The Keys to the Street (17 page)

He bared his teeth at this man too. It was a grimace that was always effective, due perhaps to its shock value. People always recoiled. Armed as usual with his camera, he stepped back to the pavement edge and took a photograph. The beggar put his arms up over his face but by that time it was too late.

Boris the borzoi was the first dog he picked up. As usual Valerie Conway made him walk all the way down the area steps. She had a message for him, she said, from Mr. and Mrs. Cornell, to keep his wits about him because there had been an epidemic of dog-stealing.

“Those dossers pinch dogs, you know,” said Valerie. “They want them to keep them warm at night and then there’s the pathos factor.”

“The what?” said Bean.

“I mean, the British feel more sorry for a dog than a human, don’t they?”

Bean stored up everything he learned on the chance it might come in useful and when he came to the flat in Devonshire Street to collect Ruby the beagle, he passed on this new information to Erna Morosini.

“Beagles are particularly in demand,” he said. “For example, that down-and-out sits outside Tussaud’s, he’s got a beagle. You can see it’s registered at the Kennel Club.” His powers of invention came into play. “They drug them to keep them quiet all day. Valium’s the favorite but Largactil runs it a close second.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me,” said Mrs. Morosini.

“We all have to face facts, don’t we, madam? I’ll be taking some photos of Ruby in the coming week. If you’re interested they’ll be very reasonably priced.”

The eyes of the Duke of Kent met his as he came back into Park Crescent, and Bean composed his features into a similar stern and haughty expression. He let himself into the gardens and he and the two dogs made their way down the sloping path to the Nursemaids’ Tunnel. On this mild afternoon of hazy sunshine it was deserted as
usual and there was no sign of the key man. The gardens of Park Square were equally empty but for pigeons and sparrows on the sunlit grass and a squirrel that ran down the trunk of one tall green tree and up the trunk of another. It being Saturday, the park itself would be crowded.

Bean told Mr. Barker-Pryce about the street people stealing dogs, in his version substituting golden retrievers for beagles. Barker-Pryce said nastily that since Charlie only went out twice a day and always with Bean, it was up to him to see that no such theft took place.

Bean said, “You’re right, sir,” but with rage in his heart. He didn’t mention photographing Charlie and obviously the time wasn’t right to say anything to Lisl Pring about pictures of Marietta. He’d told her poodles were currently the beggars’ favorite prey and she’d reacted unexpectedly.

“They can have her. She’s just shat all over my kilim.”

“You don’t mean that, Miss Pring.”

Bean was shocked, by the sentiment and the language. Waiting in the hall while she went to fetch Marietta, sniffing like a hound, he opened a door that looked as if a cloakroom would be on the other side, but it was only a cupboard. A long embroidered dress on a dummy and a suit of armor, standing up as if it had a man inside it, startled him and he closed the door quickly. Remembering what Lisl Pring had said, he was deterred from saying anything to Mrs. Goldsworthy about scotties as dogs coveted for their pathos factor or bed-warming value.

The tall dosser with the beard and the Oxbridge accent passed him as he walked up Albany Street. This, at least, was one that didn’t smell. Caught short one morning, Bean had tied his dogs up to the railings and popped into the public convenience just off the Broad Walk. The tall one had been in there, strip-washing himself and drying his hair under one of the hand dryers. Bean hadn’t spoken to him and he didn’t now. He looked the other way. These people
were a health hazard. Who knew
why
he’d been washing?

The young lady that was house-sitting Charlotte Cottage looked a bit peaky this afternoon. She was wearing black, which meant little on its own, but she had someone in there Bean recognized as one of the undertakers from a firm in the Marylebone Road. His curiosity, always active, quickened.

As he took Gushi from her, he said in his most respectful tone, “No bad news of Sir Stewart and Lady Blackburn-Norris, I hope, miss?”

She wasn’t the sort to pin your ears back and he despised her for her gentleness.

“Oh, no, no,” she said in a sad abstracted way. “I’m sure they’re fine. I had a card from Costa Rica.”

Bean decided not to pursue it. He wasn’t interested in her personal tragedies. He hustled the dogs up to the Gloucester Gate and let them off on the broad expanses beyond the Parsi’s fountain. The park was as crowded as he had expected, young people lying about on the grass in various stages of undress, though the weather was far from hot and the sun kept going in. Charlie was the most friendly and uninhibited of the dogs and it brought Bean a good deal of amusement to see him bound up to some of those cuddling couples and poke his nose into their crotches and bottoms. They shrieked and cursed him. Gushi and Marietta found a picnic party and Marietta ran off into the bushes with half a Swiss roll. Usually, Bean preferred the park to be deserted, but this was the next best thing, a real crowd, most of whom seemed irritated and incommoded by the activities of dogs.

Even the sight of the woman walker with her orderly troop strolling the long path that bisects the park couldn’t entirely dispel his mood of cheerfulness. It was payday. He would collect from everyone on the way back, as he always did on Saturdays.

The undertaker had left by the time he took Gushi back. The young lady’s eyes were red. Either she’d been crying or it was conjunctivitis.
He reminded her he needed paying, and she actually apologized to him when she handed over the notes. With one hand Mrs. Goldsworthy pulled McBride into the house and with the other thrust his money at him. It sounded as if she had a drinks party on the go, which Bean thought decadent at five-fifteen on a summer afternoon. He’d have bared his teeth at Lisl Pring if he hadn’t relied on her custom, her goodwill, and the money she owed him. She came to the door in shorts and a halter top, skinny midriff bare as the day she was born, and a fellow behind her also in shorts with his arms round her waist.

Mr. Barker-Pryce stank of cigars so badly that even the dog flinched. He counted out Bean’s money very slowly and then, like a bank cashier, did it all over again. Bean had to tug at the notes to extract them from the nicotine-stained fingers.

He said, “Thank you very much, sir,” and the door was shut smartly in his face.

Digging out the key from under the new wads of money, he let himself into the gardens of Park Square. A squirrel ran across the path no more than three feet from him and Ruby the beagle gave a great tug on the leash in pursuit of it. She nearly pulled Bean over. The borzoi growled at her and curled back his lips in much the same way as Bean did when displeased by the sight of someone or something.

In spite of the number of keys to the gardens that must be in circulation, the lawns and walks were deserted and the seats were empty. The wind had dropped, or had dropped in here in the sunlit space between tall trees. Flowers, unidentifiable by Bean, scented the air and almost masked the stench of fumes from the Marylebone Road. A blackbird sang.

The grass was not worn away by many feet and there was no litter to disfigure the walks or overflow from bins.

A pity dogs were not allowed to run free in here. If they were he’d never go into the park again. He made his way down the steep
walled path to the tunnel, Boris and Ruby padding side by side ahead of him.

He never came down this path without a frisson of tension. His muscles always flexed and he had to keep his hands from tightening into clenched fists. But there was no sign of the key man; the tunnel was empty as it almost always was. And it was never dark at this hour, even in the middle, but invariably quite adequately lit with natural light from both ends. A momentary nasty idea came then, that the key man might be waiting at the other end, outside, just round the corner, and would step out, glittering and clinking, to fill the tunnel mouth as he reached it.

But he gave no thought to what might be behind him and was almost at the other end, having heard no footfalls, no indrawn breath, when something struck him on the crown of his head. It was like hitting his head on the beams of a low ceiling or the lintel of a door. But rather worse, for he staggered and fell over, first to his knees, then sprawled on his back. There was a moment of darkness with dazzlement, a seeing of stars, tailed comets and satellites whizzing across a black sky, and in it he must have relinquished his hold on the leash.

Bean thought he felt a hand fumbling in the pocket of his bomber jacket. He groaned and made feeble movements. Then he did hear footsteps, running away, back into Park Square. He sat up. His baseball cap had fallen off, but it had been on his head when he was struck, and Bean had no doubt it had saved him from worse damage. Gingerly, he felt his scalp and looked at his fingers. There was no blood. He hated the idea of falling and wondered if he could have broken something. Osteoporosis was not confined to elderly ladies, he had read in a health magazine.

His camera! It was gone. For a moment he thought that perhaps for once he had left it at home, but he knew its strap had been round his neck when he took the money from Barker-Pryce. As for his keys … They had been in his jeans pocket, the key to York Terrace,
the keys to Charlotte Cottage and Lisl Pring’s and the one to these gardens. He ran his hand down the side of his leg, feeling for the ridges of metal, then thrust his hand inside. The keys were all there, but the pocket of his bomber jacket was empty. The wad of notes from four of his clients was gone and with it the best part of two weeks’ retirement pension. Bean’s stomach turned over. It was just as if his stomach had dropped onto the floor and done a somersault, turned itself over its heels.

At any rate he could get up. His legs were all in one piece. And he could see. The blow hadn’t detached his retinas, which was another thing his extensive medical reading had told him could happen. The two dogs were gone. Bean told himself they couldn’t get out of the gardens and dismissed wild imaginings of the two of them under the wheels of container lorries in the Marylebone Road. In vain he called them, his voice weak and reedy.

Of course he had to go looking for them himself. Boris he found rolling on the rotting corpse of a pigeon and Ruby, still attached to Boris by the leash, was running round in angry circles. Wearily he picked up the leash, his head throbbing.

One thing was for sure, he refused to go down the steps. When the Cornells’ housekeeper appeared in the area he shouted at her that if she didn’t open the front door he would leave Boris tied to the railings.

“What’s got into you?” she said.

“I’ve been mugged, that’s what’s got into me. Open the front door, Valerie. I’m not feeling at all well. I’ve probably got concussion.” After rather a long while the front door was opened. Bean saw white carpet, gilded furniture, and red lilies in a Venetian glass bowl. He unclipped the leash and Boris entered the house, as if he always went that way, padding silently, to push a door open with his long nose.

“I don’t have to remind you my remuneration is due, do I, Valerie?”

It was appalling to think of the sum that had been taken from him. He would have to plunder his savings. And the camera. Why had he never thought to insure the camera? He put up one hand to massage the lump that was swelling up on his scalp. The housekeeper came back with his money in an envelope. She seemed to be keying herself up to say something unpleasant.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” said Bean.

“And when you do, I’ll thank you to call me Miss Conway!”

She had gone red in the face with the effort of it. Bean shrugged, pocketed the envelope, and walked home to York Terrace. If you lost consciousness, however briefly, it was concussion and you were supposed to go to the doctor. But had he lost consciousness? On the whole he thought not. As soon as he was inside he phoned the police and told them he had been assaulted and all his money stolen. An officer would call, they said. Meanwhile he should see a doctor.

“I know who my assailant is,” said Bean.

“You saw him?”

“I didn’t exactly see him but I know him. He’s a vagrant, a down-and-out, goes about all covered with keys.”

“Your own keys are missing?”

Bean admitted they were not, but he was tired of this officer sounding so bored and indifferent, and said he would come down to the police station himself.

12

M
ary had thought people would take the loss of a grandmother less seriously than, say, the death of a parent, but it had not turned out like that. Dorothea’s husband had a week’s holiday due to him and he took over her job. The Trattons in Crete saw to the arrangements for returning Frederica Jago’s body. The undertakers were helpful if grimly lugubrious. Alistair arrived and shepherded her to the registering of the death, the ordering of flowers, the passing on of the news to solicitors.