Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [51]
‘Went with Chrissie—that baby is sure hard-boiled! She said it was a good joint. Honey pie, I said, we’ll go just where you say. It was a classy joint, that I’ll admit—and do they know how to charge you! Set me back the best part of thirty dollars. But the band was punk—they just couldn’t seem to swing it.’
Diverted from his recollections of his own evening, Mr Morales was pressed to remember the table in the middle of the alcove. Here he was not very helpful.
‘Sure there was a table and some people at it. I don’t remember what they looked like, though. Didn’t take much account of them till the guy there croaked. Thought at first he couldn’t hold his liquor. Say now, I remember one of the dames. Dark hair and she had what it takes, I should say.’
‘You mean the girl in the green velvet dress?’
‘No, not that one. She was skinny. This baby was in black with some good curves.’
It was Ruth Lessing who had taken Mr Morales’ roving eye.
He wrinkled up his nose appreciatively.
‘I watched her dancing—and say, could that baby dance! I gave her the high sign once or twice, but she had a frozen eye—just looked through me in your British way.’
Nothing more of value could be extracted from Mr Morales and he admitted frankly that his alcoholic condition was already well advanced by the time the cabaret was on.
Kemp thanked him and prepared to take his leave.
‘I’m sailing for New York tomorrow,’ said Morales. ‘You wouldn’t,’ he asked wistfully, ‘care for me to stay on?’
‘Thank you, but I don’t think your evidence will be needed at the inquest.’
‘You see I’m enjoying it right here—and if it was police business the firm couldn’t kick. When the police tell you to stay put, you’ve got to stay put. Maybe I could remember something if I thought hard enough?’
But Kemp declined to rise to this wistful bait, and he and Race drove to Brook Street where they were greeted by a choleric gentleman, the father of the Hon. Patricia Brice-Woodworth.
General Lord Woodworth received them with a good deal of outspoken comment.
What on earth was the idea of suggesting that his daughter—his daughter!—was mixed up in this sort of thing? If a girl couldn’t go out with her fiancé to dine in a restaurant without being subjected to annoyance by detectives and Scotland Yard, what was England coming to? She didn’t even know these people what was their name—Hubbard—Barton? Some City fellow or other! Showed you couldn’t be too careful where you went—Luxembourg was always supposed to be all right—but apparently this was the second time a thing of this sort had happened there. Gerald must be a fool to have taken Pat there—these young men thought they knew everything. But in any case he wasn’t going to have his daughter badgered and bullied and cross-questioned—not without a solicitor’s say so. He’d ring up old Anderson in Lincoln’s Inn and ask him—
Here the general paused abruptly and staring at Race said, ‘Seen you somewhere. Now where—?’
Race’s answer was immediate and came with a smile.
‘Badderpore. 1923.’
‘By Jove,’ said the general. ‘If it isn’t Johnny Race! What are you doing mixed up in this show?’
Race smiled.
‘I was with Chief Inspector Kemp when the question of interviewing your daughter came up. I suggested it would be much pleasanter for her if Inspector Kemp came round here than if she had to come down to Scotland Yard, and I thought I’d come along too.’
‘Oh—er—well, very decent, of you, Race.’
‘We naturally wanted to upset the young lady as little as possible,’ put in Chief Inspector Kemp.
But at this moment the door opened and Miss Patricia Brice-Woodworth walked in and took charge of the situation with the coolness and detachment of the very young.
‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘You’re from Scotland Yard, aren’t you? About last night? I’ve been longing for you to come. Is father being tiresome? Now don’t, daddy—you know what the doctor said about your blood pressure. Why you want to get into such states about everything, I can’t think. I’ll just take the inspectors or superintendents or whatever they are into my