Chapter 6: A Pompous Penguin

IT WAS quite late when we reached Liverpool Street station and I knew that by the time I got home to Mile End I would miss Mrs McPherson’s evening meal, yet again. It was Thursday, which meant cold cuts and home-made pickles with watery mashed potatoes, made with margarine instead of butter under war-time rationing, followed by something like tinned peaches and Bird’s powdered custard made with water rather than milk. It wasn’t much of a meal to miss, even though I was quite hungry.

Miss Marcia la Mare, a supposedly self-absorbed mistress of the silver screen, noticed my quiet reflection and, without a word from me, offered a solution to a problem that I suppose she must have sensed I had.

“I guess it’s pretty late for quiet little London town in the middle of a war, Mr Onslow?” she asked, back in her American accent. I nodded in reply.

She said this in the same assertive voice she had used in my office yesterday. As my client she was all too aware that she was also my employer.

“Do yah usually cook yahr own evenin’ meal when you get home, or do yah have a house-keeper who does that small service for yah?”

“I live in a lodging house, Miss la Mare, my landlady has a number of guests and prepares a daily evening dinner for all her tenants, plus a cooked breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays.”

“What did you eat last night, may I ask?” She knew before she asked, from the timing of my telephone call, that I was late getting home.

“I was too late getting home and missed the evening meal, so I adjourned to a nearby café and had some tinned sardines on toast.”

“That don’t sound nourishing enough for an active man, and yah’re painfully thin for the size of yah frame. So I assume that yah meal is always served by yahr landlady at a given time in the early evening?”

“Six-forty-five sharp,” I replied.

“It is gone six,” she said, looking at her tiny wrist watch, “at my hotel I usually dine at eight, although they never actually demand their guests to be sharp about the time at all, so I insist you join me for dinner as my guest this evening.”

“I am sure that for their guests they are not so strict on timing, ma’am, but they usually are in all other respects and I am hardly dressed for a West End hotel restaurant, where even in wartime I am sure that they require guests to dress appropriately for dinner, unless you are under wartime orders to dress in khaki, Navy or Air Force blue at all times, of course.”

“Yes,” she agreed, back in her Home Counties’ English, “in wartime, some concessions must be allowed and they do, although the hotel managers are such a stuffy lot otherwise. So, Mr Onslow, Edgar, would you prefer to share a meal with me as my guest, served in my room or, alternatively dine with company in the hotel restaurant? My treat, you understand, and you must accept one or the other, or I will be exceedingly upset. I am sure you would not wish to upset your newest and, I hope, most valued assistant detective on her very first day of work for you. It could scar the poor girl for life, you know.”

“I have no wish to be disagreeable at all, Miss la Mare.” I did not like to admit that she was not only my first assistant detective since setting out on my own, but she was also my only client at the moment. “In that case, Mrs Jones, Mary, proprietary dictates that I must accept your kind invitation to dine in your hotel restaurant and hope they can find us a dark corner where my drab brown suit might look vaguely military, at least to those suffering from shortness of sight.”

“Thank you, I respectfully accept your personal RSVP, Edgar. Come, I must find a phone booth, do you have any of your big copper pennies to spare? I swear this purse is designed for a lady of the night, as there is only room for a lipstick and a French letter!”

She grinned as she clutched my arm and we steered towards the main concourse of the terminus in search of a public telephone box.

The taxi we collected from the rank outside dropped us off at the rear rather than the front entrance of her swanky West End hotel, as directed by Miss la Mare.

It was now pouring with rain which was trying its hardest to turn to sleet.

Mary even allowed me to pay the cabbie’s fare, while insisting that it appeared on my final bill as a justifiable expense.

A girl in a maid’s outfit rushed out with a huge umbrella to escort us both relatively comfortably to the modest staff entrance. She must’ve been stood at the staff entrance waiting for us.

Once inside, she led us to a large and unmanned utility service lift and confidently operated the controls herself. She folded the umbrella and tried her best to melt into the background, as all the maids in the best hotels do, but there is nowhere to hide in a lift, particular one so unadorned with the usual mahogany cladding or wire work. The lift shuddered and moved slowly upwards.

“Thank yah Milly,” Miss la Mare said to the girl, returning to her native accent. “May I introduce yah to Mr Edgar Onslow, my private ex-Scotland Yard inspector of detectives, and Edgar, this is my maid, all the while I am here in this lovely hotel. Milly is, as yah’ve seen demonstrated, a skilled lifesaver.”

I reached over and offered the girl an outstretched hand, which she gripped tentatively with a couple of fingers and a thumb, curtsying while doing so.

“Pleasure to meet you Milly, I hope your sister Sheila is well and looking forward to her big day.”

“Pleasure to meet you Sir, I’m sure,” she replied, having shot a quick glance at Miss la Mare, “and yeah, me sister is very well, considerin’ how nervous she is, an’ all.”

“We had a long and tedious train journey, Milly and, after all, he is a professional detective,” Mary laughed and Milly, clearly more relaxed in her employer’s company than mine, joined her in the amusement.

It was a pretty laugh, Milly was probably a very young girl of only 15, 16 or so.

“Well,” the girl responded to her boss brightly, “he mus’ be very good, ma’am, cos he ain’t got room in that bag for none o’ them bright lamps, like wot they question suspects wiv in the pictures!”

“Indeed, not, young lady,” I said, “but, I usually find that just a glare and a slight lift of one of my eyebrows is enough to get any guilty scoundrel spilling the beans.” I don’t watch moving pictures, myself, as it hurts my eyes and therefore unsettles my mind, but unlike some, the guesthouse of Mrs McPherson is open to both gentlemen and lady guests and two of the young ladies currently in residence talk of nothing else but the moving pictures they see at the dinner and weekend breakfast table.

Milly giggled and, as the lift slid slowly to a stop, she opened the door and peered out, looking both ways.

“The coast is clear ma’am,” she said and led us off down the corridor.

I waved Miss la Mare through to follow her maid before me and I brought up the rear. The door to her suite was only ten feet away, opposite only one other door in the corridor, by the time we reached it Milly had opened the door, presumably with a skeleton key, and ushered us in before she dashed away, no doubt to deal with the unmanned lift.

Inside we stood in a lobby leading to a hallway, off of which were several rooms. That lobby itself was bigger than any hotel room I had ever stayed in, or even entered with a photographer for the business end of my present occupation.