No Business of Mine

“I think Miss Scott’s alive,” he said. “The fact that her clothes are missing, the body stolen to prevent identification and that you think you saw her yesterday seems proof enough to me. If she is alive, then we shall have to discover who the dead woman was in Miss Scott’s flat. We shall also have to find out whether Miss Scott had anything to do with her death; whether it was murder or suicide, whether there was anyone else implicated. It seems to me that if Miss Scott arranged for the dead woman to be mistaken for her, she must have an urgent reason for going into hiding. That’s another thing we must discover. The fact that she didn’t take the money nor the diamond ring, although she had time to pack her clothes, would point to a third party being present whom she did not trust and from whom she was anxious to conceal the fact that she had such valuables in the flat. We must find out who that third party was.”

“You worked all that out in a few minutes,” I said, regarding him thoughtfully. “I worked it out too, only I took a little longer, but Corridan hasn’t got around to it yet. Now why? Why should Corridan still insist that Netta committed suicide?”

Littlejohns allowed himself a bleak smile. “I have had some experience of Inspector Corridan,” he said. “He is a most misleading man. I suggest from my knowledge of his methods that he has arrived at this conclusion but he is not letting you know that he has done so. It may be, sir, that he considers you’re implicated in this case, and is allowing you to think he has hold of the wrong end of the stick in the hope you will be over-confident and commit yourself. The Inspector is a deep thinker, and I wouldn’t underestimate his abilities for a moment.”

I gaped at him. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “That idea never occurred to me.”

For a moment Littlejohns relaxed sufficiently to look almost human. “The Inspector, in spite of what Mr. Merryweather says, is a brilliant investigator. He has caught more criminals by pretending to know nothing when he has known the full facts than any other of the Yard’s personnel. I should be most careful what you say or do as far as he’s concerned.”

“Okay, I’ll remember that,” I said. “Now the next step is to dig and keep digging until we find something important to work on. I’m sure you’re right about Netta. She’s alive and she’s arranged with Cole to identify this dead woman as herself. That explains why the body was kidnapped. They are keeping the body away from me. Will you go down to Lakeham right away and keep an eye on Mrs. Brambee’s cottage? Look out for Netta. I think she’s hiding there. I’ll do what I can up here and in a couple of days or so we’ll get together and see how far we’ve got.”

Littlejohns said he’d go to Lakeham immediately, left with a much more sprightly step than when he had come.

The rest of the day I worked at my first article on Post-War Britain for the United News Agency. I had already obtained a considerable amount of material for the article so I was able to settle in my room and make my first rough draft. I became so absorbed in my work that the problem of Netta and her sister ceased to nag me. By six-thirty I had completed the draft, and decided to leave it until the next day before polishing and checking my facts.

I rang for the floor waiter, lit a cigarette and sat before the open window looking down on the Embankment. Now that I had put the lid on my typewriter, Netta took over my thoughts. I wondered what Corridan was doing. The more I thought about Littlejohns’s theory the more sure I was that Corridan knew that Netta hadn’t committed suicide, and that I might be hooked up in the case in some way.

The floor waiter, who was fast beginning to learn my habits, arrived at this moment with a double whisky, water and ice bucket. I added a little water and ice to a lot of whisky, stretched out more comfortably in the armchair. Now what, I asked myself, was I going to do to help solve the puzzle of the missing body? As far as I could see there were three things I could do that might lead to something: first, I could find out all I could about Julius Cole. If the girl who had died in Netta’s flat was not Netta, then Julius Cole was in this business up to his neck. It would obviously pay to keep an eye on him. Then there was Madge Kennitt, the occupier of the first-floor flat. She might have seen something. I had to find out if anyone had called the night the girl died. I had a hunch that Netta wasn’t involved in this business, but had, in some way, been implicated against her will. If that was so a third person had been in the flat on that night. Madge Kennitt might have seen him or her. Finally, I could visit the Blue Club, and try to find out if Netta had any special friends among the hostesses, and if she did, and if I could locate her, to find out from her anything about Netta that might give me a lead.