

"I think he uses the bathroom, too," I whispered, remembering the grubby hand towel, "l think we can find out who he is and his criminal history from the fingerprints on a cup, especially if we have several cups, we are bound to find one good print from them."

She grinned, "So all we need do is hide, whether he has a gun or not, and we'll get him anyway, without putting ourselves in danger."

"Sounds like a good plan to me."

While we stood there, quietly behind the third bedroom door, Mary flicked through her husband's diary.

"He never uses it as a diary as such," she whispered, "but as a calendar of future appointments, film schedules, etc. it was useful as a reminder so he wouldn't miss anything important.... it looks like he ticks things off when done, or crosses appointments out when they are cancelled or rescheduled. Wait —"

She paused, and we listened, as we heard Cavenagh come up the stairs, we presumed, heading for the lavatory, as was his presumed habit.

But he stopped outside, between both the bathroom and the small bedroom doors.

Without warning, there was a crash as he kicked our door in, which flew inward towards me.

Mary behind me screamed.

The door flew open and hit my artificial foot. The door seemed to bounce back off my solid foot and almost slammed shut again, as I saw a right hand coming through the door opening with a revolver gripped in it.

I threw my whole weight behind the closing door and it caught the outstretched hand between door and door jamb with a bone-crushing crack!

This time it was Cavenagh that screamed, and there was a loud report as the revolver went off with a mighty bang!

I wrenched the door open, to see the smoking gun fall from the attacker's senseless fingers, the hand hanging sickeningly unnatural at what was certainly a broken or dislocated wrist, Cavenagh reeling back against the toilet door.

"I caution you to stand still, Cavenagh." I warned him as I stepped forward, "I am arresting you in connection with the disappearance of the owner-occupier of this flat, Mr Bradford Gold, late Flight Lieutenant in the RAF...."

Before I could continue with the rest of the caution, about him saying anything that might be taken down and used in evidence, he retaliated by swinging his left hand in an arc towards my head.

I could hear the mechanism of the spring-loaded flick knife, and my eyes saw the six-inch blade unwind, that he venomously intended to hack at me, yelling a frightening bellow from his snarling lips, as the blade swept towards me.

I tried to halt my forward momentum and roll back on my heels to avoid the wicked steel from slicing through my throat, and barely managed to evade enough of his lunge so that only the tip nicked the edge of my chin.

Suddenly, Cavenagh's face disappeared, his forehead exploding like a soft-boiled egg hit overzealously by a careless heavy teaspoon. Blood and brains fountained from a neat hole as near dead centre of his forehead as made no difference, his eyes changing from a look of total fury to abject shock, and then to utter resignation as the power of sight, thought, and the ability to even stand up any longer abandoned him.

Almost immediately after this chain of events registered with me, the deafening thunderclap roar of the gun exploded next to my left ear, and the rest of the scene played out like I imagined one of Brad Gold's early silent movies would.

Just as the lifeless body slumped to the floor, I twisted my head to see Mary, gripping Cavenagh's own discarded revolver in both her tiny hands at the end of her outstretched arms, her left eye closed as her right eye sighted along the barrel to the point on the bathroom door, now covered in blood, brains and skull bone fragments from the back of what had once been Cavenagh's head.

She opened her left eye and calmly lowered the revolver, using a thumb to gently ease the hammer back in place safely without discharging the weapon for an unnecessary second firing.

I lip-read, "Sorry," she said, without remorse or any discernible passion, "I know you wanted to question him, but Daddy taught me to always shoot snakes in the head."

I didn't hear the policeman's whistle, summoned by one of the barber's customers, who ran up and down Denmark Hill Road until he saw a constable on patrol on his bike. Nor did I hear Mary call out to them, "Upstairs!", or hear them charge up the stairs in their heavy hob-nailed boots.

All I could hear was the deafening ringing in my ears.

I saw the policeman burst into the flat's master bedroom, where we had moved for comfort's sake immediately after the shooting, no doubt after he'd stepped over the grisly corpse in the hallway, truncheon at the ready, and Gus the barber following him close behind. Both were confronted by the scene of Mary and I sitting calmly on the edge of the double bed.

I must've looked a frightful sight, my face covered in blood and brains, and it might not have been immediately obvious to a casual observer that little of the gore was actually mine, but from the very recently deceased "Curly" Cavenagh.

There was a little of the blood dripping from my chin that was mine, which I staunched with a clean handkerchief mono-chromed "MJ"; my own handkerchief not being nearly clean enough for the purpose. I had urged Mary to calmly step down to open the front door, for our soon-to-be-expected company, and not to disturb the crime scene outside the bathroom.

I had noticed a small medicine tin was kept in the bathroom cabinet, in my earlier search, but I advised Mary not to touch the bathroom door.

I had brought to hand my own handkerchief, but hesitated to use it; it was two days old, having not returned to my digs last night, and there was little point in stopping the blood dripping onto my ruined coat, shirt and tie.

But Mary caught my movements and calmly retrieved a delicate and freshly laundered square of linen from her purse for me. Once she returned from the front door, I had us retire to the master bedroom, to await the plodding process of law enforcement.

While I was talking, I could only 'hear' my voice echoing to me through the bones in my head, once more projecting my mind back to the time when I lost my foot, deafened as I was then by an exploding mortar which had pitched me into the flooded shell hole, which fortunately protected me from further injury from the murderous machine gun fire from the German soldiers of a different, older war. It was back at the forward casualty unit that I rapidly learned the rudiments of lip-reading, as it was nearly a week before the ringing stopped in my left ear, but my right was permanently damaged and I had hardly heard anything above 10% in that ear ever since.

The policeman looked wordlessly at the pair of us sitting there, keeping a firm grip on his truncheon but clearly at a loss what do next. Just behind the policeman, came the barber. He also looked at us, then saw the photograph frame on the bedside table and he put two and two together.

"Blimey!" The barber exclaimed, "it's bloomin' Marcia de Myrrh, the famous actress! Look, Bert, it's only her blooming picture wot's on the table!"

The copper, a well-built fellow, who looked as though he fully enjoyed and never missed his dinners, with a full moustache that overflowed his upper lip, and red cheeks, furrowed his brow as he looked from the picture to the vision sitting next to me, "Blow me, it is Marcia la Mare, ain't it Gus?"

Gus the barber slapped the copper on the back and laughed, "It is an' all, Bert, it is an' all!"

The policeman turned to me and asked quite sternly, "Can you tell me what happened here, Mister?"

I was about to reply, when Mary must've answered for me.

"It wasn't Mr Onslow that shot Cavenagh, officer, it was me."

I couldn't see her lips from where I was sitting on the bed but, speaking later, I deduced that she said something along those lines.

The policeman turned to Mary when she started talking and then turned back to examine me when she said my name. He leaned further forward as if to search my features more carefully behind the sprayed gore.

"Mr Onslow? Blimey, it is! It's Mr Onslow!"

Suddenly, the policeman stood up straight and saluted, "Mr Onslow, Sir! PC Albert Coker at your service, Sir! Shall I send for a doctor to attend to yer, Sir?"

Even Gus the barber clicked his heels together and stood up straight, arms flat down to his sides.

"At ease, PC Coker," I said, hoping I sounded as though I was making sense, because my voice 'sounded' so different with my ears ringing so much, "there has been a violent death here and we must follow proper procedure, to ensure that the scene has not been unduly disturbed. You must stop anyone else coming to the scene. I am largely unhurt, although I may need a doctor to examine a possible punctured eardrum, as a result of the percussion from the weapon discharge, and also to stitch a wound in my chin, that was inflicted by the deceased's flick-knife before he was shot, but the doctor can wait. I can assure you that Miss la Mare discharged a weapon in self defence, and that the deceased, a man we believe to be called Cavenagh, had brought the weapon to the scene and threatened us with it and discharged his weapon once, fortunately wild, the bullet to be found somewhere in the ceiling. After I had disarmed him of his discharged weapon, Cavenagh came at me with a six-inch flick-knife, which you should find on the floor of the bedroom, possibly with a trace of my blood type on the very tip and only his fingerprints on the handle."

At that point he twisted his head, no doubt he could hear more heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

"Escuse me, Sir," PC Coker spun on his heels, stepped into the hallway and bellowed something down the stairs with his mouth fully open. Sideways on, I was unable to read exactly what he said but as no-one came through, I assumed he was successful in stopping the new arrivals in their tracks.

"Constable Coker, if you have had any reinforcements arrive, perhaps you could dispatch one to a police telephone box and contact Detective Inspector Robert Cummings at the Yard, who is the senior officer that I am reporting to in connection with this case."

He saluted smartly again in response and bellowed down the stairs again. He was one of those old style coppers, much like my own dear father, who served as a policeman all his adult life and missed it terribly when he had to give it up through retirement. This copper looked a decade older than me and probably grateful that the war had extended his period of service, to leave younger men to fight the war, while older Coppers like Coker helped keep the peace.

I glanced at Mary, to see how she was coping with the events of the past few minutes, and it was but a few minutes from discovery and death to awaiting investigation of the fact, but she sat there calm and serene, and smiled at me as I turned, recognising my concern.

"I am OK," I read her assurances on her lips. "Really, Edgar, the guy meant nothing to me, and he was trying to kill you. After that, I know he would then have killed me too, being the only witness to your murder. I believe I did the right thing by taking his life and I am resolved to not let it affect my life by one iota."

I felt her grip my hand hard, I hadn't realised that she still held it and had done almost continuously since the death of Cavenagh. I squeezed it back and turned to face the doorway again.

The Constable was stood outside the door, his mouth moving, giving more instructions to one or more unseen colleagues standing at the top of the stairwell.

Also, standing inside the doorway was Gus, the barber, standing there still grinning at us. I noticed he wasn't carrying his regulation gas mask, something that we had all become accustomed to wear about our person from the very first weeks of the war.