Текст книги "A Spider in the Cup"

Автор книги: Barbara Cleverly

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“Oh, my Lord!” breathed Alfred. “He’d need a pair of ten quid pigskins to handle that!” He put an arm over the boys’ shoulders. “You’ve done well, lads. We’ll make that sixpence a bob, shall we?”

He turned to his colleagues. “I’ll say thank you to you as well, for the pleasure of your company. And now I’d better make a swift phone call to the boss. Warn him there’s a thundering black beast on the way.” He winked at Ian and looked at his watch. “Early morning, there won’t be that much traffic about but our two sportsmen have still got to struggle over the river and out of London. Fifty miles to do. Let’s say they can do sixty miles per hour on the open roads. It’s going to take them just over an hour.”

“Granpa,” the older boy said urgently, tugging at his sleeve, “those cars can do a hundred!”

JOE HAD BEEN hanging on in Marcus’s study within arm’s reach of the telephone for the past half hour but when it rang he had to overcome a sudden attack of paralysis before he could pick it up. He was about to hear nothing good. He picked it up with a leaden hand on the third ring and, the spell broken by the abrasive “Alf ’ere,” he launched into a fast exchange.

“One English, the other didn’t speak? Description, Alfred? Onslow first … Six foot, well-dressed, black fedora …” Joe noted down Alfred’s swift, professional recitation of details. “… hair mid-brown, eyes grey, no distinguishing features. Second: Cummings? Eyes brown, similar but silent. A matched pair. Weapons, Alf? Both had guns in shoulder-holsters. Driving a—what was that?… Good lord! There must be fewer than half a dozen of those cars in the country. Ho, ho! Big mistake? Over confidence?” he wondered out loud.

“Perhaps they’re not expecting to leave witnesses.” Alfred voiced Joe’s worst fears. All he could do was repeat Joe’s own advice back to him. “Get the family out and get help in. Got any armoured divisions down there looking for something to do on a Saturday morning?”

They broke off abruptly, not troubling to take up precious minutes on assurances and good wishes and Joe got up and made his way back to the breakfast room.

Approaching, he heard laughter and conversation. Lydia’s light clear voice was meshing with Kingstone’s low rumble, punctuated by short bursts from Marcus, who’d returned from the field.

“Where on earth have you been, Joe? The papers have arrived. We turned straight to the account of yesterday’s Pilgrims’ luncheon and found our guest’s name in the starry lineup. Come and see. There he is,” she pointed, “sandwiched between an arms manufacturer and a philanthropist. Can’t have been comfortable.’

Joe’s alarm call was momentarily checked by his surprise at Kingstone’s appearance and demeanour.

“They keep their sentiments uncontroversial at these dos,” Joe put in hurriedly. “ ‘Brotherly understanding … genuine comradeship … preservation of an organised society …’ ” He quoted from Bacchus’s notes on the Pilgrims’ lunch while fixing Kingstone with a questioning eye. “Who could possibly argue with that?”

“They also serve excellent champagne at very frequent intervals,” Kingstone added, unconcerned. “After a bottle of Bollinger, even you’d be toasting the Kaiser if invited, Sandilands.”

“Joe, may I re-introduce our guest? Not, as you might suppose, our local rat-catcher! I believe you think you know Senator Kingstone?” Lydia was gurgling with amusement, as well she might, Joe thought as he took in the senator’s appearance. Wearing a pair of Marcus’s old flannels, a linen shirt with a scarf tucked casually into the neck and an ancient white Guernsey sweater tied by the arms about his shoulders, he was a changed man. He was pink and polished and reeking of peppermint toothpaste. His head was high, the grin just fading on his lips. In some way he seemed to have slipped into focus, a man at ease with his surroundings, his company, but above all—with himself. Joe wished Doctor Rippon could have been present to see the effect of his suggested cure beginning to show.

He also wished he wasn’t about to ruin his day. He didn’t look forward to wiping the good humour from Kingstone’s face and dimming the newly bright eye. He wanted nothing more than to spend time helping the two men plan a carefree day, lying at ease by the lake in the shade of a beech tree, just thinking, snoozing and bothering the occasional trout. For a moment he toyed with the idea of leaving Kingstone in happy ignorance of the black car and its cargo of killers booming towards them. But only for a moment.

KINGSTONE LOOKED AT his watch. “So—we’re saying we’ve got how long? An hour. Anything more than that would be a bonus. Any chance of a bonus, Marcus?”

He seemed undismayed by the news and Joe acknowledged that the prospect of action in which he was directly involved appeared to be a stimulant to the senator. He’d grasped the scene at once, wasted no time on recriminations of the “but you said I’d be safe here” type and got straight to the essentials. Joe’s first estimate of the man’s character seemed to have been pretty accurate. The spider in the cup had lost its venomous hold on him as Rippon had predicted and the newly revealed leader of men padded over in his socks to refill his cup from the coffee pot.

Marcus was keeping up with him and already on his feet on the way to the door. “Extra time? Certainly! I can add a quarter of an hour. I’ll ring the local police station and ask them to put back the diversion signs they dragged away into the hedge two days ago on the B road. That broken bridge they thought they’d mended requires a bit more attention perhaps. Look here …” He turned to the table and drew a quick sketch on the back page of the newspaper. “Block them at this point and they’ll have to take the diversionary route. Down several miles of single-carriage hollow lane.” He chuckled. “We might not see them again until Christmas. Bound to get stuck in a car that size. They can’t have had any idea where they were headed for. Or what they were heading into,” he added with satisfaction.

“Disturbing, perhaps, to think they see no need to care,” Joe said lugubriously.

They were not deflated. “Were your boys certain of the number, Sandilands?” Kingstone asked.

“Two. Two fedoras. Excellent choice of headgear! For hired guns, of course.” Joe heard the gung-ho flavour in his own words beginning to echo their mood. He would resist a descent into melodrama. He added lightly, “Your London thug is not going in for anything so frivolous as a boater this season. He prefers to signal his evil intent with something more sober in black felt from Lock in St. James’s Street.”

Kingstone ignored him. “Your men, Marcus?” he wanted to know. “I’m not aiming to start a range war here! This isn’t their fight. Call them off! Send them home.”

“Not a chance! This is their home. Has been for centuries. Defending it and its guests is their duty and their pride. Besides—they’re all raring to have a go. Some of them have unfinished business with the Germans.” He flicked a glance at Joe. “Um … that’s what I told them. That we’re protecting an agent of Uncle Sam from the dark forces of the Prussian Empire. I say—did I oversteer? Shall I rewrite that scenario? I can think of something else …”

“No.” Kingstone spoke firmly. “Let’s give blame where blame is due for once, shall we?”

They fell silent, waiting for the revelation of identity they all craved, but he said thoughtfully, “Not sure whether this battle will be an afterthought of ‘the last lot,’ as you call it, or a foretaste of the next.” He sighed and went on more briskly, “Enough excuses, enough politicking. In the end it comes down to identifying your enemy, choosing your ground, checking your weapons and blasting him to hell before he does the same for you.”

“The Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington would have approved of those tactics.”

“They are their tactics, Marcus.” Kingstone was almost jovial again. “Strategy … tactics … dirty tricks … I learn from the best.”

“Quite agree! Malplaquet, Waterloo or Belleau Wood where you chaps did so much damage—it usually works,” Marcus said eagerly. He hurried on with practicalities. “Right then. These Germans—or their hirelings—we know their number and we know when they’ll arrive. They’re foolhardy enough to attack us on our home ground. Let’s have a weapons check. Three of my men have twelve-gauge shotguns. They need to get close up with those to do any real damage but the ‘spray and pray’ gestures they tend to use can scare a man to death all right. Stay behind them at all times, is my advice. Two of the blokes have deer guns. Rifles. Ex-fusiliers. They don’t need sights.” He looked from Joe to Kingstone, seeing dismay on one side, anticipation on the other. “Just the blasting business to come.”

“Your men, Marcus—I say again—I don’t want them blasting or being blasted on my account,” Kingstone said. “They must be for back-up use only. Last resort. Clear? By that I mean, should I fail to defend myself and the household is put into danger. They’re coming for me. And I’ll be ready for them. At least I shall be if you can kit me out with something for my feet. A man can’t go into battle in his socks. I have my own pistol. I’ll set them a long trail—I’ll be down at the far end of the lake. Let me have a rod. Might as well get me a brace of rainbows for supper while I’m waiting …”

Joe groaned. This was getting away from him.

“They’ll be coming up against someone who’s survived stronger forces than theirs in beechwoods!” Kingstone’s voice was grim and purposeful. “The forests of the Argonne. Autumn, nineteen eighteen. Vile weather. Cold and wet. Supplies not getting through to the Doughboys of Pershing’s First Army. We were eating the beechnuts from the forest floor to stay alive.”

“Autumn nineteen eighteen? Ghastly time! But you didn’t have long to suffer by then.” Lydia’s voice was sympathetic but calm. “And you were back home by Christmas,” she added comfortably.

“No, we didn’t have long! Some only had minutes of life left.” With a tight smile, he fished about in the unfamiliar depths of the pocket of his borrowed trousers and produced an American army wristwatch. He put it down on the table.

They all looked with curiosity at the handsome timepiece. An Elgin with blue hands on a face the colour of vanilla ice-cream, silver case and worn brown leather strap.

Wondering what to make of this, Lydia stated the obvious: “It’s saying ten o’clock, Cornelius. It’s eight o’clock now. Your old watch is telling the wrong time.”

“No. It says exactly the right time. Talk of an Armistice had even filtered through to our part of the forest in early November but we didn’t believe it. We’d only been over in France for one hundred days. Some of our officers would have been mightily put out if it were all coming to an end so swiftly before they’d had a chance to take a decisive swing at the enemy. Or earn their next promotion.” His voice was grating, bitter. “My unit’s next task was to charge a particularly heavily defended position. Uphill, through trees, against a barrage of machine-gun fire. We’d tried it once. This was our second attempt. We all knew it would be our last.”

To interrupt or not to interrupt? Joe was longing to remind him that time was still of the essence. But this seemed to be the very point Kingstone was making and he held his tongue.

“The morning of the eleventh we charged as ordered. Fifty yards … a hundred yards and I was still running. And then, on my way up, I stumbled across a machine-gun pit with four German soldiers in it. They could have killed me at any moment in my dash straight towards them. They hadn’t. They were waving their arms in the air, grinning and babbling and pointing to their wristwatches. I had enough German to understand that word had passed down their line that it all ended at eleven A.M. In an hour’s time. I believed them. Their communications systems were always better than ours. No way were they going to kill me or have me kill them for the sake of an hour. They were young guys. My own age. I might have had a different welcome from a grizzled, battle-hardened crew.”

His chin went up, his eyes focussed on a very distant horizon.

“But—no one had told us. As far as we were concerned the war was still being fought. Our command that day was to charge, kill all before us and take the hill.”

“You didn’t …?” Lydia feared to hear his answer.

“One of them made a very clever move. He held out a sausage right under my nose. One of those spicy German things. It was still hot. They’d been cooking them for breakfast.” His eyes clouded with memory. “With nothing but beechnuts in my belly for four days—I took a bite. And then another. I offered them my American cigarettes. We shook hands and I took them all prisoner. But the darnedest thing …” He hesitated. “And I’m not the only one this has happened to. My watch—this one—stopped ticking right at the moment we charged. It marks the moment I ought to have died: ten A.M.—there where you see it now. I keep it with me always as a reminder of the last hour. Of the way things could have gone.”

“You’ve never tried to rewind it?” Lydia ventured. “They’re very reliable, those watches. It probably just ran down.”

“No, I haven’t. But I’m thinking maybe now I should. Put my life back where it was—on the line. Replay those last sixty minutes? Time owed?”

Lydia lunged at the watch and moved it down the table out of his reach. “No one starts a war in Surrey, Mr. Kingstone. Not even if we have the beechwoods for it. Joe must go out and speak to these people. I’ll go with you, Joe. Not Marcus, he’ll start slapping faces and demanding satisfaction.”

Kingstone turned to Joe. “I used to find it easy to judge our commanding officer harshly—Black Jack Pershing. Excellent soldier, as most agree, but not a man noted for his diplomacy. He never knew when to keep his views to himself. In a continent exhausted by four years of war and longing for it to be over, he came out against agreeing to an Armistice. And he sounded off to the Supreme War Council, no less, in a letter. By going ahead with a negotiated peace, he told them, instead of holding out for unconditional surrender, the Allies were giving up the chance of a lasting world peace and running the risk of future German aggression.”

Joe nodded, remembering. “He wasn’t the only one to think that the sight of soldiers returning as heroes still carrying their arms might give the wrong impression in their homeland. If you send them back as prisoners of war—well, it’s brutal but you do quench the last spark of resistance. That was the theory in those days of uncertainty.”

“Like many, I thought Pershing’s position hawkish and pitiless at the time. Now, Sandilands, I’m not so sure.” Kingstone added, uncomfortably, “I think we left a tap root alive and growing in the soil.”

He reached defiantly for the watch and began to wind it. The battered old timepiece came to life at once. The ticks, loud, instant and full of the brassy confidence of a bygone age, reverberated unnervingly in the silence. The blue hands began to move.

Good Lord! The man had been winding himself up as well as his wretched timepiece, Joe realised, and was glad to see Kingstone slip it out of sight back into the pocket of his borrowed flannels. He’d needed that moment but he was ready to go now. The senator’s features, already bold, were enlivened by a glow of confidence, strengthened by quiet resolve, sobered by a notion of duty. A face to follow up a hill, into the jaws of death. Marcus dropped a kiss on his wife’s head, to her evident surprise, and murmured: “Confine yourself and the other women to the kitchen, my dear, and do not attempt to respond to any shots you may hear. Guns all over the place, don’t you know.”

Joe got to his feet. This was turning into a pantomime flourish of thigh-slapping derring-do. Chapter four in a Boys’ Own Paper story. The thought of three shotguns, two rifles and at least three revolvers in the hands of eight men who’d never been introduced, being loosed off in the confines of a wooded valley made his blood run cold. Time to knock the board over again.

“Stop right there!” he commanded. “Marcus—go and make your deviation arrangements with the local Plod by all means—we can use every spare minute. While you’re at it, book two places in the cells then get back here and I’ll tell you what we’re really going to do. Oh, and tell Pearson I need to have a word with him.”

CHAPTER 17

“Well, well! Why am I not surprised to hear that?” Inspector Orford purred into the telephone. He looked with satisfaction at the registration number on his pad and wrote down the address he’d just been given. “Ta, Daisy, love! Can you send me written confirmation of that?”

His triumph was swiftly modified by a look of concern. Better safe than sorry. Guessing what Sandilands would have done next, he picked up the phone again. “Get me Companies House, miss … Oh, good morning. Scotland Yard here. We need some information on the owners and directors of a London firm—could you oblige …?”

Startled at what he’d uncovered, the inspector asked for a repetition of the names he’d just been given. On a second hearing, the names were just as alarming. Two of the names were known to him. Shell burst, that! Among the “untouchables” of society. A third was a foreigner whose face he’d seen in the papers last week. He began to see why the Assistant Commissioner had been breathing down his neck on this one. He was only surprised they hadn’t called in the Household Cavalry. Ants’ nest!

Orford thought for a bit. He was going in, one way or another. There was only one way to attack an ants’ nest and that was with a very long stick.

As he bustled out of the inspectors’ room to pick up a sergeant and start his poking, a messenger arrived with a chit from the front desk. He read it swiftly. An update on the missing girls of London. Front desk had been very good about sending him the latest. Here was a note of yet another loved one whose absence had only just been noticed after five days. This one made him whistle between his teeth. Marie Destaines, aged twenty-two, five foot two, dark hair and eyes. Reported missing by her granny. A Mrs. Clarke from Stepney had been expecting a visit yesterday but the girl had not turned up. She’d last paid a visit the previous Monday night when she’d stayed over, saying she’d be back the following Friday. Worried granny requested a visit from an important policeman who could investigate a delicate matter and enquire into the girl’s present whereabouts. Orford tucked the sheet into his pocket.

“No reply. I’ll deal with this personally,” he told the messenger.

He rustled up a detective sergeant he knew to be a bright lad and on the ball and asked him to parade for duty with briefcase, clipboard and dirty macintosh in ten minutes time.

“I’ll brief you in the taxi on our way there,” he told Sergeant Dobson, having inspected his appearance and found him perfectly acceptable. “Ever been to Harley Street? Nor have I. We’re backdoor trade today, I’m afraid. We’ll be starting and finishing in the kitchens, which is the best we can do for two blokes with no warrant and no clout. A surprise visit from the Public Health Department inspectors is just about the only excuse you can come up with for getting into these places unannounced. I keep two official passes at the ready. Funny that—say you’re from the Yard and folk slam the door in your face. Say you’ve been sent to inspect their U-bends and they fling it open and put the kettle on. There’s your badge. You’re Officer (Second Class) Albert Fish today.”

Officer Fish put on a good show, Orford reckoned. Clipboard at the ready, smell-of-gas face on, he’d distracted the kitchen staff with a series of penetrating questions and demands to check for himself the state of their ovens and their drains. While he was so occupied, Orford had cruised about the kitchens looking inscrutable. He’d asked the cook to supply him with a copy of the menus prepared for the patients over the last week. He checked from Sunday through to Thursday but came up with little more substantial than ham salad and tinned fruit. Jokily, he pulled a face at the cook. “Cor! This lot isn’t likely to test your culinary skills, madam! Don’t they ever let you cook something a chap could get his teeth into—a nice roast? Shepherd’s pie?”

The cook laughed. “You’ve forgotten where you are! All ladies here. And mostly on diets. Only healthy food on offer.”

“I suppose that makes sense. I shall enter … ‘diet varied, delicate and appropriate to consumers,’ shall I?”

“WELL, THAT DIDN’T get us very far in any direction. Up and down the U-bend and back where we started.” The sergeant was disappointed not to be hauling someone off in cuffs.

“There’s times, laddie, when a nil return is just as significant as a positive. This is one of them. We drew a blank there for the pie. Eliminated. Wherever our dead girl had her last meal it wasn’t in that chop shop. It all goes to build a case. That Sandilands will know what to do with the results. We’re here to do the steady police work that puts the building blocks in his hands. Next up—a grieving gran. Take your raincoat off and put on a sympathetic smile. We’re off to Stepney.”

They were welcomed into the small terraced house and put to sit in the parlour while Mrs. Clarke went off to make a cup of tea. As soon as they heard the tap running, Orford was on his feet examining the row of silver-framed photographs on the mantelpiece. He picked up one and silently showed it to the sergeant who pulled a face and nodded gravely.

Mrs. Clarke revealed her anxiety by her strained chatter. When they had settled to their tea, she offered them the photograph Orford had just noted. “This is Marie. Doesn’t do her justice. She has lovely rich dark hair and brown eyes. Gets those from her father. French,” she confided. “Went home to join up with the French army in nineteen fourteen when Marie was three. Never seen hide nor hair of him since. I brought the child up while her mother went out to work. When we discovered she had a talent for dancing I sold the house next door—these two were both left to me by my father—and I invested the cash in her career. It’s not cheap. All those lessons and all the dresses. She didn’t let us down. She did well. So well I hardly saw her for years at a time. Always touring abroad. Her mother died five years ago but she’d have been proud … Whenever Marie is back in London, she always stays with me, not in the digs the company provided.”

“Which company is she appearing with, Mrs. Clarke?”

“The Covent Garden lot. They start at the end of the month. She’s in rehearsals at the moment.” Her face clouded and she hesitated before continuing. “Well, she was in rehearsals. She left.”

“Left? Just like that? When was this?”

“Monday. She had a row with the man in charge. She was always having rows with someone in the company—it’s part of the life. But this time I think it was serious. She resigned. Walked out.”

“So the company wouldn’t have realised she’d gone missing? They wouldn’t have raised the alarm. As far as they were concerned, she’d packed her bags and left.”

“That’s right.” She hesitated. “She told me she’d left but … I don’t know … she may have been sacked. I suppose they’d have to, really, wouldn’t they … in the circumstances?” She fell silent and fiddled with her teacup.

In his most tactful rumble, Orford asked: “Do you feel up to telling us about these circumstances? Don’t fret … we’ve heard it all before, love.”

“She’d had a bit of a slip-up. I don’t know with who—she didn’t breathe a word. I think it must have been someone quite high up because the someone was paying the bills. Marie never asked me for a penny towards it and I know how much it costs. She was booked in at a swish little place, she said. ‘It will only be for four days, Gran,’ she told me. ‘I’ll be back and dancing again by Friday. See you then! Don’t worry! It happens to all the girls at some time or another.’ But how can I not worry? Something’s gone wrong. I’m sure of it. She never broke her word to me in twenty-two years. If she’s lying ill somewhere I want to know about it and fetch her home.”

The tears could be kept back no longer. The inspector hurried to produce a large crisp handkerchief and handed it over with a gentle, “Here you are, Missis. You’re very welcome. I always carry a spare.”

As she sniffed and gulped he remarked quietly: “She’ll be missing her gran’s home cooking, I expect.”

Mrs. Clarke looked up and managed a watery smile. “She ate like a bird most of the time. But she always tucked into her favourites when she got back home. At least she had a good meal in her when she went off on Tuesday. She had shepherd’s pie and rice pudding for her dinner. Well, lunch they call it these days.”

“That would be Tuesday, then. Midday. Look, may I take this photograph away with us?” Orford asked. “More enquiries to make but I guarantee I’ll get back to see you by tomorrow morning at the latest.”

As they walked back to the bus stop, the sergeant asked, “Why didn’t you tell her there and then? You knew, didn’t you, that it was Marie lying dead in the police morgue?”

“I did. But I have to do this by the book and check it out with Doc Rippon or Sandilands. Death is something you have to be one hundred percent certain about. But I’ll make sure I’m the one who breaks the bad news as soon as we have it confirmed. There’s never a good way to do that but I always think it comes more easily from someone you’ve shared a pot of tea with, Sarge.”

“However do you find the right words?”

“Not sure I ever do. I can never remember them afterwards. I certainly don’t trot out any prepared phrases—they deserve better than that. I know if any stranger oozed up to me ‘offering condolences’ and claiming to ‘understand my grief’ I’d poke him in the eye. But they always seem to know anyhow. Like that old lady—she knows. It’s the noises you make that matter—no one needs a fancy vocabulary to be death’s mouthpiece.”