Dying to Know (25 page)

‘He didn't,' I insisted, wondering why everyone automatically thought Dad was guilty. She shrugged; I could say what I wanted, it wouldn't have changed her opinion. I asked, ‘Have you ever contacted Oliver Lightoller?'

She handled the cigarette as I would think she imagined elegant and refined people did – film stars and society people – holding it at the tips of her fingers, her lips pursed as she blew out the blue-grey smoke. ‘No.'

She said this simply, definitively, without doubt. I asked for clarification. ‘No? You're sure?'

‘Yes. Why?' It was obvious from the way that she said this that she wasn't lying.

‘You didn't ask him to clear your husband's house?'

‘No.'

Bugger.
I sighed. I had lost my appetite, at which point I realized that I had been staking a lot of hope on getting the right answers in this interview. The door opened and a mother with two small children came in, both talking loudly, clearly excited at the treat ahead. The woman was about thirty, dressed in a thick, pink overcoat; it was starting to rain outside and she had on a clear plastic rain hat that was dotted with drops.

Nadia Baines stood up having stubbed out her cigarette in the cast metal ashtray. ‘I've got to get back to work.'

I would have let her go and was on the point of thanking her for her time when Max asked, ‘Who did clear the house?'

She stopped and looked back down. ‘I don't know.'

Which was surprising. ‘Why not?' asked Max.

‘Because I didn't arrange it.'

Before we could respond, she went to serve the woman and her children. Max and I exchanged looks; what did that mean? While we were waiting, Max ate the last of her burger with the small, precise bites and contained chewing movements that I was starting to know and love. I just sat there and wondered how she could be so calm, impatient as I was to find out more.

The woman took a tray replete with glasses of Coke, a cup of something and plates of burger and chips to a table near the door. We went back to the counter.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Baines, but who did arrange the house clearance?'

She was fed up with the conversation and said tiredly, ‘My solicitor.'

OK. Fair enough.

‘Can you give us his name so that we can contact him? We really need to know who did the house clearance.'

She shrugged. ‘If you like. His name's Holversum. Alexander Holversum.'

THIRTY-FIVE

‘
W
hat?'

It was a somewhat hackneyed reaction but a real one. I had thought that we would be given an anonymous name that we would contact to find out what we needed to know, nothing more. ‘Holversum?'

She said, ‘Yes.' There was the merest of pauses before she added for emphasis, ‘Holversum,' and said it in the kind of voice my teachers used when I was being particularly stupid at school.

I looked at Max and she looked at me and I saw in her eyes my own question mirrored. What was the significance of this? Max turned to her. ‘Has he always been your solicitor?'

‘Ricky's, not mine. He'd represented Ricky for years and years.'

The door opened and two more youths came in and were greeted enthusiastically by those already present. Nadia looked across at them, then back to us. ‘If you've finished . . .?'

We could think of no more questions but I wasn't sure if we were irrevocably done. With my brain still trying to work out what this meant – if it meant anything at all – we left the Wimpy Bar and made our way home.

‘Mr Holversum?'

‘That is I.'

‘It's Lance Elliot. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday . . .'

‘Think nothing of it, dear boy. What can I do for you?'

‘I don't know if I told you this, but I saw something in Mr Lightoller's shop which has me somewhat puzzled.'

‘Really? What would that be?'

‘A brooch. It belonged to my mother but was stolen from my house about six months ago.'

‘Good grief! Are you sure?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘But I don't understand; how can I help with that?'

We were nearing the nub of things and, I had to admit, I was also feeling that my purported reason for ringing him was somewhat tenuous. I looked across at Max who was looking on with interest. We were in Dad's sitting room, cups of tea in front of us on a low table. I felt slightly sick, the burger lurking in my stomach, a bolus of indigestion.

‘It occurs to me that Mr Lightoller did house clearances.'

‘He did.'

‘So he might have acquired the brooch that way.'

‘Yes, I suppose he may.' He sounded puzzled.

‘You don't happen to know which houses he might recently have cleared, do you?'

‘Me?'

‘Yes, well . . .'

‘Why should I know such a thing? I hardly knew the man.'

On the face of it, this was a good question. I had reached the tipping point and either now plunged in, or pulled back and lost the initiative. ‘I understand that you arranged the clearance of Ricky Baines' house; I don't suppose you used Mr Lightoller, did you?'

There was a long pause at this. I heard him draw in breath before he said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did.'
Bingo!
I looked across at Max and nodded with my eyebrows raised. Meanwhile, Holversum was asking, ‘But what can that possibly have to do with your mother's brooch?'

I had prepared my explanation, knowing that it would sound pathetic but hoping, thereby, that it would sound authentic. ‘Mr Baines was a jewel thief. I just thought . . .'

Holversum's laugh came down the phone complete with a full load of condescension. ‘I don't think Ricky Baines had anything to do with the theft of your brooch; he was still enjoying the hospitality of Her Majesty six months ago.'

‘Oh, yes.' I waited for a heart's beat, then went on: ‘How stupid of me.'

‘Oliver Lightoller did many house clearances,' he went on, forgetting that he ‘hardly knew the man'. ‘He might have picked up the brooch in probably fifty houses.'

‘Of course.'

‘Is there anything more I can do for you?'

I wasn't entirely planning to say what next came out of my mouth. ‘Did you know the Lightollers well?'

His answer came in a slightly different tone, a more defensive one, perhaps a more hostile one. ‘I believe that I have already explained my relationship with Oliver Lightoller. I did some legal work for him, nothing more. I did not know his wife at all.'

‘Oh, yes. You said.'

‘And now, I really must get on. If you have no other questions, doctor?'

I did, but none that I could reasonably ask and, accordingly, I rang off.

Max asked, ‘It was Lightoller who did the clearance?'

‘Yes.'

‘So it's possible that he found the diamonds amongst the possessions.'

I pointed out, ‘The police apparently went through the house, practically ripped it apart, and they didn't find them.'

‘But they're so small they could have been hidden in anything. I mean, it's not as if we're talking about gold bars or wads of pound notes.'

She had a point and because of that, it seemed hopeless trying to prove anything. Max was right and I felt then that there was nothing more we could do. We had speculation and we had coincidence, but that was all we had. And anyway, what did it matter? Even if we were right, if Lightoller had found the diamonds amongst the possessions in Baines' house, and somebody was doing a lot of killing to find them, it didn't indicate
who
, and certainly didn't point at Holversum, even if he was a little shy about how well he had known the dead antiques dealer.

But Masson clearly had his suspicions about Holversum. He had implied that he was rather too well acquainted with the criminal fraternity, yet did that mean he was himself a criminal? Might Masson's prejudices merely be those of a man who was continually being bested? Certainly, from what I had seen, Holversum's behaviour was guaranteed to outrage and vex someone like Masson, but that didn't in any way mean that he was a murderer. If anything, it seemed somewhat odd that Holversum, were he after the diamonds, should have allowed Lightoller to clear the house. If Lightoller had found them, how had Holversum found out? Why would Lightoller have told him? Wouldn't he have been better advised to keep quiet?

I finished my tea, and looked at my watch. It was half past two and the long stretches of a dull November afternoon lay ahead. Nothing but
The Big Match
and
Kung-Fu
to look forward to on the television. Since the radio offered only delights such as
Down Your Way
or the
Mitchell Minstrel Show
, I turned to Dad's bookshelves for entertainment. Not that I was overly optimistic. My father's fictional entertainment was drawn heavily from John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson and Trollope, redoubtable authors all but impossible to characterize as ‘light' reading; his non-fiction choices, to describe them charitably, were eclectic, and to describe them realistically, were bizarre. In the end, I plumped for an ancient tome on the English Civil War which I found on the top shelf in the back room. The shelf was so high that I had to stretch even though I was on tiptoe; it was wedged in, too, just to make things really difficult. Because of this, I had to tilt it towards me by pulling on the spine and I almost succeeded, but then the binding tore with a soft rasp.

I was truly mortified; Dad prized his books and he had instilled in me a sense of the importance of them, the reverence with which they should be treated. No book, no matter how old, how peculiar, should be abused. I would not enjoy telling him what I had done, because I knew that he would excoriate me for such vandalism. But perhaps I needn't tell him, I thought; all I had to do was push it back and go and look for something else. It was highly unlikely that he would spot it for years, if ever.

I reached back up, fighting a small pang of guilt and beating it.

As my finger made contact with the spine of the book, I saw for the first time that something had been revealed as the spine had come away from the binding. Old and yellowed, it looked like a folded slip of paper. Intrigued, I changed my mind; I would quite like to take a peek at it, see what it was. Accordingly, I strained every muscle and just managed by so doing to get forefinger and thumb around the book. Eventually it came free from its cramped home and I had it in my grasp.

In the event, it was inexplicable. In faded ink and a cursive hand that was neat and clearly decades old, it was a billet-doux, asking for a meeting. To Cecily from Bertram, it asked the lady to attend at the War Memorial at seven in the evening on the Tuesday next. It spoke of love and affection, and was somehow Edwardian in its tone and sentiment. I looked at it and thought how strange it was that it had been there for so long and remained undiscovered. Why was it there? Had Cecily hidden it in a hurry as her father had come into the room? Had she been supposedly studying the English Civil War but instead dreaming of this tryst? Perhaps her parents did not approve of this Bertram, had forbidden her from having contact with him.

For a moment, I became inexplicably sentimental, hoping that Cecily had managed to keep her appointment with Bertram, that the relationship had prospered . . .

And then the true significance of the note burst upon me.

THIRTY-SIX

‘
T
he inspector's not here.' Smith said warily, as if feeling unprotected.

‘Where is he?'

Smith's tone suggested that he didn't take kindly to being the subject of interrogation. ‘Out,' was the response.

‘It's quite important that I speak to him. Will he be back soon?'

‘I'm not too sure. If you like, I'll pass the message on when I see him.' He sounded to me as if it wasn't going to be top of the priority list, though.

‘If you could. As I said, it's important that I speak to him.'

‘Can I help?'

I hesitated. Maybe he could. ‘You remember the petty thief who stole that book from the Lightoller's house?'

‘Victor Robbins.'

‘That's him. He just stole a book; is that right?'

‘Yes. Hang on a minute . . .' There was some faint rustling for a moment or two. ‘Here we are.
Diamonds Are Forever
by Ian Fleming. It's an early edition, but not that valuable. At most a tenner.'

I wasn't listening because the fireworks of triumph were exploding in my head. I managed to ask, ‘What condition was it in?'

More rustling. ‘Fairly tatty. The spine was ripped apart.'

More fireworks. ‘Listen, constable, I need to talk to you. I think I know who killed the Lightollers.'

I said to my audience, ‘It's Holversum. It has to be.' Max glanced across at Smith to judge his reaction. She had already heard my theory but I don't think she had bought a large number of shares in it, something that made me all the more nervous in front of what was always going to be a difficult audience.

We sat in a cramped office in Norbury police station that had been made to accommodate two desks, but only by placing them so close together that they practically kissed at one corner. Masson's desk, naturally, was larger and he had more leg room; Smith looked, in comparison, like a large schoolboy squashed behind his. From the expression on his face, I guessed that at least one of his legs had gone to sleep. The chairs on which Max and I sat were similarly intimate, so that she was almost, but not quite, keeping my left knee pleasantly warm.