Frequent Hearses Read Free Page A

here. If it isn’t confidential, that is.”
    “No, it isn’t confidential.” At the reminder of his mission a certain sombreness had invaded Humbleby’s bland countenance. “And knowing these people, you may possibly be able to help me.”
    “A crime?”
    “Suicide is a crime, yes. But there’s nothing special about this one, except that the poor wretch was so very young, and thought better of it at the last moment—though too late to save herself…” And Humbleby braced himself, as a man braces himself when confronted with a necessary but wholly disagreeable task. “Tell me,” he said, “have you ever come across a girl called Gloria Scott?”
    A group of cleaners—stolid, morose, elderly women—drifted in at the studio gate; their voices, exchanging laborious witticisms with the gatekeeper, rasped unpleasantly through the limpid morning air. The men on the scaffolding had ceased work and were recouping their energies with cold tea. A distant succession of reverberating bumps suggested that someone was loading or unloading balks of timber. And as Humbleby spoke, the shadow of a great cloud curtained the studios from north to south, so that, by contrast, the low hills where the sun still shone glittered like polished metal.
    “Gloria Scott?” Fen echoed. “No, I’m afraid the name doesn’t convey anything to me.”
    Humbleby was absently fingering the lapel of his light-grey overcoat. “I’m not clear,” he said, “as to whether she actually worked here or not. But it was from here that Miss—um”—he consulted with his memory—“Miss Flecker rang up to identify her. Perhaps you know Miss Flecker?”
    “No, I don’t,” said Fen restively. “And all this means nothing to me, nothing. Explain, please.”
    “You’ve seen this morning’s paper?”
    “The Times and the Mail only.”
    “The Mail had it in. A photograph of this girl, with a request for identification.”
    Fen produced the paper from his pocket and hunted through it. “There,” said Humbleby, pointing.
    The photograph was of a pretty, sulky-looking girl in her late teens. It was a portrait of that contrived and glamorous sort favoured by the acting profession, with the lips, nose, neck, and breasts sharply outlined by careful lighting. The accompanying letterpress was scant, conveying no more than that the police wished to know who she was.
    “There’s a sense in which one recognises her, of course,” said Fen thoughtfully. “You can see that photograph—or something pretty well indistinguishable from it—outside almost every repertory theatre in the country… What was she—brunette, red-head, mousy? They all come out the same in black-and-white photographs.”
    “Auburn, when I saw her. Saturated auburn, with a dressing of Thames mud and Thames weed.”
    Fen glanced at him sympathetically. “Well?” he said. “What about it?”
    “It happened early yesterday morning—that’s to say, during the night before last, at about 2 a.m. A taxi picked this girl up at the Piccadilly end of Half Moon Street, where she was talking to some man whom the driver didn’t particularly notice. She asked to be taken to an address in Stamford Street, on the other side of the river. Then, when they were in the middle of Waterloo Bridge, she told the driver to stop. She was a good deal overwrought, it seems, and the driver didn’t immediately start off again when she’d paid him. He watched her run towards the parapet, and as soon as he realised what she was going to do, he ran after her. The bridge was almost deserted, but there was a police-car coming across it, and the people in that saw what happened. The taxi-driver made a grab at her as she went over, but it was too late. She came up once, and screamed—she’d fallen flat on the surface of the water, and you know what that does to you when you fall from a height. One of the men in the police-car dived in after her, but she was dead when he got her ashore.”
    The cleaners