Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

The reaction of the working class by William Bankier[4]

She strode along the King’s Road in knee-high oxblood boots, denim trousers tucked in, satin baseball jacket sporting a number on the sleeve, her hair streaked gunmetal to shoulder length, her big face vacant as she turned her eyes to the traffic. Tony Logan set down the bricks he was holding and stopped pretending he was doing anything else but watching her pass by.

“Take a look at that,” Logan said to Ernie Colman, who was mixing cement on a sheet of plywood.

Ernie gave the girl his blue-eyed assessment. “She’s not all there,” was his comment.

“Notice the way she looks only at bus drivers and guys in lorries. She’s checking the reaction of the working class.”

“Better invite her to the meeting, then,” Colman said.

Logan left the building site and ran after her in plaster-patterned trousers and broken boots. He stood just behind her at an intersection waiting for the light to change. He heard a humming sound coming from her — not a tune, only random notes. The head turned slowly from side to side, observing the occupants of passing vehicles and people walking by. Her smile was transient, like sunlight on a day of patchy cloud.

The light changed, and when she stepped forward her boot missed the curb, giving Logan an opportunity to take her arm. “Nearly a nasty accident,” he said.

“Sorry, I’m not concentrating.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Stand over here, out of the flow.” He guided her into a doorway. “Been in the pub?”

“I wish it were only that.” She showed him the face of a troubled child. “I can’t remember who I am.”

“Have you got identification in your handbag?”

“Yes, but that isn’t the point. I can look and discover who I am and where I live. I want to know without doing that.” She drew herself up. “Have we met? You could be an acquaintance and I wouldn’t know.”

“Afraid not. My name is Tony Logan. My partner and I are working on that house across the road. Converting it into flats. We saw you walk by and took an interest.”

She closed her eyes and slumped against the wall. “Forgive me,” she said. “These blackouts leave me weak.”

“You need a sit-down and a cup of tea.” Logan took her arm again. “Come along, we have a kettle on the site.”

They sat on salvaged chairs in a small garden behind the house, under the shade of a pear tree that would survive the modeling. Colman acted as “mother,” pouring boiling water onto teabags in massive crockery mugs. Logan passed the ginger cake.

“I’ve remembered my name,” she said. “I’m Nora Packer.”

“I wonder,” Colman said, “if Nora Packer would like to attend our meeting.”

“Might be the best thing for her,” Logan said. “Drinks and conversation with convivial strangers. Nobody knows who anybody is at the Broken Bell. Amnesia anonymous.”

“I am Mrs. Nora Packer.”

“I have a wife and four children,” Colman excused himself.

Logan said, “I have an American girl friend who treats me like a husband. We’re all safe as houses.”

The shattered house beside them chose that moment to shed a couple of slates from its roof. As the dust settled, everybody laughed. “I like a building with a sense of humor,” Nora said. “What’s this Broken Bell?”

The public house derived its name from an emasculated brass bell hanging behind the bar. Its clapper had been removed by the previous landlord, who decided to defy the drinking laws by refusing to signal the legal closing hour of eleven o’clock at night. He got away with it for a while, then he paid a few fines and finally was stripped of his license. The new owner obeyed the rules, but the broken bell was retained as a conversation piece. Eventually it took over from the predictable Rose and Crown as a more original name for the pub.

Colman brought drinks to the arrangement of tables pushed together where Logan was sitting close to Nora in a crowd that included Max, the unemployed actor, Neville, the alcoholic ex-journalist who was surviving currently on one of the houseboats beside Battersea Bridge, Tilly from the greengrocer’s shop next door to the pub, and Gabe, the punk beautician from the King’s Road, with her fluorescent hair and her face made up in white and red like a pantomime mask. Others came and went like the gulls that flickered beyond the wall of windows facing the river, and conversation surged in tides of argument and laughter.

“You were crazy to give up the Doctor Dillon series, Max,” Neville scolded. “You worked every week — you were seen on every television screen in Britain.”

“Hindsight,” the mournful actor replied. His famous eyes rolled in a face drawn down with boredom and alcohol. “I wanted to escape being typecast. Now, God help me, I’m seldom cast at all.”

Gabe was framing Nora Packer’s face with nervous hands, her eyes squinting through smoke from a cigarette clenched between her teeth. “Your hair is mad for me to shape it forward.”

“Never mind,” Neville droned on, “we’re all sinking here. If only a publisher would accept my book, I could get back to work. I can’t go and see my friends at the paper. They ask me how the novel is going. Good lord, four years—” He produced the shy smile of a schoolboy.

The landlord approached, his arms lined with plates. “Egg and chips,” he recited, “steak and chips, shepherd’s pie and chips, bacon sandwich and chips—” The meals were claimed and the perpetual rotation to and from the bar for drinks went on.

“I’m not sure what he’ll say,” Nora said to Logan and Colman, the three of them withdrawn into a private conversation. “My husband is an unpredictable man.”

“A powerful man,” Logan warned. “When you said Packer, I thought right away of the Reginald Packer who writes the column for Reflections Magazine and does those talks on Metro Radio.”

“Tony’s girl friend,” Colman said, “the American woman he mentioned, works for Reflections. Her name is Valerie Land. She keeps wanting him to move with her to New York.”

“Go,” Nora said fervently. “Escape. I almost made it once, all the way to Montreal, before they caught me and brought me back.”

“There speaks an unhappy person.”

“So unhappy my mind shuts off every now and then. One of these days, I may not come back.” She gave the dusty builders a wistful look as they leaned close, attending on her words.

“What happened, Nora?” Logan asked. When she hesitated, he said, “This is the place for the truth. And the time.”

“I got pregnant,” she said. “Not by my husband. Reg was not pleased, but he seemed to have a civilized solution to the problem. He has connections in Montreal from years ago. I was sent there to have the baby because he refused to claim it as his own and I said no to an abortion. The idea was that I would settle down and start raising my child there. He would work out his contracts here and join me in Montreal in a year or so to begin a second career.”

“Obviously, none of that happened.”

“Some of it did. I had the baby, but she was taken from me immediately and given away for adoption — I never even held my daughter. The shock wasn’t like anything I’ve experienced. I still have these blackouts. I flew back to London to try and persuade Reg to honor his promise. When I saw he never would, I returned to Montreal — the escape I mentioned — and tried to get Doctor Monteith to put me in touch with my daughter, to get her back. Reg must have given him a lot of money — he refused even to see me. My husband sent a detective. I think the amnesia may have taken over — anyway, when I woke up I was back in London.” She picked up her glass and set it down without drinking. “And here I am.”

Colman’s wife appeared, along with his oldest son — a carbon copy of his father. Rangy build, sky-blue eyes. She was impressively fat and as beautiful as a black-forest gateau. “Caught you with another woman,” she said.

After introductions, Colman said, “Nora is married to a very unkind man. We’ve been hearing.”

“She needs a friend,” Logan told her.

“She’s found two of them,” Colman said.

Half an hour later, he and his wife and son were off to do things with the barbecue behind his house in Hammersmith. “You have my permission to sort the bastard out,” he instructed Logan. “But save a piece for me.”

“Nobody can do anything against Reginald Packer,” Nora said.

“Don’t be too sure,” Colman told her. “You’re in with a whole different class of guy.”

When his partner was gone, Logan said, “What about the father, the man who got you pregnant? Wasn’t he able to help?”

“I never even told him. He doesn’t know I had the baby.”

“Does that make sense?”

“I thought it did at the time. Maybe it doesn’t. It was a very sudden affair and it was over almost before it started. I met Martin at a class I used to attend for keeping fit. He was our celebrity guest one night.”

“Have I heard of him?”

“I’m sure you have. Martin Whittaker, the marathon runner.”

Logan finished his drink and looked at his watch. “First things first,” he said. “You and I are going to run after Whittaker and put him in the picture.”

“I do this for therapy,” Whittaker said, using white on a thin brush to touch highlights on his still life of fruit in a crystal bowl. “It helps me fight the depression. Fortunately, I’m a better runner than I am a painter.”

As if they had come to attend his vernissage, Whittaker had supplied Nora and Logan with glasses of sherry. “Remember the first time I showed up at your movement class, Norie?” he said as he refilled their glasses.

“I remember,” she said, glancing at Logan.

“You’ve never believed how scared I was.”

“To me you seemed all confidence.”

“Talking to strange ladies — I was more petrified than I’ve ever been setting out on a road race.” He dunked his brush in turps and dried it on a rag. “Time for me to exercise my injury. Come next door and I’ll show you what I purchased with my Sports Council grant.”

They followed him from his studio into a room half the size, where one corner was occupied by a machine of chrome bars and springs and iron weights. “I’m trying to get over a back injury that includes a pinched sciatic nerve. I don’t mean to sound heroic, but for some months I’ve been running with pain.” He lay down on a ramp which was part of the machine and which accepted his head at a level below his feet. He inserted his ankles under a weighted bar. With hands locked behind his neck, he began a series of situps.

“Will you be all right for the London Marathon next month?” Logan asked.

“I’m not sure. At the moment it’s touch and go. I’d like to be the first man to win it two years in a row.” Whittaker changed his position and began raising and lowering weights on his shoulders. “I’d also like to be selected to run for England in the Olympics. It all depends on getting fit again.”

Logan was the one to broach the important subject. “Nora has a project, too,” he said. “You’d better tell him.”

“I’ve kept it a secret till now, Martin,” she said.

He was climbing into tracksuit trousers, his lean legs ivory-smooth. “Is it about the baby?”

“How do you know? I never told you!”

“I’ve known since before you left for Montreal the first time. I think you were in your seventh month.”

The life drained out of her. “Oh, God. Reg. It must have been Reg.”

“We had a conversation in a bar. Neutral ground, he called it. There was some kind of noxious drink. He described the whole situation to me, how it was impossible for Reginald Packer’s wife to have somebody else’s baby here in London where the word would get around. But you could have it someplace else and leave it there. It was Montreal?”

“She’s living there today. Your daughter.”

“Montreal is tough for road-racing. Too many hills.”

Logan said, “Are you hearing what the woman is telling you?”

“I’m not totally callous. She never even told me she was pregnant. I heard it from Reg. He offered to set me up with this training equipment, and funds enough to make me independent, like the Eastern Bloc athletes. All I had to do was forget about Nora Packer and my illegitimate child.” He began bending to touch the opposite toe, legs apart, torso and arms swinging rhythmically. “If it is, in fact, my child.”

Logan made a move, but Nora caught his shoulder and drew him away. “I won’t get any help here,” she said. “Nobody home.”

Outside, looking for a taxi, she said, “I should have known. Reg would cover all the bases — especially the father.”

“How did he find out it was Whittaker if you didn’t tell him?”

“He’s gotten hold of rarer information than that.”

A cab slowed and stopped. Logan opened the door: “Will you let me talk to him?”

Nora’s response was to give the driver her home address. As the cab pulled into traffic, she said, “All right, come and complete your education. Learn what it feels like to talk to a charming stone wall.” They went from room to room of the Packer Mayfair penthouse without locating the owner. Nobody home here, either. There was a note on the pine chopping block in the kitchen, held in place by a half full bottle. Nora read the message aloud: “I assume from today’s absence you’ve been on one of your mystery tours. The good news is I’m at Metro, recording three special programs for the station anniversary. Money money. Drink your medicine and get to bed.”

“Very nice,” Logan said. “Not many people can be sarcastic with a whiskey bottle.”

She glanced at her watch. “We could probably catch him at the radio station. Will you come with me?”

Nora wheeled a sinister Porsche from some cave behind the building, and when it turned out of the laneway Logan got in beside her. “Now you look more at home,” he said.

“There’s still time for you to back out.”

“I’m not bothered. If Packer gives me any difficulty, I’ll call in my large friend Colman.”

As they drove up Park Lane and turned past Marble Arch, heading for the broadcasting center in Euston, he asked her, “How did you ever end up married to such a sadistic bastard?”

“It was fun at first. He can be charming. I was working as a barmaid in the Crossed Keys and Reg came in one Saturday morning, making everyone laugh and buying drinks for the house. He waited for me after closing and it grew from there.”

“I don’t picture you working in a pub.”

“I quit Kenlow School with a year to go before graduation. Trouble at home.” She decided to tell him about it as she waited for a traffic light to change. “My father was a successful stockbroker in the City. We lived in Surbiton at the time. He got involved in some sort of manipulation — it must have been evil for that lot to investigate his affairs. Anyway, they did. Daddy thwarted justice by overdosing with drugs and alcohol.” The car raced away from the intersection like a dragster. “We were supposed to go to Brighton the following weekend.”

“So you quit school and went into the drinking trade.”

“Not immediately. I had a little money so I bummed around Chelsea for a year, staying with friends in a squat. Then I met Martin Whittaker and moved in with him. He needed help with the rent so I took the barmaid job. Shortly thereafter, Reginald Packer made his entrance.”

They drove the rest of the way to the studio in silence, Logan catching glimpses of the hard pretty face frowning through the windshield, the daughter cheated out of her weekend in Brighton by a man who had put himself permanently out of her reach.

Packer had completed the recording session and was standing in a tape-editing room making the engineers laugh. He was slim as a teenager, dressed in pearl-grey slacks and white cashmere sweater over a black shirt open at the neck. His grey hair was brushed in thick waves around the tanned, handsome face.

“Norie! What a lovely surprise. Who’s this? Mr. Logan, how are you?” He led them out of the room and down a flight of stairs to reception. “Come for a drink. I have a feeling you’ve rescued my wife.”

Now that they were with the great man, Nora had gone silent. They went next door to a hotel bar, where Packer set them up with some special cocktail he claimed to have invented. Logan waited for the lady to open the subject of the missing daughter, but she kept her head down and sipped her drink like a little girl allowed to stay downstairs with the grown-ups as long as she behaved herself.

At last, driven more by curiosity than anything else, Logan said, “Mr. Packer, with respect, I have to ask you something. Nora has been telling me about the daughter she had a few years ago. You sent her to Montreal to have it because it wasn’t yours.”

Far from being annoyed, Packer seemed entertained. “Is that how she’s telling it? Poor man, I hope you haven’t let your emotions be too harrowed by this tale of sorrow. It isn’t true. Not a word of it.”

Logan stared at the top of Nora’s head centered over the empty cocktail glass. “She had no baby?”

“False pregnancy. There’s been more than one. I keep hoping we can manage a son and heir before this old geezer loses his powers.”

Logan finished his drink and refused another. He wanted to go home and forget about this wild-goose chase. The Packers left the bar with him. He turned down Packer’s offer of a lift and looked for a taxi. As he stood by the curb, Nora left her husband and came to his side. “Thank you,” he said, “for an interesting day.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Don’t start again.”

She laughed softly. “I knew it. Plausible Reginald Packer, the man everybody accepts at face value.” Her voice hardened. “What the hell did you expect him to say?”

Valerie Land wound the clock, set the alarm, and turned out the bedside light. She settled back her head mostly on Logan’s pillow, an arm across his bare chest. He turned his face into the fragrant veil of her hair. “All the more reason,” Val said, “for you to forget this crowd and come to New York with me. I know Reg Packer from editorial meetings. He can be dangerous.”

“Has he given you trouble?”

“I keep out of his way. Listen, my boss took me to lunch today. They love my work here but the magazine is not making it. There will have to be cuts in staff before the winter. They sure as hell aren’t going to drop Brits and keep a Yank.”

“I suppose.”

“They have a place for me in New York. But it won’t remain open forever. In the next few weeks, I’m going to have to sing or get off the stage.”

“I’m not sure I can make it without you.” Then, because he felt like it, Logan let loose with a tavern baritone. “Val, Val, dear old pal...”

She shut him up with a breasty headlock and then they were engaged in that most beautiful of human activities, laughing in bed. .

Ernie Colman appeared on the building site at half past eight with a bottle of milk, a bag of sweet buns, and a copy of one of the morning tabloids. Logan was standing in a daze staring at the wreckage of the house they were converting. Someday it would be reorganized into four smart apartments, everything neat and polished, tenants in place paying astronomical rents. Today it was impossible to see how that could ever happen.

With the kettle plugged in and beginning to murmur, Colman shook open the newspaper. “How about this then,” he said. “We’ve lost our best marathon runner.”

“Whittaker?”

“He shot himself. Left a note saying his injury was not responding to treatment. I guess he thought he could never run competitively again.”

Logan looked at the photograph of a jubilant Martin Whittaker accepting the trophy last year for winning the London Marathon. “This is fishy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nora Packer took me to see this guy last night. He seemed confident to me, working out to get in shape for next month.”

Colman was puzzled. He wanted to know what Nora had to do with the famous athlete and how Logan had come to meet him.

“After you left the pub with your family last night, she told me who got her pregnant. It was him — Whittaker. They were living together before she met Reg Packer. I wanted to help Nora, do something to bring her together with her baby. This guy hadn’t even been told he was the father. I said let’s bring him in on it, maybe he’ll want to help.”

“How did he react?”

“Less than enthusiastic. Not even willing to concede the baby was his. All he could think about was winning the marathon two years in a row.” Logan returned the paper. “Now this so-called suicide.”

They made their early tea and used it to wash down sweet buns as they stood in the ruins of the kitchen. “How do you read it, then?” Colman asked.

Logan said, “We went on to see Packer himself. Lucky me, I got inside Metro Radio where he was doing some recording. He told me none of what Nora says is true. There were only false pregnancies, never any baby. Her amnesia comes from this hysteria of hers.”

“Who do you believe?”

“Last night I was ready to believe Packer. A busy man with a neglected wife whose system will try anything to claim his attention. Now I’m not so sure. Whittaker said Packer gave him lots of money to leave Nora alone. He accepted it and the boat sailed on. Last night we made waves. Now it isn’t just a quiet arrangement between three people, the Packers and Martin Whittaker. Now I know about it, maybe others as well. Whittaker becomes more than a receiver of hush-money. He becomes a witness to the fact that Nora is not a hysteric, that she really had a baby, that the estimable Reg Packer sent her away and had the infant kidnaped.” Logan kicked the paper. “How the tabloids would love to get hold of that one.”

“Sounds horribly plausible,” Colman said.

“And I’m involved.”

They went outside and resumed yesterday’s work on the front wall. Sometime after ten o’clock, Colman tapped a brick in place with the end of his trowel and said, “Don’t be involved, Tony.”

“Nora has nobody else.”

“Falling in love again. .” The big builder crooned the line out of tune, the way Dietrich used to do it.

“Not really. But I got her to tell her story. I made her take me to see the marathoner. Without that, Whittaker would probably be clocking ten miles around Hyde Park this morning.”

“Then go to the police.”

“With a flimsy story like this? Against a solid citizen like Packer? They’d show me the door.”

As he went on working, Colman said, “There’s one thing you’re forgetting. Let’s assume Packer did kill Whittaker because he knew too much.” He held his trowel like a pistol and aimed it at his friend. “You know as much as Whittaker did. What’s going to happen to you?”

Two days later, Logan’s telephone rang in the early evening. It was Nora. “I hope you don’t mind this call.”

“I’m glad to hear from you. I was wondering what was happening.”

“A few things. Can you come out and meet me?”

She was in the hotel bar in Euston when he got there, at the same table where Packer had bought them his elaborate cocktails. Now they drank whiskey and water. “It’s such a relief to be with you again.” Her hand covered his. “I think he wants to kill me.”

“Your husband?”

“Or have me put away.” Her eyes emptied and she stared vacantly at the glass in her hand. “I’d rather be dead.”

“Are you sleeping all right? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Don’t say doctor. That’s part of what’s happening. But let me tell you first about Martin. The police think he shot himself with a gun that was found in his hand. They haven’t been able to trace the gun. And the so-called suicide note was typed. Anybody could have done that — and put the gun in his hand after he was dead.”

“Where are you getting these details? I didn’t see them in the newspaper.”

“The police came to us because of Reg backing Martin financially. It was only a formality. They don’t know Martin was the father of my child.”

“Could they connect your husband with Whittaker’s death?”

“The gun. For years Reg has kept a pistol in the bottom drawer of his desk. He got it somewhere illegally — it could never be traced. I looked the other day. The gun is gone.”

“It would be your word against your husband’s that it existed.”

“That’s why I’ve kept quiet so far. Anyway, the police seem convinced Martin killed himself. They say a physiotherapist confirms his back was not responding to treatment.”

The waiter brought another round, for which Nora insisted on paying. “I haven’t told you the worst,” she said. “Dr. Monteith is in London.”

“Who’s he?”

“Clifford Monteith, the Montreal doctor who delivered my baby and then stole her from me.”

“Is he a problem?”

“Monteith has been in my husband’s pocket for years. That’s how Reg was able to get him to go along with the plot. He has files on my behavior in Montreal after I gave birth. And he knows about my blackouts. I think he’s going to certify me and have me put away.”

“Can he do that?”

“You don’t know Reginald Packer.”

“Why would he want to?”

“Because I won’t shut up about my daughter. I want her and I’m going to get her. The easiest way for Reg to get back to a peaceful life is for me to be committed. That or get rid of me the way he got rid of Martin.”

Logan finished his second drink faster than he wanted to. “Wheels within wheels,” he said.

“Will you stay with me?” Nora asked. “You’re the only person I can depend on.”

She looked vulnerable and beautiful and Logan was proud to be asked. This quality lady — his own discovery on the King’s Road only a week ago — was turning to him in her distress. She was Guinevere and he was no less than Lancelot and chivalry was not dead, not as long as he felt such a powerful urge to stand up and be counted. “I’ll do whatever I can,” he said.

“Thank you, Tony.” She kissed his cheek so unexpectedly and so briefly that he would never be sure it had happened. “Let me make a telephone call. I’ll arrange for us to go and have a word with Doctor Monteith.”

Spending time with Clifford Monteith was like being backstage at a vaudeville show. A balding man in his fifties, he had the lean build, the lugubrious face, and the bewildered moves of a trained comic. Every time he turned, you expected him to be hit with a bucket of water.

“I didn’t have to come here and face Reg Packer,” he said. “I could have stepped out of the plane over the Atlantic.” The hotel suite had several closed doors. Surely they would start opening soon and a French maid would dart through, chased by a man in his shirttails.

“Why did you come, then?” Nora asked.

Logan had accepted yet another drink and was feeling over his limit. “This girl is afraid of you, Dr. Monteith.”

“Because of what I know. Yes, I can understand that. But Packer made me a promise three years ago and he hasn’t begun to fulfill it. If it was only me, I’d probably be back in Montreal delivering babies. But Mindy thinks I should go for what’s owed me.”

“You’ve lost me,” Logan said.

“Mindy is my wife. Lovely big Jewish girl from Winnipeg. Years ago her parents sent her east to Montreal because there weren’t enough eligible boys of her persuasion in that small community. Montreal with its world-famous medical school and the remains of an early ghetto would be the happy hunting ground. Imagine the screaming back in Winnipeg when she fell for a goy. Gevalt! At least she married a doctor.”

“I mean you and Reg Packer,” Logan said. “Where’s the connection between you two?”

“The glorious old days,” Monteith said, drifting about and topping up glasses from a bottle of scotch. Had it been a seltzer bottle, he might have sprayed the room. “I was a medical student. Reg was getting started in journalism, doing a column for the Gazette. Both of us worked three nights a week at the Top Hat Club doing comedy sketches on a little stage above the bar. Satirical stuff on local politics. Reg was also a calypso singer — did you know that, Nora? He played the guitar and wore a top hat and sang little verses about the news of the day. Lord Reggie, he called himself.”

The telephone rang. Monteith answered and carried on his conversation, looking directly at Nora and Tony as if he was speaking to them and the phone was some sort of hearing aid. “Yes, they’re here. All seems peaceful. No need for you to stay any longer. By all means, bring her in. See you soon.” He put down the receiver. “They’ve been to see the lions in Trafalgar Square.”

Nora said sharply, “Have you brought the child with you?”

“The better to persuade Reg he should pay. As he promised years ago.” Monteith opened one of the doors. It led into a bathroom. “Talk to each other,” he said as he closed the door behind him.

“I don’t get this,” Logan said. “You told me he was here to have you put away. That he and Reg were in it together.”

She opened her handbag and took out a pistol. She handed it to Logan. He accepted it unwillingly. “What’s this?”

“The gun from Reg’s desk. I told you about it.”

“You said it was missing. What the hell is going on, Nora?”

“You promised to help me.”

“I can’t if you won’t level.”

“Monteith has to be got rid of. And you’re the man. You won’t regret it, Tony, I promise you. Things can be lovely between you and me once he’s out of the way. Reg won’t mind, he’s hardly ever around.”

“The way he didn’t mind about Whittaker?”

The bathroom door opened. Monteith stepped into the room, saw the gun in Logan’s hand, and did a reaction loaded with enough astonishment to reach the back of the second balcony. “Who’s that intended for?”

“Now,” Nora commanded. “Do it now.”

Logan understood almost everything in a flash. Thinking he had gone after Nora in the street, it was she who had selected him. It explained the provocative walk and the eyes focusing on working men. She was searching for the kind of hero who would swallow her story and do this killing for her. She knew a working-class man would make the ideal patsy — his reaction would be to come racing to the aid of the princess in danger. He looked at the doctor and began to say, “Have you any idea what she—”

Nora came to him fast, grabbed his arm and raised it, pointing the gun at Monteith. Logan resisted and was surprised at the woman’s strength. Her fist was closing on his gun hand, exerting pressure on the trigger finger. He managed to turn his arm enough so that the gun was no longer aimed at Monteith. “Let go,” he said. “Let go of the gun!” It went off. Nora sank to the floor.

“Crazy,” was all Logan could say. “She must be crazy.”

Monteith knelt beside her, examined her. “And dead.” He got to his feet. “You aren’t wrong about her. If she couldn’t have me killed, she was ready to settle for herself.”

The door from the corridor opened and two people came into the room. “This is my wife, Mindy,” he said. He got between her and the child and the body on the floor. “Better go into the bedroom,” he told his wife, “there’s been an accident.”

Logan caught only a glimpse of the little girl as she was ushered through, but it was enough to see that she was one of the most beautiful of mixed-race children, pale hair drawn back in braids from an exotic African race.

When the police had been and gone, taking the body of Nora Packer with them, Logan said, “So now we have an orphan asleep in the other room.”

“She doesn’t know Nora was her mother,” Mindy said. “We’ve told her she’s adopted. She doesn’t fully understand what it means, except that she was chosen because we love her.”

“Whittaker wasn’t the father,” Logan said. “I’m still confused.”

“Nora went with a lot of men,” Monteith explained. “The father was another athlete, a friend of the marathon runner. When she realized she was pregnant, Nora told Reg she was going to have a baby with the wrong color skin. Reg had never been too bothered by her exploits as long as there was no publicity. So they arranged for her to come to Montreal, have the child at my clinic, and leave it with me.”

“So all that business about a stolen child and Nora’s blackouts was nonsense,” Logan said.

“Yes. She told lies the way the rest of us discuss the weather. Her aim — Packer’s aim, too — was to get somebody to knock me off.”

“The glorious old days,” Monteith said, drifting about and topping up glasses from a bottle of scotch. Had it been a seltzer bottle, he might have sprayed the room. “I was a medical student. Reg was getting started in journalism, doing a column for the Gazette. Both of us worked three nights a week at the Top Hat Club doing comedy sketches on a little stage above the bar. Satirical stuff on local politics. Reg was also a calypso singer — did you know that, Nora? He played the guitar and wore a top hat and sang little verses about the news of the day. Lord Reggie, he called himself.”

The telephone rang. Monteith answered and carried on his conversation, looking directly at Nora and Tony as if he was speaking to them and the phone was some sort of hearing aid. “Yes, they’re here. All seems peaceful. No need for you to stay any longer. By all means, bring her in. See you soon.” He put down the receiver. “They’ve been to see the lions in Trafalgar Square.”

Nora said sharply, “Have you brought the child with you?”

“The better to persuade Reg he should pay. As he promised years ago.” Monteith opened one of the doors. It led into a bathroom. “Talk to each other,” he said as he closed the door behind him.

“I don’t get this,” Logan said. “You told me he was here to have you put away. That he and Reg were in it together.”

She opened her handbag and took out a pistol. She handed it to Logan. He accepted it unwillingly. “What’s this?”

“The gun from Reg’s desk. I told you about it.”

“You said it was missing. What the hell is going on, Nora?”

“You promised to help me.”

“I can’t if you won’t level.”

“Monteith has to be got rid of. And you’re the man. You won’t regret it, Tony, I promise you. Things can be lovely between you and me once he’s out of the way. Reg won’t mind, he’s hardly ever around.”

“The way he didn’t mind about Whittaker?”

The bathroom door opened. Monteith stepped into the room, saw the gun in Logan’s hand, and did a reaction loaded with enough astonishment to reach the back of the second balcony. “Who’s that intended for?”

“Now,” Nora commanded. “Do it now.”

Logan understood almost everything in a flash. Thinking he had gone after Nora in the street, it was she who had selected him. It explained the provocative walk and the eyes focusing on working men. She was searching for the kind of hero who would swallow her story and do this killing for her. She knew a working-class man would make the ideal patsy — his reaction would be to come racing to the aid of the princess in danger. He looked at the doctor and began to say, “Have you any idea what she—”

Nora came to him fast, grabbed his arm and raised it, pointing the gun at Monteith. Logan resisted and was surprised at the woman’s strength. Her fist was closing on his gun hand, exerting pressure on the trigger finger. He managed to turn his arm enough so that the gun was no longer aimed at Monteith. “Let go,” he said. “Let go of the gun!” It went off. Nora sank to the floor.

“Crazy,” was all Logan could say. “She must be crazy.”

Monteith knelt beside her, examined her. “And dead.” He got to his feet. “You aren’t wrong about her. If she couldn’t have me killed, she was ready to settle for herself.”

The door from the corridor opened and two people came into the room. “This is my wife, Mindy,” he said. He got between her and the child and the body on the floor. “Better go into the bedroom,” he told his wife, “there’s been an accident.”

Logan caught only a glimpse of the little girl as she was ushered through, but it was enough to see that she was one of the most beautiful of mixed-race children, pale hair drawn back in braids from an exotic African race.

When the police had been and gone, taking the body of Nora Packer with them, Logan said, “So now we have an orphan asleep in the other room.”

“She doesn’t know Nora was her mother,” Mindy said. “We’ve told her she’s adopted. She doesn’t fully understand what it means, except that she was chosen because we love her.”

“Whittaker wasn’t the father,” Logan said. “I’m still confused.”

“Nora went with a lot of men,” Monteith explained. “The father was another athlete, a friend of the marathon runner. When she realized she was pregnant, Nora told Reg she was going to have a baby with the wrong color skin. Reg had never been too bothered by her exploits as long as there was no publicity. So they arranged for her to come to Montreal, have the child at my clinic, and leave it with me.”

“So all that business about a stolen child and Nora’s blackouts was nonsense,” Logan said.

“Yes. She told lies the way the rest of us discuss the weather. Her aim — Packer’s aim, too — was to get somebody to knock me off.”

“Why?”

“Because I wrote Reg a letter and told him that unless he paid me the money he promised, I was going to introduce Nora’s interesting daughter into London society. It was only a threat, we would never have done it.”

“What was the money he promised?”

“Fifty grand for me to expand my clinic. Doctors are supposed to have all the money in the world, but I’ve never raked it in.”

“He treats people who can’t pay,” Mindy said, frowning at her husband under magnificent eyebrows and putting an arm across his shoulders. “Schmuck.”

“When Nora was in trouble, he promised me the money. After I’d taken care of it, he forgot. I’ve been writing him letters for three years.”

Logan discovered a new bruise on his hand. It must have been made by the trigger guard as Nora tried to control the gun. “According to the police, Whittaker’s suicide was real. His injury meant he couldn’t run, and he was hooked on morphine. Poor bastard. Nora tried to make it sound as if Reg had killed him. Why do that?”

“To earn more sympathy? Who could say with Nora? The event took place, so she used it.”

In the morning, Logan showed up late at the building site. “Thanks for coming around,” Colman said.

“I was in a terrible hassle last night,” Logan said. He took his friend through the story. At the end, he said, “I’ll have to attend the inquest since I held the gun that killed her. But Monteith’s testimony puts me in the clear.”

“What about Reg Packer?” Colman asked. “What happens to him?”

“Nothing. We’ll never know whether killing Monteith was only Nora’s idea or whether he was in on the plan.”

Around three in the afternoon, when the men were sorting good brick from damaged brick in the front yard, a convertible rolled to a stop outside and refused to start up again. A girl with crew-cut red hair and leopard eyes got out, raised the hood, and looked inside at the engine without much comprehension. When she turned and faced the men behind the low stone wall, Ernie Colman spoke without being spoken to. “Sorry, lady,” he said, “we only fix buildings.”

“Amen,” Logan murmured. He was wondering if a trip to New York with Valerie Land might change his luck.