Gilded Edge, The (48 page)

The tremulous voice asked, ‘You think . . . Billy Hill killed . . . Johnny . . .’

Vince didn’t think Billy Hill had killed Beresford, because Billy Hill told him he hadn’t. And Vince had believed him. But for the purpose of turning up the heat on the already broiling DeVane, he gave as non-committal a shrug as he could muster without falling off his stool, and said, ‘I’m not interested in card cheating, Nicky. It’s murder I’m interested in. Always was, always will be. And I think you know more than you’re telling me.’

‘I know nothing.’

‘I think you know
everything.
Asprey’s washed his hands of you. You’ve been hung out to dry. But I can help you. I can keep your name out of the card cheating, and away from Billy Hill. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell me everything.
Everything
.’

Nicky DeVane looked as drained as his glass. As one of the only two customers sitting at the long bar, Vince easily caught the attention of the complicit young barman, who was reading a copy of
Playboy
that he had stashed under the counter. Again he went in heavy on the fizz and light on the firewater. Nicky DeVane took on board some heavy slugs of his drink and, along with them, Vince’s words. He knew he was backed into a corner that could potentially turn into a dead end. Because he knew Billy Hill was bad news. And now, he thought, that the news had just got worse: Billy Hill had lived up to his underworld reputation as a ruthless operator and killed Johnny Beresford. These were the thoughts running through Nicky DeVane’s head, because these were the thoughts Vince had put in his head. And this is why Nicky DeVane now told Vince
everything.

‘Johnny was scared. A friend of his, Hugh McGowan, used to own the Hideaway club in Soho, until he got muscled out by two brothers from the East End. A deeply unpleasant duo. You may have heard about it?’

‘Everyone heard about it, Nicky. It was in all the papers.’

‘Quite so. Well, Johnny had warned Aspers that you had to be careful with these people, Billy Hill and his ilk. You couldn’t just use them and discard them. It’s like a Faustian pact. So, to get Billy Hill off his back, he told Aspers about a card scam he’d been working on. It was called the Gilded Edge.’

Vince picked the Montcler playing cards up off the bar and fanned them out, their gilded edges glistening under the available bar light. Nicky eyed the cards and said: ‘Aspers liked the sound of it. He certainly liked it more than just giving Billy Hill money. And it was a way for them to “win” more money, which they needed.’ Vince’s eyebrows arched in surprise at this, and Nicky DeVane clarified. ‘Things weren’t as rosy in the garden as they seemed. Johnny’s luck in business had soured some time ago, and he had recently taken some heavy losses in certain big investments. And Aspers had sunk a fortune into turning a country pile he’d bought in Canterbury into a private zoo. He used to joke that feeding monkeys doesn’t cost peanuts. So they could both do with the money.’

‘And not forgetting greed.’

‘Quite so,’ conceded DeVane. ‘Anyway, Aspers gave the goahead, but he laid down the ground rules. They were only to cheat certain players, obviously ones that they didn’t care too much about. And if they got rumbled, well, one of them would have to take the fall. And that
one
was to be Johnny, since Aspers would plead total innocence and ignorance of the matter. He wouldn’t know a thing about it. Fair dos, thought Johnny, what good would it do to drop them both in it?’

‘What indeed,’ deadpanned Vince. ‘So what was your part in it, Nicky?’

‘For the scam to work, Johnny needed someone else to go along with it and read the cards with him, and share the luck, as it were. To be honest, Vince, me and Johnny had been rigging games and cheating at cards since Eton. We used to subtly bend the corners of the pack: a high-value card would be bent upwards, low-value downwards. It was an old magician’s trick I learned in the Magic Circle. What you do is hold the cards lightly, and shuffle gently so as to maintain the bend at the edges. Of course, it was never guaranteed, but it gave you odds of about 60 to 65 per cent. Enough of an edge to come out on top.’

‘What were the odds for the Gilded Edge?’

‘Bigger and better. Johnny had twenty/twenty vision, so I’d say at least 80 per cent, maybe more. Johnny and Aspers made a lot of money that way. Certainly enough to satisfy Billy Hill with his cut.’

‘And your cut?’

‘I got a flat fee. When my father died, I got clobbered with death duties, and it paid those with change to spare.’

‘So you, Johnny Beresford, James Asprey and Billy Hill. Who else knew about it?’

Nicky DeVane pursed his lips in a gesture of serious thought, then gravely replied, ‘It was top secret. I
mean
top secret. Loose lips sinks ships, and all that. I never talked to anyone about it – not even to Johnny. We just did what we did, and he would give me an envelope with my payment once a month. Sometimes it was more than I expected, sometimes it was less, but I never questioned it either way. And I never discussed it with him, even when we were alone together. I did mention it once, in a roundabout sort of way, and Johnny gave me such a baleful look that I never mentioned it again. It was the great unsaid. If it ever got out, it could have ruined us all. Plus the fact Billy Hill was involved, so there was the added factor of fear.’

‘How about Simon Goldsachs – did he need the money too?’

DeVane detected the irony in Vince’s voice and replied, ‘God, no. Simon’s aiming to be the richest man on the planet . . . wouldn’t surprise me if he gets there. But I assume that he knew. He does have a share in the Montcler, after all, and he and Aspers are as thick as thieves. As you witnessed tonight.’ DeVane looked bitter, then took another swig of his drink, swilling it around like mouthwash before sucking it down. ‘It was the things Simon used to say, in a roundabout sort of way, that made me think he knew all about it. Simon was always warning Aspers to be careful with his animals, saying that wild animals could never be fully tamed or trusted. But it was the way he said it, very analogous, so I always thought maybe he was referring to Billy Hill and his ilk. And if you’re right about him killing Johnny, it was good advice.’

‘How about the other two, Lucan and Guy Ruley?’

‘Lucky?’ DeVane asked, before shaking his head dismissively. ‘As you know yourself, he’s far too unbalanced. A degenerate addict of a gambler, so he could never be trusted.’

‘Guy Ruley?’

DeVane gave a listless shrug that seemed to sum up his attitude towards Ruley, then qualified it with, ‘I’ve never got on with Guy. Never had much to say to him. Simon Goldsachs gets on with him, respects what he does. Something in mining and engineering . . . all sounds very . . .’

‘Practical? Useful?’

‘Boring.’

‘Ah.’

‘Guy was a couple of years below Johnny and me at Eton, but I never considered him one of us. Not really.’

‘Why’s that? He’s in the Montcler team photo, has the money, went to the right school.’

DeVane went to hoist his drink, then stopped halfway between the bar and his gaped mouth, and he said rather apologetically, ‘Oh, Vince, I’m afraid you might think I’m a frightful snob if I tell you.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Nicky. You’re an aristocrat, and it goes with the territory. I’d be disappointed if you weren’t, and it would kill the American tourist trade.’

DeVane thought about it for a second, then let rip with an impulsive peal of laughter.‘Quite so, quite
bloody
so!’This outburst of laughter must have set something off, because he suddenly looked queasy and uncomfortable. ‘Oh, Vincent, you must excuse me, but I need to get to the little boys’ room post-haste,’ he said, dismounting from his stool with some effort. ‘When I get back I shall tell you all about how the Gilded Edge works . . . I’m surprised you haven’t asked already, Vince.’

Vince picked up the loose cards on the bar and packed them into a tidy block, and said, ‘That’s the thing about good tricks and puzzles. I like to work them out for myself. And I think I’ve got this one beat.’

‘Bravo! I shall look forward to hearing it,’ replied DeVane, before he toddled off to the gents with a stiff and unsteady stride.

Confident he had their card trick sussed, Vince sat at the bar, making busy with the cocktail sticks. One in his mouth, and one dislodging a small piece of grey grit from under the forefinger amid his otherwise perfectly clipped and kempt phalanx of nails. That operation took up the fat end of a couple of minutes. He then gathered up the cards from the bar and did some fancy shuffling that brought the young bartender over to initiate some conversation. He was an English Lit student studying at London, and was only reading
Playboy
because it contained an interview and a short story by Vladimir Nabokov. The young bartender’s story was upheld by the thumbed and annotated copy of
Lolita
that was stashed along with the jazz mag. By the time Vince eventually got up and made his way into the gents, Nicky DeVane had been absent for about fifteen minutes.

Vince found the aristocrat sitting on the throne in a cubicle, out for the count. Vince shook him, gave him a couple of wakening slaps across the chops, and even considered shoving his head down the toilet and flushing the chain, but decided against it. Nothing was going to stir him out of his current stupor. It substantiated the account of his behaviour at the Imperial, as an unreliable lightweight.

Vince told the young barman that his friend, the Honourable Nicholas no less, was sleeping it off in his private chambers. He then slipped him a couple of quid to keep an eye on him, and picked up the pack of cards from the bar. Nicky DeVane had never got around to telling him about the Gilded Edge card cheat, but as Vince left the Criterion, wishing the young bartender good luck with his exams, he wore a sanguine and solid grin on his face.

Ten minutes after Vince had left the Criterion bar, two men entered it. Both were of medium height and build, and were attired in dinner jackets. And they both wore rhino masks.

Vince got a taxi back to his flat. The cabbie wanted a conversation, but Vince didn’t; he was busy. His head was still spinning with all the information Nicky DeVane had revealed.

And with all his own theories slipping into place like tectonic plates, the path was becoming less crooked and uneven as, conversely, the fault lines and cracks in the suspects’ stories and motives began to appear. He was so caught up in the case, and lost in thought, that when he knocked on his own front door and had it opened by Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, still in a catsuit and thighhigh boots, he stepped back in surprise before he stepped in. He’d forgotten about the fancy dress ball they’d just attended, and now thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

Vince told Isabel everything that Nicky DeVane had told him. She had questions, but he had more and wasn’t too interested in playing catch-up, as the clock was ticking. He explained that he needed to get into the house in Eaton Square, and reckoned he knew a way in. When he and Mac had first checked the place over for possible ways of entering not involving the front door, they had realized the house could easily be accessed through the back garden. That just meant getting in through the—

‘I have a key.’

Isabel cut him dead with that statement. Then she looked suitably sheepish, as well she might. If that little fact had been floated earlier, her claim of innocence would have been thrown further into jeopardy. She confessed that she found a spare set, and had another set clandestinely cut. Beresford – controlling, fastidious, territorial – would have been apoplectic had he found out that she was prowling the premises uninvited and unsupervised. But Isabel had her reasons: she suspected he was seeing someone else. Not just an informal fling (which their liberated and louche arrangements had allowed for) but a full-blown affair with a model he had stolen from Simon Goldsachs; a woman who Isabel suspected had probably been procured for them both by Nicky DeVane. So with the green-eyed monster mocking her every move, she had searched through drawers, ransacked laundry baskets, plundered suit pockets and ogled his address book. Not her finest hour, she now admitted. Vince didn’t care, so long as she had a key.

They drove to Isabel’s new flat to pick it up. Vince asked her if she wanted to change out of the catsuit and into something more appropriate. She refused, stating that he hadn’t changed either, so why should she? And, anyway, she thought the outfit was highly appropriate for their venture, and most enjoyable. Vince couldn’t argue with that, and got the comic-strip connotation, and went along with it. So the masked detective and his catsuited sidekick roared off in the growling Jag and headed for Eaton Square.

There had been changes to the house since Vince and Isabel’s last visit. The olfactory senses were no longer assailed by the cloying odour of lilies. There were no flowers anywhere now, and the air smelled vapidly old and empty. With its occupant’s death, it seemed something of the house had died with him. Most of the portraits featuring proud generations of battling Beresfords, were removed from the walls now; the finely struck collection of Paul Storr silverware was under lock and key; and all the antiques – from the heavy oak furniture to the dainty porcelain – were boxed up and put in storage until their fate had been decided. And that went for the bricks and mortar, too. The place had been the Beresfords’ town residence since it had been built, but Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue Service had been forensically finecombing the Beresford finances, and they had been found wanting. Death and taxes, both guaranteed, and the former didn’t negate the levying of the latter.

In the basement den/study things seemed relatively untouched, though. The Escalado horse racing game was still set up on the billiard table, with all the little jockeys and gee-gees lined up expectantly for the next race. All the cups and trophies were still on the shelves, along with the photos of Beresford and his friends.

Isabel asked, ‘What’s down here that wasn’t down here before, Vincent?’

‘Nothing. It’s always been here. Just hidden, sort of.’