A Spider in the Cup (Joe Sandilands Investigation) (35 page)

“Grey. Definitely the grey. Statesman-like and sober is what we’re after. He’s not going to tea with a duchess. I was looking for
you
, Julia. I have to see you. There’s something I have to tell you. I’ll be having breakfast downstairs. Come and find me when you’ve done up here, will you?”

“Fine. I’ll look forward to that.” She smiled again as though she meant it. Joe returned the smile.

The ease and normality of Claridge’s was beginning to settle around him like an eiderdown, soothing and slowing his reactions. He shrugged it off. Unease and abnormality were his lot in life. As was the breaking of bad news. Julia seemed not to have heard yet that Natalia was dead. Kingston appeared from his dressing room, slipping on his jacket. “Joe! It’s all right. Just screwing my courage to the sticking point but you can leave it to me,” he said, reading Joe’s expression. “Go have your breakfast. We’ll be fine.”

C
OTTINGHAM AND ORFORD
,
engaged in companionable chatter, were waiting for him at his office door at Scotland Yard.

Joe swept them inside. “The very blokes I wanted to see! Sit down, both of you. I want you to work together over this next bit. All our irons have been heating in the same fire, it would appear. First, Ralph—can you take the evening duty watching over Kingstone when he leaves the conference hall?”

They confirmed schedules for the coming week and then the three men turned their attention to the pile of documents on Joe’s desk, a pile that increased impressively with Orford’s contribution. The inspector was clearly bursting with information and Joe invited him to launch into his story. Murmurs of surprise and approval greeted his neat account.

Two victims were now named: Marie Destaines, with a grandmother in Stepney, and Absalom Hope, of no fixed abode.

The written information given by the murdered sailor had been used to track down the vehicle used for the deposition of the body of the dancer and Orford had followed the trail to the back kitchens of a clinic in Harley Street. An awkward moment. Orford paused to allow the Assistant Commissioner an opportunity to rap his knuckles for effecting an unauthorised entry but an encouraging chortle filled the guilty silence.

“I didn’t hear that. You mumbled, Inspector! Carry on.”

Orford passed a note of his conversation with the clerk at Companies’ House and watched as Joe’s delight turned to astonishment. He blinked, looked again and gave a low whistle. “So that’s where you are, you bugger! Hiding in plain sight! There for anyone to see if they know where to look. On paper this a well-funded and highly respectable establishment, Inspector. I’d buy shares in it. We’d better be very sure we’ve got this right. And remind ourselves that one of the links in the chain is a dead down-and-out’s sighting of a number plate in the dark. I don’t want to be the one who stands up in court and delivers that bit of evidence with a straight face and raised right hand, do you, Orford? Tell us what impressions you were able to form from the tradesmen’s level.”

“It gets no better, I’m afraid.” Orford summarised his impressions of the nursing home, touching on everything from the efficiency of the organisation to the healthy state of the drains. He referred with quiet pride to his uncovering of the menu.”

“All that holds up,” Joe agreed. He explained the circumstances of the girl’s death. “So—not a murder in this case but an illegal disposal of a body and denial of a respectable burial is what we have on the books. Not much is it? But at least we’ll have some news, even though heartbreaking, for the granny. It will at least be less distressing to account for a death in hospital in the course of a tricky operation. Orford—would you …?”

“I’d like to break the news, sir, if that’s all right. I’ll tell her the body will be sent to her for burial, shall I? And Absalom Hope?”

“I shall pursue the investigation into his killing. I have to tell you, Orford, that I think we may well have the blokes who did this already in custody down in Surrey on a charge of attempted murder. To which I shall hope now to add: murder achieved. They keep themselves busy.”

“One other thing, sir. Fingerprinting results came back in double quick time. The coin in the girl’s mouth. No more than we expected and it hardly matters now, I suppose, but the labs dealt with it so fast I thought maybe you’d want to …”

“I shall commend them. In fact, I shall be very interested to see what they’ve come up with.”

Joe read the short report in silence and studied the photographic evidence with the accompanying notes of the technician’s observations. Over the years he’d grown skilled at reading fingerprint evidence, valuing it—as did the general public—as solid and incontrovertible proof of guilt or—more rarely—innocence in affairs which in all other respects were murky and misleading.

The continuing silence as Joe struggled to make sense of what he was seeing was beginning to disconcert his two officers. Feet were being shuffled, watches discreetly consulted.

“Orford—you have the notes you took when we interviewed Sam and Joel with you? Have I got the names right? Colonel Swinton’s men? Good. They were the ones who gave the clearest—and the longest—account of the actual discovery of the coin as I remember. Could you find it and read it out to me again?”

“It was the strangest thing they’d ever seen in their lives,” the inspector murmured as he shuffled through his notes. “I heard them tell it three times at least but they never changed a detail. Solid witnesses. Here we are. Do you want me to miss out all that mythology stuff the professor filled their heads with—Hades and Charon and the gold of Thrace?”

“Thank you, Orford. Just the bones of it.”

The inspector read, apologising for his stumbling over handwriting mixed with shorthand.

“That’s exactly my memory. Look—get that typed up as soon as possible. Have them make an extra copy and get it to my desk.”

The Assistant Commissioner stared bleakly at his men for a moment and then gave vent to his feelings in language neither man had heard for fifteen years.

W
HEN HE’D RECOVERED
his equanimity, the instructions followed thick and fast. “Orford, go and get me another copy of these fingerprint sheets, will you? Take this card and have my secretary book an appointment for the professor to be there at the phone when I ring at eleven this morning. Then you’d better go and see Granny. Ralph, have you got your pass for the Geological Museum Hall? Splendid. Go in and watch Kingstone’s back, will you? He’s still under threat, even more so … Yes, I know Armitage will be there. Pass an eye over him for concealed weapons. They’re all supposed to have been frisked before entry but this is a cute one we’re dealing with. I’m pretty sure he committed a cold-blooded murder this weekend.”

Joe twiddled his pencil for a moment and then added, “So you’ll think it a bit odd when I say: watch
his
back too. I’m not certain which side the sergeant’s playing for—or even which pitch he’s on. He may be a target himself and unaware of it. Who murders the murderer? And who guards the guards? Well, today it’s Cottingham of the Met. That’s who.”

The men bustled off about their business and Joe lifted the telephone. On the third attempt, he raised Bacchus. “Drop whatever you’re doing and come here for a briefing, James. Bring everything you have on the Nine Men. Oh, and put on your best hat and a clean Burberry—I’m taking you on somewhere afterwards.”

“W
ELL?
W
HAT ARE
you thinking, James? Struck you dumb, have I?”

“I’ll say! I’m trying to get used to the thought that I may well have served liqueurs and cigars to a consortium of the world’s power brokers. Bringers of War. Wreakers of Mayhem. When I think what I could have slipped into their beverages! The contents of the two capsules I always carry in my pocket could have saved the world from lord knows what. But two of these blokes are out of place. Minnows swimming in a shark tank. Kingstone and Armitage. Look, Joe, would it be an irrational thought … with all this economics stuff buzzing in our ears … we might have overlooked an even more alarming reason for their foregathering in London?”

“The conference is just a useful cover, you mean, for something more dire than fiddling with the exchange rates?”

“Could be. It
is
a good cover—a damn good one. We can be sure Kingstone is heavily involved … useful to them, but not indispensable, as they’ve shown they were quite prepared to dispense with him definitively. But he’s a recent acquirement—and Armitage is only there at his insistence. There must be a core of elder statesmen—say, five—and they co-opt others as and when they’re useful.”

“I had thought as much. But the motive, James? An economic one?”

“I’d have thought more—political, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s what Kingstone himself hinted to me. The annoying chap has given me lots of hints as to the seriousness of his predicament and I’ve wondered why he can’t just come out with it straight. He’s a man who is by nature, I’d say, a straight-talker.”

“Wants to warn you off—doesn’t like to see innocent strangers involved in his troubles?”

“Yes. I do believe so. But there’s more to it than that. Have you noticed, James, when you’re doing interrogations—the people who make a show of clamming up but then go on to drop hints, start sentences and leave them tantalisingly unfinished—they are the ones who are encouraging you to press them harder. They want you to guess their secret or their guilt.”

“So they can claim we beat it out of them! Not their fault, they never intended to give anything away? Know the type. I wouldn’t have thought Kingstone fitted that profile. He’s tough and he’s a gent. Don’t forget—I’ve listened in to his unbuttoned moments. I think I know the man by now.”

“No. He’s made of sterner stuff, I agree. I’ve seen him grinning in full knowledge he has two revolvers trained on him. The swing in popularity of the gold standard wouldn’t freeze him like a rabbit in the headlights.”

“Then we have to raise our eyes above the level of the economic shenanigans?”

“Or below. Where the hell are we supposed to be looking? What’s happening in the world that some powerful people take exception to? That’s so unpalatable that men from various nations will gather together under the umbrella of transatlantic friendship to put a stop to? Let’s think in those basic terms.”

“Discounting greed, world poverty, and starvation then …” Bacchus rolled his eyes and gulped. “Let’s see … It usually comes down to leadership, doesn’t it? Power. Now I’ll rule us out here in Britain. I know we can be damned annoying to anyone who doesn’t know the words to ‘Rule Britannia’ and have the recipe for strawberry jam by heart but … honestly, no. With our charming old sheep-farmer prime minister and our peace-loving monarch presiding over a war-weary nation, who would feel threatened? Apart from renegades like this old fart, Admiral Buchanan, we have no one who’s going about the world annoying other nations. Unless someone’s been unkind about the Japanese again.”

Searching his memory, Joe presented Bacchus with the remark of Kingstone’s that had truly puzzled him. In his sphinx-like manner, the senator had declared that what these men valued was his military reputation and record.

“A
military
leader, eh? He’s young enough and fiery enough to play Mars to his friend Roosevelt’s Jupiter, I’d say, wouldn’t you? Those two men in harness would be very impressive.”

Joe pointed out the drawbacks to this notion. Kingstone’s military career, though impressive, had been short-lived. He was never a professional soldier. Conscripted. In and out of the war within a year. Joe voiced the objection that the US had already got an army general with a reputation in the picture.

“That would be MacArthur you’re thinking of? But since last summer his reputation is pretty well a stinking one. Blotted his copy book in no uncertain terms.”

Joe had to admit mystification.

“It happened in July. I think you were up in Scotland, miles away from a newspaper. Rather shocking event! After months of strikes and disorder which nearly brought the country to its knees, the protest to end all protests broke out. The ‘Death March’ around Washington, staged by the Bonus Expeditionary Force. The B.E.N. Old soldiers. Veterans down on their luck. Ten thousand of them gathered to march and demand an instant payment of their ‘bonus.’ The promised veterans’ endowment policy which hadn’t been paid. Worth about a thousand dollars a man. They set up camp outside the capital and called their collection of shacks ‘Hooverville’ after President Herbert Hoover. Being soldiers, they dug latrines, kept the place clean and orderly. Denied use of their assembly to communists and fascists alike. There was no rise in the crime rate. They were unarmed. Some brought their families with them. Planted vegetables. A skirmish with the police left two officers dead and several injured and federal intervention was called for.
Unfortunately it was the army’s chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, who answered the call.”

“Oh, dear! Heavy fist shaken?”

“Four troops of cavalry, four companies of infantry with machine guns and bayonets, city police in support—oh, and four tanks. Heavy enough for you? The general routed the veterans and chased them across the river. Ordered not to pursue them, he disobeyed the order and set fire to their camp. President Hoover became the first American president to make war on his own citizens. And in their own streets in sight of the White House. Many of them had voted for him. Of course he was not re-elected and in stepped Franklin D. Roosevelt that following autumn.”