1 Murder Offstage Page 14
Inspector Lovelace waved him on wordlessly, his face set in an angry line. ‘What did you want to find there anyhow?’
It was Len’s turn to colour a little. He blushed, and sighed:
‘I was looking for something I thought might be down there, something stolen from the Grape Street Bureau, possibly by Lucky Lucy or her gang…or by Dolly Price…’
Inspector Lovelace’s eyes had widened. ‘What, exactly? The whole truth, please, Irving.’
‘A cat. If you must know. Posie’s cat.’
For a long minute there was silence in the room. Len rubbed his eyes wearily. He briefly described the theft of Mr Minks, the arrival of the blue letter with the shaved cat hair that morning.
‘Anyway, I didn’t find him. I scoured the place back and forth, including the hidden rooms behind the bar. And it was in one of them, kicked under a table near the back, that I found this. Recognised it at once, of course. Wretched silly girl was only flashing it around yesterday under our noses...’
‘So what do you think it proves, exactly?’
‘Well, Inspector. I’d say it was pretty damning evidence against our girl Dolly. She’s in on it with them. Part of the gang. I’d suspected it for a few hours, actually. I said so yesterday to Posie; I said Dolly was a bad hat. But Posie wouldn’t believe it. I reckon Dolly works for this della Rosa chappie, stole the cat and also planned to lure us to the nightclub…but we foiled her plan, we got away…’
‘But why, you noddle!’ cried Posie. ‘Why would she do that? It doesn’t make sense.’
Len shrugged. ‘Who knows? But it failed last night. She escaped with the rest of them behind that sliding mirror-thing when they realised they were outnumbered and the game was up. And she dropped this on the way. That’s why we haven’t seen her since…’
Inspector Lovelace was standing at the barred window, thinking.
‘Posie’s right, Len,’ he said quietly. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Dolly Price doesn’t fit the type of person the Count had working for him. We know more about that now. She wasn’t Belgian, a criminal or a jewel expert…It makes more sense to me that somehow Dolly’s been kidnapped and whisked away by these people. Maybe the cat is not all they’re going to blackmail you with. Have they made threats about taking anyone else?’
Posie nodded, hanging her head. She brought out the flimsy blue letter from her handbag.
‘There,’ she said apologetically, sliding it across the table. ‘I didn’t realise how serious…’
While Inspector Lovelace read it she had another horrible thought. Something half-forgotten becoming clearer:
‘Oh my days! I’ve just remembered. I heard them talking last night in the club,’ she said in a small voice, avoiding Rufus’ eye. ‘I heard Caspian della Rosa telling his companion that he had the “prize”. I think he meant the Maharajah diamond. He went on to say that he had “an extra little prize” and that he would “save it as a reserve”. What if that extra prize was Dolly?’
Inspector Lovelace was nodding warily. ‘I think you’re right.’
Len was glowering silently but was starting to look panicked, too. Rufus was beyond words. Inspector Lovelace took control: ‘Before we assume she’s been kidnapped, or start wondering why, we’d better just check she’s really not at home in bed with a cold or something.’
Everyone nodded, disbelief etched on every face. Inspector Lovelace shouted down the corridor for a policeman to come running.
‘So, do you have her address then, Posie? Where does she live? In one of those women-only hostels?’ Inspector Lovelace indicated that the ruddy-faced, fat policeman who had appeared should write it down in his black leather fob-book.
‘No!’ wailed Posie. ‘I don’t know her address! I only met her for the first time on Monday night!’
She looked up at the barred window in despair, wanting air and light. She hated feeling like she was in a prison.
Then she turned and smiled in relief.
‘But YOU have it, Inspector. On police file. Dolly was a suffragette. She told me she had been in prison somewhere in London before the Great War because of it. I know she lives in the same flat now as she did back then. Please hurry. I feel dreadful that I didn’t realise she was in danger before.’
****
Fifteen
The waiting seemed to last forever, but it could have been no more than forty minutes in all.
Rufus sat huddled in a blanket, shivering, while Len sat reading the Sam Stubbs piece in the Associated Press, over and over again, studiously avoiding looking at anyone. His handsome face was flushed darkly with anger and nerves. You could have cut the atmosphere in the interview room with a knife.
Inspector Lovelace had gone off to interview Mr Blake, and Posie sat watching a cup of grey, insipid tea growing cold on the table before her. She poured another from the thermos flask which had been provided, but it was not much better.
‘Good piece this, after all,’ Len said begrudgingly, putting the newspaper down at last. He smiled in grim satisfaction. ‘The police don’t come out of it too well though; it makes it sound like you busted the joint single-handed. Your name, everywhere. Even a big photograph of you, you’re not looking too shabby, either… It should have the desired effect, anyway. Should make della Rosa furious, especially if he’s innocent. He’s definitely going to make contact with you or the police now. Practically names him as the murderer!’
Len drummed his fingers on the table in boredom, echoing the heavy rain outside. Posie wondered how Inspector Lovelace was getting on with Mr Blake and his side-kick Reggie. She remembered Caspian della Rosa saying that they would never talk. She sighed in exasperation.
The clock on the grey-painted wall ticked loudly on. An annoying grating sound.
‘Come with me,’ she grabbed Len suddenly by the shoulder, jolting him upright. She needed to do something. She opened the thick metal door and frogmarched Len along the dark corridor back towards Reception. It was deserted now save for the Duty Sergeant scribbling in his jotter at the counter.
They stood on the porch steps together. It was almost totally dark now outside, pin-points of lights from cars and horse-drawn carriages on the main road behind the wrought-iron fences glittering strangely through the slanting rain.
‘What have I done now?’ asked Len waspishly, lighting a cigarette under cover of his coat collar and taking a deep drag. His face was half in shadow.
‘Nothing. I need you to do something for me. Now. All that waiting around in there is driving me crazy.’ She pulled out some change.
‘I need you to go and buy two large bottles of Scotch. Nothing fancy, no single malts. Just make sure it’s very strong stuff. And bring it back in a brown paper bag. Hidden.’
Len frowned at her, before taking the money and nodding knowingly:
‘I understand. For Cardigeon, is it? I thought he’d be better off with a spot of drink inside him too, but I never thought you’d be the one to get it for him. That’s the trouble with the toffs – they can’t do anything without a drop of the old grog. Addicted. Saw it in the trenches time and again.’
Posie said nothing, too tired to argue or explain. Sometimes Len could be annoyingly narrow-minded, for all his gorgeousness.
‘I’ll be back in ten minutes. There’s a place I know over at Victoria Station, Moonshine Harry’s.’ He squeezed her hand, then winked and left.
She watched from the doorframe as Len cut across the rain-swept yard, a jaunty figure disappearing into the darkness who, under normal circumstances, she would have longed to run alongside and accompany, keen not to be parted from.
But these were not normal circumstances and he was acting like an oaf, and she was pleased to be rid of him for a few minutes: she had forgotten how much Len hated the upper classes, so perhaps his conflict with Rufus was not so surprising, after all. He reminded her suddenly of Inspector Oats, and she suppressed a laugh: for surely that was one comparison she could never, ever make out loud.
Ten minutes later they had the news that Dolly Price had not returned home to her bed-sit in Billingsgate market the night before, and had not been seen since.
The fat ruddy-faced policeman looked worried. He flicked through his fob-book for the details:
‘Miss Dolly lives alone in a bed-sitter on the top floor. But there’s an old woman wot lives in the flat below, above a fish and chip shop. She’s a font of all knowledge. She seems to have made it her duty to keep an eye out for Miss Dolly; she said Dolly always came home late at night, on account of her work at the theatre, but in all the years she’d known her, she’d never known her not to come home at all. The old woman was on the verge of calling the police herself when I showed up. Most upset she was…’
Posie nodded, but she felt sick to the bottom of her stomach. It seemed certain now that Dolly had been kidnapped, and it was all her fault that Dolly had ended up in this position. An image of the dead, vacant face of Lucky Lucy floated up before her eyes: Posie had to get to Dolly before she ended up like that; discarded like so much rubbish.
But how? And where could she possibly be?
****
Rufus was packed off in a taxi to his father’s club, with strict instructions to have a hot bath.
Len looked on in surprise when Posie returned to the empty interview room and threw most of the contents of the thermos flask down a ceramic sink in a corner. She deftly unscrewed the two cheap, evil-smelling bottles of whisky which Len had managed to procure at Moonshine Harry’s, and she tipped them neat into the empty thermos. She poured the last cold dregs of her cup of tea on top and shook the flask roughly after sealing it up.
Just at that minute Inspector Lovelace put his head around the door:
‘I’ve just heard the news about Dolly. Rotten luck. I’m so sorry. We’ll add it to the list of things to do. I’m busy now but I’ll see you at six-thirty, as planned?’
His eyes caught the newspaper still lying on the table and he looked towards Posie impatiently:
‘I take it you have your reasons for that,’ he said coldly.
Posie nodded and tried to explain. At his stony silence Posie blundered on: ‘Did you have any joy talking to Mr Blake and the programme-seller?’
‘No. Not a dicky-bird out of either of them. Both of them clammed up tight, won’t say a word. Absolutely useless.’ He ducked out of the doorway.
Posie and Len lingered at Reception.
‘Where are the cells please?’ Posie asked the Duty Sergeant, smiling. He looked at her suspiciously, before waving her back down the corridor they had come from, indicating to take a sharp left at the bottom and go down a spiral staircase.
The row of cells loomed ahead, ceramic-tiled walls arching above a concrete floor which was damp and sickly with fresh disinfectant. Ten little doors with barred windows stretched along the horrible corridor, all set behind a locked, iron-barred gate. Poor old Rufus had had to stay down here two nights in a row, and Posie felt tears pricking her eyes.
‘Now what?’ hissed Len anxiously. ‘What on earth are you playing at, Po?’
Posie glanced around nervously but as luck would have it the ruddy-faced constable who had just been sent to Billingsgate to look for Dolly Price was coming out of one of the cells at the far end, jangling a big bunch of black keys.
‘I say!’ shouted Posie sweetly. ‘Can you help me?’
The policeman frowned and then came towards them, unlocking the iron gate. He looked at Posie keenly.
‘I know Mr Blake, the Theatre Manager. He’s down here, isn’t he?’
The policeman nodded and indicated to the cell nearest him with a backwards jerk of his thumb.
‘Inspector Lovelace said he’d let me give him a flask of tea. It’s just the stuff we didn’t drink upstairs. Could you possibly…?’
She passed the police regulation thermos flask to the policeman and held her breath. She hoped against hope that he wouldn’t open it, or come too close and smell it, but she was lucky: he flicked the small barred window of the nearest cell and shoved the flask through it with a rough warning to the man inside to ‘be grateful for small mercies.’
Posie nodded her thanks and turned on her heels and walked as fast as she could out of the police station, Len just behind her. She breathed in big gulps of air outside, pleased to be out at last, more so because she had the feeling she had been skating on particularly thin ice all day long. She heard the chimes of Big Ben coming muffled through the heavy rain.
There were two free hours before she needed to be back again with the Inspectors. And she swore she would use the time well.
****
The offices of the Associated Press on Fleet Street were a stark contrast to Scotland Yard. Huge glass windows ran the length of the building from floor to ceiling; in the daytime the building was simply flooded with natural light. It was an art-deco landmark, a stopping-off point for visitors looking at the recent architectural splendours of London.
Inside, the offices were open-plan, all white lacquer and silver metal, and each of the seven floors was visible from the huge entrance hall, glass elevators speeding up and down connecting the floors at what seemed like a giddying speed. Everywhere there was movement; smart young journalists tearing to and fro, beautiful girls wearing thick make-up and high heels trotting endlessly backwards and forwards.
‘It’s just in here,’ Sam Stubbs called out, cheerily. Gone was the nervous manner of the ink-smeared boy they had met last night at Sal’s caff, and in his place was a confident, eager-to-please young journalist who felt, quite rightly, that he was at the very beginning of a promising new career. The scoop had obviously worked a treat, and now it was pay-back time.
The Archive Room was on the ground floor, just off Reception, and like the rest of the place it was ultra-modern and brightly lit.
‘What are you after exactly?’ he asked, head cocked to one side.
‘Anything you have on a certain Count della Rosa,’ Posie said. She needed to be doing something and having been excluded from the action at Scotland Yard, as she had known would be the case, she felt a relief at being able to get stuck in here.
‘No go, I’m afraid, Miss Parker.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, don’t you think if there was anything to find I’d have used it myself in the story? A picture tells a thousand words, after all. But I hunted around in here for one and found nothing. No photographs, no old reports. Zip. He’s either new in town, your Count, or else he’s using a pseudonym. If you find out what his real name is, then we’re talking. That would be very worthwhile.’
Posie hadn’t thought this far ahead. She had expected it to be simpler somehow, that there should be a trace, a mention of him somewhere.
‘What about Lucky Lucy?’ she asked. ‘You have files, clippings on her, I take it?’
Sam Stubbs grinned and took them over to a white lacquered filing cabinet. ‘Plenty,’ he said proudly, rolling back a smart modern drawer and bringing out three fat files. ‘These should keep you busy for a while.’
Posie and Len spread out the files over a shining white desk.
‘We’re looking for photos, or any names mentioned in conjunction with hers,’ she hissed.
Len nodded and they started to work. The room was silent apart from the swishing noise of their file pages turning, and the very occasional ‘snap’ as one or the other of them brought out a photo or a cutting and placed it in the middle of the desk. The electric lights hummed quietly and apart from one other reader they were undisturbed.
‘Oh, excuse me! Mr Irving?’
It was one of the beautiful, carefully made-up girl assistants. She approached their table with a smile.
‘Hullo. I’m Pattie. Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ she fawned, ‘but it’s the telephone for you. Apparently it’s quite urgent. Would you like to follow me?’
‘A call for me? Here?’ Len’s eyebrows knitted together in curiosity and Posie watched him follo
w the girl out. Two minutes later he was back, grabbing his tweed jacket from the back of the chair and stuffing his arms into his raincoat.
‘Sorry, Po. It’s one of my lawyer clients,’ he said crossly. ‘I couldn’t hear him very well but apparently I’ve got to go now to take a photo of some Judge with a call-girl. It’s a piece of evidence they’ve been waiting more than a year for, and apparently this evening it couldn’t be easier to catch the poor devil at it. I’m sorry.’
He shrugged and swung his camera over his neck. ‘It should pay very nicely, anyhow. I should be back at the Yard later, and if not, I’ll see you first thing tomorrow at Grape Street.’
Posie nodded and watched him leave, swinging out of the smart glass door. She heaped the tiny pile of photos and cuttings they had collected before her and stared vacantly out of the rain-drenched window for a split-second, before a horrible thought came crashing into her mind: How on earth could a lawyer client possibly have known where Len would be, at that exact moment?
Nobody knew they had come here. Unless they had been followed.
Her heart jumped into her mouth and she started to run, breaking out of the Archive Room at high speed and running across Reception, though the revolving doors out onto the dark, wet pavement of Fleet Street outside. Cabs and carts crowded the wide street, and the pavement was chock-full of umbrellas and men in bowler hats crushing through the rain towards the Tube. She looked frantically for Len’s tweed homburg hat sailing among the others, but she realised in desperation that she had no idea which way he had gone, or even – as he sometimes did – if he had jumped into a cab.
She had lost him.
Posie stumbled back inside, utterly defeated and on the verge of wild, hysterical tears. She crouched down at her table in the Archive Room and tried to breathe normally.
She was just gathering herself together when Pattie, the immaculate receptionist, came bustling towards her. Pattie was holding a stiff black envelope outstretched in her hands, and she waved it under Posie’s nose: