Gently French by Alan Hunter Page B

dead sort of eyes. You were just muck to him.’
    ‘Any special features?’
    ‘Not that I remember. Though of course you could tell he was a cockney.’
    ‘Eddie?’
    Eddie shook his head. ‘That’s what I was going to say,’ he said.
    ‘Try thinking about his face. Just let it come to mind, don’t force yourself into seeing it.’
    ‘He was looking a bit scruffy,’ Doris said, after a moment. ‘Sweaty. Like he might have been driving all day.’
    ‘Sweaty and grimy?’
    ‘A bit of that too. You’d have thought he would have washed before he went out.’
    ‘But in the morning, at breakfast, he would be tidied up?’
    ‘Well yes, he was smart enough then.’
    Could they have missed the scar? It wasn’t very prominent, except perhaps to an eye conditioned like mine: it followed the natural lines of the face, it might register without at first being recognized. As for the missing joint, he would keep that inconspicuous.
    ‘Did you watch him sign the book?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Did he use his right hand or his left?’
    Doris gestured helplessly. ‘If he had used his left hand, I should think I would’ve noticed that.’
    ‘Anything else about his hands?’
    ‘They weren’t very clean.’
    ‘Do you mind if I see the book?’
    Doris fetched it. The ‘Peter Robinson’ entry had been made in bold but back-slanted writing. No visible dabs, and a poor paper for latents: not much to hope for from that.
    ‘What I would like to see now is the room where he slept.’
    ‘The room has been let again, you know.’
    I sighed to myself. ‘Never mind. Just ask the occupant if I may step in.’
    In fact, the occupant was out. Doris used her pass-key to admit me to a small, pleasant room, the single window of which was framing a view of a giant chestnut in lavish bloom. It was fitted with a wash-basin, mirror, a glass shelf and a tooth-glass located in a chromium-plated holder. The paint was clean and shiny on the frame of the sash-window, a white-enamelled dressing-table, and the door.
    ‘Who serviced the room after he left?’
    ‘I did,’ Doris said.
    ‘Tell me what you did.’
    ‘I changed the bed-linen, hoovered, dusted and gave it all a wipe over.’
    ‘How much is all?’
    ‘Well, the wash-basin mostly; the shelf, the mirror. And I changed the glass.’
    ‘Did you touch the paintwork?’
    ‘Only with a duster. The paint was washed a fortnight ago.’
    Which sounded like a frost; but to turn every stone, I rang Hanson to send out a dabs team. They arrived within half-an-hour. I gave them the register and turned them loose in the little bedroom. A lot of insufflating and snazzy camera-work and paint left looking as though the devil had stroked it; then Eddie, Doris and the apprehensive room-occupant were check-printed for comparisons. Results: nil. Bilney wasn’t yet a certainty, just a hot front-runner. One witness liked him, one was cautious. But I felt the wind was blowing his way.
    And the more so when I returned to the Barge-House, where Dutt was just putting down the phone.
    ‘That was Dainty, sir.’
    ‘Has he collared Fring yet?’
    ‘No sir. But he’s been chatting-up Bilney’s girl-friend.’
    I shrugged and sat. The girl-friends of villains are a highly variable quantity. Even when they are jealous their information is suspect, and in the normal way they simply go dumb.
    ‘Why has this one suddenly turned chatty?’
    ‘Dainty says it’s because she’s scared.’
    ‘Scared of what?’
    ‘Of Bilney’s being missing, sir. She reckons he ought to be back by now.’
    I grunted. But somebody might love Bilney.
    ‘What’s this girl-friend’s name and trade?’
    ‘Name is Mavis Treadwell, sir, and she claims to be a photographer’s model. It seems she had a date with Bilney for Friday. She has a key to his flat in the Bush. When she arrived there she found he’d left a note for her saying he’d been called away on a job.’
    ‘On a job?’
    ‘Well, that’s what she infers,