The Chelsea Murders by Lionel Davidson Read Free Book Online

now.
    ‘Okay,’ Artie said. He left Steve and went in right away.
    They were all eating duck inside.
    Serge said, ‘ Ah, le poète en personne. La muse est parmi nous’.
    ‘Que pouvons-nous lui offrir? ’ Marc said. ‘ Qu’est-ce qui va inspirer son âme et son palais aujourd’ hui? ’
    Artie told them all what they could do.
    Steve was crossing the Albert Bridge in a cab. He got off at the other side of the river and hurried into the residential hostel.
    He wasn’t, strictly speaking, entitled to this favoured accommodation , but he’d managed to keep himself listed as a student.
    He let himself into his flat and switched on the light. He had left the door locked that led to his bathroom and bedroom and he unlocked it and switched the light on there, too.
    Frank stirred unhealthily in the bed.
    ‘Get up now, Frank,’ Steve said.

7
    ‘C HRIST . Must you?’ Frank said.
    He was shielding his eyes from the light.
    ‘Get up,’ Steve said, and waited till Frank did.
    Frank groped first for his glasses and put them on. Then the long thin length of him articulated out of the bed. He just had his shirt on. He looked awful.
    ‘God,’ he said. He had to clutch at the bed.
    Steve didn’t help him. ‘Take a cold shower,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, don’t be so fucking beastly.’
    ‘Have a wash, then. I’ll make coffee.’
    He went and did this and presently Frank appeared in a robe.
    ‘Here we are,’ Steve said.
    Frank shakily sat and sipped the hot, very black coffee. He looked about sixty. He was thirty. Steve alertly watched him.
    ‘How do you feel?’ he said.
    ‘Daisy-like. Flower-fresh.’
    ‘Do you want to talk?’
    Frank smacked his foul mouth a little. ‘Do I?’ he said. ‘I don’t know. What’s been happening in the world?’
    ‘Germaine is all over the front pages, and the back pages, and other pages.’
    ‘Well, she made it,’ Frank said. ‘She wanted to.’
    ‘What did you do to her?’
    ‘I didn’t do anything. And stop looking like a lawyer.’
    ‘They say she was strangled, Frank.’
    ‘Oh, God, do they?’
    ‘Yup.’ He poured more coffee. ‘What happened?’
    Frank was assimilating this.
    He said dazedly, ‘I was in the King’s Road. Going to the night shooting. And there was old Germaine, outside The Gold Key. She said she was going to the river.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Well, I don’t know why,’ Frank said pettishly.
    ‘But you went with her.’
    ‘Did I?’ Frank said. ‘I think I did. Yes. Down those pissy streets. World’s End. That’s right. That’s what we did do.’
    ‘Frank, had you had a fix?’ Steve said gloomily.
    ‘What if I had?’
    ‘All right, then what?’
    ‘Then we got there and saw the lights at the other side, the film lights, and I said didn’t she want to come and see, and she said she couldn’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘So you went.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Where?’
    Frank looked round the room. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘I wish I wasn’t here.’
    ‘When you left Germaine, Frank,’ Steve said patiently, ‘you went somewhere. You were going to cross the bridge to those lights at the other side. Did you do that?’
    ‘I think,’ Frank said slowly, ‘I went home. To bed.’
    ‘And in the morning you got up.’
    ‘Well, of course I did. I had a lecture.’
    ‘I don’t think you gave it, Frank.’
    ‘No, I wish you’d stop this. Of course I didn’t give the fucking lecture. I told you that.’
    Steve blinked.
    ‘Why didn’t you?’ he said.
    ‘Are you imbecilic, or what? A kid on the bus had this transistor . I told you. They do news items between the noise. And I suddenly heard Germaine’s name and something about the police, so I got off and bought a paper. It was the early one, full of racehorses and greyhounds. But in the stop press it said she’d been drowned. It blew me out of my mind. I suppose I looked a bit funny.’
    ‘That’s right, you did,’ Steve said. ‘Frank, you walked a long way past the art