The Umbrella Murders by Roger Silverwood

Author:Roger Silverwood [Silverwood, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books thrillers and mysteries
Published: 2019-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

NINE

It was three o’clock when Angel came out of Fred Butcher’s. He checked his watch and decided that he still had time to call on Max Starr in Leeds if he got a move on. He was only twenty-four miles away; it wouldn’t take long on the M1.

At 3.40 p.m. he was scouring the side streets off The Headrow and eventually spotted an empty parking-space. Delighted, he drove on to it, parked up, locked the car door, pressed the requisite coins in the meter, and strode quickly out towards Fenton Street, using the umbrella as a walking-stick. Two minutes later he turned into the street, past a tobacconists and an office-stationery shop to a once elegant, smoke-stained stone office block called Bramah Buildings. He went through the open wooden doors into the entrance hall where he saw a long wooden sign screwed to the wall. It listed the forty-two tenants who had offices in the block. He found the name Max Starr and Son, entertainment agents, discovered that they were on the second floor, went into the old lift and pressed the button. He was soon at the appropriate door with a glass panel with the name he wanted painted in big letters across the glass. He pressed down the door-handle and entered a tiny office.

A young woman with a big bosom, mostly uncovered, was sitting at a desk banging noisily at something. A tin ashtray next to her with a cigarette burning in it was sending up a line of smoke to the brown-stained ceiling. There was a telephone at her elbow. There were two uncomfortable-looking folding chairs, a window looking out at a solicitor’s office window across the street, and another door with a glass panel with the word Private painted on the glass. The wall space was devoted to framed photographs with names underneath of entertainers of every sort. By the style of the poses and the quality of the sepia, Angel guessed that some of the photographs were more than a hundred years old. A cane waste-paper basket in the corner, and eight square yards of dark red linoleum on the floor completed the room’s inventory.

The young woman ignored his entrance. She was engrossed in printing the word complimentary across some tickets with a rubber stamp.

Angel was in a hurry. He went up to her desk and said briskly: ‘Good afternoon. I want to see Mr Starr. My name is Inspector Angel.’

She stopped the banging and looked up at him with a bored expression.

‘Are you an entertainer or a booker?’ she whined.

‘I’m a police officer,’ he said pointedly. ‘Inspector Angel.’

She gave him an unpleasant look.

‘All right. All right,’ she said and sulkily reached out for the phone.

He could hear a bell ring out in the adjoining room … and he could hear what was said.

‘What is it, Maureen?’

‘Max, there’s a man here says he’s from the police. Wants to see you.’

‘From the police?’

‘That’s what he says.’

‘Send him in, Maureen.’

Angel didn’t wait. He turned round and pressed the door-handle to the inner office.

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