Текст книги "The Bee's Kiss"

Автор книги: Barbara Cleverly

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Chapter Twenty-Two

She was talking, he realized, to allow him time to pull himself together and he was grateful for that. ‘Beatrice did something unforgivable,’ he said at last, ‘and it caught up with her, do you mean? Yes, I think it’s entirely possible. Um, I wonder, Dorcas . . .’

‘Have a proper look, Joe! I don’t mind. And, yes, I have seen them.’

Tactfully she went to poke the fire and pile on a log or two while he sat down at the table and reopened the file. The contents were meagre. No notes. No printed pages. Secured with paper clips to the plain sheets inside were just five photographs, six inches by five inches, of different girls. He looked at the faces, trying to blank out the context. All young, all beautiful, all naked and in the arms of what appeared to be the same man in each photograph. He had no doubt that the man was Donovan. Five out of the eight members of the Hive? But who were the girls? Studying the similar haircuts and make-up, the kind you could see on any young flapper, he felt he was quivering on the point of recognizing one or two of them. His mind hesitated, stuttered almost, just failing to come up with a familiar name. With a sudden chill, he remembered that Tilly had been about to apply to join this sorry band. And Joanna, if she had answered the signal at the Ritz the other night? Was the intention to recruit her?

He turned the photographs over but found no clues to identity. The setting presented less of a difficulty. The silken divan, one corner of a Modigliani painting carelessly intruding into one of them, were telling enough.

Dorcas pulled up a chair and sat next to him. ‘Now the question is, why? Why did Aunt Bea have these rude pictures? Shall I tell you what I’ve worked out?’

Joe muttered a faint protest but she continued. ‘Was she collecting them? People do, you know. Well, I don’t think that’ll quite answer. Because, you see, they’re not very rude. Not as rude as the ones Jacky’s uncle brought back from Mespot. Anyway – I think they’re rather arty. “Venus and Mars” perhaps? I’ve seen much worse on canvases in France. Look – the focus is on the face. They’re meant to identify the girl. The man’s got his back to the camera. You can’t really identify him for certain. Except!’ She ran to the dresser and from one of the drawers took a magnifying glass. ‘Look – there. He’s got a sticking plaster on his left arm. In all the photos! Now, I don’t suppose these can all have been taken on the same day, do you?’

Joe swallowed and agreed that the logistical drawbacks to mounting such an operation would be insuperable.

‘So they were probably taken over some time, and if they were – it can’t have been a wound, can it? It would have healed. So it’s something he’s hiding from the camera. There’s a man in the village who’s in the Merchant Navy and he’s got a tattoo in the same place. It’s an anchor with hearts and . . .’

‘Yes, Dorcas. I’m sure you’re right.’

‘She was blackmailing them, don’t you think?’

‘I’m afraid that’s the most likely explanation.’

‘But why would she bother? She had lots of money.’

‘I think there must have been something else Beatrice wanted from them.’

‘But who are these poor silly girls? They must be so worried, knowing their photographs are somewhere and the person who had them is dead.’

‘I could ring a number and get hold of a man who could give me a list of eight possible candidates but I have a feeling that the information is no longer available to me – or anyone. I’ll have to find a different way of identifying them.’

‘We could just burn these but have you thought, Joe . . .?’

‘Yes, I have. The negatives.’

‘I bet damned old Audrey had them.’

‘Don’t swear, Dorcas.’

‘Bet she did, though!’

‘And I bet she went to London to sell them to someone. She would have needed money. They never found her handbag. That’s probably where they were. And now it’s at the bottom of the Thames and the negatives will have been ruined. Good! These girls must be found and discreetly reassured that all is well.’

Dorcas gathered the photographs together. ‘I’ll put them on the fire.’

‘No! Don’t do that! I’ve just thought how I might get them identified. Scissors? Have you got a pair of scissors?’

Dorcas fetched two pairs of scissors from the dresser. Companionably, they sat side by side, cutting out each expressionless drugged face and consigning the rest of the photograph to the fire.

For a dislocated moment Joe was carried back to a winter’s day of his childhood when he’d sat between his brother and sister at just such a kitchen table, clipping and sticking. The cook had made up a jar of flour paste for them and they’d mounted selected parts of that season’s Christmas cards into albums. The sound and scent of Mrs Ross’s drop scones being beaten in a bowl at the other end of the table and cooked on the griddle came back to him.

They’d been completely absorbed by their task. Georgie, the oldest, had chosen as his subject transport – cars and trains and sleighs – and Joe, the baby, had been told to collect toys. Lydia had laid claim to all the angels. As she snipped carefully around the haloes, she’d had much the same air of concentration, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, as young Dorcas.

‘You’ll need to glue these to something if they’re not to bend. I’ll get some of Granny’s postcards.’ She dashed off and returned with five plain cards and a pot of cow gum.

Minutes later she was pleased with their collection. ‘That’s better! I’ll put them into an envelope. You could produce them in any company and no one would ever guess!’

Joe stowed his fallen angels safely away in his bag and was beginning to think about taking his leave when Dorcas exclaimed and went to the window.

‘Another visitor! Oh, dear! It’s that awful Barney Briggs! One of father’s drinking set. Mel thinks he’s a bad influence and ought to be discouraged. Come and help me discourage him, Joe.’

Joe glanced down the drive and saw a fine chestnut approaching with, he supposed, the despised Barney aboard.

They stood at the door with fixed smiles as Barney dismounted and hailed them.

‘Halloo there! I was just passing and thought I ought to call by and see Orlando. Is he about . . . er . . .?’

‘Dorcas,’ she reminded him. ‘No, he’s in London at my aunt’s funeral. They all are. There’s just me and the other children and our Uncle Joe who’s looking after us.’

Barney nodded vaguely at Joe and apologized for intruding at such an unfortunate time . . . he’d had no idea . . . how one lost track, continually commuting to London . . .

He made to remount then thought again and said, ‘You would remember to give him a message if I were to leave one, would you, miss?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, tell him to watch out because the police are checking up on him. No idea what the old fruit’s thought to have been up to but a goodly number of his friends in London town have been subjected to harassment on his account. Interrogated! Turfed out of their beds at dawn for questioning, don’t you know!

‘I was able, however, to give him an alibi, I’m pleased to say. As luck would have it we travelled down from London on Sunday morning on the same train which corroborated what Orlando had been telling them all along.’ His air of self-congratulation told Joe that this was the real reason for his turning up on the doorstep. He’d done Orlando a good turn and was looking forward to a gossip, joking with him about putting one over on the coppers.

‘Jolly lucky either of us was able to remember the events! Both pi-eyed! Oh, I beg your pardon, miss! I’m not suggesting . . . Well, Orlando would be a bit the worse for wear after a family birthday party at the Ritz . . . you’d expect it . . .’ He tried heavily to recover his faux pas.

Joe began to listen.

‘Rather a boring do, I understand, compared with my evening.’ He rolled his eyes at Joe. ‘Goings on at the Cheval Bleu!’ he confided. ‘Ending in an unscheduled performance by an artiste Orlando particularly dislikes. When I told him the story, I thought he’d have apoplexy – he laughed so much! Made me tell it all over again!’

Joe gave a polite smile. ‘Shame he wasn’t there!’ he said.

‘Ah, here comes Yallop,’ said Dorcas with relief, ‘to summon me to my riding lesson. So good to see you again, Mr Briggs, and I’ll be sure to pass on your message.’

Barney remounted his horse with nods all round and went lolloping back up the drive at a fast clip.

Judging by the glower cast at the retreating back from under Yallop’s formidable black eyebrows, Barney was not universally popular in this household. In amusement Joe’s eyes flitted from Yallop to Dorcas and back again as they stood side by side in profile, chins raised, faces set in disapproval, guard dogs on duty.

He hoped his gasp had not been audible. Physically shaken by the suddenness of his perception, he actually put out a hand and steadied himself against one of the door pillars. He struggled to suppress the mad thought.

When the unwelcome visitor had vanished between the gate piers, Yallop turned to Joe. Whatever he had been intending to say was left unsaid, swept away by the fresh awareness that Joe had not yet succeeded in wiping from his features.

For a moment the two men held each other’s gaze, Joe questioning, Yallop calculating, then Yallop smiled slowly, nodded, and dropped a grandfatherly arm around Dorcas’s shoulders.

Swallowing down his emotion, and knowing that there were no words he could ever use to express it, all Joe could do was take the groom’s other hand and give it a manly squeeze.

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Joe, for a man whose unsavoury job takes him from the swamps of Seven Dials to the cocktail bar at the Savoy, you can be unbelievably naïf!’ Lydia said on hearing his disjointed account of his day. ‘Now we see from where Beatrice got her louche ways!’

‘Lydia! Alicia Joliffe is a sixty-year-old widow who looks as though she’s been expensively moulded in glass by René Lalique!’

‘Doesn’t mean she was always a saint. It wouldn’t be the first, it wouldn’t be the thousandth time it’s happened! And the twentieth century doesn’t have a patent on passion, you know. And you say this Yallop is a good-looking fellow?’

‘Oh, yes. Undoubtedly. He must have been amazingly well set up when he was young,’ said Joe. ‘But he doesn’t strike me as being the type who would . . .’

‘All men are the type who would . . .!’ said Lydia crisply. ‘Particularly if they were young and impressionable and seduced, lured, commanded . . . who knows? . . . by an attractive employer.’

‘She’s certainly the kind of woman who would expect to get whatever or whomever she wanted.’

‘But she found herself paying the bill for her indulgence? A slip-up she regretted? Danger of discovery always there to torment her? It might account for Mrs Joliffe’s questionable attitude to her son? But can you have got this right, Joe? I mean, didn’t you say that Orlando was bequeathed the house by his father Joliffe? Old Augustus can’t have suspected anything. What does Orlando look like?’

‘More like his mother than anything. But shortish and wiry. He doesn’t look in the least like Yallop. Not at all. No, I must have been mistaken. And I made a fool of myself, gawping and shaking the chap’s hand in an emotional way. He’ll think I’m a very unsuitable uncle for Dorcas. Probably getting the horsewhip ready as we speak!’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . these things can skip a generation. Think of Great Uncle Jack’s nose!’ Lydia smiled and Joe rubbed his own nose thoughtfully. ‘Do you think Dorcas is aware?’

‘No. I’m sure she isn’t. She’s deeply fond of the old chap, you can tell. There’s a bond there but I don’t think she realizes what that bond may be. She puts her dark looks – as do they all – down to her fleet-footed gypsy mother.’

‘It’s all coming down to inheritance, after all, don’t you think? “Who benefits?” you always say is the most important question in a murder case. Well, it seems to me you can say – Orlando benefits. The old girl was bending the rules to leave everything to Beatrice who, in her eyes, was the rightful heir. On two counts: she was the oldest and she was legitimate. It wouldn’t matter a jot to a feminist, which I understand she is, that Beatrice was female. Many of us cannot accept the laws governing male inheritance over female.’

‘Perhaps she told Orlando. Perhaps she threatened to expose his dubious parentage if he didn’t agree to the house being turned over to Beatrice? How would one ever find out? No one’s going to tell me, even if I were allowed to ask.’

‘Well! I never dreamed we had such lively neighbours! I shall be sure to pay a call. It does sound as though that unfortunate Mel could do with a bit of support . . . I’ll let you know how I get on, shall I?’

‘I’d be fascinated to hear. But, listen, Lyd, old gel – don’t go sticking your nose into anything that might get you into trouble with people like me . . . no – people a good deal shadier than I am. Nameless men from nameless departments. It’s been concluded that the Dame was killed by her employee and we have no option but to go along with that.’

‘Yes, Joe,’ said Lydia, meekly.

Passing Joe’s room on her way to the bathroom at one in the morning and seeing his light was still on, Lydia tapped lightly on the door and, receiving no reply, pushed it open and went in. She’d been about to offer him some cocoa but she stood and smiled to see him fast asleep, his bed covered in sheets of notes and photographs, his open briefcase by the bed.

Silently she gathered them all together and replaced them, then, her face alight with mischief, she crept from the room carrying the briefcase away with her. In the deserted kitchen she put some milk on the stove, threw her old gardening coat around her shoulders and settled at the table to put everything in order again. Joe would thank her in the morning.

At two o’clock Lydia was still sitting by the stove holding in her hand four sheets of paper and wondering. She read for the third time through the evidence and failed to find what she was looking for. But it was the merest detail. She was being ridiculous and fussy. After all, her sharp-eyed brother had been right there on the spot. It was probably in the notes somewhere. He wouldn’t have missed it.

Lydia yawned, drained her cocoa and packed up Joe’s bag.

When he got back to his Lot’s Road flat on Friday morning, Joe sorted through his post and picked out the brown envelope bearing a Home Office stamp. Larry had been as good as his word and completed the fingerprint testing he’d asked for. There was a handwritten note from his colleague accompanying several typed report sheets. It was unsigned, on plain paper and obviously meant to be destroyed at once:

‘Sorry, old man – axe fell halfway through your commission. Managed to get it finished but I don’t think you’re supposed to have these. If anyone asks, I’ll say it was fait accompli, irretrievably in the pipeline! All right?’

Joe scanned eagerly through the results of the testing and analyses he’d asked for. In dismay at what he saw, he started again at the beginning and read with care.

‘Using the extension of the Henry System devised by Ch. Insp. Battley for the classification of single prints . . .’ ran the foreword, ‘. . . all prints submitted have been photographed and enlarged reproductions would be available for presentation in court . . .’

Fat lot of use that would be! He skipped on to the conclusions, wading through reports of loops, whorls, bifurcations and islands. ‘When the imprints of two fingers or – as in this case – thumbs are compared and it is found that there are twelve essential points of resemblance between the two, the degree of probability that they come from the same digit is so high as to amount to a certainty. We are able, in this case, to attest to no fewer than fifteen points of resemblance . . .’

On his third reading Larry’s report was still sending him the same devastating message.

He went to the telephone and asked the operator for Whitehall 1212. ‘Hello? Commander Sandilands here. Put me through to Inspector Cottingham, will you?’

The following Monday found him sitting in his office, papers neatly arranged in front of him, a half-drunk mug of tea on one side, when Big Ben struck one. He greeted a simultaneous rap on his open door with a cheerful, ‘Come in, Bill!’

Armitage came in, evidently invigorated by his week’s leave. His expression was of eager anticipation and readiness.

‘Inspector says you want to see me, sir.’

‘Yes. Sit down. Glad you could come. I see the sea air’s done you a power of good,’ said Joe. ‘Must try it myself sometime.’

‘Go on, sir! Don’t tell me you spent the time chained to your desk?’ He waved a hand at the evidence of work in progress. ‘Though it does rather look like it.’

‘No. I went to the country. I stayed with my sister in Surrey. I called on some of her neighbours, Bill. You’ll be interested to hear your absence was noted and regretted by Miss Dorcas.’

A smile broke out but was instantly suppressed. ‘Not poking about still, sir? That’s all done and dusted, isn’t it?’

‘I believe so. Yes. The Dame was buried for a second time last week and we can all exclaim, “Good Lord! What a shame! Such a loss to the service! Her maid did it? Well, we all knew the servant problem was getting out of hand.” And by next week we’ll all have forgotten about Dame Beatrice.’

‘Dame who?’ grinned Armitage.

‘Except that I shan’t have forgotten.’

‘Still ferreting, sir?’

‘Yes. As a matter of fact I got more than I bargained for down at King’s Hanger.’

Joe outlined the evidence he’d discovered for the existence of the Hive. And Donovan’s involvement.

‘Bugger me!’ said Armitage, round-eyed. ‘Are you telling me that she stood there – the Dame, I mean – and took photos of the girls in flagrante delicto with that . . . that . . .’

‘Lothario?’ suggested Joe.

‘Can’t we get him for something?’ said Armitage hopefully.

‘I wouldn’t like to have to specify the offence on the charge sheet,’ said Joe. ‘Are you curious, I wonder, Bill, as to what’s really behind all this? They obviously had blackmail of some kind in mind – or coercion. I don’t believe money was involved so what on earth could this unholy pair have been extracting from these girls?’

Armitage shrugged. ‘You don’t need to be an expert at differential calculus to work it out. Come on, sir! It’s sex and sadism! They’ve been reading some French books they shouldn’t oughter. But anyway – it doesn’t matter now. I was hoping you’d called me in to say we’d got fixed up with another job?’

Joe side-stepped the question. ‘Power. That’s what it was all about, I’d guess. With evidence like that hidden away and a threat to send copies to . . . parents perhaps? Rich, well-placed members of society with a good name to lose? “Dear Admiral X, You will be interested to see the enclosed art study of your daughter Amelia enjoying the company of a naval petty officer. Signed, A Wellwisher.”

‘Two girls from the Hive committed suicide, Bill, I do believe as a result of this pressure. And that also deserves to be properly investigated. They chose death rather than dishonour for their family but above all they were rejecting something else: whatever it was they would be required to say or do or give when the Dame pressed the button. And what I intend to find out is where precisely was that button and what was at the other end.’

Armitage was silent for a while. When he spoke his voice had taken on a firmness and even steeliness Joe had never heard before. ‘God! You don’t give up, do you? Listen, Captain! I’m telling you! You said to me the other day down in Surrey that you loved your country enough to fight a bloody war all over again if you had to. Well, there’s no need for such a dramatic gesture. You can do your country a favour by doing nothing. Nothing! Is that so difficult? I shouldn’t be saying this but you always were a pig-headed bastard.’ He smiled when he delivered the insult. ‘Tell me you understand, sir. Both our careers depend on it.’

So, the gloves had finally come off.

Joe’s reply was polite, teasing even but deadly: ‘Your career? Now which one are you thinking of, Bill? The career outlined in your doctored CID file? The file that omits to mention your physical impairment? We can forgive them that omission, I think, since there’s nothing wrong with either leg. Nothing to stop you playing a nifty game of alley football with your young Russian pals. And all that clever reverse stepping through Soho on the night of the murder! Perhaps there’s another file that reveals you’re actually an understudy for Fred Astaire? Or is it John Barrymore whose talents you emulate? “Let me do the climb, sir!” All that tight-lipped, white-knuckled drama! I should have asked for an encore.

‘Or have you in mind the file that will never be open to my eyes? What name is stamped on the cover? Foreign Office? Special Branch? MI5? Room 40 . . .’

‘No name,’ said Armitage, shaking his head almost regretfully. ‘No name.’

‘Thought probably not,’ said Joe, heavily. His worst fears had been confirmed with those two words. He patted his pockets, feeling for his cigarettes and encountering the reassuring bulk of his Browning revolver in his left pocket.

‘Cigarette, Bill? No? I think I’ll have one . . . calm the old nerves . . .’

He lit a Players and was careful to hold it in his right hand as he always did.

‘There have been whispers about a department that no one seems to be able to put a name to. One that no one wants to believe exists. Not in this country that we all love. After all, it’s the sort of thing foreigners get up to, isn’t it? Russians, Turkomen, Balkans . . . probably even the Frogs if we did but know it . . . they all go in for a little discreet . . . assassination. But not the British! No, no! Not the British! Remuneration good, is it? What did they pay you for killing the Dame, Bill?’