A Fête Worse Than Death (10 page)

‘Yes. It looks like a map case.'

He opened the top drawer. ‘Not in there.' He looked through the other drawers. ‘It's not here,' he said eventually. ‘Address books . . .'

‘I'll have those,' said Ashley.

‘And campaign medals and a photo album.' He opened it, holding it so Edith Sheldon could see. ‘There are some pictures of you in here.'

She bit her lip. ‘That's right. That top one. Him and me. That was on a boat last year. We'd gone up the river for the day and had a picnic. It was nice. I was fond of him in his way. Poor Reggie . . .' She sniffed and, taking a hanky from her bag, blew her nose. ‘Can't you find the diary, then?' she asked after a pause. ‘He must've taken it with him to . . . Where was it? Breedenbrook? I don't know why he should, but it had something to do with it. He got it out the desk and said, “I'll show him” – meaning Jerry Boscombe – “I'll show him. I've got this and he'd better not forget it. It's mine.” Don't ask me what it's about because I don't know.'

Haldean slid back the roll-top part of the desk. ‘I don't suppose it's in here. No, there's not enough room. Pens, stamps, pencils, bills – lots of bills – and a collar-stud box. Odd place to keep it. I suppose it's got paper-clips in.' He opened it idly and then stood, his body rigid, staring into the little box in his hand.

‘Jack?' asked Inspector Rackham quickly. ‘What is it?'

Edith Sheldon craned her head to see. She gave a startled gasp. ‘It can't be real.'

Haldean looked up. His voice was quiet. ‘It is.' He tipped the contents of the box on to his hand and showed them to Rackham.

‘Jewels,' said Rackham in surprise.

‘Not just jewels,' said Haldean grimly. ‘This is my cousin Isabelle's emerald pendant. It was made for her and I'd recognize it anywhere. But for heaven's sake, Bill, what the dickens is it doing in Boscombe's desk?'

Inspector Rackham leaned against the windscreen of Haldean's Spyker, watching Edith Sheldon's departing back. ‘That woman,' he said with great feeling, ‘ought to have a prize for talking. Good God, I thought she was never going to shut up.'

‘I thought her tongue was running on wheels,' put in Ashley.

Haldean grinned and climbed into the car. ‘Some people are never satisfied. After all, Ashley, it was only this morning you were yearning for someone to Tell All about our two blue-eyed boys. Why don't you hop in the car, by the way? Don't hang about on the pavement. And now the loquacious Miss Sheldon has answered your prayers, all you can do is grumble.' He reached in his pocket for his cigarette case. ‘Smoke?'

‘The thing is,' said Rackham, climbing into the back seat and taking a cigarette, ‘how much can she be trusted? Not factually, I mean, but in her impressions of their characters. Jack? You knew Boscombe. How did her account add up?'

‘Fairly well,' said Haldean, blowing out a mouthful of smoke.

‘What I'd like to know,' said Ashley, speaking over the noise of the traffic, ‘is how Boscombe got hold of Miss Rivers' necklace.'

‘Yes . . .' Haldean pulled the collar-stud box out of his pocket and opened it. ‘It's certainly Belle's, all right. It's a unique design.'

‘You're sure of that?' asked Rackham.

Haldean smiled. ‘I designed it.'

‘Did you, by Jove?' Rackham leaned over and took the box. The pendant was a delicate twist of gold wire shaped like an elongated star with tiny emeralds for its points. ‘You did a nice job, Jack. It's a lovely thing.' He passed the box back.

‘Thanks. I've got a friend who's a jeweller. He made it for me. It's not terrifically valuable, but Isabelle will be glad to have it back.'

‘Not only that, but I'd say it answers one question, at least,' said Rackham. ‘There's no doubt about where those two got their money from. Horses, indeed! I don't care if Morton did have a name as a gambler, I'd say robbery was much more likely, wouldn't you, Superintendent?'

‘It looks that way,' agreed Ashley.

‘But . . .' began Haldean impatiently, then shook his head. ‘You might be right. In fact, in one way you've more or less got to be right. He could have pinched this pendant at the Ritz, I suppose, or at the Savoy or any of the other places Isabelle can be found when she's in London. We know from Miss Sheldon that Boscombe liked the high life.'

‘But you're not happy,' stated Ashley.

Haldean wriggled in irritation. ‘Not completely. Never mind. Scrub it for now. Can I give Belle her pendant back, Ashley? She'd be very grateful. She wants to wear it at Mrs Verrity's Red Cross ball. I know it's evidence and all that, but I'll give you a receipt and promise that she'll produce it as and when necessary.'

‘I can't see why not,' said Ashley after a moment's thought. ‘It is Miss Rivers' property, after all, and it should be restored to its rightful owner. But this idea of Boscombo and Morton being thieves, Inspector. Have you got any more unsolved thefts on file at the Yard?'

‘There are always a few hotel thefts we can't nail down,' said Rackham. ‘I can't think of anything particularly out of the way, but it's a common enough occurrence. Having said that, your cousin didn't realize the necklace was stolen, did she, Jack?'

‘She thought she'd mislaid it.'

‘I wonder if anyone else has mislaid anything? It's your case, Superintendent, but it'd be worth asking the people who knew them.'

‘That's a very good suggestion,' agreed Ashley. He opened one of the address books he'd taken from the flat and flicked through it. ‘This is Boscombe's. Quentin Manderton? He lives in Chelsea. That's not far from here. Shall we go and see what he has to say?'

‘Quentin Manderton?' repeated Haldean with a groan. ‘Yes, all right. If we must.' He started the engine and slipped in the clutch. ‘I've run across him a couple of times. He's a great poet, according to his own estimation, and exactly the sort of person who would be friends with Boscombe. He talks more undiluted eyewash than anyone else in London.'

Undiluted eyewash, thought Ashley, sourly. Yes, that just about summed it up. Quentin Manderton had flung open the door to them. He was giving, he said, a poetry reading and ushered them into a room crowded almost to bursting point with people. Inspector Rackham told Quentin Manderton they were policemen. Manderton roared with laughter, pulled a supposedly funny face, sang ‘
A policeman's lot is not a happy one
,' and immediately started a conversation about unsubstantial realities with a young man in an orange waistcoat. No one asked their names. No one questioned their right to be there. Haldean, who seemed to know at least half the people in the room, was greeted enthusiastically by a young man in a brilliant purple tie who then completely ignored him. The only time everyone was quiet was when Quentin Manderton, announcing himself by banging on a tin tray, read his poems. And the best you could say about
them,
thought Ashley, was that they were short. Incomprehensible but short. The fumes from a gas ring over which an earnest young woman in khaki trousers was frying bacon and onions made his eyes sting. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and no one, as far as Ashley could see, was listening.

‘But darling,' shouted a shingle-haired woman who had cornered Haldean, ‘surely what you
must
try to achieve is a single integrated abstraction.' She might have been quite pretty, thought Ashley disapprovingly, if she hadn't been dressed entirely in black, including black lipstick and eye-shadow, and wearing a monocle. She waved away a cloud of cigarette smoke and shouted to where a piano was being tortured in the corner by a thin man with bad teeth and a beard which looked as if it had suffered from moths. ‘Viktorovich, that's wonderful. So loud. True poetry,' she continued, turning back to Haldean, ‘is a single perfect note.'

‘Why stick to notes?' shouted Haldean who, Ashley gloomily observed, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. ‘Surely music is a discarded metaphor. The music of the spheres? Nonsense. We need to reach beyond the perceptions of human sense, probe into the pure uplands of clarified reality. Real poetry touches the immaterial.'

‘Capitalist propaganda,' grunted the piano player, rising after a few final thumps. ‘What is the immaterial?'

‘What indeed?' agreed Haldean.

‘Poetry. Bah! Pretty words fit only for children. The only thing which matters is to create change.'

‘Flux,' nodded Haldean.

‘Does it support the ideology of power or is it the stinking rags of the bourgeoisie? That is the only criterion I will admit.'

‘Boscombe,' muttered Ashley, his mouth close to Haldean's ear.

‘Boscombe,' said Haldean smoothly. ‘Did he support the ideology of power?'

‘Boscombe,' repeated Quentin Manderton. He had read four poems to great applause and was now refreshing himself with tea taken from a steaming samovar. ‘Jerry Boscombe? Boscombe was a realist.'

‘Boscombe was a bourgeois,' grunted Viktorovich.

‘Boscombe was a creep,' said the monocled girl, descending to personalities with a bump. ‘He really was, darling. You know how he
hounded
poor Richenda and he was terribly mean. And he was always out for what he could get. He'd take anything offered and never give anything back. He lived at Hilda's expense for months, and dropped her like a hot coal when he'd had enough.'

‘Good parties, though,' put in Manderton. ‘You went, didn't you, Haldean?'

‘No,' yelled back Haldean over the noise. ‘What were they like?'

‘Liquid.'

‘He only wanted to impress us,' said the monocled girl, who seemed to have a streak of realism of her own. ‘Show off, you know? Darling!' she shouted to a fair-haired man in a seaman's jersey who had just come into the room. ‘You've brought your Norwegian violin. How wonderful!' She clutched at Haldean's arm. ‘You
must
listen to Ansgar.'

‘And I shall play,' added Viktorovich.

Much to Ashley's relief, they didn't stay for the concert.

Seated in the blessedly quiet saloon bar of the Heroes of Waterloo, Ashley took a deep draught of Bass. ‘Ah,' he said, and meant it. ‘All artists,' he said, with deep profundity, ‘are puggled.'

‘Puggled?' asked Rackham, putting down his mild-and-bitter.

‘Loopy,' translated Haldean. ‘Half-baked. Nuts.'

‘Too right. God help us, we've seen enough to judge. That Russian bloke and his ruddy piano shouting “Capitalists!” at everyone was bad enough and I tell you, I didn't know where to look when we were at Rupert Lister's.'

‘The artist's model?' suggested Haldean with a grin.

Rackham nodded vigorously. ‘Say what you like, but I can't concentrate in a room with a completely naked young woman stretched out on a sofa. And did you see his picture? All green blotches and nothing like the right shape. You seemed to get on all right,' he added in reproof. ‘All that stuff about mechanical forms and multiple viewpoints and overlapping planes and so on. I've never heard you carry on like that before. You took the whole thing in your stride.'

Haldean grinned. ‘I rather like the opportunity to talk total nonsense from time to time. I enjoyed myself, apart from running into that bloke Ditteridge. You know, the neo-vorticist novelist. He really does hate my guts. I write commercial stuff, you see, and he has a soul way above money. It's not all nonsense, though, Bill. Most of those people are capable of really good work and all the hot air they talk is simply the atmosphere they need to survive.'

‘It's not atmosphere but gas, if you ask me,' said Ashley. He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘D'you know, it's still early. I feel as if I've been locked up in a lunatic asylum for a year. To get back to business, the general view of Boscombe seemed to be that he was a bit of a phoney, wouldn't you say? He didn't seem to be well liked. Having said that, no one seemed to think he'd stolen anything. Mind you, how they'd know is a question.'

‘He had a “bourgeois attitude” towards money,' added Rackham.

Haldean finished his beer. ‘Definitely more blessed to receive than to give. Yes, that was the impression I got, too. Look, Ashley, are you keen to get back home right away? I've got a yen to visit the War Office, but I'll be there until at least seven o'clock, I imagine.'

‘That suits me,' said Ashley. ‘I can always take the train if you'd rather.'

‘No, don't do that. We'll run back together, but I do want to go to the War Office. I'll take Boscombe's book with me, if you don't mind.'

‘Help yourself. I wouldn't mind an hour or two to myself. My wife would appreciate something from London and my daughter's got a birthday coming up. What d'you want the War Office for?'

‘I want to check Boscombe's book against the official facts.' He pocketed his pipe and tobacco pouch and stood up. ‘Nice to see you again, Bill. Ashley, will you meet me outside the War Office at about seven o'clock? That should give me plenty of time.'

Haldean, his spirits sobered by the mahogany-rich fastness of the War Office, smiled with both pleasure and relief as he was ushered in to see Brigadier Romer-Stuart.

He had known the Brigadier, who, despite his rank, was in his early thirties, since the nervous days of the spring of 1918 when Haldean had flown him above the lines. Since then there had been the matter of the mess bill, a scandal which Haldean had quietly defused, and more than a few reminiscent, slanderous and enjoyably long-winded dinners at the Young Services club. Apart from anything else, it was, after the earlier part of the afternoon, a pleasure to talk in coherent sentences without shouting.

His smile of pleasure was returned. ‘Jack!' said Romer-Stuart, getting to his feet. ‘I had no idea you were in Town. I thought you were down at your aunt's place for the month. How about a bite to eat this evening? Take a pew, won't you?'