The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Read online

  Tiny said, “Did you believe that stunt?”

  Danny said, “Bloody amazin’.”

  “D’you reckon he was up that high?” Jimmy asked.

  “What made me laugh,” Tiny said, “there he was, hangin’ on to that clock for all he was worth an’ he still kept his straw hat and glasses on!”

  Safety Last with Harold Lloyd had kept them amused for a while. They were at a bit of a loose end before they could make their rounds, so they went to the cinema. The men made their way down Mile End Road, cutting down Bancroft Road, into Stepney Green.

  “What’s the world comin’ to, I ask yer?” Lenny Procter said. Unusually for him, he’d been quiet most of the evening. “Kattie was one of me girls an’ gets her throat cut, an’ we go swannin’ around at the bleedin’ pictures!”

  Jimmy said, “Lenny, we’re goin’ to sort out whoever done this.”

  “Too fuckin’ right we are!” Tiny added.

  “Some bugger is goin’ to pay for this. She was one of me best girls. Good lookin’, smart, well-liked. An’ one of the best dips.”

  “It’s bloody criminal what ‘appened to ‘er.” Danny agreed. “But it goes with the territory.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Leave it, Danny,” Jimmy suggested.

  But Lenny wasn’t going to let it go.

  He said, “D’you think that just because she was a prossie, she deserved to get topped?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Sounded like it to me.”

  “Maybe the geezer caught her with her hand where it shouldn’t be.”

  “Not on his dick?” Tiny came up with the one-liner.

  “If you ain’t got anything sensible to say, Tiny, shut yer gob.”

  “Oi! Don’t take it out on me, Lenny.”

  Jimmy said, “Right, that’s enough! I said we’ll sort it out, Lenny – all right? An’ Tiny, you ain’t on the stage, so shut it.”

  As it was, Jimmy thought Tiny’s crack was a good one. But he didn’t dare laugh. If he did, he knew that he would spend all night trying to get Lenny to calm down. Or even swapping a couple of punches. But they had to stick together at times like these. So all right, one of Lenny’s girl’s had been killed. Then it was up to them or the police to get the killer, and he knew they had the better chances. The world was full of snitches and narks, someone would come up with something and pretty quick since she came out of Kruger’s stalls.

  The strength of the gang lay in that Kruger could fix anything. Unwanted pregnancies dealt with; people on the run, he could hide them; landlord troubles – no problems; bets and loans were his specialities. Everything had its price. And he was smart because he didn’t personally get involved. Always saying, “Yeah, I might know someone who could help.”

  Murdering one of the girls went against the grain. Some were accosted, their money stolen and they might get a thump but murder? Murder was different. Before dealing with that, they had a little bit of business to attend to. Which was why they were out tonight with knuckle-dusters and lead saps banging in their pockets. The bloke they were on their way to see was taking the piss. They’d let Jack Jenkins off with just a slap the last time, when he promised he’d pay back the loan with a bit on top. But word had reached Kruger that Jenkins had been mouthing off that he had screwed over the money lender. Don’t people learn?

  They caught Jenkins coming out of The Railway. He was three parts pissed and unsteady on his feet. Tiny stepped up behind him and twisted Jenkin’s arm up his back until he was nearly crying. Jenkins was a big man, a waterside labourer, but he couldn’t move in Tiny’s grip.

  “Think you’re so clever, you mouthy git!”

  “Jimmy, please! There’s ten quid in me pocket. It’s all I got. Take it.” His beer-puffed face was pouring with sweat.

  “Too late for that. Too fuckin’ late.”

  Lenny swung the sap. It connected with Jenkins’s left knee cap and exploded bone and cartilage. He used his left fist to uppercut Jenkins’s jaw. His head snapped upright, blood and tears merging. Lenny Procter was enjoying this. Now he could get rid of some of his anger and frustration on the man in front of him. In his mind’s eye, Jenkins had become the man who murdered Kattie. The sap descended again.

  Strange as it may seem, this was the moment he loved the best. The arc lights, the roar of the crowd and the tension – all gone. Just him on his lonesome. The feeling of elation still coursed through his body. He had knocked out Marsh Cronin, the little Irish lad from Islington, in the third with a beautiful combination ending with a clubbing right hand right on his chin. He’d earned six pounds for tonight’s fight. Kruger trying to make up for last week.

  Griggs heard footsteps running down the corridor.

  Jimmy came in first. His face red with anger, his self-control lost.

  “They’ve nicked Kruger,” he said. “The coppers came for him this afternoon.”

  “What for?”

  “Murder.”

  “You what?”

  Jimmy moved into the room and leaned against the wall, looking at Griggs.

  “He was in the scullery and they dragged him out. Took six of ’em, mind you.”

  “I didn’t know. Been in the gym all day, an’ I hadn’t heard a word.”

  Danny, Lenny followed by Tiny stepped into the room. It was growing claustrophobic in the changing room.

  “It’s all over the manor,” Danny said.

  Jimmy said, “Nicked him right in front of his Missus and little Ada.”

  “It’s fight day,” Griggs said. “I do a bit of sparrin’, a bit of shadow boxin’. I don’t go out. No one told me.”

  Lenny sat on the edge of the table swinging his leg gently back and forth. “He won’t be there for long.”

  Griggs didn’t know what else to say and the silence stretched out between the men until Danny said, “Notice he hasn’t asked who was murdered.”

  “Or how,” Jimmy added.

  “Because the bastard already knows!” Tiny pointed out.

  They jumped him before he could draw another breath. He tried to struggle but they pinned him down on the table.

  “No! For God’s sake!”

  Jimmy slapped him around the face. “Feelin’ proud of yerself?”

  He struck him again. “Get his hand.”

  Tiny took hold of Griggs’s right arm and stretched it in the air.

  “What’re you gonna do?” Griggs asked.

  “First, I’m gonna break every finger on yer right hand,” Jimmy answered and yanked back Griggs’s middle finger until it snapped. “Then I’m gonna start on yer left.” The ring finger was next. “An’ then every fuckin’ bone in yer body!” he shouted over Griggs’s screams.

  They brought him around by throwing a bucket of water over his head.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  Griggs looked up at Lenny through swollen eyes.

  His voice was hoarse. “’Cos he threatened me Mum.”

  Lenny stood back. “You what?”

  “The night at the Grove Club, he said he’d break her knees.”

  “Is that all?” Lenny was dumbstruck.

  “Yeah.”

  Tiny said, “Probably will do now.”

  Danny said, “He will. He will.”

  “When we’re through with you,” Jimmy said. “Never mind being known as ‘Fast Hands’, be more like fuckin’ ‘Slow Hands’!”

  They broke the rest of the fingers of his right hand, then those of the left. The second time he came around there was a quiet calmness about him. If they wanted to know everything, then what more harm could they do him? He was finished as a boxer, he wouldn’t be able to swing a paper bag, let alone a punch.

  Griggs nearly lost his footing, dizzy and eyes a little out of focus, he just about remembered where he was. He had been drinking since two o’clock that afternoon, bitter at first, then a glass of whisky. And then he gave up counting. He should have stuck to the beer. God he wished that
now. He walked along the street a gangling, staggering figure.

  Then she was walking alongside him.

  “Where you off to?” she asked.

  “Home.” He looked around at the young woman.

  “Sure?”

  “Hmm?”

  She put her arm through his and pulled him closer. “’Ere, do I know you?”

  “’Praps. I’m a boxer.”

  “Yeah, right. Billy Grey, ain’t it?”

  “Griggs. Billy Griggs. An’ you work at the Grove Club, dontcha?”

  She nodded. “Well, Billy. Want to show a girl what you can do with them hands?”

  They had reached a junction where a small turning on the right led off into the darkness. She pulled him in that direction.

  Sixteen years old, a boxer on the up, fifty quid in his pocket and now he was going to lose his load. Griggs thought that life couldn’t get any better than this.

  They leaned their bodies together and kissed. His right hand slipped behind her and cradled her backside. He could feel her firm buttocks through the chiffon. She did nothing to dissuade him. Now his hand moved over her breasts.

  “Oi! Not so fast.”

  She pulled away, breaking contact.

  “Gonna cost you.”

  Griggs nodded. “Yeah, of course.” He pulled out a small bundle of notes and peeled off a single five pound note.

  The prostitute smiled and snatched the money from his fingers before he could argue the price. She opened her purse and pushed the note inside. That’s when he saw the razor.

  “What you got there?” he asked.

  She took out the razor and held it in the palm of her hand.

  “Don’t worry about it. I took it off some geezer so’s he couldn’t use it no more.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  He knew it belonged to Kruger. It had a distinctive mother of pearl handle and a small nick on the razor’s edge. The very same one that had been stuck under his nose when he was told that he was under new management.

  Griggs couldn’t remember the rest. Just a blurred image of the prostitute on the floor, blood pumping out of her throat. He didn’t remember putting the razor under her body. Just that he had a chance to fix Kruger.

  “How’d you find out?”

  Jimmy dragged on his cigarette, exhaled and said, “You stupid schmuck. Ain’t even worked that out, have yer? Go on Danny, tell him.”

  Danny Marks was quiet for a moment, then said. “I spoke to the yid who found Kattie’s body. He didn’t want to say nuffin’ at first but I persuaded him that the Pogrom was nuffin’ compared to the grief I’d give him. Seems he took a fiver out of Kattie’s purse. That was all she the money she had on her. Thing is Billy boy, it was one of mine. I got a list of all my notes and who they went to. It was one of the forged notes that Kruger gave you. Did you ever stop to think why Kruger was so happy to part with a hundred and fifty quid when you threw the fight?”

  Thoroughly Modern Millinery

  MARILYN TODD

  Somehow the Roaring Twenties and Marilyn Todd are made for each other. Of course we all know Marilyn from her series featuring the cunning vixen of ancient Rome, Claudia Serferus, who first pushed back the sheets in I, Claudia (1995), and somehow I think Claudia would have loved the Roaring Twenties as well.

  The Pink Parrot was buzzing louder than a barrelful of hornets when Fizzy Potter fluttered her fingers at Lennie the barman, tossed her feather boa over her shoulder and shimmied up the sweeping spiral staircase. Down on the dance floor, the exuberance of the Charleston had given way to pencil-thin couples fusing together for the Argentinian tango, a relatively recent import, but one which seemed destined to remain the chief talking point among the middle-aged and middle-classed for years to come. Sensitive to the dance’s stillness and pauses, the conductor of the Pink Parrot Orchestra was milking its suggestiveness for all it was worth.

  “I say, Fizzy!” A young man with a moustache that looked like an anchovy on his upper lip waved her over. “Care to join me with a whisky and soda?”

  “Sorry, darling,” she quipped back, “but with you and me it’ll only ever be gin and platonic!”

  With his laughter ringing in her ears, she made her way to the corner where her friends had set up their usual Friday night colony. All feathers and beads, cloche hats and silk stockings, Fizzy also happened to own the finest pair of knees this side of the Bosporus. A point which rarely went unappreciated when she sat down, as now, and crossed her long legs.

  “Jolly glad you made it, old girl,” Marriott muttered across his martini.

  Impeccably turned out as usual, and with a crease in his trousers that could slice bacon, he twiddled the yellow rosebud in his buttonhole. Marriott Stokes was the only member of the group who didn’t need to go out and earn his weekly envelope, his father having left him a packet several years previously.

  “Rather hoping you can do something with old Catspaw,” he drawled.

  “Yes, I’d noticed he’s sporting a face like a vulture whose carrion has just made a miraculous recovery and is now dancing the fandango instead of providing him with a good supper,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Seems Bubbles gave him the raspberry,” Foxy Fairfax explained.

  Like Fizzy, he was also an illustrator, only instead of working freelance for magazines, Foxy tended to restrict himself to children’s books.

  “Come off it, chaps, every girl gives Catspaw the bird,” she said, sliding her olive off its cocktail stick. “Why should Bubbles be different?”

  Anyway, Bubbles was married, and girls like that don’t pass up on rich bankers in favour of penniless cartoonists.

  “Exactly what I told him,” Biff said. “In fact, I seriously advised the old halibut to go and get stinko and forget all about popsies. Like the Mongol hordes descending from wherever it was they used to descend from, girls only bring grief on a chap.”

  Adding, as Marriott ordered another round of drinks, “I say, Fizzy. Given any further thought about swanning down the aisle with me?”

  As a partner in the family firm of purveyors of quality pickles, Biff Kilgannon had no interest in art like the rest of the gang, in fact the nuances of Impressionism, gouache and the finer points of the Neue Sachlichkeit sailed completely over his head. He only tagged along because his sister, Lulu, was an artist and this way he got to mix with lots of Witty Young Things, something one tends not to do in the gherkin and piccallilli department. It wasn’t that Biff wasn’t a dish, Fizzy mused, especially since playing prop forward had endowed him with muscles of steel. It was just unfortunate that he had a brain to match.

  “Sorry, Biff.” Fizzy set to powdering the shiny spot on her nose. “The answer’s still no.’

  The mirror in her cloisonne compact reflected a heart-shaped face with a much-kissed snub nose and big eyes enlarged further by finely plucked brows and heaps of soot black mascara. It was only upon closer examination that one realized that one eye was brown, the other blue.

  Fizzy’s appointment diary rarely showed a blank spot.

  Snapping the compact shut, she slotted a cigarette into its holder. Simultaneously, a battery of clicks produced enough light to power up half of Southern England and quite possibly a chunk of East Anglia, too. Thanking her gallant knights with an all-encompassing smile, Fizzy struck her own match and thought, funny how the entire male section of the Westlake Set was queuing to slip a diamond cluster on the third finger of her left hand – yet every time she pictured the hatload of kids she so desperately wanted, all the little beezers sported the same ski-slope noses, lopsided smiles and floppy fringes of the only man who’d never once jumped forward in a bid to light her gasper.

  Damn you, Squiffy Hardcastle. Damn you to hell.

  “ – don’t you think so, Fizzy?”

  “Sorry, Kitty, didn’t catch that.”

  “I was just saying, sweetheart, that his work’s far too Gauginesque for my taste—”

  Fizzy
didn’t bother asking whose work. “Absolutely,” she replied, her mind elsewhere. On a certain painting, as it happened, in a gilt frame . . .

  “ – Matisse is living in the south of France, I hear—”

  “ – now does Lulu’s stuff reflect Synthetic Cubism with a hint of Purist, d’you think, or pastoralism with a touch of Analytic Cubism?”

  Snippets drifted past like ducks on the Thames, while Fizzy contemplated portraits in gilt frames . . .

  “Sorry we’re late, everyone.”

  Her train was interrupted as Orville Templeton, Hon. Member for Knightsbridge & Chelsea, held out a chair for his wife.

  “Traffic was an absolute stinker.”

  “You haven’t missed much,” Foxy told the newcomers. “Chilton and his protegé haven’t arrived yet.”

  “Traffic, probably,” Orville said, shooting his cuffs.

  Poor Orville. Noble, worthy, gallant, dignified – a hundred decent men packed into one – and duller than a miner’s bathwater. Fizzy exchanged smiles with his wife and thought the same couldn’t be said of Gloria Templeton. Fizzy’s best friend was five years older than her and a study in understatement, from the simple wedding band to the pale cream silk she always draped herself in. Not half as modish as Fizzy’s white cloche, Gloria’s broad-rimmed hats were perfect for hot summer evenings like this, flattering her chestnut bob and emphasizing her strong patrician features – though nothing could disguise the permanent sadness in her lovely green eyes.

  That was the problem, Fizzy sighed, when one’s still in love with one’s first husband.

  A husband, moreoever, who was handsome and charming, gave one two gorgeous daughters, then betrayed all three of them by getting himself blown to pieces in the very last week of the War. Her blue-brown gaze rested on Orville, looking for all the world like a reject from a second-rate taxidermist’s. Poor Orville. The Hon. Member for K&C worshipped his new family. Adored Gloria. Idolized his adopted girls. Would do anything for them, anything at all. Even to accepting that he would only ever come second best . . .