A Spider in the Cup (Joe Sandilands Investigation) (31 page)

His voice was chill, his face as expressionless as that of a hanging judge as he concluded, “As a result of these meetings, Lydia, fortunes are made. Governments fall. Ships are sunk. Wars are started. And, on the way to achieving these ends, men—and women—are assassinated, swept from the board like counters.”

Lydia was pale and wide-eyed, absorbing every stark word. At last she spoke. “Well! I’ve heard some pretty inventive excuses for wriggling out of a game but that takes the biscuit! I won’t dare to suggest chess! I’ll leave you to make your own plans with Joe and Marcus. Here, Cornelius, have a look at the papers … do the crossword … you didn’t have time this morning. I’ll go and search out my needlepoint. Much less distressing. It’s a bit early but I think I could do with a cup of tea. I’ll go and make us one.”

She got to her feet, once again the brisk hostess.

Rising with her, he caught her hand. “I’ve startled you and I meant to. I’m a straightforward operator, Lydia. It was always my way to keep my troops informed. Tell them the worst. How can you keep your head on your shoulders if you don’t know where the fire’s coming from and when it’s coming?”

“Don’t worry, Cornelius. I know now. From every direction. All the time. Tin hats on, I think. Earl Grey or Darjeeling?”

P
EARSON GREETED JOE
on his return with a calm account of domestic activities since his departure. “We had not looked for you so soon, sir. All’s well,” he thought to add. “Mister Marcus is on patrol in the grounds and Miss Lydia has withdrawn to the morning room with her embroidery. You’ll find the senator in the drawing room, asleep. Shall I have more tea sent in?”

“We’ll let him snooze on for a bit,” Joe said, “and I’ll have a word with my sister.”

“No, Joe, she’s going to have a word with
you
!” Lydia had heard him arrive and came out to greet him, size three crewel needle held at the tilt. “In fact she’s planning to puncture your composure.” She ushered him into the morning room. “You set me up to play a perfectly ordinary Sunday afternoon game with Cornelius, never bothering to tell me I risked blowing the lid off the jam jar. Now he thinks I’m some sort of Mata Hari and he’s clammed up. Did you have any idea you were bringing down death and destruction, not just on the innocent Surrey stockbroker belt but apparently—the world? The Nine Men of Mystery you told me to pump him about turn out to be a sinister blend of Knights Templar and the Mafia and all run, we’ll no doubt find, by Professor Moriarty, drawing on the technical expertise of Alphonse Capone.”

“Yes, yes,” Joe interrupted her. “I know all that. And your indignant squeaking speaks volumes. Not something to be taken too seriously perhaps? You didn’t manage to discover
what Cornelius’s role is in this coven? Moving force? Recent recruit? Sacrificial victim? That’s the sort of thing I’d really like to know.”

“Well, you’ll have to ask him yourself. He didn’t confide that much. His warnings were more all-enveloping, open-to-interpretation, Cassandra-like utterances than personal confession. All I can say is that he didn’t strike me at all as a willing conspirator; in fact the whole thing seems to scare him rigid. He got very hot under the collar when I spoke out and revealed that you knew what he was up to.”

“I must go and talk to him.”

“Can’t you leave it for a bit? He’s been asleep for the last hour. Badly needed sleep, I think. Catching up on days, perhaps weeks, of deprivation. Speaking as his self-appointed medical nurse, I’d say—leave him for as long as you can. He’s in the drawing room, curled up all of a heap in the armchair with the cat. One’s snoring, the other’s purring.”

“Oh, no! You didn’t let that slobbering old brute get at him? He’s got bad breath and a worse temper.”

“No, no! The old thing knew just what was required. Cats are very healing creatures, you know. He marched in, jumped up onto his knee without a by-your-leave, licked the senatorial ear and settled down in his lap, purring.”

“Hardly a course of therapy his hostess could administer.” Joe smiled. “I can see that. Well—if it’s working …”

“He’s on the mend, I’d say. Just don’t offer to play him at Nine Men’s Morris or you’ll undo everything,” she called after him.

J
OE STOOD IN
the doorway for a moment, amused by the scene. The drawing room, the heart of the house, reflected the comforts of an earlier, more upholstered age. William Morris fabrics strained around well-stuffed sofas, velvets gleamed on rounded cushions. The walnut surfaces of tables and dressers glowed with
beeswax, their amber highlights echoed by soft Persian rugs. The more rigorous glint of hand-crafted pewter-framed mirrors, the cooler notes of modern French glassware and the restrained arrangements of white flowers rescued the room from any suggestion that Victoria still reigned. Everything in this room had earned its place because it was loved and in some cases had given years of good service.

Tall windows were standing open to green lawns rolling away down into the valley and somewhere in that dense foliage a late cuckoo who should have been winging his way to Africa by now called a mocking farewell. And, in the middle of all this, another discordant note.

Cornelius had changed for lunch, digging deeper into Marcus’s wardrobe. No shirt was up to the task of encircling his muscled neck and the collar was standing open, the tie discarded. The tick of a stately grandfather clock beat out in syncopation with a harmonious strand of snoring and purring coming from the armchair. Straight out of a
Punch
cartoon, Joe thought. Gentleman at his unbuttoned ease in his douce English drawing room. An ease he was going to have to shatter.

“I say—I do apologise, Cornelius, for the uninvited guest! Bugger off, Brutus!”

At the sound of Joe’s voice, the black cat leapt up and fled under a sideboard.

“Don’t scare him! I was flattered!” Kingstone said, struggling awake and suppressing a yawn. “We’re getting along just fine. He’s a beast I’m proud to know. In fact he’s rather like me. He sees us as brothers, I think. Moth-eaten, battle-scarred but still feisty. Though my teeth are in better condition.”

Joe grimaced. “That’ll be the ale. He drinks it out of a Wedgwood saucer. Rots his teeth and gives him the temperament of a street brawler.”

“Like I said—brothers in arms. Pass me my saucer.”

“It’s Wedgwood, but the best Darjeeling, if that’s all right? I brought in a tray. Thought you’d be ready for a bracer after going a round or two with Brutus,” Joe said genially, busying himself with the tea things.

“Brutus, eh? Named for the upright Roman senator?”

“The very same, though honouring that senator’s more dubious skills. Famous assassins, both!” Joe was amused. “My sister left you snoozing the afternoon away with your soft parts exposed to the claws and fangs—such as they are—of a champion ratter. Deadliest in the county!”

Joe talked on easily, realising he was putting off the moment he dreaded. His interview with the wretched Cummings had confirmed his worst fears and he had nothing but a further dollop of heartache to offer his guest. Kingstone also seemed happy to be clinging to the ritual of tea cups and casual chatter and ready to prolong it. Or perhaps he was simply a cat lover. Some of the most unlikely people were.

“He looks kind of … venerable?”

Joe was touched that, even with the cat out of earshot, Kingstone had searched for the kindliest word.

“He’s ancient. Mangy old flea-pasture! They had an infestation of rats on the estate some years ago. With children about the place, instead of doing the obvious thing—putting down poison or getting in a frisky pack of Jack Russells—Marcus equipped himself with a pair of kitchen cats. Gift from a neighbour. You know Marcus now—what else would he call a couple of lethal backstabbers but Brutus and Cassius? They hunted as a pair. And very effective they were, I have to admit. The corpses piled up by the back door. The deep silence of the Surrey night was rent by eldritch screeches whose awfulness the Bard himself would have had a hard time attempting to convey. Brutus’s brother and partner-in-arms died last year. In a state of utter bliss—on the field of battle.”

“He’s still lying low under there.” Joe turned to see Kingstone on his knees, peering under the furniture. “Do you think I could tempt him out with …?”

“Oh, go ahead!” Joe sighed. “He’ll happily drink milk at this time of day. It’s a bit early for his beer.”

He settled down opposite Kingstone, stern-faced, unable to put off the moment any longer. “Now, Senator. Guildford jail. I’ve charged the men with an impressive list of offences. But the one that really got them going was the threat of a charge of murder. I implied I was ready to add Miss Kirilovna’s death to their account.”

“Good thought! How did that go down?”

“It was received with granite-jawed indifference by Onslow but Cummings showed some emotion. He was startled and dismayed, I’d say. Last thing he’d expected to hear. I left Onslow to stew in his cell. With much banging of cell doors and merry calls down the corridor for pale ale and sandwiches for two to be brought in, I gave Onslow reason to suspect his mate was having a cosy chat with his new police confessor. In fact, I didn’t get much although he was ready enough to oblige in his eagerness to avoid the noose. He claimed that Natalia was alive and well when they left her. He held his hands up for everything else.”

“Did he say what she was doing there with them in the first place? It’s all right, Joe. I’ve figured it out. I just want to be sure there are no more surprises.”

Joe stirred his tea, reluctant to encounter Kingstone’s sorrow-filled eyes which held, in spite of everything, the desperate hope of a last-minute surprise. “She was there to supervise your killing. The agreed plan was to trick you into going out to meet her in the car, which would have taken off the minute you settled.”

“We’d call it being taken for a ride. Thought as much.”

“By staging our shooting party, we changed the points and diverted Onslow onto another line. Our chosen line. That
Cummings glows with all the energy of a forty-watt electric bulb—he wasn’t able to shine much light into the shadowy area beyond Miss Kirilovna. She was the sole authority he had knowledge of above Onslow. He was there to look tough, growl and cover you while Onslow drove to a suitably quiet spot. Beyond that we can only speculate.”

“Execution. She was working with them all along. I wonder if she’d have pulled the trigger.”

“Possibly three times,” Joe suggested.

“Right.” Kingstone’s thoughts had kept pace with his own. “The Surrey police might well have stumbled on the scene of an American-style shoot-out?”

“Brave senator dies defending himself, taking his killers with him?”

“Huh! They’d have it on celluloid in no time. Another role for Paul Muni?”

With that reef safely cleared, Joe decided to change tack.

“Kingstone, this Nine Men’s Society … my sister suggests that you were—would a good term be ‘shanghaied?’—into membership of it.”

“That lady’s not often wrong, I’d guess. But try—press-ganged. Like your British Navy used to do with our American sailors on the high seas back in wilder times. That would be nearer the mark. If you want to man your ships with fellas who already have the skills and strength you need, you don’t go trawling for them on the city streets. You pick ’em straight off another ship. They liked my background, my circumstances and my contacts. I found myself black-jacked and hauled aboard. I had no idea they existed before they approached me.”

“The other Pilgrims—are they aware …?”

“I can’t speak for them. Societies of any kind are not something I would ever be interested in. I’ve lately joined a few clubs because that’s where I can get to meet the men whose ears I want
to bend, whose arms I want to twist … but, no. I’ve never yet heard from any bona fide members that they suspect anything odd is happening right under their noses. No one’s ever quite certain who is a member of the Pilgrim Society and who is not, after all. Names are listed in the papers of course, but they vary according to where the meetings are being held. That’s all over the globe. Hard to keep track. Certain names are well know and constant—the ruling body is composed of men whose office demands it—ambassadors, your prime minister, a member of your royal family, our president—whichever man is holding the post.”

“I’d have thought Roosevelt would qualify as a pilgrim regardless of political eminence?”

“He surely would. On both sides of his family, he’s descended from very early pilgrims. Mayflower blue blood in all his veins.”

“And you, Cornelius? You had spoken dismissively of your ancestry.”

“A late ocean crosser! Only three generations ago. But that was enough for them. A technicality. They didn’t press-gang me for my bloodline. Or my money.”

“What then did they see in you that they wanted?” Joe asked, thinking he probably knew.

“My military record and reputation,” Kingstone replied, surprising him.

“Which I know to be excellent,” Joe murmured, calling to mind the medals and citations listed in the senator’s Military Intelligence notes. His stories of stopped watches, fraternisation in machine-gun nests and illicit frankfurters were entertaining but came nowhere near conveying the truth of the man’s achievements. “You’re a national hero. Or would be if you didn’t actively avoid the spotlight. But your closeness—some would say influence—with the new president … must have been of some account?”

“Less important. They never asked me to sweet-talk him. Or
spy on him. I told you, Joe, that I was being coerced into making a speech before them that would swing the economic situation, which is balanced on a knife edge at the moment. I led you to believe that the motivation behind this plot—conspiracy would not be an exaggeration—was an economic one. It is not. I handed you—not a lie, I wouldn’t do that—but a half truth which you were ready, even primed, to believe. The situation is, indeed, a dire one and much depends on the outcome. Can the United States be swayed into coming back onto the gold standard, which we abandoned in April, or do we stay off it and risk ruining the economies of most other nations in the world? What terms will we make on war repayments by our European debtors? How will the president fund the launch of the New Deal he is about to unveil on the fifteenth—three days after the start of the conference? I have considerable personal interest in that because one of the clauses concerns the setting up of the Tennessee Valley scheme.”