Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

“Cut,” says pop.

So Luke cuts — about halfway down the deck (though knowing Lukey I should think it was exactly halfway down). Miraculously, it seems, old Virgil’s hands had gotten themselves rid of any shakes, and he deals the cards out firm and fine: one for Luke, one for himself; another for Luke, and another for himself. For a few moments each man left them lying there on the top of the table. Then Luke picks up his own — first the one, and then the other.

“Stick!” he says, and his voice is a bit hoarse.

Every eye in the room was now on Virgil’s as he turned over his first card — a seven; then the second card — a ten. Seventeen! And all you’ve got to do, my friends, is to add on three — and that’s a handsome little twenty, and the whole room was mumbling and murmuring in approval.

Every eye now switches to Luke, and in the sudden tense silence the cards are slowly turned: first a king, and then — ye gods! — an ace! And as Lukey smiles down at that beautiful twenty-oner the audience groaned like they always do when its favourite show-jumper knocks the top off the last fence.

And where, my friends, do we go from there? Well, I’ll tell you. It was Lucy who started it all immediately Luke had left. She pushed her way through the on-lookers and plunged her hand deep down between those glorious breasts of hers to clutch her evening’s tips.

“Mr. Perkins, isn’t it? I know it isn’t all that much; but — but if it’ll help, please take it.” About seven or eight dollars, it was, no more — but, believe me, it bore its fruit two-hundred-fold. It was me who was next. I’d taken about thirty-five dollars on the coach and (once more hitching the old briefcase higher under my arm) I fished it all out of my back pocket and placed it a-top of Lucy’s crumpled offerings.

“Mr. Perkins,” I said sombrely. “You should’ve been on my coach, old friend.” That’s all I said.

As for Virgil, he said nothing. He just sat back all crumpled up like before, with Minny sobbing silently beside him. I reckon he looked as if he couldn’t trust himself to say a single word. But it didn’t matter. All the audience was sad and sullenly sympathetic — and, as I said, they’d had their fill of Louis’s vintage wines. And I’ve got to hand it to them. Twenty dollars; another twenty dollars; a fifty; a few tens; another twenty; another fifty — I watched them all as these clean-living, God-fearing folk forked something from their careful savings. And I reckon there wasn’t a single man-jack of them who didn’t make his mark upon that ever-mounting pile. But still Virgil said nothing. When finally he stumbled his way to the exit, holding Minny in one hand and a very fat pile of other people’s dollars in the other, he turned round as if he was going to say something to all his very good friends. But still the words wouldn’t come, it seemed; and he turned once more and left the cocktail bar.

I woke late the next morning, and only then because Luke was leaning over me, gently shaking me by the shoulder.

“Louis says he wants to see you at half-past ten.”

I lifted my left arm and focused on the wrist-watch: already five to ten.

“You all right, Danny?” Luke was standing by the door now (he must have had a key for that!) and for some reason he didn’t look mightily happy.

“Sure, sure!”

“Half-past, then,” repeated Luke, and closed the door behind him.

I still felt very tired, and I was conscious that the back of my head was aching — and that’s unusual for me. Nothing to drink the night before — well, only the odd orange juice that Lucy had... orange juice...? I fell to wondering slightly, and turned to look at the other side of the bed, where the sheet was neatly turned down in a white hypotenuse. Lucy had gone — doubtless gone early; but then Lucy was always sensible and careful about such things...

I saw my face frowning as I stood in front of the shaving-mirror; and I was still frowning when I took the suit off the hanger in the wardrobe and noticed that the briefcase was gone. But I’d have been frowning even more if the briefcase hadn’t gone; and as I dressed, my head was clearing nicely. I picked up the two thick sealed envelopes that had nestled all night under my pillow, put them, one each, into the pockets of my overcoat, and felt happy enough when I knocked on the door of Louis’s private suite and walked straight in. It was ten thirty-two.

There were the usual six chairs round the oblong table, and four of them were taken already: there was Luke, and there was Barty; then there was Minny; and at the head of the table, Louis himself — a Louis still, doubtless, no more than four-ten, four-eleven in his built-up shoes, but minus that garishly striped blazer now; minus, too, that shock of silvery hair which the previous evening had covered that large, bald dome of his.

“You’re late,” he says, but not unpleasantly. “Sit down, Danny.” So I sat down, feeling like a little boy in the first grade. (But I usually feel like that with Louis.)

“You seen Lucy?” asks Minny, as Barty pours me a drop of Irish.

“Lucy? No — have you tried her room?”

But no one seemed much willing to answer that one, and we waited for a few minutes in silence before Louis spoke again.

“Danny,” he says, “you’ll remember that when we brought you into our latest li’l operation a few months back I figured we’d go for about a quarter of a million before we launched out on a new one?”

I nodded.

“Well, we’re near enough there now as makes no odds — a fact perhaps you may yourself be not completely unaware of? After all, Danny, it was one o’ your jobs to take my li’l Lucy down to the bank on Mondays, now wasn’t it? And I reckon you’ve got a pretty clear idea of how things are.”

I nodded again, and kept on looking him straight in the eyes.

“Well, it was never no secret from any of us — was it? — that I’d be transferrin’ this li’l investment o’ mine over to Luke and Bartholomew here as soon as they — well, as soon as they showed me they was worthy.”

I was nodding slowly all the time now; but he’d left something out. “Lucy was goin’ to be in it, too,” I said.

“You’re very fond of my Lucy, aren’t you?” says Minny quietly.

“Yep. I’m very fond of her, Minny.” And that was the truth.

“It’s not bin difficult for any of us to see that, old girl, now has it?” Louis turned to Minny and patted her affectionately on the arm. Then he focuses on me again. “You needn’t have no worries about my li’l daughter, Danny. No worries at all! Did it never occur to you to wonder just why I christened this latest li’l investment o’ mine as the ‘Lulu-Bar Motel’?”

For a few seconds I must have looked a little puzzled, but my head was clearing nicely with the whisky, and I suddenly saw what he meant. Yes! What a deep old devil our Louis was! The Lu -cy Lu -ke, Bar -tholomew Motel...

But Louis was still speaking: “I only asked you down this mornin’, Danny, because I was hopin’ to wind it all up here and now — and to let you know how much I’ve bin aware o’ your own li’l contribution. But — well, it’s all tied up in a way with Lucy, isn’t it? And I reckon” (he looked at Luke and Bart) “I reckon we’d better call another li’l meeting tonight? About eight? All right?”

It seemed all right to all of us, and I got up to go.

“You off to town, Danny?” asks Louis, eyeing the overcoat.

“Yep.” That’s all I said. Then I left them there and caught the bus to the station.

I’d always noticed it before: whenever I’d felt a bit guilty about anything it was as if I sensed that other people somehow seemed to know . But that’s behind us now. And, anyway, it had been Lucy’s idea originally — not mine. She’d needed me, of course, for devising the cheque and forging Louis’ signature — for though I’m about as ham-fisted with a deck of cards as an arthritic octopus, I got my own particular specialism. Yes, sir! And Lucy trusted me, too, because I’d been carrying all that lovely money — 240,000 dollars of it! — all neatly stacked in five-hundred bills, all neatly enveloped and neatly sealed — why, I’d been carrying it all around with me in the old briefcase for two whole days! And Lucy — Lucy, my love! — we shall soon be meeting at the ticket barrier on number one platform — and then be drifting off together quietly in the twilight...