Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

“You’re getting a Mr. Smart, aren’t you?” said Barnes. “Fancy you’re noticing that. Oh, well, I suppose you’ve come to ask for your rooms back?”

Michael with the consciousness of the woman behind those curtained doors knew that he could discuss nothing at present. He felt that all the time her ear was at the keyhole, and he went out suddenly, telling Barnes to meet him at the Orange that night.

Again the beerhall impressed him with its eternal sameness. It was as if a cinema film had broken when he last went out of the Café d’Orange, and had been set in action again at the moment of his return. He looked round to see if Daisy was there, and she was. Her hat which had formerly been black and trimmed with white daisies was now, to mark the season, white and trimmed with black daisies.

“Hulloa, little stranger!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been?”

So exactly the same was the Orange that Michael was almost surprised that she should have observed a passage of time.

“You never seem to come here now,” she said reproachfully. “Come on. Sit down. Don’t stand about like a man selling matches on the curb.”

“How’s Bert?” Michael asked.

“Who?”

“Bert Saunders. The man you were living with in Little Quondam Street.”

“Oh, him! Oh, I had to get rid of him double quick. What? Yes, when it came to asking me to go to Paris with a fighting fellow. Only fancy the cheek of it! It would help him, he said, with his business. Dirty Ecnop! I soon shoved him down the Apples-and-pears.”

“I haven’t understood a word of that last sentence,” said Michael.

“Don’t you know back-slang and rhyming-slang? Oh, it’s grand! Here, I forgot, there’s something I wanted to tell you. Do you remember you was in here with a fellow who you said his name was Burns?”

“Barnes, you mean, I expect. Yes, he’s supposed to be meeting me here tonight, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, you be careful of him. He’ll get you into trouble.”

Michael looked incredulous.

“It’s true as I sit here,” said Daisy earnestly. “Come over in the corner and let’s have our drink there. I can’t talk here with that blue-nosed ⸻ behind me, squinting at us across his lager.” She looked round indignantly at the man in question.

They moved across to one of the alcoves, and Daisy leaned over and spoke quietly and rather tensely, so differently from the usual rollick of her voice that Michael began to feel a presentiment of dread.

“I was out on the Dilly one night soon after you’d been round to my place, and I was with a girl called Janie Filson. ‘Oo-er,’ she said to me. ‘Did you see who that was passed?’ I looked round and saw this fellow Burns.”

“Barnes,” Michael corrected.

“Oh, well, Barnes. His name doesn’t matter, because it isn’t his own, anyway. ‘That’s Harry Meats,’ she said. And she called out after him. ‘Hulloa, Harry, where’s Cissie?’ He went as white as⁠ ⁠… oh, he did go shocking white. He just turned to see who it was had called out after him, and then he slid up Swallow Street like a bit of paper. ‘Who’s Cissie?’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember Cissie Cummings?’ she said. ‘That fair girl who always wore a big purple hat and used to be in the Leicester Lounge and always carried a box of chocolates for swank?’ I did remember the girl when Janie spoke about her. Only I never knew her, see? ‘He wasn’t very pleased when you mentioned her,’ I said. ‘Didn’t he look awful?’ said Janie, and just then she got off with a fellow and I couldn’t ask her any more.”

“I don’t think that’s enough to make me very much afraid of Barnes,” Michael commented.

“Wait a minute, I haven’t finished yet. Don’t be in such a hurry. The other day I saw Janie Filson again. She’s been away to Italy⁠—is there a place called Italy? Of course there is. Well, as I was saying, she’d been to Italy with her fellow who’s a commercial traveler and that’s why I hadn’t seen her. And Janie said to me, ‘Do you know what they’re saying?’ I said, ‘No, what?’ And she said, ‘Did you read nearly a year ago about a woman who was found murdered in the Euston Road? A gay woman it was,’ she said. So I said, ‘Lots of women is found murdered, my dear. I can’t remember everyone I see the picture of.’ Well, anyone can’t, can they?” Daisy broke off to ask Michael in an injured voice. Then she resumed her tale. “When I was with that fellow Bert I used to read nothing else but murders all the time. Give anyone the rats, it would. ‘Lots of women, my dear,’ I said. And she said, ‘Well, there was one in particular who the police never found out the name of, because there wasn’t any clothing or nothing found.’ So I did remember about it, and she said, ‘Well, they’re saying now it was Cissie Cummings.’ And I said, ‘Well, what of it, if it was?’ And she said, ‘What of it?’ she said. ‘Well, if it was her,’ she said, ‘I know who done it.’ ‘Who done it?’ I asked⁠—because, you see, I’d forgotten about this fellow Burns. ‘Why, Harry Meats,’ she said. ‘That fellow I saw on the Dilly the night when I was along with you.’ ”

“I don’t think you have enough evidence for the police,” Michael decided, with half a smile. Yet nevertheless a malaise chilled him, and he looked over his shoulder at the mob in the beer hall.

“⁠⸻ the police!” Daisy exclaimed. “I don’t care about them when I’m positive certain of something. I tell you, I know that fellow Burns, or Meats, or whatever his name is, done it.”

“But what am I to do about it?” Michael asked.

“Well, you’ll get into trouble, that’s all,” Daisy prophesied. “You’d look very funny if he was pinched for murder