1 Murder Offstage Read online

  ‘Lord Cardigeon met this chorus girl at the theatre; the Athenaeum Theatre in Piccadilly, to be precise. I was with him that night.’

  ‘Really?’ asked the Inspector quizzically. ‘How curious. I’ve never known Lucky Lucy tread the boards before. Did you actually see her on stage?’

  Posie shook her head. ‘No. Strangely enough I did not. She was dressed as a caterpillar.’ Posie realised immediately how silly she sounded, and then added in a quiet, subdued voice, ‘If she was there at all, that is.’

  The Inspector snorted. ‘What nonsense! Now I really have heard it all,’ he muttered, angrily putting his notebook away. He swung off down the corridor.

  Poor old Rufey, Posie thought to herself. What a day: one mess after another.

  And it would be up to her to sort it all out.

  ****

  Two

  It had started to snow thickly again by the time Posie reached her office on Grape Street. The flakes were falling fast and it was a relief to close the door on the cold, wintry world.

  The Detective Agency was on the second floor, up a narrow blue-carpeted staircase, which had, like everything else in the building, seen better days. But when choosing it two years earlier, Posie had decided the location of the office was perfect. It sat in a shabby triangle enclosed on three sides by Covent Garden, the glittering Theatre District and musty old Bloomsbury. The looming silhouette of the British Museum, like the prow of a great ship, was just visible from the office window. Posie had hoped that clients from all walks of life, from all the worlds that the triangle quietly intersected, would approach her and use her Detective Agency to solve their unsolvable mysteries, unravel their unfathomable secrets.

  But, as with many things in life, it had not worked out like that…

  ****

  When she had first opened, Posie had sat solemnly waiting for her first client to arrive, day after day. She had been flooded with disappointment when no-one came, despite the bright new bronze plaque outside on the street which had cost her the earth and which read:

  THE GRAPE STREET BUREAU.

  P. PARKER & ASSOCIATES.

  Mysteries and Problems Solved. No case too big or small!

  (2nd Floor)

  She had not dared have ‘Detective Agency’ inscribed on the plaque – it had seemed too presumptuous somehow. After all, she was just starting out. And likewise, she had not dared reveal the fact it was just her. She was the Detective Agency. She reasoned to herself that a small white lie never hurt anyone: sometimes you needed to be extravagant with the truth.

  After two months of absolutely no clients, Posie was on the point of shutting up forever, desperately calculating when exactly her money would run out, when into her office walked her saviour. In the shape of one Mr Irving.

  He had presented himself in her office one morning around coffee-time, a small startled-looking man in his mid-fifties, in brown tweedy clothes and a dented homburg hat. There was something ferrety about his manner – he was the sort of man you forgot instantly, which was, as it turned out, his business.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he remarked casually, almost sniffing the air as if to check on its suitability. Posie had simply nodded, it was nice, she knew that, but when she had taken on the lease it had been dank and dirty. With the last of the small capital sum she had received under her father’s Will she had bought a few sticks of good furniture to furnish the bare rooms and enough tins of emulsion from the Army & Navy Stores to keep her busy painting the place singlehanded for a week.

  Mr Irving had thrust his cheaply printed card across the desk at her as he cast an appraising eye around Posie’s neat cream office.

  She read:

  IRVING & SON.

  PRIVATE DETECTIVE AGENCY.

  For all your legal and personal needs.

  33B,Lincoln’s Inn West.

  ‘Posie Parker, at your service. How can I help you, Mr Irving?’ she had asked in as confident a manner as she could, fearful he would read in her every move that he was the very first person to ever sit opposite her in the woefully unused client’s chair.

  He tore his eyes away from the only decoration in the room, a small and delicately painted watercolour of the Cap d’Antibes in France above Posie’s desk; a riot of bright sunshades and azure sea. It had been painted by Posie’s father when he was a young man.

  ‘Nice bit of seaside you’ve got up there. Fancy. Not much like Margate, is it?’

  Posie coughed politely and pointed to Mr Irving’s card enquiringly.

  ‘Not a small talk kind of gal, are you? Very well. I’m here to see if we can help each other. Come to an arrangement, sort of thing. This could be your lucky day.’

  ‘Go on.’ Posie looked at the man curiously, and with a smidgen of mistrust.

  ‘I’ve got a nice little practice going, just ten minutes from here. In Lincoln’s Inn. See on the card? Not a high-level shindig, more your everyday sort of business. But it pays the bills nicely.’

  ‘What is it you do?’ Posie asked bluntly, interested.

  ‘Spy on folks,’ laughed Mr Irving, rubbing his hands together gleefully. ‘In the trade we’re known as shadowers. We get a tip-off from a lawyer and then we follow people; mainly rich toffs or businessmen having affairs, or keeping mistresses. Rum-doings. We take photos, and then the lawyer uses the snaps as evidence in divorce proceedings for their clients. It’s lucrative work; we get referrals from more than twenty lawyers in all. Keeps me and my boy going nicely.’

  What horrid work, Posie thought, trying not to visibly shudder. Dirty work, somehow; almost akin to blackmail.

  ‘But I don’t see how our interests coincide, Mr Irving? You sound as if you are doing well enough already without my help.’

  ‘Look at the address on the card, Miss. What do you notice?’

  She faltered for a minute. ‘Why! Your address is just a basement! 33 B. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Yep. Good girl.’ Mr Irving nodded. ‘Just a basement, as you say. Only, at the end of this week we won’t even have that. We’re being thrown out. The basement is being turned over for this newfangled telephone equipment for the lawyers’ offices.’

  A flash of understanding hit Posie.

  ‘You want to buy me out?’ she asked quietly in a measured voice. She didn’t know whether she felt happy or sad at this prospect.

  ‘No,’ Mr Irving shook his head firmly. He was gazing at the Cap d’Antibes again with a look of longing.

  ‘I’ve decided to retire. It’s about time. Go some place nice, perhaps. Grab a bit of sunshine, mebbe. But my boy Len, he needs a job. He survived the war, thank goodness. He’s a good lad, but he needs a chance. He can carry on just as well as we both did before, using everything he’s learnt from me. I walked past your sign this morning and I just wondered…perhaps you need some help too. An assistant? A good detective? Just you, is it, Miss, working here?’

  Mr Irving looked at Posie squarely with his eagle-eyes and his many years of experience of the very worst aspects of human nature. Posie held onto the business card tightly. The print had rubbed off all over her scarlet-manicured hands. No point trying to hide the truth now, she thought to herself. She nodded:

  ‘Yes. It’s just me. But I don’t have enough work, even for myself.’

  ‘That’s what we’d bring to the table,’ Mr Irving went on hopefully. ‘Work. Masses of it. Len’s one of the best shadowers in London. We’ve got cases coming out of our ears, and enough lawyers on our books to fill your empty bookcases. And more. You’ll never need to worry about paying the rent here again.’

  Posie swallowed. This was all very surprising.

  ‘But what do you want from me? This is my Detective Agency!’ Posie squeaked, and immediately realised she sounded childish.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mr Irving said reassuringly. ‘Just let Len come and work for you. The location here is perfect. No need to change your sign outside, or the name. In our game discretion is key, anyhow. All
profits, after costs, to be split 50/50, between you and Len. How does that sound?’

  It had sounded good, dirty work or not, and Posie had put her scruples quickly aside.

  And now, two years down the line, Posie looked back fondly on that day as indeed being her lucky day. Mr Irving had proved some sort of ministering angel from heaven, in fact.

  Len’s shadowing work alone had kept them afloat for many, many months. Through it all, and especially at the beginning, dear, good-hearted Len had never once questioned Posie about her lack of work; never complained about the days he spent chasing errant husbands all over town while she sat in the office at Grape Street reading The Lady and drinking sugared china tea, waiting for a suitable case to come in. They covered the bills and split the profits 50/50 and that was that.

  It had only been in the last year that Posie had finally started to gain some cases of her own: a missing wife here, a Belgravia cook gone astray there, a minor insurance fraud.

  Most recently and importantly, however, she had helped track down a gang of clever jewellery robbers dressed as choristers who had burgled a shop at Christmas in the exclusive Burlington Arcade (in what had come to be known as ‘The Carino Affair’, after the Italian Countess, Faustina Carino, whose jewellery, in for repairs and cleaning, had been the main target of the heist).

  Posie was relieved she was finally able to bring some bacon to the table, and glad too that she was finally making a name for herself and for the Detective Agency. The Carino Affair had landed the Grape Street Bureau some good press – a small article in The Times which was nicely written – and perhaps more importantly, a friend and supporter in the form of one Detective Inspector Lovelace, of New Scotland Yard. Posie firmly believed that you couldn’t underestimate the importance of knowing good people in the right places, especially at sticky times.

  Times such as now, perhaps…

  ****

  Plodding up the stairs and unwrapping her frozen layers of damp scarf, Posie was jolted sharply back to the present by the sound of loud, high-pitched laughter coming from the office. She opened the glass-stencilled front door and peered in.

  The little waiting room was bright and warm. The fire was blazing merrily in the hearth and Len was sprawled all over the sofa. Babe Sinclair, their glamorous American secretary from New York, sat cosily to Len’s right, nearest the fire. Her impossibly shiny black hair glinted beautifully and her sumptuous glittery jade necklace threw off beams of reflected light from the fire. On the coffee-table next to Len’s beloved camera was a crumpled green-and-white striped bag from Lyons Cornerhouse.

  ‘Crumpet?’ Len asked cheerfully. Posie saw that he had improvised with a stoking iron and that he had been toasting the cakes over the fire. Posie nodded and slumped down into one of the armchairs. She kicked off her wet snow-boots and sat in her damp stockinged feet; the likelihood of any clients wandering in off the street without an appointment on a foul day like today was very small. She took the crumpet Len handed her gratefully, she hadn’t realised how hungry she was.

  Babe had begun to look at Posie resentfully, for she had been having a good time alone with Len, who never took anything too seriously. Babe knew too that she owed her job to Len, who had taken a shine to her at interview, rather than to Posie, who had only ever been frostily polite. She had only been working at the Grape Street Bureau for a few weeks, since just after Christmas, and she was still in her probation period. She realised that Posie’s return meant she would now have to do some actual work, and she picked up her blue notebook from the floor with an exaggerated weary gesture.

  Through mouthfuls of hot crumpet Posie gave Babe brisk instructions to send three important telegrams. She dictated the exact contents, which Babe wrote down in a fancy American shorthand which Posie had never encountered before. Posie gulped the last crumbs down gratefully and licked her buttery fingers. She noticed that the secretary was still sitting in her chair, pouting slightly.

  Posie sighed to herself: Was it just possible that they had managed to hire the worst secretary in the world, ever?

  ‘What are you waiting for? Please, Babe. It’s urgent. Send the telegrams now. Take the money from the strong-box on my desk.’

  ‘But, gee, Miss,’ drawled Babe, ‘it’s kinda snowing badly outside.’

  ‘Hang it all! Don’t you have snow in New York every winter? I would have thought this was nothing compared to that! Now, off you go. And when you come back I want you to go into your office and start the typing. If there isn’t any to do, I want you to do the filing. If anything’s not clear, come and find me. I don’t want you disturbing Mr Irving out here. He’s very busy.’

  Babe gave a moue of dislike and then went through to Posie’s office where she could be heard jangling coins together, and then she flounced out of the office, wrapping her shorn-black head in several woolly scarves. Len and Posie listened to her heavy, cross footsteps thumping down the stairs, followed by the violent slam of the front door onto the street below.

  Len gave Posie one of his I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that looks.

  ‘What?’

  He smouldered at her. She felt her insides melting.

  ‘I’m not being mean sending her out into the snow. That’s her job! Anyway, she should be working, not shilly-shallying around with you out here, eating cakes. What do we pay her for, after all? We can only just afford it. As well you know.’

  Len raised his eyebrow at Posie and smiled gently.

  ‘We’re sitting out here as our own offices are freezing. I thought we’d economise and light just one fire. Give her a break – I know you don’t like her, Po. And anyway, I’m not busy. I don’t have another case on until tomorrow.’

  Posie glowered back at him. Len always had her sussed out, and he was right; she didn’t like Babe, didn’t trust her somehow. It was just a gut feeling she had.

  To lighten the mood he started to skim through a sheaf of his freshly developed photos on the coffee-table, offering comments as he flicked through. Len looked at one in particular and threw back his head, laughing aloud, and the sound of it caught at Posie’s throat, tugging at her heart, making her look away quickly into the roaring flames of the fire.

  She was, simply and inconveniently, madly in love with him.

  He was totally unsuitable, and totally out of her league. But he was a man with whom she felt a tense, thrilling crackle of electricity every single time he looked her way. And she could have sworn he felt it too.

  Dashingly handsome, Len was tall and loose-limbed with dark curly hair and green eyes that crinkled up at the corners when he laughed, which was often. Sometimes Posie couldn’t believe that the original Mr Irving, that ferrety little man, and the magnificent Len, with whom she had the good fortune to work with on a daily basis, were actually related to each other.

  When she had suspected she might be falling in love with Len, right at the start, she had talked herself sternly out of it. It wouldn’t do at all: Captain Harry Briskow, her fiancé, was newly dead, lying out on a battlefield in northern France somewhere, buried with no name and no grave for her to mourn at. Her only remembrance of kind, loyal Harry was one photo, and a little gold-and-silver ring with six diamond chips which he had given her the night before he had left.

  A ring which she had now taken off and put to rest at the back of a drawer in her bedside cabinet... Besides, it wasn’t just the memory of Harry either. It was more complicated than that.

  Len was attached. He had a girl he had been seeing down Leytonstone way for years, a childhood sweetheart. An unnamed girl whom Posie had never met and who wasn’t spoken about by Len, but whose presence could be felt sometimes hanging between them like a hardy, unforgiving ghost: a new knitted tie worn loyally just after Christmas; an unexplained bouquet of fresh freesias bought at lunchtime in the market at Covent Garden. Bridges which had not yet been burnt…which Posie could not expect to be burnt.

  Posie leant casually in and looked at the photograph Len was laughi
ng at now. It showed a well-known and particularly odious Member of Parliament, often in the newspapers, in a state of total undress. He was trying to frantically close the curtains on a scene he would rather Len had not been photographing. Posie couldn’t help but smile.

  Len went out and made some tea. When he came back with it he asked Posie about her day.

  ‘Something about a jewel robbery? Babe heard the messenger-boy telling you.’

  Posie nodded, noting to herself to be more discreet in the future. She described her afternoon.

  Len whistled. ‘Coo-ee! What are you going to do now?’ he asked, curiously.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to let the grass grow under my feet, that’s for sure. I’ll do everything possible. But a word of warning – you may have to help me out in the next few days. Is that okay? I’m not sure I can do it alone.’

  Len nodded and his eyes twinkled in the light of the fire. ‘Anything, Po. Just let me know when you need me. You know I’d do anything for you.’

  If only, Posie thought to herself, and cursed him for being so totally and utterly lovely. She headed off to her freezing office to collect her thoughts.

  ‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’ called out Len cheerfully.

  ****

  It was almost dark. Posie sat motionless at her desk in the failing light, her head in her hands. Mr Minks, the cream-and-brown Siamese, rubbed himself purposefully around her ankles. He wanted feeding.

  He was a spoilt cat, Posie knew. A terribly haughty cat, too. And he really preferred the company of men to ladies, especially Len’s company. But Posie loved him with all her heart and he was the only link to her past, to her father’s Vicarage in Norfolk, where Mr Minks had spent his glory days happily climbing the red velvet curtains in the Reverend Parker’s study. Mr Minks had been her father’s pride and joy.

  Since her father’s sudden death two years ago, when Posie and Mr Minks had both found themselves unexpectedly homeless, Posie had felt perpetually guilty at uprooting the Siamese and installing him in the dingy London office. But Posie wasn’t allowed pets at her digs on the top floor of the Mews House she lodged at in South Kensington, and so Mr Minks had to live alone at Grape Street. Posie had tried to make it homely for him by installing old velvet curtains for him to climb up in the tiny back kitchen, and by spending far too much of her salary on fresh cuts of chicken for him, which she cooked on the primus stove twice a day.