One Shoe Gumshoe

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely unintentional.

Part of the Wine & Old Lace event, with a few literals corrected.

PROLOGUE

WE walked slowly, almost reluctantly from the warm and stifling waiting room across to Platform 7, to where the puffing engine had just dragged its train of carriages into the Paddington terminus from the countryside. The air was damp with mist, a thin fog that smelled strongly of ash and deposited a greasy, smoky film over everything the fine mist touched.

We stood waiting out of everyone's way as the train disgorged its sardine-packed cargo of mostly grey pinstriped-suited passengers onto the paved platform, and we watched them as they hurried further away from their relatively safe houses in the capital city's distant suburbs, each carrying their cardboard boxes of gas masks over their shoulders into the terrified city. Towards their darkened workplaces the herd of daily visitors went, to join its native inhabitants who were only now beginning to wake and wearily emerge from the underground shelters after another disturbed night of intensive German bombing.

The beautiful lady standing next to me tucked her arm into mine and pulled herself close, as if to assuage the cold, grey fog seeping into our bones after the steamy hothouse of the railway station café, where we had sat awhile as we awaited the arrival of the first train.

The timetables, so reliable before the war I assured her, now ran as a consequence of either the Luftwaffe or the whim of the War Office and their priority use for troop movements.

She clutched a small handbag in one hand, also holding taut the shoulder strap of her gas mask. All the rest of her luggage, consisting of two matching leather suitcases and a large trunk, had already been surrendered to the guardianship of the Great Western Railway porters and was no doubt being loaded into the baggage car under the care of the guard, while we waited for the wave of incoming passengers to wash away like a tidal surge into the city.

Bouyed by her touch, I felt little of the usual constant imaginary ache in my missing right foot as we walked slowly together towards the First Class carriage where she would recline for the first part of her long journey homeward, from Paddington to the Welsh ferry, that would take her across the Irish Sea, regularly swept for mines and U-boats, to the safety of neutral Ireland, one of the few European countries not yet drawn into conflict with Hitler's all-conquering Nazi Germany and its aim of world domination.

From western Ireland she would fly by Flying Boat back over Greenland, landing at Newfoundland and Canada before landing back home in the United States, a country still at peace in this world torn apart with hate, violence and irrational racial intolerance.

I was sure that, in the seclusion of her carriage, her mind would be full of the events of the past two weeks, as would mine as I returned through the Underground train and London red double-decker bus to my modest lodgings in Mile End, in the East of London, my town for a quarter century, ever since being released from hospital in 1916.

I opened the heavy door of the train carriage for her. As expected, the carriage was empty, few travelled First Class away from London at this early hour, still barely dawn. We faced each other by the pair of steps leading into the warm interior. I tried my hardest to smile as if this was not our final farewell and knowing that we would most likely never meet again.

Our last ten days together had been intense and emotional and I knew that I would miss her terribly, knowing, accepting as inevitable, that she would barely ever spare me a thought again, in the excitement of the gay life she led, culminating in her displays upon the bright-lit silver screen, in comparison to the indistinct grey foggy background of my mean existence. I cleared my throat in preparation of finally saying goodbye, but before I could open my mouth to speak she pulled me tightly to her, gripping both the lapels of my trench coat with one hand, the other hand spread behind and enveloping my head, and whispered "Love ya!" in my better ear before she pressed her fully ripe and rouged lips against mine.

I was in a daze, even after she pulled away from me and sprang up sprightly into the waiting carriage. All too soon, the carriage door was slammed shut behind her by me, reacting like a penny arcade automaton might. The guard's whistle blew shrilly to the new engine coupled at the front of the train, its sharp shriek overcoming the muffling fog. The train started to move down the platform, taking up the slake one by one of the reluctant carriages behind.

"But..." I stuttered through the open window, trying to keep up with the train, using legs that never worked too well at the best of times and now didn't seem to want to work for me at all any more after that searing kiss.

"Be seein' ya!" she said from the open window, smiling, her bright red lipstick smeared by her eager mashing of our lips in farewell, waving at me with one gloved hand, while she held on tight to the door frame as the departing train subjected the carriages to a succession of bumping jerks as they were pulled and bullied into motion and gathered speed taking her away from me, to another continent, a wide and deadly ocean away.

I watched helplessly, as the steam from below the carriages enveloped me in white vapour, and the engine chugged, dragging its precious cargo behind it out of the station. For a while I stood there as petrified as Lot's unnamed Wife, long after the train had departed, carrying Mary with it, with now nothing at all for me to see in the fog. But my mind was full of the image of her leaving, her smiling face and sad eyes perfectly framed by the open carriage window.

CHAPTER ONE

Ten days ago

WHEN I emerged from the Mile End tube station at ten to seven upon that icy cold early spring morning on 29th January 1941, I could see the black smoke rising from Wapping and Limehouse to the south west and south, and rather lighter smoke coming from Spitalfields to my west. The smell of burning was less intense this morning, the air still, the late winter ground frost testimony to the clear skies that had drawn to London yet another intense bombing raid from German-occupied Europe during the night.

According to my late father's trusty old fob watch, I pulled from my waistcoat pocket to check, I had ten and a half minutes to walk what was normally a six-minute journey in order to make my early appointment at seven o'clock on schedule.

Plenty of time, I had thought at the outset. But as I emerged from the tube station I could see we had also had a light dusting of snow overnight and the ticket guard announced that it was as low as 22 degrees or ten degrees of frost, "so look out for ice", he called out as a warning when I hobbled past him.

I soon found out that two of the sticks of bombs had landed in terrace housing in Southern Grove, leaving bricks and rubble strewn across the road directly across my route and this meant that, picking my way through the debris, my progress was exeedingly slow.

I regretted now that I hadn't carried a walking stick when I went out last night, mostly because of my damned stupid pride. As a consequence, I didn't reach my office in Hamlets Lane until five past seven.

So, I was late for my appointment and, due to my hurrying and the rough terrain, my missing right foot was bloody well killing me.

"Mornin', Mr Onslow," the old doorman greeted me with a cheery wave, adding with a nod of his grizzled head upwards and a knowing smile on his lips, "there's a young lady in yer office. She was waiting outside when I turned up, so I let 'er in an' lit yer fire for ya, 'bout 10 minutes since."

"Thanks, Bert."

I turned to climb the first of the three flights to my icy garret office, but Bert couldn't let me go without a final remark, "She's a right tutti that one, Guv. Her old man must be bleedin' fore an' aft, ter go cheatin' on 'er an' risk losin' everyfink over anovva ord'nry bit o' skirt! She definitely ain't nuffink like ord'nry, Guv."

I just waved my hat at him. Bert was at least thirty years older than my 42 years of age, but still as sharp as they come, or at least he was usually right on the button when it came to visitors to the various and diverse offices in the old office building. This time he had assumed that my new client was a wronged wife wanting to hire me to catch her "daft" husband in the act of his infidelity, usually with a girl younger and prettier than my client usually was. That was my usual cut of clientele, to be honest, but Bert was well out of his crease to a full toss on this one.

I knew that my potential client's husband was a volunteer in the military of a country no longer his nationality and had gone absent without leave, in unusual circumstances. I also understood that she just wanted to know the wherefore and why, and not yet aware if there was any "who with" involved in his disappearance.

As I laboured one by one up those 39 painful steps to my tiny office, I recalled our brief telephone conversation from last night.

***

The fog had come rolling in from the river as soon as it grew dark and the air was developing quite a nip in the air after a clear, dry and partly sunny winter's day. Due to the war, the public telephone on the corner of Mile End Road and Eric Street has become my office telephone from 6.15 to 6.30 the five weekday evenings each week, and had been thus for the past four months.

'Private Dicks' in London at the height of the Blitz, during the winter of 1940 to spring 1941, didn't always have the luxury of their own telephone line, or even shared party line. At least not a Dick who had been bombed out of two different offices in the previous five months and the military demanded first dibs on every new telephone line that was available, 'for the war effort'.

Besides, business in my line of work was so bad that, if truth be told, I could no longer afford the line rental, and incoming calls on the public call box cost me nothing. I was beginning to find that few potential clients cared much about such trifling details as spousal infidelity when they were being blown to smithereens every night and expected the invincible German Nazi panzers to invade on the very next tide under cover of darkness.

I had been so deep in my thoughts that evening that I had almost missed the call, and only answered the ringing telephone on the fifth ring, "Mile End 551," I answered automatically.

"I almost gave up ringin' yah," the woman at the other end of the line said rather tetchily, "Are yah'll the discrete private detective they call 'One Shoe Onslow'?"

I was well aware of my nickname at the Yard, so I was long past taking enough offence at the remark to slam the receiver down. Besides, most of my work came from personal recommendation and I needed the work, so I didn't hesitate to confirm my identity to the female caller.

"Yes, Madam, I am Mr Onslow. How may I help you?"

I almost straightened my back as if back on parade, one time the Army or until recently the Metropolitan Police. Her voice was unmistakably American, but carried with it an air of authority, and therefore a complete expectation of the immediate and satisfactory service of her yet to be specified requirements. This was no retiring mousey housewife in denial of her husband's moral shortcomings or depression because she suspected her husband of walking all over her, by having an affair of the heart, without considering the consequential damage to his own wife's heart.

"I am Marcia la Mare...." she started. Then she paused momentarily, like the name was supposed to mean something to absolutely everyone she thus introduced herself to. Maybe to others her name did mean something, but it rang absolutely no bells at all with me. I did regularly read the "society" pages of all the British national papers in the Public Library, and some of them were clients or potential clients at one time or another, but the name Marcia la Mare meant nothing at all to me in any social context.

I replied, "And I am Edgar Onslow, Madam, a private investigator. How may I assist you?"

"You do know who I am, don't yah, hey?" There was more than a hint of surprise in her voice.

"I understand that you're either a Miss, or more likely, a Mrs Marcia la Mare and I assume you are calling me to assist you with the investigation into a problem you might be having involving your husband? Perhaps he goes missing without adequate explanation from time to time and you want to know where he goes and who he spends time with?"

"Yeah, wanting someone to assist me with an investigation into a missing husband ... yeah, I guess that's exactly who I am," she replied, "Look, mah husband has been missin' here in London for four weeks now, but the damned authorities around here can't seem to help me none, so I need a Private Eye to find him, see. I spoke to some detective guys in New Scotland Yard earlier today and they told me that yah were the best possible unofficial investigation help I could rustle up round here at a moment's notice. They gave me yah number and told me that ya could only be reached in the early evenin' 'bout this time, a quarter after six."

"That's right. I find my work mostly starts out in the early evenings and sometimes takes me extremely late into the night."

"I guess that is the nature of yah business, Sir. Well, Mr Onslow, may I see yah later tonight about my ahhh ... problem? I assure yah it's a matter of some urgency."

"I'm afraid that I am already preparing to leave the office to work on a case tonight," I replied, "What about meeting up tomorrow morning?"

I was working too, despite how quiet business had become recently. The last two Tuesday nights I had been trailing an erring Colonel and his cute waitress girlfriend from a restaurant for dinner, a hotel for dancing and, after dancing, with absolute certainly, they would retire to one of the rooms the hotel had available to rent for an hour or two at the most. I knew that by the time I had negotiated a key from the night porter, so I could catch them in the act, it would be well past midnight if I was lucky. Sometimes the client, in this case the Honourable Lady Bletchley-Havering, one of the ancient and wealthy Sussex Haverings, wanted to be present at the moment the adulterers were discovered in flagrente. This meant a lot more hanging around by both the photographer and me while she was brought to the scene in her chauffeur-driven Bentley from whatever fancy West End hotel she was staying at for the night.

I didn't know it at the time that I was speaking to Miss la Mare about my prior engagement, of course, but it was the Luftwaffe that intervened between eleven and midnight so that my night was not only wasted, I also lost my only current paying client following a direct hit on her Bentley by 500 pounds of high explosive. A divorce from the dissolute Colonel was no longer necessary or, in fact, even legally possible, and I was unlikely to have my bill, including the photographer's time, settled by either the Colonel or his late wife's own vast estate.

"Okay?!" Miss la Mare on the line snapped, clearly frustrated by my negative response to granting her an immediate audience, "When is the earliest possible time that I can see yah at yah offices in the mornin'?"

I thought that if the same pattern as the last several nights similar to this repeated itself, I would be emerging from an Underground station about 6.30 in the morning and I could be at any one of the stations up the West End, then a bus ride home ... "Seven o'clock," I told the caller, "my office address is 67C Mile End Road, Mile End, any London cabbie will find it for you."

"Thanks, Mr Onslow, I will see yah there tomorrow, Wednesday morning, at 7 sharp, then."

Click, went the telephone as the receiver was replaced in the cradle at the other end.

Of course, I immediately called the Yard to gather information about the caller and what the facts were regarding her missing husband. A few of my old colleagues still worked at New Scotland Yard, several of them feeling that they owed me the odd favour from time to time. My old Sergeant, Bob Cummings, now promoted to Detective Inspector, was still in. He told me that he was just about to ring me about Miss la Mare.

Apparently, Miss Marcia la Mare had expected me to know that she was not only a well-known actress but currently one of the hottest properties that one of the larger Hollywood Studios had on their books. Her missing husband was a certain Captain Bradford Gold, an even more famous Hollywood actor, producer and director, a former pilot recently transferred from Bomber Command to a squadron operating fighters over south east England, where he had been a Flight Lieutenant. But, Bob said, this posting may well have been a ruse by the Military, as Cummings believed he was actually transferred to Army Intelligence and was so well thought of that he had been promoted to an Army Intelligence Captain in the last four months. This additional information was all off the record, of course.

The trouble was, that this Captain Gold was now missing, not exactly in action, but had last been seen in the East End of London whilst working on an intelligence operation about a month before, and was now several weeks late in reporting to his superiors.

The actor was an American citizen, but was born in the East End of London around 1895 and emigrated with his parents to the West Coast of America when he was about ten years old. Gold's family had made a fortune over there in the import export business in silver-plated cutlery and tableware and invested heavily in the motion picture industry during its infancy, well before the boom in that business since the early 1920s. Gold's father had thrown himself headlong into the business and invested everything he had into moving picture production and had therefore multiplied his original fortune many times over. Bradford Gold was Gold Senior's youngest son and had been indulged in film-making where he developed an enthusiasm for acting and subsequently had starred in a number of extremely popular films in the late Twenties and had been a rising star all through the Thirties until he was a major box office success.

Bob Cummings told me that the secretary in their office in the Yard had called Gold a "heart throb" and was considered a "true hero" for putting his lucrative career and his personal safety on hold to help save his old country from invasion by Nazi Germany. As soon as Britain declared war on Germany, and the United States of America decided to have nothing to do with the war, Gold had apparently been determined to take full part in the action. He had flown over the Atlantic on the earliest seaplane that he could catch. Gold had actually wangled a place on one of the trans-Atlantic mail carrying flights, between Newfoundland and Ireland, and joined the RAF as a pilot shortly after his arrival on these shores. In a press release that the film studio had issued to his adoring fans, Gold had stated that he couldn't let his old country down in their hour of need. It sounded much like a publicity stunt issued by the Gold Film Studio but, according to the AOC of his RAF station, Bob told me, he turned out to be a "damned fine pilot", and had completed a large number of successful bombing missions over enemy territory.

Bob told me that he had briefly spoken by telephone with Gold's last RAF commanding officer at a location in East Anglia. Gold been trained by the RAF on twin-engined bomber planes, in fact he actually owned a twin-engined plane in California that he regularly used to cross the North American continent to his various homes, in preference to taking the train or using chartered flights.