John Creasey - The Toff And The Stolen Tresses

Rollison said: “I’ll take every chance that looks as if it might come off, Bill. Did you know that the firm Jepsons was involved in any way?”

“First I’ve ‘eard of it, except that one of their lorries was used yesterday morning, I meant to tell yer. My chaps saw the name on it. Could’ve bin stolen or borrowed, though. Watch out, Mr. Ar.”

“Thanks, Bill,” Rollison said.

Ten minutes later, he delivered the list at Jepson Buildings, and went from there to the barber’s where Jimmy Jones had had his hair cut. Two chairs were full, but a bright-faced Italian-looking man was standing idle and hopeful. Rollison saw the Hair Stylist and some of the competition entry forms, took several of these from under the barber’s nose, then thrust the photographs of Wallis and Clay under the man’s nose.

“Ever cut this man’s hair?” he asked, and a pound note appeared as if by magic in his hand.

The barber took one look at the photographs, and backed away.

“No, I haven’t! I have nevair seen heem!” Fear was in his voice, the kind that Wallis always engendered.

The other barbers swore that they had never seen Wallis or Clay, either, but Rollison did not believe them.

They might be made to talk, but that could wait until everything else failed.

A little after one o’clock, Rollison reached Donny’s. A tall, elderly man wearing a cap to cover a completely bald head, a grey polo sweater and a pair of old, patched but spotless grey flannels, was waiting outside.

“You got that note for Bill, Mr. Ar?”

“Yes, Micky. How are you keeping?”

“Oh, I don’t get no worse,” the man said, wrinkling his big nose, “and I don’t get no better. I can still walk.” He smiled and turned and hobbled off, a Bill Ebbutt pensioner suffering grievously from rheumatoid arthritis.

Rollison went into the shop.

Obviously it was very busy. Machines hummed, each chair in sight through open doors was occupied, smartly-dressed and well-made-up girls were flitting about. It was equally obvious that there was tension here. The queen of yesterday was not behind the desk; another girl was wearing a turban round her head, almost as if she had just had her hair washed; but Donny would not allow the staff or a customer to sit like that behind the cash desk.

Rollison said: “Good morning. Is Mr. Sampson in?”

The girl didn’t answer at once, but stared with her eyes narrowed, her lips set tightly; the way that Ada might have looked had he met her this morning; or Stella Wallis, last night. It seemed a long time before she spoke.

“Why don’t you go back to your part or London and forget the slumming?” she asked bitterly.

“I’d prefer to see Donny,” Rollison said mildly.

“He doesn’t want to see you. None of us wants to see you any more. If you hadn’t put your big nose in, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“What wouldn’t have happened?” asked Rollison in the same mild voice, but now his heart was beginning to thump again: there seemed no end to the trouble that came without him knowing.

She snatched off the towelling turban and showed her fair hair, cropped close to the scalp. A woman without hair could look more naked than a nude.

“Now perhaps you’re satisfied,” she said viciously. “If you hadn’t—”

“I’m not satisfied by a long way,” Rollison told her softly. “Are you another of Donny’s daughters?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am, and I’ve talked to you quite long enough.” She twisted the turban back expertly, and became a normal woman again. “It’s happened to Leah and it’s happened to me. Don’t tell me you don’t know why.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Because you came to question Donny,” the girl said with the same bitterness. She leaned forward and pointed a red-tipped finger at him. “Because someone thinks Donny could help you, and they’ve got to make sure he doesn’t. They cut Leah’s hair off and then they cut off mine, just to make sure he keeps his mouth shut. I’m his third daughter, if you really want to know: I’m Lila. I don’t know what else they told Donny, but they threatened him with a lot worse than this if he has anything more to do with you. So why don’t you go and buy yourself a long holiday?”

Two customers were coming out, and they stood listening. Another coming in, stopped to stare. The machines whirred busily. Someone was talking in one of the cubicles, traffic passed noisily outside.

Then Donny appeared.

He looked older even than he had yesterday, and much more lined. There was sadness in his fine amber eyes and sadness in his gentle voice, too. He gazed with that familiar compassion at his daughter Lila, then turned to Rollison and said gravely:

“You must forgive Lila, she is so upset that she doesn’t know what she is saying. I will gladly talk to you, but I cannot help you. I have no idea why such a thing as this should happen, no idea at all.”

He did not smile; he looked saint-like, the kind of man to whom a lie would be not simply abhorrent but almost impossible.

But was he lying?

His daughter said with tears in her eyes: “You’re crazy! You ought to kick him out.”

“I’ll go without being kicked when I know where you get the hair for your wigs and toupees,” Rollison said to Donny. “How about it?”

Donny’s expression did not change.

“Please come with me,” he said, and Rollison went, aware of the girl staring at him as if she hated him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Wig-Maker

Donny walked past the door of the room where Rollison had sat yesterday, and led the way through a doorway at the end of the passage, and then up a short flight of steps. The paintwork was a more ordinary cream colour here, but the place was spotless; Donny did not just put up a front. As Rollison followed him along a narrow landing, seeing the bowed shoulders beneath the snow-white barber’s coat, he found himself trying to reconcile two conflicting things.

Donny was rich. He owned dozens, perhaps hundreds of shops. He owned a great deal of valuable property. Yet he worked in one of his own shops, cutting hair for customers, actively managing the whole concern. He might have been expected to work from an office, and to leave all the donkey work to others.

What was the explanation?

Was he so rich as Grice had made out?

Or was he a miser?

He opened a door into a long, narrow room, with a north light, a room which might have served excellently for an artist’s studio; but instead of canvases round the wall and paintings dotted all about, and instead of easel and palette and brushes, there were wigs and tresses of hair.

One long bench beneath the north light had at least twenty model heads on it, some bald and shiny, looking strangely like Lila without her turban, some with complete wigs on them, some with partly finished wigs, some with hair hanging down, some with hair brushed upwards, Edwardian fashion. Hanging from racks along the wall were tresses of hair of a great variety of sizes and shades and colours—from the fairest to the darkest, like the hair which had been fastened round the bricks last night. There were some small pots of liquid which looked like a kind of glue, and in a corner were several ovens; Rollison could not even guess their purpose.

Donny saw the question in his eyes.

“They are for dyed hair,” he explained. “We subject all dyed hair to the severest tests, to try to make sure that it doesn’t change under the most intemperate climatic conditions. It isn’t always possible to be absolutely sure, of course.” He showed some screens, not unlike the one on which Ada Jepson had her tapestry but threaded with hair, as if this was going to be the silkiest tapestry of all. “That is our matching screen,” Donny explained. “We take samples of hair from the customer’s head, and match it up—that is, for people who want a little extra help, or are balding, or wear a toupee.”