Help From The Baron (17 page)

The corpse was lying face downwards. The powerful right shoulder showed and, beneath it, the butterfly scar. Bristow shot his questioning look into Francesca’s eyes; eyes which were glistening with bitter tears.

“Have you ever seen this before, Miss Lisle?”

She tried to speak, couldn’t get the word out, tried again and said, sobbing: “Yes.”

Bristow turned the cloth back, took the limp arm quite reverently, held the wrist and raised it to the light. The scar looked very red.

“Have you?” he asked.

“Oh, no, no, no!” cried Francesca. “He can’t be dead, he can’t be!”

Bristow steeled himself to ask more questions.

Mannering watched the taxi disappearing. He caught a glimpse of Lorna’s face as she glanced round towards him. Then she disappeared along the Embankment. A police car was just behind her, and other police had already gone ahead. In ten minutes Lorna would be in Chelsea, helping Francesca up the stairs to the studio flat. It wasn’t a task she relished, but she would do it better than most.

The policewoman was also in the taxi.

Bristow was standing with Mannering, at the foot of the steps of the new building which housed the C.I.D. He still had those smudgy eyes, and looked as if he would break into a yawn at any moment. Mannering turned to look at him.

Bristow said: “We’re so short-handed that we’re days behind with some jobs, and watching her is going to cost three men. I hope it’s worth it.” He brooded. “I wish I knew why Lisle was killed, too.”

Mannering said: “Why did you turn sour on me?”

Bristow was in the mood to answer.

“Because I didn’t like what you did.” His tone hardened, for Bristow his manner became almost trucculent,

“I still don’t. Just because you came in useful . . .” He broke off.

What he meant was that he had been in a fix, and had known of no one more likely to help than Mannering. There was a moment of complete understanding between the two men, when their defences were right down.

Bristow shrugged and turned away, leading the way towards the main hall.

“You coming up?”

“Yes,” Mannering said. He followed the Yard man into the hall, up the two flights of stairs, along a wide passage and into his office. This was long and narrow, with windows broadside on the Embankment, offering a view of Westminster Bridge, the sluggish old river and the squat mass of London County Hall. The sun still shone, the sky was blue and the Thames reflected it, looking calm, peaceful and benevolent - as if it could never take a man or woman or child and hold on with cold indifference until death came.

Francesca had been pulled out of its embrace. Now she was in the tight hold of grief.

There were two desks, but no one was in the office. Bristow flung his hat towards a peg, and missed; it rolled almost to his feet. He kicked it.

“That’s how it goes,” he said. “Everything I start comes back and hits me in the face. All right, I was wrong to raid Prinny. I suppose what you really mean is that if I hadn’t he might not have been dead. That he was killed because . . .” He broke off.

“Why did you turn sour, Bill?”

Bristow was lighting a cigarette.

“Prinny named you.”

“As what?”

“As the man ready to sell the Fioras. Prinny had one of them - the girl’s cross, the one her mother was supposed to have had.” Bristow rounded his desk, sat down, pulled open a drawer and produced a matchbox. He opened this; cotton-wool inside hid the jewelled cross.

It flashed and flamed.

Mannering exclaimed: “You left that in an unlocked drawer? You must be going crazy!”

Bristow found a grin from a distant place. “They don’t burgle Scotland Yard,” he said, “and they certainly don’t raid it in daylight. After we’d found it, Prinny told me you’d brought it to him, and I knew you’d been to see him. He told me that you wanted him to hold it for you. He said he trusted you, and agreed. He was scared, and I brought him here. He was sitting in that chair for two hours, and we didn’t give him a minute’s peace. Oh, we didn’t third-degree him, but he was fit to drop when we finished. We didn’t shake him from his story by so much as a syllable. He was hard to disbelieve. I could imagine that you wanted to make sure that no one found the jewelled cross at Quinns, that you’d be safer without it.” Bristow was drawing at his cigarette between the sentences, and that gave the story a curiously disconnected form; he looked steadily at Mannering all the time. “Then this girl Susan Pengelly said her piece. That girl reminds me of someone, and it isn’t anyone good.”

“Pictures of the knitting matrons of Tyburn,” said Mannering, “or the sadistic ladies of Madame Guillotine’s Court.”

Bristow considered.

“I see what you mean,” he conceded. “But if she were a Borgia, Delilah, Circe and Cleopatra rolled into one, and she isn’t, I’d have believed her when she said that cosh-boy said you had the Fiora Collection. And I don’t believe the slob would have acted the way he did if he hadn’t thought so. He certainly wanted Simon Lessing to use his influence on you.” That brought a faint smile even to Bristow’s cynical lips. “How much he didn’t know!”

“Oh, he believed it. He tried the same trick on me.”

Bristow looked pointedly at his swollen mouth.

“Young Lessing must be in better condition, he nearly knocked the little swine’s head off.”

“That’s the trouble,” Mannering said, “I’m getting spongy and decadent, and you know what it does to the muscles. So you couldn’t shake Prinny’s story?”

“No.”

“He was a funny little chap,” Mannering said reflectively. “I liked him, and I think the liking was mutual. He must have been terrified of what would happen to him. Terrified. With reason, too. He was told to name me as the man with the Fioras, and he did just that - for fear of death. I’d forgive him the lies even if he were alive.” There was a pause; then abruptly: “Any news of Joy Lessing?”

“No.”

“Call out?”

“I told you it was. So you want me to believe that you don’t know where the Fioras are.”

Mannering looked at the shimmering cross.

“Until just now, my ignorance was even greater than yours.”

“What is it you do know? Isn’t it time you stopped playing lone wolf, and . . .?”

“No,” Mannering said, very precisely. “I know a little, Bill. I don’t know quite how significant. If I pass it on you’ll have to take police action. If you take action, I’m afraid that Joy Lessing might die. That’s how scared I am of these people. That’s why I’m keeping some things to myself. But not the Fioras; I don’t know where they are.”

Bristow chewed on his teeth.

Traffic noises came in from the sunlit embankment and the sturdy bridge. Big Ben chimed suddenly, the booming note reverberating into and about the room. Twelve noon. So much had happened in so little time.

Da-da-da-da.

Bristow said: “If things go wrong because of what you’re holding back, you’ll have your own conscience to answer, and I for one wouldn’t let it rest. Here’s a question you might be able to solve. What makes these people think you have the Fioras?”

“It’s the question I’m trying to answer myself.”

. . . six - seven - eight.

“It could be important.”

Nine.

“Yes, Bill. We have a gap of . . .” Mannering waited until the last booming stroke faded away; its echo lasted for a long time; after it, his voice sounded very quiet. “Francesca had the jewels with her, there isn’t much doubt about that. We know what time she reached the Festival Hall. We know she was found about an hour afterwards. She didn’t see her father after he had spoken to her at Waterloo Station - in fact she didn’t really see him then. She was attacked, presumably robbed, and then pushed into the river. Why didn’t Prinny’s killers get the Fiora jewels then? They snatched the cross from her neck. What actually happened to the other stones in that hour?”

Bristow said, as if unwillingly: “I suppose there could be two sets of thieves.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? One set believe that I stole the Fioras either (a) in person or (b) through whoever took them from the girl. Who would tell them that I had the Collection?”

Bristow said stonily: “You’re doing the guessing.”

“Who would they expect to know who had them?”

Bristow’s eyes lost their smudgy look, almost for the first time. He stubbed out a cigarette, and forgot to light another. He barked “Bernard Lisle!”

“That’s right.”

“The thieves got them from the girl, Lisle got them back, the thieves tackled him, and to keep in the clear he named you.” Bristow couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

“It could be that,” Mannering conceded, grudgingly.

“And when the gang was sure Lisle hadn’t got them and didn’t know where they were, they killed him. And telephoned us to report that he was dead? Why do that? It was a man’s voice - he just dialled 999 and reported. I happened to be in the Information Room at the time, I’d just got back. So we went there like rockets.” Bristow began the inevitable business with cigarettes. “Well, we’ve worked up a pretty theory.”

“Couldn’t be prettier,” Mannering agreed. “How much attention have you given Simon Lessing and Susan Pengelly?”

“The usual check.”

“Found anything?”

“Simon runs a genuine architect’s business, he has some money and has a reliable assistant. The girl’s a genuine art student, reckoned to be one of the most brilliant at the Slade. Brilliant but uncontrolled. They spent most of the summer and all of their winter vacation in Paris - with two or three others from the school.”

“Paris?” echoed Mannering. “Who else went? Francesca?”

“No. Joy Lessing and a couple of other girls. What’s on your mind?”

“There’s a vague French association already,” Mannering said. “I heard two men speaking French in a way which suggests that the people speak it a lot, and where would they do that except in Paris, France? The original owner of the jewels was le Marquis de Cironde et Bles, whose chateau was burned down over his head and who had to sell a lot of heirlooms and family treasures because he’d forgotten the little matter of insurance. Or it had been forgotten for him by a careless secretary. Now these girls study painting in France. Bernard Lisle - have you a photograph of him?”

“Here.” Bristow ferretted among the papers on the desk and produced one; a good one. “Handsome beggar,” he commented.

“He said the jewelled cross once belonged to Francesca’s mother,” Mannering said. “Francesca’s mother would have been somewhere about the age of forty-seven to fifty, if she’d lived. The cross might have been hers a long time ago. Bill, I think we want to find out how many daughters the Marquis de Cironde et Bles had, and whom they married. That might help us to identify Bernard Lisle. Can you get that from the Sûreté Générale?”

“Yes.” Bristow moved to the telephone. “And I’ll ask for a photograph, too. You get ideas sometimes. Where are you going now?”

“To see Simon Lessing and Susan Pengelly,” Mannering said. “The girl might have met Lisle in Paris, mightn’t she? Or met someone who’s involved in this from across the Channel.”

“You’ll probably find the pair at Lessing’s flat,” Bristow told him. “I’m keeping it watched, and my man reported half an hour ago.” He touched a note on his desk.

“Thanks,” said Mannering. “Don’t lose ‘em, Bill.”

He used the lift to go downstairs, nodded absently to familiars at the Yard, reached the courtyard and realised that his car was still outside the nursing home. It was only ten minutes’ walk away. He decided to walk, for a taxi would probably take longer in the midday traffic. It was so warm that some typists were carrying their suit coats as they walked along the embankment. Mannering kept on the river side, which was emptier. On the gardens just beyond the Houses of Parliament it looked like a summer day. Every seat and every inch of grass was covered with sitting or sprawling bodies, a thousand jaws were chewing on a thousand sandwiches, and a thousand apples were waiting for the onslaught of sharp teeth.

He crossed the road to the side street and his car.

A man, lounging against the wall, moved as he came up, and deliberately blocked his path.

The man wasn’t ill-favoured so much as rugged. He was dressed in a baggy suit of grey tweeds, had a big moustache which looked as if it might come off when pulled hard; and shaggy eyebrows which were probably false, too. He had an easy smile. His movements were lazy but considered, and he gave the impression that he could pack a useful punch.

“Fancy meeting you,” he greeted.

Mannering stopped. “You have the advantage of me,” he said solemnly.

The other’s grin broadened.

“Scoby said you’d see it his way, sooner or later! Now you’ve seen the kind of thing that happens to people who play fast and loose with us, and we hope it’s a lesson you’ve learnt. You remember there was some talk about those little bits of glass.”

Mannering moved, to allow a young girl and an elderly woman to pass.

“Vaguely.”

“Better not be vague,” the man said. “Scoby wants them tonight. Take them with you to Lessing’s flat. Fair exchange - the bits of glass for the bit of fluff.” He grinned. “You wouldn’t like little Joy to stay with her new friends any longer, so that she could learn a bit more about life, would you?”

The grin was a leer.

“I told Scoby one thing,” Mannering said, “don’t hurt Joy. Don’t hurt her and don’t teach her anything.” He moved on.

The man took his wrist and held it very tightly, with the pressure of a man who had great physical strength.

“Tonight, Lessing’s flat, no police, no pals,” he said.

Mannering flicked his wrist. Strength was one thing, judo another, and in days long past it had been necessary for him to fling a sixteen-stone policeman over his shoulder. This man was not sixteen stone. He winced, gasped, felt as if his arm were going to break, and then smacked back against the wall, propelled by what appeared to be no more than a wave of Mannering’s hand. Two lads gaped, a nicely-turned out young woman in a veil and pipe-line skirt missed a step.