The Stand-In (22 page)

Cyril's antique shop was on King's Road. While he had a late breakfast, Boy had Fortman telephone to make sure the place was open—giving no name, of course. Boy wanted to surprise Cyril.

He opened the door and heard the antique overhead bell tinkle. The place looked empty. Using his stick carefully in the crowded room, Boy limped over to a rather good buhl cabinet and then behind him Cyril said, “Good morning,” and then, recognizing his customer's back, gasped.

“Good morning, Cyril.” He watched while Cyril made a noble effort to pull himself together, but Cyril was no actor. His face made it obvious that Boy was the last person he wanted to see.

“—honored by visit, Boy—humble establishment—Are you thinking of selling me some of your exquisite pieces? No? Then perhaps you're putting on a play which needs—”

“Do stop nattering, Cyril.” Boy banged his stick on the dusty floor. “I wanted to tell you that when I rang up your young friend to warn him that I was going to give his name to the police in return for your favor, a lady answered and told me that he couldn't possibly be disturbed. When I insisted, she was forced to admit that he really couldn't get out of bed. Come off it, Cyril, one is not quite a fool!” There. That left Julius out of it. “I'm here to inquire why your protégé is too weak to totter to the phone right after my friend Ronnie was murdered. Ten to one, he tried to kill himself.” Cyril was fluttering madly, and Boy pressed his advantage. “Why did he, Cyril?”

“Oh, dear!”

“Ronnie is killed and your protégé with, as they put it, everything to live for, promptly tries to do himself in. I should like that explained to me, if you can.”

“Of course I can explain it, Boy. I can, but I don't choose to.”

“Indeed? Well, if you prefer to explain to the police—”

“I cannot
see
why you should concern yourself with this!”

“Dear Cyril, I am a very good friend and an implacable enemy. Ronnie was my friend.”

“Whereas Desmond is your enemy?” What had Desmond done to Boy? Implacable was the very word. Boy looked implacable. Cyril tried to conceal his fright. “Boy, you are
steeped
in melodrama today!”

“And you are evasive, Cyril. Let's have your explanation.”

“You are going to feel extremely foolish, Boy, I promise you! What Desmond did has no possible connection with Ronnie.” Cyril described how Coral Reid had made a public spectacle of Desmond in the commissary.

“Feeble, Cyril, feeble.” Boy pointed with his stick to the shop, chockablock with furniture and
objets d'art
among which men and women had lived and died. “How does it go? ‘Men have died from time to time and the worms have eaten them, but not for love!' But not for love, so do men die for a laugh, then?”

“Apparently, Boy! At any rate poor Desmond almost did, which has no connection with Ronnie, you see.”

“Not a shred, dear, but it does have a connection with Coral Reid, who laughed and who is connected with the house where Ronnie was murdered. And you have a connection with that same house, and through you, perhaps, your young man.” The effect this statement had on Cyril was spoiled by the appearance of a blonde child in a white jersey who emerged from Cyril's back room carrying a very Victorian doll.

“Her arm broked! I didn't do it!”

“And who is this, Cyril?” Obviously thinking frantically, Cyril tried to slip back the doll's arm joint. “Who are you, little girl?”

“Kitten.” She said to Cyril, “Can you fix her? Are you fixing her?”

“Kitten? A stray Kitten? And did Auntie Cyril take you in, Kitten? Your kindness seems
boundless
, Cyril.” He looked at the little girl. “Unless you've had an—er—
change
of heart?”

“You're offensive, Boy!”

“Offensive and momentarily stupid, Cyril! Kitten!” He smiled his shark's smile. “Not a stray Kitten after all, is she, Cyril? There was an article in the paper. Kitten here is Coral Reid's little niece. The article mentioned that Kitten had replaced Coral Reid's own little girl in the film Ossian's making with Miss Reid and Branton Collier. No, not a stray Kitten, but another connecting link!”

“You are preposterous, Boy! Kitten's mother happens to be a
particular
friend of Desmond's. She's nursing him while I am playing nanny to her daughter, and very badly, too, with you badgering me.” He gave the doll to Kitten. “There, her arm's good as new. Please leave, Boy. I'm not interested in these preposterous fantasies about Desmond and Ronnie.”

“Ronnie's
bad!”

“What did you say, little girl?”

She was carefully moving the doll's arm in its short taffeta sleeve up and then carefully down again, and paid no attention.

“Little girl—Kitten! Kitten, what did you say about Ronnie? Why did you say Ronnie was bad?”

“From the mouths of babes, Boy!”

Kitten saw that Cyril approved of her and stamped her foot. “He's bad, bad, bad!”

“De mortius nil nisi bonum
, Kitten. Didn't they teach you in the States not to speak evil of the dead?”

She was moving the arm again and said scornfully, “I
know
Ronnie's dead.” Kitten laid the doll on the floor the way Ronnie had fallen. “Like that!”

“Do look, Cyril! Now I wonder why, if there is no connection, why should you tell this child's mother about Ronnie lying dead like that?”

Kitten said,
“I
told mommy.” She picked up the doll and brushed the back of the long taffeta skirt vigorously. “She's not dead any more.”

“‘She's not dead any more.' Did you hear that, Boy? This is an
infant!
Or perhaps it was Kitten who killed Ronnie?”

“I diden kill Ronnie!”

Using his stick, Boy moved toward her. “Come here, Kitten. I know
you
didn't, but who did kill Ronnie? Come now, tell Uncle Boy who killed Ronnie.”

But now he had reminded her that she had promised her mother never to talk about that and Kitten, dragging the doll by one arm, scuttled to Cyril and buried her face against his thin legs. “I want my mommy! I want my mommy!”

Boy watched Cyril awkwardly trying to pry the child loose to comfort her, but she clung and wouldn't stop crying.

“Boy, I will not have you chivvying her any longer!”

“I'm going, Cyril, dear. I can't do any more here because it's obvious that this particular mouth of babe isn't going to utter another word right now. Infantile discretion, if I ever saw it. I shall have to go elsewhere.”

“To the police, Boy?
You?”

“No need, Cyril, dear. To Mr. Nubar Ossian.”

26

Millie had carried the phone to the bedroom door so Desmond could hear who it was. She said, “Yes, Cyril, he's conscious. He's fine, really.”

Cyril. The Good Fairy. As Millie had pointed out, Bran had Ossian and Coral Reid with all their pull behind him, while he, Desmond, had Cyril and this avenging angel. One Good Fairy and one avenging angel. As he watched her listening, he could tell that whatever Cyril was saying was bad news. She was swallowing hard.

“Okay. You better bring her here. You better bring her right here.”

Desmond watched her put the phone back and then come in. Her mouth dropped, and her eyes were dull.

“It was Kitten. This man came into Cyril's store.” She broke off, holding her elbows. “I shoulda asked Cyril to put her on a plane! I should have put you first! Kitten could have stayed with the Wilsons—our next-door neighbors—now Kitten went and told this Mr. Martin—”

“Flyte-Martin? Boy Flyte-Martin?” She nodded. “What about him?” Millie told him what Kitten had said, and Desmond remembered Ronnie telling him Boy was out to get him. Captain Ahab. Desmond had seen Gregory Peck in
Moby Dick
on TV, and a picture of Boy dressed like Gregory Peck was so wild that Desmond laughed.

Millie said uncertainly, “It's funny?”

“Not really. Come on, come on,
you
can't be worried! You're not stacking a lousy pervert like Boy Flyte-Martin against God Almighty, are you?” But he couldn't get a rise out of her. Between them, he and Boy had stripped the wings off the avenging angel like they yanked off a soldier's decorations, so that she was just a poor little bird with tears in her eyes. Quite gently he asked her to close the door while he got dressed.

She had never seen him in men's clothes, Millie thought. Only pajamas. He came out wearing a brown round-necked wool sweater with no shirt underneath and brown slacks with brown moccasins. He must have put them on because they were easy, being still weak, you could see that. Going into the kitchen because she had to fix something for Kitten and Cyril to eat, she wondered if he knew how great he looked. His skin was very pale, but that only made his eyes more blue.

By now she knew how Cyril liked tea, a big production, warming the pot with boiling water and swirling it round and then pouring it out and putting in the tea (no tea bags) and ‘bringing the pot to the water, not the water to the pot.' She made a production of the sandwiches, too, because she was in no hurry to go back in and have nothing to say. What was there to say?

Desmond watched her laying the table. When the bell rang, the silver she was holding clattered out of her hand. He said, “Come on, come on, that's not the cops, that's only Cyril.” She had become good at throwing the key right, he could see that.

Cyril had stopped to bring some flowers, beautiful red roses, and Millie went into the kitchen to put them in water while Cyril worried over Desmond. Kitten just stared at him. Was she remembering Daph's uniform? After a while Cyril ran down, but silence bothered him, so he tried to get the kid to talk.

“Kitten, say how wonderful it is to have Desmond with us again.”

“Uncle Cyril—”

My God,
Uncle Cyril!
“Hi, Kitten.” They smiled at each other. She was a cute little kid. He wondered whether she still remembered everything. The dog's grave. Digging.

Millie came back with the roses in a pitcher Cyril had once given him from the antique shop and set it in the center of the table. Cyril promptly put it on the window sill, backed off, and moved it a bit to the right while Millie went away again and returned with the tray on which she had the teapot and a glass of milk and some sandwiches and a bowl of apples. She got them started eating, but didn't touch her sandwich.

“Cyril, you told me about your relative who has a hotel in Brighton, remember?”

“Kember Lodge. My cousin Sylvia. It's not grand enough to be called a hotel, actually. Why, Millie?”

“Would your cousin take Kitten in if you asked her to? You could say she was the daughter of a sick friend, something—”

“Mommy!”

“Now, Kitten, be a good girl! You'll have fun. Brighton is a beach, isn't it, Cyril? Kitten could swim.”

“She could, and it's more than just a beach. There's the Pier, Kitten. You'll adore it!”

“It's like Disneyland, Kitten,” Millie said. “Remember how you loved Disneyland? Would your cousin take her today, Cyril?”

“Like a shot. Sylvia's a good old hag.”

“Would you drive her there as soon as we finish eating?” Millie knew Kitten better get the hell out. “Let's go pack your things, Kitten. Dumbo never got to see Disneyland, did he? This is Dumbo's big chance.” She knew damn well it was no big chance for Desmond, but God helped those who helped themselves.

Millie had poured a cup of tea for Cyril and he sat quietly stirring it. When Desmond tried to thank him, Cyril put his spoon down. He wanted no thanks for anything. “I was the one who brought Boy in. Oh, why did I have to bring Boy in? If you saw him in the shop just now, Desmond! If you heard him!” He suddenly clapped both hands over his ears. “I don't want to know precisely what that episode in the shop meant, dear boy! Don't tell me! I babble, dear boy, I babble!”

Between his hands his eyes rolled, and he looked like a frightened horse wearing blinkers.

“Okay, Cyril,” said Desmond.

Then Cyril took his hands away from his ears and, making a face, gulped down some tea before he picked up Kitten's small bag. “Well, we're off.”

Millie put on Kitten's heavy sweater and knelt in front of her to do the buttons. She said, “Remember, Kitten!” not daring to come out with the rest of it.
“Remember not another word about Desmond or Ronnie to anybody else
,
not a word!”
But Kitten, she knew, got the message. Kitten realized she shouldn't have talked to that son of a bitch. “You be a good girl, sweetie, and you and Dumbo will have fun in Brighton.”

27

Yesterday Boy had tracked Ossian to the small projection room in the basement of the T.I.A. building in Audley Street which Ossian had rented to see his rushes. In the dimness, using his stick, Boy had moved down the aisle and presently he saw Ossian alone in the sixth from the last row. The director had paid no attention to him, so he had chosen a seat and settled back—fabulously comfortable chairs, actually, closing his eyes to the screen where (what a bore) they were showing one after another of the takes of a one-minute scene. And they called the cinema an art form!

When the rushes were over, he had approached Ossian. (Man looked a spiv.) He had introduced himself, reminding Ossian who
he
was. “If you can spare me a bit of your valuable time, it could be that I might help get the matter of the mysterious murder in Stoke Newington cleared up.”

Ossian had asked what his interest in it was, and Boy explained that he had known Ronnie and that Ronnie's people had been friends of his people. One didn't enjoy one's friends being foully murdered, did one?

“If some of
my
good friends were murdered, I wouldn't have so many enemies.”