The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 19

Because with that painting they could afford both.

The Day of Two Cars GILLIAN LINSCOTT.

Now here's a little-known fact. Did you know that the very first public telephone box was set up in Britain in 1921? And not just in cities but in rural areas, areas where city life seemed so far away. That's the scene that Gillian Linscott wanted to explore, where rural and city life met in the 1920s. Gillian is no stranger to the 1920s, or rather the years leading up to them. Her series about suffragette Nell Bray, which began in Sister Beneath the Sheets (1991) has taken us from the Edwardian period and through the First World War.

"It was a young woman who found him," the village constable said. "Molly Davitt, the blacksmith's daughter. She thought he was having a conversation on the telephone. After a while when he didn't move she decided something might be wrong."

"After how long, exactly?" the inspector asked. He was a city man and disliked vagueness.

"Half an hour or so, Molly says. Could be longer."

"You mean to tell me this young woman stood watching a man in a telephone box for half an hour or more?"

"There's not much happens round here. And the fact is, Molly's been fascinated with that telephone box from the time they put it up."

It was the spring of 1924 when they came to install the telephone box in Tadley Gate. n.o.body was quite sure why. The men from the Post Office travelled from Hereford, 17 miles away as the pigeon flew and half as much again by winding country road. All they knew was that they'd been instructed to erect the standard model Kiosk One, designed to be especially suitable for rural areas, on the edge of the common, in between the old pump and the new war memorial. It was made of reinforced concrete slabs with a red painted wooden door and large windows in the door and sides. In a touch of Post Office swagger, a decorative curlicue of wrought iron crowned it, finis.h.i.+ng in a spike that some people a.s.sumed was an essential part of the mechanism. n.o.body in Tadley Gate (pop. 227) had asked for a telephone kiosk and very few had ever used a telephone. Still, they were pleased. The coming of the kiosk was an event at least, which made two events in eighteen months, counting back to the other new arrival, the petrol pump. The petrol pump belonged to Davy Davitt, Molly's father. A third generation blacksmith by trade, he'd had more than enough of horses and fallen in love with cars. The sign over his workshop said "Blacksmith and Farrier" in the curly old-fas.h.i.+oned letters that had been good enough for his grandfather. Underneath he'd painted, stark and white. "Motor Vehicle Repairs Undertaken." The fact that the parish included 33 horses and ponies and only one motor car limited his scope but he was a resourceful man. Long negotiations with a distant petrol company ended with the arrival of a tank and a pump. The pump was red like the phone kiosk door, topped by a globe of frosted gla.s.s with a c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l and "Sealed Sh.e.l.l" on it in black letters. The tank below it held 500 gallons of petrol, delivered by motor tanker. In the first year Davy's only sales were five gallons every other week to the colonel from the big house who drove a Hillman Peace model very cautiously, so at that rate it would be nearly four years before the tanker needed to come with another delivery. But as Davy told anybody who'd listen in the Duke of Wellington, that was only the start. He was looking ahead to the arrival of the motor tourer. It stood to reason that as more people bought cars and the cars became more reliable, they'd drive for pleasure far away from cities and into the countryside. It didn't matter that the only motor tourist Tadley Gate had ever seen was somebody who'd got badly confused on the way to Shrewsbury and didn't want to be there. Davy believed in the petrol pump the way an Indian believed in his totem pole. He was even inclined to credit it with attracting the telephone kiosk to the village. He reasoned that now, properly equipped with both telephone and petrol pump, Tadley Gate was ready to unglue itself from the mud and enter the age of speed. Only the age of speed seemed to be taking its time about getting there.

Molly had no strong feelings about the petrol pump. She didn't like the smell much, but petrol was no worse than the throat-grabbing whiff of burning horn when her father fitted red-hot shoes to horses' hooves. On the other hand, the phone box enchanted her from the day it arrived. She was twenty then and single, having just broken her engagement to a local farmer's son. The second broken engagement, as it happened, and more than enough to get her a reputation as a jilt. She honestly regretted that. She'd quite liked the farmer's son, as she'd quite liked the young grain merchant before him, but s.h.i.+ed away from marriage because they were both of them firmly tied by work and family to the country around Tadley Gate. If she married either of them she'd have had to stay there for life and she knew with the instinct that tells a buried bulb which way is upwards that staying at Tadley Gate wasn't the way things were meant to be. She'd been away from the village once, for a family wedding in Birmingham where she'd been a bridesmaid. In the days before and after the ceremony she'd gone with her cousins to the cinema, bought underwear in a department store, read the Daily Mail and seen advertis.e.m.e.nts in magazines of sleek women poised on diving boards, leaning against the bonnets of cars, dancing quick-time foxtrot in little pointed shoes with men in evening dress. At the end of the visit she'd gone quietly back to Tadley Gate with a new shorter hairstyle that n.o.body commented on, an unused lipstick tucked into her skirt pocket and a conviction as deep as her father's belief in his petrol pump that the world must somehow find itself her way. The men who came to set up the telephone kiosk, pleased to find an unexpectedly beautiful girl in such an out of the way place, had been only too pleased as they worked to answer the questions she put to them in her soft local accent.

"So who can you talk to from here?" (She had the idea that a telephone had a predetermined number of lines, each one to a different and single other telephone.) "Anyone," they said.

The elder and more serious of the two explained that when she went into the kiosk and picked up the receiver, a buzzer would sound in the telephone exhange. Then, in exchange for coins in the slot, the operator would connect her with anybody she wanted, anywhere in the country.

"But how would she know? How would the operator know where to find them?"

"Everybody has their own number," the older man explained. "They're written down on a list."

"So if you had a particular friend," the younger man said, risking a wink at her, "he'd give you his exchange and number and you'd give that to the operator, then you could talk to him even if he was hundreds of miles away."

"So I could stand here and talk to somebody in Birmingham or London?"

"As long as your pennies lasted," the other man said.

At lunchtime she brought them out bread and cheese and cups of tea. At the end of the afternoon as they packed up their tools, the younger man explained about police calls.

"You don't have to put any money in. Just tell the operator you want police and she puts you straight through."

"To Constable Price?"

He was their local man, operating from his police house in a larger village three miles away.

"Or any policeman. Just run to the box, pick up the telephone and they'll come racing along as if they was at Brooklands."

Constable Price only had a bicycle. She a.s.sumed a telephone call would bring a faster kind of police altogether. It all added to the glamour of the phone kiosk. When the men had gone she stood looking at it for a long time, went in and touched the receiver gently and reverently. It was inert on its cradle and yet she felt it buzzing with the potential of a whole world. Every day her errands around the village would take her past it. She'd slow down, touch the kiosk, sometimes go inside and touch the receiver itself, trying to find the courage to pick it up. One autumn day, she managed it. The woman's voice at the other end, bright and metallic as a new sixpence, said "h.e.l.lo. What number please?" She dropped the receiver back on its cradle, heart thumping. She didn't know anybody's number, n.o.body's in the world. But in her dreams, one day a number would come into her head and she'd say it. Then the operator would say "Certainly, madam," the way they did in the department stores in Birmingham, the phone would click and buzz and there would be somebody on the other end London, Worcester, anywhere who'd say how nice to hear from her and he could tell from her voice that he'd like her no end, so why didn't he come in a car or even an aeroplane and whisk her away to a place where she could quick-time foxtrot in little pointed shoes and drink from a triangular gla.s.s under a striped umbrella? What was the point of telephones, after all, if they couldn't do magic? So like her father with his petrol pump she waited patiently for it to happen.

"So," the Inspector said, "Miss Davitt decides after half an hour or possibly longer that all might not be well with our man in the kiosk. So she looks more closely and finds Tod Barker with the back of his head cracked open the way you'd take a spoon to your breakfast egg."

Constable Price thought inappropriately of the good brown eggs his hens laid in their run at the back of his police house.

"Yes, sir. Only she didn't know it was Tod Barker, of course. She'd never seen the man before."

"Which isn't surprising, because as we know the only times you'd find Tod Barker outside the East End was when he was on a race course or in prison. And unless I'm misinformed, there aren't any prisons or race courses in this neck of the woods."

"No, sir. He had quite a record, didn't he? Three burglaries, two a.s.saults, two robberies with violence and four convictions for off-course betting."

This feat of memory from the doc.u.ments he'd read earned him an approving look from the inspector. But Constable Price reminded himself that a village bobby who wanted to keep his job shouldn't be too clever.

"Those are just the ones they managed to make stick in court," the inspector said. "Plenty of enemies in the underworld too. Our colleagues in London weren't surprised to hear that somebody had given Tod Barker a cranial ma.s.sage with an iron bar."

"An iron bar, was it?"

"So the laboratory men say. Flakes of rust in the wound."

"And n.o.body surprised?"

"Not that he was dead, no. Not even that he was dead in a phone box. In the betting trade I gather they spend half their lives on the telephone."

"And we know he'd made a call from that box earlier in the day."

"Yes, and since they keep a record at the exhange of the numbers, we know the call was to the bookmaker he works for back in London. So no surprise there either. In fact, you might say there's only one surprise in the whole business."

The inspector waited for a response. Constable Price realised that he was in danger of over-playing rural slowness.

"Why here, you mean, sir?"

"Exactly, constable. Why when Tod Barker regarded the countryside as something you drove through as quickly as possible to get to the next race meeting should he be killed somewhere at the back of beyond like Tadley Gate?"

"There's the petrol pump, of course." Constable Price said it almost to himself.

"Does that mean you get a lot of cars here?"

"No sir. We had two of them here on the day he was killed and I'd say two cars in one day was a record for Tadley Gate."

When the first of the cars arrived, around midday on a fine Thursday in hay-making time, Molly was sitting at the parlour table with the accounts book open in front of her, getting on with her task of sending out bills to her father's customers. Men's voices came from outside and the sound of slow pneumatic wheels on the road. She jumped up, glad to be distracted, and looked out of the window. Advancing into their yard came an open-topped four-seater, sleek and green. A man with brown hair and very broad shoulders sat in the driving seat. It moved with funereal slowness because the engine wasn't running at all. Its motive power came from two men pus.h.i.+ng from the back. One of them was plump, middle-aged and red-faced. The other bent over with his shoulder against the car happened to glance up as Molly looked out of the window. He smiled when he saw her and her heart did such a jolt of shock and unbelief that it felt like a metal plate with her father's biggest hammer coming down on it.

She thought, "Did I really telephone for him after all?"

Then, because she was essentially a good and practical girl, she told herself not to be a mardy ha'porth, of course she hadn't, so stop day-dreaming and get on with it. Her father hadn't heard or seen the car because he was hammering a damaged coulter in his forge out the back. It was up to her to get into the yard and see what they wanted. As she stepped outside the two men stopped pus.h.i.+ng and let the car come to a halt not far from the petrol pump.

"Is there a mechanic here? Call him quickly, would you."

It was the older, red-faced man who spoke, in a south Wales accent. The other man, the one she'd have called on the telephone if she knew he existed and had his number, straightened up and smiled at her again, rubbing his back with both hands. He was pretending that pus.h.i.+ng the car had exhausted him but Molly knew at once from the smile and the exaggeration of his movements that he wasn't exhausted at all, was just making a pantomime of it for her amus.e.m.e.nt. She smiled back at him. He was taller than average and maybe five years or so older than she was, with black hair, very white teeth and dark eyes that seemed more alive to her than any she'd seen before. And the smiles they exchanged were like two people saying the same thing at once: "Well, fancy somebody like you being here." But she had to turn away because the red-faced man was repeating his question loudly and urgently.

"I'll get my dad," she said, whirled away into the shadowy forge and shouted to him over the hammer blows. Davy Davitt followed her into the suns.h.i.+ne, still wearing his thick leather farrier's ap.r.o.n and when he saw the motor car by his petrol pump his face lit up.

"Twelve horse power Rover, nice cars, six hundred pounds new," he murmured to himself. Then aloud, "What's the trouble then, sir?"

"Blessed axle gone," the red-faced man said. "These roads are an insult to motor cars, not a yard of tarmac in the last twenty miles."

"Come far, have you?"

"Far enough," said the tall young man. "We started from Pontypridd."

His voice was Welsh too, bright and dancing. The red-faced man gave him a hard look.

"Doesn't matter to him where we started, Sonny. Question is, can he do something so we can get where we're going to?"

"Where's that then?" Davy asked.

"London. And we're in a hurry."

Even though the red-faced man's voice was impatient, they were some of the sweetest words in the language to Davy. In seconds he was horizontal under the car, with the man bending himself double to try to see what was happening. n.o.body was paying much attention to the other young man who'd been in the driving seat. He'd got out and was sitting, calm and contented in the suns.h.i.+ne, on the low stone wall between the house and the yard, looking at Molly. And Molly was staring enchanted at the man called Sonny because she'd just heard from his lips some of the sweetest words in the language to her.

"Would there be anywhere here with a telephone I could use?"

Proudly she led him to the kiosk and sat on the step of the war memorial to watch. She always liked to watch on the very rare occasions when people used the telephone, grieved by their hesitations and fumblings. Sonny was different. He didn't pause to read the card of instructions, or drop coins on the concrete floor or fidget with doubt or embarra.s.sment. He simply picked up the receiver and spoke into it as if it were a thing he did every day, easy as was.h.i.+ng your hands. She saw a smile on his face and his lips moving and knew he must be giving a number to the distant operator then he must have been connected to his number because his lips were moving again though she couldn't hear what he was saying.

"Blessed car's broken down, back of beyond. No sign of them though. Didn't guess we'd be going this way."

He was speaking to his father, who ran a boxers' training gymnasium in Pontypridd.

"That's where you're wrong, boy. They're right behind you. Left Cardiff early this morning in a black Austin 20, heading same way as you."

"How did they know, then?"

"Never mind that. Fact is, they do know. Tell Enoch. You at a garage?"

"Blacksmith's with a petrol pump."

"Can't miss you then, can they?"

"They can't do anything to him, not in broad daylight."

"Only takes a little nudge, you know that. Elbow in wrong place, oh dear so sorry, damage done."

"Enoch and me wouldn't let a flea's elbow near him, let alone theirs."

"You look after our boy."

Molly watched as he came out of the kiosk looking worried.

"Have you had bad news?"

It didn't strike her that she had no right to ask this of a stranger. He answered her with another question.

"Your father good with cars, is he?"

"Very good."

"We need to be moving, see? Quicker than I thought."

She caught his urgency and they practically ran back to the yard. By then her father was out from under the car and delivering his verdict. Beam axle gone and rear axle just holding together but wouldn't make it to London. Both of them would need unbolting and welding.

"How long?" the red-faced man asked.

"Two or three hours, with luck."

"Make it two hours or less and, whatever your bill is, I'll give you ten pounds on top of it."

Davy's jaw dropped at the prospect of more money in two hours than he usually earned in a week. Then he went under the car with a spanner and Sonny, in his good suit and s.h.i.+ny shoes, went under too. Davy called out to Molly to go and tell Tick to make sure the fire in the forge was hot as he could make it. Tick was the apprentice, a large and powerful sixteen-year-old. Molly found him in the forge along with the other young man who'd been in the driving seat of the car and for an angry moment thought the two of them were fighting. Then she saw it was no more than play, the man dodging and dancing on the trodden earth floor among the sc.r.a.ps of metal and old horse-shoes, feet moving no more than an inch or two at a time, but enough to avoid the light punches Tick was aiming at him. A furious bellow came from behind them.

"Rooster, are you b.l.o.o.d.y mad, boy? Come away from there."

It was the red-faced man.

"Sorry, Uncle Enoch."

Obediently, the young man followed him out to the yard. Molly tried to give Tick her father's instruction but could hardly get the boy to listen. His face was s.h.i.+ny with excitement.

"Did you hear what he called him? I thought he might be, then I said to myself it couldn't be. I'd only see'd him from a good way off and he looks different in his clothes. So I put my fists up, joking like, and he . . ."

"What are you saying, Tick boy?"

"The Rhonda Rooster, that's all. He's only the Rhonda Rooster!"

"What's that?"

"Only the next British middleweight champion, that's all. He'll be fighting for the t.i.tle in London the day after tomorrow and the money's on him to win it."

"A boxer?"

"Then he'll take on the Empire champion after that. Could be world champion. When I see'd him at Cardiff he won by a knock-out in three rounds against a heavier man even though there was so much blood pouring down his face he could only see from one eye."

Molly was a country girl, not squeamish.

"If he's as good as you say, how come he'd got so much blood on him?"

"He's got a gla.s.s eyebrow."

"A what?"

"That's what they call a weak spot. Hard as iron all the rest of him, only he's got an old cut over his left eyebrow and if that opens up it pours with blood so the referee would have had to stop the fight if he hadn't knocked the other chap out first."

It turned out that her father had heard of the Rhondda Rooster too because he got his head out from under the car just long enough to tell Molly to make the gentlemen comfortable in the front parlour and get them something to eat. She rushed round making tea in the good china pot, putting bread, cheese and cold beef on the best table cloth. Sonny had come out from under the car by then and she was conscious all the time of his eyes on her. The Rooster's eyes were just as admiring if she'd noticed, but he was nothing beside Sonny shoulders and chest too broad for the cut of his suit, one ear a bit skew-whiff, big hands that he kept bunching and flexing all the time they weren't occupied with knife and fork. Under the stern eye of the red-faced man, Uncle Enoch, he had the clumsy good manners of a schoolboy, while Sonny seemed a man of the great world. Occupied with serving them, she missed another milestone in the speeding up of life in Tadley Gate. Another stranger went into the phone kiosk and picked up the receiver. It was the first time since the kiosk was built that it had been used more than once in a day.

The new stranger was small, dark-haired, and twentyish, in a dark suit and cow-dung smeared shoes that hadn't been designed for country walking. He looked round to see n.o.body was watching and slid quickly into the box as if glad of its protection from the country all around him. The number he wanted was at an east London exchange.

"Bit of luck. Their car's broken down."