The Private Eye. Ernest Dudley
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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY ERNEST DUDLEY
The Amazing Martin Brett: Classic Crime Stories
Department of Spooks: Stories of Suspense and Mystery
Dr. Morelle Investigates: Two Classic Crime Tales
Dr. Morelle Meets Murder: Classic Crime Stories
New Cases for Dr. Morelle: Classic Crime Stories
The Private Eye: Classic Crime Stories
The Return of Sherlock Holmes: A Classic Crime Tale
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1948 by Ernest Dudley
Copyright © 2013 by Susan Dudley-Allen
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Robert Reginald
THE ASH-BLONDE
Anyone who knew Nat Craig personally would also know that if they walked into his office they would almost invariably find him with his feet on the desk, tilting his chair lazily backwards in order to obtain a better view of the clouds of smoke which rose to the ceiling from the tip of his inevitable cigarette.
Craig said it helped him to think.
He was tilting, smoking, and thinking hard when Mr. Geoffrey Moran rang him up.
“Speaking,” Craig said laconically into the mouthpiece. “What’s on your mind?”
Mr. Geoffrey Moran had plenty on his mind.
He spoke rapidly and nervously for a few seconds and gave Craig his address in Ealing.
“I’ll be over. Two-thirty. Hello, hello?”
The faint click in his ear told Craig that Mr. Moran, apparently having no desire to prolong the conversation, had hung up.
Craig eyed the telephone speculatively for a moment, shrugged, and went off to lunch.
He took a tube train at a few minutes to two. He wondered idly if Mr. Moran’s abrupt end to his phone-call might have been inspired by someone else in the household interrupting him. Someone whom Geoffrey Moran wouldn’t want to know about private detectives.
Craig grinned to himself and lit a cigarette. He hoped the Moran family wasn’t a large family. The process of elimination could become tedious.
The street was wide and lined with trees that hid the neat houses with their sedate formal gardens from curious passers-by. A few were superior to their neighbours in that they possessed garages. Geoffrey Moran’s house was one of these.
Craig walked up the short cement drive and pressed the bell. He pressed it three times before he heard approaching footsteps. A tall ash-blonde opened the door.
“Yes?”
Craig told her pleasantly:
“I want to see Mr. Moran.”
“I am Mrs. Moran. I am afraid my husband has just gone out.”
She had a slightly guttural accent and Craig taped her as a Scandinavian. The solid type. Cool and not easily ruffled. He raised an eyebrow and murmured:
“Pity.”
“Is he expecting you?”
Craig eyed her and let an amused quirk tip the corner of his mouth. “I would not have come all the way out here on chance.”
“Well.…”
The ash-blonde hesitated, and her lips widened showing small white teeth. It was a particularly humourless smile, and the scent of some subtle, clinging perfume she was wearing drifted across the porch to Craig’s nostrils. Finally, she offered:
“Can I help you?”
“Maybe, yes. Maybe, no.”
Craig unhitched his shoulder from the doorpost where it had been taking a rest and told her who he was. He watched her face, but she didn’t bat one of her mascaraed eyelashes. Instead her forehead wrinkled up in a puzzled frown.
“I wonder what on earth Geoffrey would want to see a detective about?”
Craig enlightened her as far as he was able.
“Seemed afraid someone was going to bump him off.”
She stared at him, hesitating. Then:
“Won’t you come in?”
“I’d love to,” Craig accepted politely.
She took him through a small hall and held open the door on the right. It was the lounge, and ran the width of the house, with a bay window at the front and French windows leading into a long rhododendron-lined back garden with a cluster of trees at the bottom.
She picked up a silver cigarette box and offered it to him. He indicated his unfinished stub and watched her as she helped herself, tapping the cigarette thoughtfully on a crimson thumbnail.
She appeared to be deliberating on what to say next, and Craig was in a singularly unhelpful mood.
“My husband said he was going over to see a friend who lives in the next road.”
She spoke at last, slowly and keeping her voice carefully conversational.
Craig nodded expectantly.
“He knew I was going to be in here all the afternoon,” she went on. “I wonder he didn’t tell me you would be calling.”
Craig suggested obligingly:
“Maybe he thought the idea of a detective around the house would worry you.”
She nodded in agreement.
“I expect that was it. Anyway, if he’s expecting you, I’m sure he won’t be long.”
Craig grinned amiably. He said cheerfully:
“Don’t let’s have any misunderstanding about this, Mrs. Moran. I am a detective and not somebody trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner, and your husband is expecting me. He asked me to be here at two-thirty.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s just that now.”
She began a slow smile that indicated she wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or not.
“It’s such a lovely afternoon,” she suggested. “Geoffrey may have decided to go for a stroll on the way home which would take him longer.”
Craig eyed her.
“It could work out that way,” he agreed.
There was a pause while she regarded him levelly. Then her face clouded, she crossed to the open French windows, stared out for a moment before turning back with a sudden restless movement.
He thought it was all very nicely timed and melodramatic, to say the least of it, and she heightened the effect by twisting her hands together despairingly.
She said, as if she had just come to a difficult decision:
“Mr. Craig, I might as well admit it, I’m worried about my husband. He’s been so very moody and strange these last few months. It’s overwork, but though I—I begged him to go away for a holiday, he just won’t move. I haven’t told anyone before what I’m telling you because he’d be furious with me. But after what you have said, I mean, that he’s afraid someone is going to—to kill him—”
Her voice trailed off, leaving Craig to prompt her.
“You mean he’s, shall we say imagining things?”
“We-ell—” It was a long-drawn out syllable. “It does seem rather farfetched to believe anyone would murder him, doesn’t it?”
Listening to the suddenly matter-of-fact tone in the bright little