Out of the Past

CHAPTER 8

Earlier that day Chief Detective Inspector Lamb looked up from his desk as the door opened. It was Detective Inspector Frank Abbott who presented himself, that very fair hair of his immaculately smooth, his tall, slim figure immaculately clad.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Lamb fixed him with a stare which had long since ceased to terrify.

“Shouldn’t have sent for you if I didn’t.”

His own appearance was solid rather than elegant. He filled his massive chair, and looked as reliable as the oak of which it was made. His strong black hair was going a little thin on the top but retained its tendency to curl over the temples. His voice carried a pleasant country accent. He might, in fact, have served as an example of the old type of police officer at his best. He said now,

“Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

“Well, sir?”

Lamb drummed on his knee.

“It’s about that fellow Cardozo.”

“Cardozo?”

“No, you don’t know about him-you were out on the Notting Hill case. Well, this chap came in with a yarn about his brother having disappeared. Philip Cardozo, only he writes it with an F and has some kind of a dago way of saying it.”

“Felipe.”

“You’ve got it-Fayleepy. Funny sort of way to say Philip. I don’t know how anyone gets their tongue round that sort of lingo. This one spells his name J.O.S.E. and calls it Hosy. Doesn’t seem much sense in it to my way of thinking, but there you are. This Hosy came in about a week ago and says his brother is missing. Says he was coming over from South America, and it might have been on the Marine Star from Rio, or it might have been some other boat, or he might have taken a plane to Lisbon and come on from there. The point is, he hasn’t turned up here, and Hosy thinks something has happened to him. Very excitable little chap. You know how these foreigners are-waving his hands about and putting in a lot of words I couldn’t make head or tail of.”

Frank Abbott felt some regret at having missed the interview. It might have brightened the official round, and would certainly have proved a good deal more entertaining than the affair of the grocer’s teeth in the Notting Hill murder case.

Lamb drummed on his desk.

“To start with, there wasn’t any evidence to show that Felipy ever set foot in this country. Hosy says he had a very particular reason for coming over, and if he didn’t come one way he’d have come another. Says he thinks he’d have come by plane. Well, if he did, it wasn’t under his own name. And I don’t mind saying I thought the whole thing was a lot of fuss about nothing. If this chap had slipped in under an alias he’d want to keep quiet. In fact Hosy might have wanted to see Felipy, but Felipy mightn’t have been so keen on seeing Hosy. People don’t always want to meet their relations.”

“They do not-and with reason.”

Lamb frowned.

“Well, that was a week ago. I told him how many people disappear every year, and that about three quarters of them turned up again.”

Frank cocked an eyebrow.

“I can’t make out why you were seeing him at all, sir.”

Lamb jerked open a drawer, looked for something that hadn’t ever been there, and shut it again with some force.

“Oh, he came along with an introduction. You know the sort of thing-Sir Somebody Something in the South American business line who wants to oblige Signor Somebody Else who doesn’t mind putting in a word for Hosy who is some kind of an agent of his. As I say, I told him his brother would probably turn up, and no call to think anything had happened to him. He waved his hands a lot and talked nineteen to the dozen about his brother being murdered, and went away.”

“Is that all, sir?”

“No, it isn’t. I shouldn’t be talking to you about it if it was. He’s been here again. This time he says he’s found his brother.”

Frank began to say something and stopped.

“Picked up out of the river.”

“Dead?”

“Quite a time. We’d passed on Felipy’s description, and he was sent for to identify the body. He says it’s his brother all right, and he swears he’s been murdered. The post mortem shows a blow on the back of the head. Well, it might have been accidental, or it mightn’t. You can go down and look into it.”