Lord Foxbridge Butts In (23 page)

“At least your inexperience in these matters has the excuse of youth,” the Baron swallowed down the last of his drink, “I really must go now, Sebastian. I’m expected at the Romanian Embassy for dinner, I have to prepare my remarks.”

“You
prepare
remarks for dinner?” I cocked my head.

“I create a list of things that I may say and topics that must be avoided,” he stood and started drawing on his gloves, “based on the nationalities and ideologies of those expected to be present. I must also be prepared to portray my Queen in a favorable light to those nationalities and ideologies. Preparation is the greater part of diplomatic work.”

“How terrifically clever of you!” I said admiringly, though I was thinking
Sooner you than me, chum
; I stood with him and walked out of the pub, seeing him into a cab, “Have a lovely evening. We must have dinner together sometime, next week if that’s all right.”

“Good evening, Sebastian,” he waved as the cab pulled away.

Since I was already so close that I could see its roofs, I turned my steps to New Scotland Yard, thinking it might be fun to drop in on Twister at
his
work, and see how
he
liked it. The big banded brick-and-stone Victorian building was an immense buzzing beehive of activity, with telephones ringing and telegraphs clacking and people shouting and shoes banging the floors. It took me some time to locate Twister in this hive, but I was eventually directed to the end of an interminable corridor on the fourth floor, which was relatively quiet and lined with frosted glass windows and doors; the last door on the left read “Chief Inspector Brigham,” behind which I found Sergeant Paget at his desk outside the great man’s office.

“Foxy!” he looked up at me in a moment of pure delight, which he schooled quickly into a more quizzical and distant expression, “What are you doing here?”

“People keep asking me that, today,” I laughed and perched on the corner of his desk, leaning over a little to see what he was typing — reading upside-down is one of the most useful tricks I’d ever taught myself, “It’s true, I seldom get this close to the Thames; but people seem to think I’ll turn to dust if I step south of Pall Mall.”

“Who else has asked you that question today?” he pulled the cloth cover over the typewriter before I could make out much more than the date and ‘Dear Sir.’

“My father,” I laughed, glancing at other papers on the desk, which were all lying face-down to thwart the curious, “And Baron van der Swertz.”

“So you were in Westminster Palace,” he surmised, “Did you get anything out of the Baron that I had failed to get?”

“A more detailed account of his activities, an explanation of why he was in Soho, and an admission of suffering shell-shock,” I shrugged my disappointment, “I thought for sure I could pin Nilssen for this, though I didn’t think it likely he would use the Baron’s knife and then leave it behind; but he has an airtight alibi for Mrs. Nazerman.”

“Unfortunately, both Mr.
 Baker and Mrs. Nazerman had lengthy rosters of enemies; it really
could
have been anybody who killed either of them. If not for the paper-knife, I wouldn’t even think to connect them.”

“But the knife
does
connect them, and makes it all so bizarre,” I complained, getting up to walk around the room and examine the certificates on the wall, all of which were commendations for Brigham, with not one piece of praise for Twister visible, “Why in the world would someone spend good money to redeem that knife — it must have been at least twenty pounds, if not fifty — just to use it to kill Mike Baker, and then turn around and kill Mrs. Nazerman the very next day? It would have been so much neater to do it the other way around, and nobody would have known that Nazerman even had the knife in the first place.”

“Except Gabriel,” Twister pointed out.

“But what good would the knowledge do him?” I was thinking aloud by this time, walking in a circle around Twister’s little office, “Even if he did kill his brother, why go to all the bother of redeeming the knife in the first place? He could have used any kind of weapon, the man would never have thought Gabriel capable of violence. With that kind of trust, you could kill a man with a hatpin up the nose, and nobody’d even know.”

“What about if Gabriel used the money you gave him for the papers to redeem the knife, in order to return it to the Baron,” Twister posited, leaning back in his chair and staring at the light fixture, also thinking aloud, “Gets home and has a shindy with Mike, stabs him in self-defense, and then runs off.”

“Only to come right back and let me in, pulling off a performance of shock and grief that would put Miss Bernhardt to shame. If he could simulate
that
, he’d be treading the boards, not the pavements. And he, also, has an airtight alibi for this morning. Me.”

“You slept with him?” Twister’s voice rose just a bit in anger. Was he jealous again?  The Count had sparked his jealousy, and Gabriel, but not Professor Beran?  How interesting.

“He didn’t want to be left alone,” I temporized, filing away that reaction for later consideration, “He was scared.”

“Hmph,” he abandoned the topic with a frown, “Is it possible he could have crept out during the night and returned without you knowing?”

“I’m a pretty heavy sleeper,” I admitted, “He could have got up and done a Parisian revue at the end of the bed without waking me, so long as he didn’t jostle me. But the hotel staff would have seen him. I’ve checked, and double-checked: there is no way out of Hyacinth House except through the front door or the kitchen, both of which are occupied by staff at all hours of the day and night.”

“What about over the roof?”

“An acrobat might manage, but there are no alleys between any of the buildings opening onto the street, and a boy in pale green silk pajamas scrambling down the front of a building and running up Piccadilly would have been noticed. Pond had his clothes and his shoes by then.”

“So,” Twister gave up the game and got up to get his hat, “You’ve ruled out everyone
you
know. I’ll just have to start widening my investigation to people you
haven’t met yet. I’m sure there are plenty of other people who have Mike Baker and Mrs. Nazerman in common. It doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with the Baron or with Gabriel. Mike Baker was a nasty piece of work, there’s no telling what all he was up to. I’ll call around tomorrow morning to ask Gabriel to give me a list of Mike’s associates. You might ask him to write it up for me beforehand. I’m going home now.”

“May I walk with you?” I asked as innocently as I could, hoping to see where he lived.

“As far as the door,” he said, very tense again once we were on the stairs, outside the safety of his office, “You live west of here, and I live north. I recommend going out the Parliament Street side and cutting through St. James’s Park. I go up the Embankment.”

“One of these days, Sergeant Paget,” I promised, “I’m going to see your rooms.”

“They’re just rooms, Lord Foxbridge,” he replied, smiling at me in a faintly patronizing manner that was calculated to irritate, “Same as any others.”

“Of course they are, Sergeant,” I wouldn’t be drawn, “Then I will expect you in the morning, and ask Gabriel to provide a list. Shall I have Pond lay three places for breakfast?”

“No, thank you,” he said, pulling open the heavy door that led out into Derby Gate, the narrow road that separates the two buildings occupied by Scotland Yard, “I’m sure I’ll have had time to breakfast twice before you drag your lazy carcass out of bed.”

“Just as well, I suppose,” I turned to face him and took his hand in as manly a shake as I could manage, “The table only seats two comfortably.”

I saluted him smartly, turned on my heel, and strolled off in an elaborately casual manner toward the gate into Parliament Street, where I took Twister’s advice and turned up Great George Street in order to cut through St. James’s Park to Pall Mall. The paths were fairly empty at that time of day, when working people were on their way home to the suburbs and idle people were dressing for dinner, so I had a nice think as I skirted around the lake and crossed the little bridge to Marlborough Road.

Twister had made a point of saying that I’d eliminated everyone
I
know. Was there someone else involved in the case I
didn’t
know? Or was there someone I did know but Twister didn’t think I knew? I had told him pretty much everything about the Baron and Gabriel, Mike and Stan, the Green Parrot and the pub in Wardour Street.

In the American comedy pictures, actors always look terribly surprised when they have an idea: I probably looked much the same when the name ‘Stan’ rattled through my brain: I could see Harold Lloyd staring wide-eyed and gape-grinned at the camera with one finger held aloft as he figured out some hare-brained scheme for getting Clara Bow’s attention.

Stan could have killed both Mike Baker and Mrs. Nazerman, I had no idea what sort of alibi he might have. And he was certainly in the neighbourhood when both murders happened, I saw him myself not long before finding Mike Baker’s body.

But why would he do it? Like Gabriel, he could have killed Mike at any time with any instrument, though it seemed less likely that Mike would let his guard down with a big strapping fellow like Stan in the room. And why go through the expensive and dangerous procurement of the Baron’s paper-knife? He couldn’t have known that he’d have the opportunity to kill Mrs.
 Nazerman before the police got to her, and he must have known the knife would be traced immediately back to her, since I at least knew it was there, as did Gabriel.

But he was such a
nice
man, it simply wasn’t plausible — but then, the scenario Twister had concocted for Gabriel was just as implausible, and I had entertained it, at least briefly; there was no reason to leave Stan out of the equation just because he was such a jovial fellow.

But if he had an alibi, the whole question would be rendered moot; and my curiosity wouldn’t let me rest until I found out, so I hopped in a cab as soon as I reached Pall Mall and directed it to St.
 Anne’s Court in Soho. Though I still didn’t know Stan’s surname, I remembered the name of the betting shop from his story about the late Mr. Cavendish.

It was starting to get dark, and I was wishing I’d stopped to have dinner, when the cab dropped me at the Dean Street entrance to St.
 Anne’s Court. I poked my way along the cheerful, crooked little alley, reading the signs in the windows, and wondered why there were so few people out and about.  The last time I’d been to Soho in the evening, it was
streaming
with people; but perhaps it was like St. James’s Park, deserted in that odd time between people going home after work and coming out for dinner.

I found Cavendish’s Racing Agents halfway up the Court on the left, squeezed in between a wireless-cabinet showroom and a cheese shop. I could see Stan behind the counter, but nobody else was there. I pushed through, causing a little bell to ring, which made Stan look up with a happy smile.

“Well, if it ain’t Bastian!” he cried out in delight, “What brings you by?”

“It’s my day for surprising people in their work,” I smiled back, ambling up to the counter and studying the horses and odds written on the black slate wall behind him.

“Care to take a flutter on a race?” he indicated the wall, “People are very excited about Cyloon for Ascot.”

“No thanks,” I had never been terribly interested in horse races unless I was attending them, “But I
was
wondering if you could help me with a couple of questions I had about Mike Baker’s death.”

“Oh. Righty-oh!” he came out from behind the counter and headed for the door, “Let me lock up the shop, and we’ll go ‘round to the pub for a pint.”

I stayed leaning on the counter and watched him with interest as he went around securing the place, bringing the notice-boards inside and pulling the wide green paper shades over the windows, locking and bolting the door. Then he turned off the lights, which startled me enough to cry out. Then he coshed me.

At least, I
think
he coshed me. I didn’t really feel it at the time, it was just another shade of darkness; but the back of my head hurt abominably when I woke up, so it made sense. It took me quite a while to realize I
was
awake, anyway, since I woke up in just as much darkness as I went out in. I could tell I was on a bed, in a cool dry place into which no light penetrated, and my right wrist was tied to something.

“Ow! Bright!” I yelled when the light came on, dazzling my eyes painfully.

“Sorry, pretty,” Stan said cheerfully, carrying something over to another corner of the room. As my eyes adjusted to the light, and my brain adjusted to the pain in my skull, I was able to take in my surroundings: a vaulted stone room with one metal door and no windows at all, an electric bulb in a tin shade hanging from the center of the ceiling, a large zinc laundry basin, an old black iron stove or water-heater, a rickety bedside table, and the iron-framed bed I was lying on. Bringing my attention closer to home, I looked down and discovered that I was quite naked, with only a threadbare sheet for modesty, and my wrist was tied to the iron bedstead with my own necktie, in a knot so intricate and tight that I couldn’t see the ends.