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Death with Blue Ribbon

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

A tall thin man in a well-cut morning suit sat at an ornate desk in his office facing two unexpected callers. He was trying to control the nervous tremors which were making his leg twitch.

'This is nothing short of blackmail!' he said in a voice which he hoped would sound firm.

One of his callers, a coarse-featured man in his middle thirties, laughed heartily. He slapped his knee and released his laughter with no inhibition. But his eyes did not laugh, the tall man noted. His eyes remained cold.

'Blackmail, eh? That's good, Mr Rowlands.'

'The name is Rolland,' said the tall man, making it sound very French.

'Now, it is. Yves Rolland. You were Ivor Rowlands not so long ago. But never mind about that. Let's get back to what we were discussing. Here are you, the owner of a very successful business. Everyone knows the Haute Cuisine Restaurant at Farringforth. Here are we, friendly callers who want to be helpful. And you talk about blackmail. I don't call that polite.'

He laughed again, less uproariously but with the same chilly fixed expression of the eyes.

'What you propose is that I should pay you protection money. Protection against what? You're the only people I need protection against!'

'Oh dear!' laughed the other who had given his name as Jimmie Rivers. 'But you've got something there, Mr Rowlands. You've stated the case in a nutshell. We supply the need for protection, as you call it, as well as a twenty-four-hour-a-day security service. That's a politer name. You need that service, Mr Rowlands, and you're going to need it a lot more.'

'It's monstrous. I shall report it to the police.'

'You really mustn't make me laugh like this. It's not good for me. The police! And what do you think they would do for you? Make a note of the matter. Ask you to report anything further. And meanwhile what should we be doing? It wouldn't look well at all for you to appear a changed man after you'd come out of hospital would it? Teeth all smashed, no nose to speak of, eyesight gone very likely — that's if there was anything to take to hospital, which I doubt. So what would you tell the police then? No, Mr Rowlands, let's talk sense. We're not begging. There are a lot of us. A lot of hungry mouths to feed. We're really giving you a chance ...'

'You're threatening to beat me up if I don't buy you off?'

'Oh dear, no. I was only just saying what might happen if you mentioned to anyone, anyone, even your wife, mind you, that we'd happened to be passing and called in for a chat. I haven't introduced my friend, by the way. This is "Razor" Gray. Mr Rowlands. Razor's not very talkative — except when he's called upon.'

The third man made no acknowledgement of the introduction but continued to regard Rolland with contemptuous hostility. He was seedy in appearance but looked as though he had strength of the steel wire kind.

'Oh no,' went on Jimmie Rivers cheerfully. 'Nothing violent about us except in cases of emergency, like when silly chatter has to be stopped. We're business men. We offer a complete security service. Security for you against any mishaps which might leave you disfigured, crippled, blind or otherwise incapacitated, and security for your business against any little trouble in your restaurant, causing inconvenience to your customers, like food poisoning and so on.'

'Food poisoning?' gasped Rolland.

'Just an illustration. Suppose someone ate something which caused sudden vomiting and made a claim for damages and that. See what I mean? Never do with a restaurant called the Haute Cuisine, would it? Or one or two coming in, like me and Razor might, and causing trouble, breakages, people hurt, when all your customers had expected was to dine quietly in a nice place like this. You know how these things might blow up if there happened to be a party of four, say, looking for trouble. You'd be covered against all that.'

'But no one makes trouble here.'

'That's not to say they wouldn't, is it? We wouldn't want you to have that sort of headache, Mr Rowlands. Ours is a very comprehensive service. Just like an insurance policy, really.'

Rolland seemed to be collecting himself for a last stand.

'And you provide the risks as well,' he said bitterly.

'Not if you were to use our service. But I haven't come to argue about it. I'm not a salesman. I'm doing you a good turn. Giving you a chance. All you have to do ...'

'Yes?'

'Is pay. Our little charges are so moderate, really, when you think of the money you're making. You can't take it with you, you know.'

Pale and hoarse, Rolland asked, 'And what are those little charges?'

'Nothing really. Fifty a week. It's chicken-feed. Only you don't want to have to pay collection charges as well, do you? So we arrange to collect it as a lump sum in advance. One grand will keep you covered for twenty weeks. Nearly five months. Think of that. You wouldn't see us again till — where are we now? January the second — not till somewhere in May. Like the swallows. Back in the Spring.'

'I won't pay it. This can't happen in England.'

Jimmie Rivers started to laugh again. To say his laugh got on Rolland's nerves was a gross understatement. Rolland's nerves were stretched about as far as they would go.

'There you go again!' Rivers said. 'Wishful thinking. They are happening, Mr Rowlands. They happen every day in restaurants like yours. Classy, you know. Menu in French. Head waiter tarted up in tails. First-class chef. It's just where they do happen.'

'But why restaurants?' cried Rolland desperately.

'Oh, not only restaurants. Gambling clubs. Hotels. Casinos. Don't you read the papers? You're one of the lucky ones. Given a chance to use our service before anything happens. We haven't even given you a frightener yet.'

'A frightener?'

'You know. A little something to show which way the wind's blowing. Headlines like Shots in Famous Restaurant. The press get these things so quickly. I think you have a wonderful opportunity. What's fifty nicker? You spend that on electricity. But there you are. I shan't try to persuade you.'

'I haven't got a thousand pounds.'

'Of course you haven't!' said Rivers genially. 'Not in the till. But there's plenty of time before the banks close. We could slip down together, couldn't we? I happen to know you have an account locally. No trouble at all. Only we should have to go at once. No point in wasting time. Razor and I have come a long way to do you this favour. We shouldn't want any messing about. Like telephoning anyone. Or chatting up the cashier at the bank. Just a quiet little transfer. Like you were drawing for wages, or New Year bonuses. All over in a minute until next May. You'd be able to sleep at night as sound as a baby. And may your restaurant continue to flourish!' he ended rhetorically.

Rolland, famous for his dictatorial behaviour with customers, the restaurateur who had earned headlines by telling a party to leave because one of them had asked for tomato ketchup with his canard pressé, a martinet with his highlypaid staff, now sat pale and sweating at his expensive desk. When he thought of the long climb into this position of wealth and authority it seemed even more fantastic that it should be threatened now by this confident and amused rogue and his sinister friend. Fantastic, yes, but it was not fantasy. All he had learned in his unscrupulous and utterly selfish career told him that he faced reality.

He looked back to his home in Woolwich and to his father, a professional waiter all his long working life, and to his own schooldays. He had not been a popular boy, having nothing, in schoolboy eyes, to justify his air of superiority. So far from feeling any indignation on his father's behalf for those years of meanly rewarded servitude, he had borrowed his life savings to start his first café and when this failed had made no attempt to repay the loan and watched his father spend the rest of his life keeping up a miserable show of respectability in conditions of semi-starvation. A series of dubious enterprises on borrowed money, tawdry little clubs full of décor and decadents, had brought him at last to acquaintance with Tony Brown in whom he recognised ability, for Tony was a born cook with a flair for artful catering. The two had decided on partnership on a fifty-fifty basis, Tony to run the kitchen of a restaurant they were to start and Rolland the business as a whole. They had planned to start in a small way and go forward cautiously.

They had actually found premises and paid a couple of thousand, supplied by Tony, for the lease when Rolland announced that he was about to marry a woman twenty years older than himself with a very large and unprotected fortune. He had bought the Fleur-de-Lys, an obscure pub thirty miles from London in a rift of unspoilt country and built onto it the splendid restaurant which he called the Haute Cuisine so that Tony, now known as Antoine, had no remedy but to become his chef at a high salary with a minute percentage of profits and no say in the business of which he was to have been part proprietor.

It was a squalid life-story but Rolland saw in it only his heroic career from modest beginnings to immense success. It was his shrewdness, his determination, his enterprise which had made him at less than forty years of age a famous restaurateur whose photograph and idealised biography had appeared in the illustrated supplement of a Sunday newspaper.

Though he had some knowledge of catering and menu language he would have puzzled a Frenchman, brought up in the tradition of real cooking, by his basic ignorance of the kitchen. But he made up for this in gastronomic arrogance and lectured his customers on wines and food, on what to drink with what, and on why his food was so much better than his rivals'. He had realised the value of a few specialities and had cashed in on one of those anomalies of taste and fashion by which scampi on a menu had become a status symbol in the English catering trade. He had been one of the first to import these mediocre shellfish frozen and had persuaded Antoine to produce a dish of them, deadened under a curried sauce with an admixture of coconut, flambé at the customer's table and called Scampi à la Rolland. It had helped to make his restaurant thrive.

Now, suddenly, today, soon after he had reached his office there had arrived out of the blue these two unwelcome callers. He had received them as he received all visitors on business, believing that they might offer him some opportunity for publicity. They had quickly disappointed his hopes and the man who called himself Jimmie Rivers had put forward his monstrous proposition as though it were a happy joke to be shared between them. But Rolland knew very surely that it was not a joke.

He tried to play it cool. He tried by his manner to show that he was not intimidated.

'And how would I know,' he asked coldly, 'that I was getting the benefits of this remarkable service you offer me?'

'You wouldn't,' said Rivers. 'You'd only know if you weren't getting it. You'd soon know that.'

'How soon?' he forced himself to ask.

'Could be tomorrow. Could be next day. But don't worry. There wouldn't be any doubt of it in your mind. That's one thing about us. We never leave any doubt in anyone's mind. Do we, Raze?'

The gentleman known as Razor Gray slowly shook his head.

Once again Rolland tried to convince himself. This was England. This could not happen here. Bank robberies, wage snatches, all that clumsy stuff, but a protection racket, as he had heard it called, that was only carried on in Chicago.

'Suppose I had not seen you this morning?'

He might have known this would make the fellow produce that ghastly laugh.

'Then you wouldn't have been warned, would you? We should have had to start straight away with the frightener, wouldn't we? What a lucky man you are!'

'I'm not going to do it!' said Rolland suddenly and loudly. 'You won't get a penny of mine. I'll have this place watched by the police. I'll employ tougher characters than ever you knew. You can get out, the pair of you.'

Strangely enough they both rose obediently as though they had been waiting impatiently for this, as though they hoped he would show defiance. They seemed quite willing to get their coats on and be gone.

Rolland, half relieved, half apprehensive, watched them. It was the apprehensive half that made him speak again, as though he wanted to delay them.

'You hear? Not a penny!' he said.

Rivers did not laugh again. He gave Rolland a pitying smile and went towards the door.

'Bye-bye,' he said amicably. 'Be seeing you.'

The two went out and it occurred to Rolland that he had not even noticed what car they drove and with what index number.

Suddenly he went into action. Someone else should share this — the horror, the humiliation, the anxiety, the fear. He went out to the kitchen. He saw that Antoine had just arrived.

'They're trying to blackmail me,' he said. 'Two of them. They want protection money.'

Antoine, a surly cadaverous fellow, showed no indignation or sympathy.

'How much do they want?' he asked.

'How much? What does it matter? You don't think I'm going to give in to that? It's scandalous. They talked of food poisoning.'

Antoine shrugged.

'This is England, not Chicago,' said Rolland. 'They can't do this to me. I shall employ a bodyguard. You must double all precautions. Inspect every piece of food that comes in. I'm going to the police.'

'You know your own business best,' said Antoine. It was evident that he meant to share none of the burden. 'I don't see what the police can do. What evidence is there?'

'Evidence? They told me straight out. A thousand pounds they wanted every five months.'

'I should pay it, if I were you,' said Antoine gloomily. 'You can afford it.'

'If that's your attitude ...' began Rolland, but his one-time partner began to inspect some vegetables.

Two nights later a florid gentleman whom Rolland had never seen before was dining alone in the restaurant and ordered the Scampi à la Rolland. He had eaten about half of the portion allowed him when he suddenly changed colour to a dirty-brick red, his eyes bulged and he rose from his place and made for the gentlemen's lavatory where he could be heard vomiting violently.

There was an ugly scene in the foyer.

'I've been poisoned,' he said. 'That filthy fish. You'll hear more of this, I can promise you. How dare you give your customers food poisoning?' A dozen expectant diners, waiting for tables in the crowded restaurant, looked startled.

'I assure you ...' began Rolland.

'And I assure you,' interrupted the man, 'that you'll hear from my solicitors.'

He made for the door without leaving his card and walked away towards the car park.

There was only one thing for it. Rolland dare not — as he had admitted to himself in calmer moments — go to the police. A changed man after he came out of hospital, Rivers had said. What might happen if he mentioned it to anyone, anyone? The police could not protect him. There was only one thing for it. A private detective. The name gave him a little relief. If he had Sherlock Holmes here, for instance, omnipotent, imperturbable Holmes. He was a character in fiction of nearly a century ago, but there must be someone to whom he could tell his appalling story.

'So I'm prepared to spend a large sum, a really generous sum, to be rid of the whole thing,' said Rolland, expansively.

Carolus Deene examined his visitor without favour.

'It's what you might call a plum, this job,' went on Rolland. 'Free board at the Fleur-de-Lys. Free meals in the Haute Cuisine Restaurant — with the exception of certain starred dishes, of course. And a reasonable allowance of free drinks in the bar. With a large fee. Any private detective would jump at it.'

'But I'm not a private detective.'

'Not?' said Rolland. 'I understood that you were just the man for this job. I made enquiries before coming to see you. It needs someone presentable, as you can imagine. The Haute Cuisine has a reputation.'

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Excerpted from Death with Blue Ribbon by Leo Bruce. Copyright © 1969 Leo Bruce. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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