Last Nocturne (24 page)

‘Apparently
from a woman?’

‘My mother found them in his desk. And the reason I haven’t seen them is that they’ve been stolen. Someone is demanding money for their return.’

Lamb regarded him gravely. ‘I think you’d better give me the full story, don’t you?’

‘You can leave this with me, Mr Martagon,’ he said when he’d heard the details about the blackmail demands. ‘We’ll make the necessary inquiries.’

‘Discreetly, I hope. I’m afraid my mother isn’t going to be very pleased that I’ve breached her confidence – for reasons of her own, she didn’t wish the police to know of it. But I think what you’ve told me about Theo Benton alters the case enough to warrant it. And in any case – well…’

‘You may assure Mrs Martagon we will be as discreet as possible, though I think you should tell her that you’ve informed me.’

‘Of course, I wouldn’t do otherwise. But don’t do anything until I’ve told her.’

Lamb was mildly amused to see trepidation on his face. Women are beginning to get the better of us, he thought.

It was Martagon’s turn to fetch the sherry decanter. He brought it to refill their glasses but Lamb shook his head and Martagon, after a moment, left his own glass empty, too. A furious frown creased his forehead.

‘Is there something more you want to tell me?’

‘Nothing that has any bearing on your inquiries.’

Miss Thurley moved slightly in her chair.

Martagon raked his fingers through his neatly brushed hair. ‘This is the very devil, Inspector.’ Propping himself against the desk once more, folding his arms, he collected himself and told Lamb of the day his sister Dulcie had witnessed the meeting between an unknown woman and his father in St James’s Park.

‘And this woman was the writer of the letters?’

‘I really have no idea, though she well might have been,’ Guy answered stiffly. ‘They were apparently unsigned. But they were love letters of a sort, and for what it’s worth, Dulcie seemed to think there was something of that nature between the lady and my father when she saw them together.’

‘She may be right, probably is. Women – even as young as your sister – seem to have a sixth sense regarding things like that,’ Lamb said, with a smile at Miss Thurley. ‘Mrs Amberley, you said. Mrs Isobel Amberley? That’s not a German name – yet they conversed in German. Was your sister sure of that?’

‘She had a German governess at one time. It wasn’t a success, but I’m sure Dulcie picked up enough to recognise that was the language she was hearing.’

‘But she didn’t actually hear what was said?’

‘No. They spoke together only for a minute or two, I understand. After the woman was introduced to Dulcie, she spoke to her in English.’ He again studied the grain of the leather on the desk, frowning,

‘What else, Mr Martagon? There’s more, if I’m not mistaken?’

Guy hesitated. ‘Only that my father left behind instructions, requesting his solicitor to arrange some kind of financial support for a child.’

‘Whose mother you think this Mrs Amberley is?’

‘Isn’t that what it looks like? She wasn’t named in the instructions my father left, but I intend to find her, and discover the truth. Hardisty, our family solicitor, must know where she is, but he’s being stiff-necked about passing on what he considers confidential information. However, I dare say he might look at it differently now, especially if you – if the police – were to put pressure on him.’

‘As yet, we’ve no authority to do that. As far as we’re concerned, the verdict still stands that your father died by his own hand, unless or until we have something to prove otherwise, or something turns up that may warrant reopening the case. At the moment we can’t force your Mr Hardisty to divulge something he considers to be confidential. And he may be right – Mr Martagon may have had very good reasons indeed for not wanting the child’s name to be made public.’

‘In which case, one would have thought he’d have been more careful not to leave evidence lying around.’

‘Perhaps he wouldn’t have done so,’ Lamb said carefully, ‘had he known he was going to die.’

‘Yes.’ For a moment or two, Martagon remained lost in thought. ‘There is someone who may know something about this Viennese affair. A man called Julian Carrington. He’s an old friend of my father’s who lived and worked in Vienna for many years. If he can help in that direction, I’m sure he’d be willing.’

Lamb rose to go. ‘Thank you for your assistance – and your honesty. I would advise you to keep what I’ve told you to yourself for the moment. Now I’ll leave you to your business. Difficult time for you, I dare say, learning the ropes to run a place like this. Though I must say Mr Ireton seems to do a thorough job. I believe your father thought highly of him.’

‘That’s true. You’re mistaken, though, thinking I’m going to take over the gallery. Don’t have the knowledge. Nor the inclination, if we’re being honest,’ Martagon admitted candidly. ‘Edward Ireton’s hoping to buy the place, and it will remain in very capable hands if he does, but he’s having trouble raising the wind. Art galleries are an uncertain investment.’

After making a note of where Carrington might be contacted, Lamb left him. He went out the back way, having no wish to find himself once more in the middle of the ear-splitting cacophony still issuing from the gallery.

Cogan hadn’t been overjoyed with the notion that he might have to accompany Lamb when he went to his meeting with Ireton. Nothing much intimidated him; on the other hand, art galleries and the sort of affectation he associated with them had never featured much in his life and he was happy for this state of affairs to continue. He was more than relieved to be let off by resuming inquiries about the gun which had killed Eliot Martagon. He prided himself on his elephant-like memory and rarely needed to take notes, but on this occasion he took with him, to teach him the ropes, a bright young detective constable named Smithers, who had his head screwed on the right way and was eager for promotion.

There had always been a possibility, however remote, that the gun which killed Martagon had been his own, bought perhaps on one of his visits abroad, despite his alleged antipathy towards firearms. If, as Lamb at least thought was now looking more and more probable, his death and Benton’s murder were linked in a way that suggested Martagon, too, might have been murdered, there was a better case to be made out for it having belonged to the killer, and necessarily left behind in the attempt to make the death look like suicide. Unless it had indeed been Martagon’s own weapon, drawn in self-defence before it was wrested from him and used against him. Possible, though unlikely. There had been no signs of any struggle, or indeed of forced entry. Had he, then, known his killer?

The pistol had been a little FN Browning automatic, made in Belgium, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t buy one in England. On the contrary, you could obtain all sorts of guns anywhere, from a gunsmith to one of the grand department stores – Selfridges, Swan & Edgars, Harrods – over the counter, as casually and easily as a box of truffles or half a pound of
foie gras
. But according to the experts who’d examined it, it had had a fair amount of use, so it might just as easily have been bought second hand.

Cogan emerged with Smithers from yet another gunsmiths’ premises and stood on the pavement while he decided where to go next and which tram to hop on. Like all the other gunsmiths previously visited, these last had been adamant that this particular weapon had never passed through their hands: they were proud of knowing their stock intimately, new or second hand, and swore they would have recognised or could account for any gun they’d handled over the last twenty years. It began to look as though it had indeed been bought on the Continent, in which case there was little hope of tracing its purchaser.

It was an unseasonably warm day, the heat rising in waves from the pavements made them hard on the feet, and the sunshine glancing off the liver-coloured tiles of the new tube station across the road hurt the eyes. It was nearly lunchtime. There was a pub Cogan knew not far away. He met Smithers’ eye, jerked his head and, as soon as a gap in the jostling traffic appeared, they crossed the road.

Cogan was on familiar ground here. The landlord was a man from Wapping who kept a traditional house and the sort of menu he considered natural to all right-thinking Londoners. Cogan nodded to him and considered the options chalked up on the menu board. Smithers, young enough to have a healthy appetite and not deterred by the heat of the day, went for the pie, mash and liquor, plus a half of bitter. Cogan settled for jellied eels and a glass of Guinness. When it came, he took a deep, thirsty, satisfying pull, belched and leant back.

As he put the glass down and watched the foam sliding down its sides, he thought of Theo Benton and his two artist friends who had spent their last convivial evening together before his death, eating steak and kidney pudding and getting through several bottles of red wine…with ginger beer for Theo. Cheerfully expansive, no doubt, as they walked home round the corner to Adelaide Crescent, where the other two had left Benton.

He ate his jellied eels and then said, ‘Your mother’s German, ain’t she, Smithers?’

Smithers, mopping up the last of his gravy, red-faced and replete with the heavy food he’d finished down to the last mouthful, flushed even further. He pushed his plate to one side. This was a question he spent much of his time hoping he wouldn’t be asked. The Germans weren’t exactly riding high in the popularity stakes with the British public at this given moment, what with reports in the newspapers about their Kaiser being publicly rude and aggressive to the King, his own cousin, and the growing possibility of a war between the two countries – the certainty, said the
Daily Mail
, now that the Germans had more warships than the British Navy, and that they would need to be taught a lesson.

‘German-born. But she’s lived here most of her life,’ Smithers answered defensively. ‘She came over with her parents when she was three.’

‘Speaks German, does she?’

‘Not as a rule. But she
can
speak it, if that’s what you mean. Me, too. She believed – and I agree – we should be brought up to speak both English and German, me and my sister. Nothing wrong with that, is there – sir?’

‘Off your high horse, lad. I was only thinking it might be useful to us. They speak German in Vienna, don’t they? I didn’t know you spoke the lingo as well.’

‘Useful? You mean – go over there to try and trace the gun?’ The truculence disappeared and a hopeful gleam lit Smithers’ eye. ‘My sister’s married to an Austrian.’

Cogan eyed the young constable cynically. ‘You’ve a lot to learn, my lad. The Force, financing a holiday abroad? Not on your nelly!’

But he was thinking about a remark Lamb had made, before they went their various ways that morning. ‘The more I hear about Vienna, Cogan, the less I like it. It’s too much of a coincidence for that place to keep cropping up like a bad penny. Seems as though some sort of scandal might have blown up there, and if both Martagon and Benton were mixed up in it, it’s time we found out what was going on. If we don’t discover what it was from these letters of Mrs Martagon’s, we’ll have to contact the police there.’

He said more kindly, ‘I was thinking more along the lines of translating a report into German and reading the reply, Smithie – should it happen to be necessary.’

‘Oh. Well, I daresay I could manage that,’ Smithers responded, slightly less eagerly. ‘I could if the Baa– if the chief thinks so,’ he amended, meeting the look Cogan was giving him over the top of his spectacles.

‘Well, we’ll see what he thinks. Just an idea I had. Finished? Come on, then. Since we’re in the vicinity, we’ll have another look at Adelaide Crescent.’

Ireton’s office behind the Pontifex Gallery had a less comfortable and well-polished appearance in the morning than when Lamb had seen it the previous evening, as rooms tend to do in the light of day, less forgiving than the shadowy ambience of lamplight. It was revealed as a little dusty, with scratches here and there on the furniture, windows which were due for a clean, all in all slightly shabby. Less private, too, Lamb thought, than it had seemed before. Several people passed by in the alley outside, using it as a short cut to Bond Street. The sun hadn’t yet come out and the morning was chilly; to compensate, a gas fire hissed and occasionally popped in the grate.

Mr Ireton was in the process of going through his ledgers. He, too, looked somewhat less urbane and less well pleased with himself than when he had been mingling with his potential clients, and older than he’d existed in Lamb’s imagination. His pristine collar appeared ever so slightly too big around a neck which had begun to show the first signs of middle age. Twenty years as Eliot Martagon’s assistant had frosted his dusty fawn hair with silver, given him a jaundiced opinion of clients and tarnished the bright certainty of his early years. He was unmarried, having observed early that business did not mix with domesticity. Unless a suitably rich wife were to appear, since he’d long had his eye to acquiring a gallery such as the Pontifex and making an illustrious name for himself. Unfortunately, neither had yet happened. He seemed a little on edge this morning. Perhaps the show hadn’t netted quite the profits he had expected.

‘Please be seated, Chief Inspector.’ He leant across the desk and offered a cool handshake and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He indicated a chair facing him. ‘I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since you spoke to me last night why you should want to see me and I must confess I’m a little puzzled.’

A gold-capped fountain pen lay on the desk. He aligned it more precisely with the ledger he’d been working on. He was a neat and careful man. Lamb could see, even from upside down, that the words and figures on the open pages were precisely written, ruled off and without doubt totted up correctly. ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help you, since I can only presume you wish to talk about Theo Benton’s suicide?’

‘Murder, Mr Ireton. Murder, I’m afraid, not suicide.’