McQueen's Agency (32 page)

She stopped talking and gazed out the window at the peaceful scene beyond, her mind back in those terrible days.

‘One day, just after the end of the war, Lena came here in tears. She said her relationship with Kenneth had broken down and he had told her he no longer loved her. She then said she wished she hadn’t betrayed Ben because he might have married her once Lizzy had died.

‘I was shocked. We had all thought it was a tragic turn of events that had led the Rosenbergs to their deaths and here was Lena, saying she was the one who had informed the Germans about their whereabouts.

‘Well, I decided my turn had come to marry Kenneth after all these years and I announced our engagement. I thought that Lena couldn’t open her mouth and protest. What I didn’t realise was Kenneth’s reaction to my proposal. He was shocked and that’s why I sent the letter; to let him know what Lena had done. Lena was always mentally fragile but she became worse as the years went on and Kenneth was afraid that she was becoming deranged. I didn’t know the full story of his attraction to Molly. I guessed a bit of it but I didn’t realise how much.’

She stood up. ‘That’s the whole sordid story and I’m really sorry for my part in it. I should have kept quiet about Lena but, as I said earlier, I really resented her.’ Her hand went up to the necklace again. ‘I wear this all the time. I wanted Lena to see it every time I came to the house. I never wanted her to forget what she had done.’

Charlie asked, ‘Isn’t it a glass necklace?’

Nelly laughed but it wasn’t a humorous sound. ‘This was Ben’s wedding gift to Lizzy. A necklace of perfectly matched rubies.’ She undid the clasp and put it on the coffee table.

‘But you’re right … by wearing it I’ve managed to make it look cheap and it’s just red glass as you say. One thing I will say is that something happened on that journey that changed all their lives forever. I never found out what but I do know Kenneth was never the same with Lena after that.’ Charlie thanked her and the two policemen emerged into the street. Nelly was standing at the window. She looked a pathetic sight.

‘Well, what do you make of that, Sir?’ said PC Williams.

Charlie was quiet for a moment then he said, ‘I remember when I was at school we all went to see a play; a tragedy full of death and mayhem. That’s what this story sounds like. People’s lives wasted in the search for love, revenge, money and power.’

‘Where do we go from here, Sir?’

‘We’re going back to see Joe Lamont. If he won’t answer our questions then I’ll take him to the station and see how he likes it there. Telling us this whole sorry affair was the result of a domestic tiff!’

Joe was sitting in the sheds. He had just come back from the hospital. Mike was in a good deal of pain and it would take ages for his broken leg to heal.

Joe clenched his hands into two fists. If Lena had still been alive he would have lost his temper with her. She had deliberately pushed the rack onto Mike as he tried to stop her from dragging him into the boat. Mike had told him he must have been groggy from the pills and he had seen her half carrying Joe aboard the boat.

Memories, he thought, and all of them bad.

He was still sitting there when Christie arrived, carrying a clipboard. It looked as if business was going on as usual.

‘How’s Mike?’ he asked.

Joe said he was as well as could be expected. ‘Do you know, Christie, Mike saved my life a few years ago.’

Christie was surprised by this statement but he stayed silent.

‘I was fishing one evening in the river. Not here, but further upstream, nearer Perth. I slipped in the water and my waders filled up. I almost drowned. Mike had been fishing as well, and he jumped in and pulled me out. He was just out of the army after the War and was in a job he hated, so I asked him to join the firm and he’s been here ever since. Oh, I know he doesn’t have a great way with women, he doesn’t know how to handle them, but he’s been a good friend to me.’

Christie said, ‘What will happen to the business now, Joe? Will you continue to run it?’

Joe gave a hollow sounding laugh. ‘I expect Nelly will take over. She’s always been the boss but she’s been more of a silent partner. She inherited the business from her husband Hans.

‘Maybe I’ll stay on. It all depends on how well Mike does. If he wants to stay on then I will as well.’

The two men were still sitting there when the policemen arrived.

‘I’ve got some more questions that need answering, Mr Lamont,’ said Charlie.

Joe nodded. He seemed a different man from the one who had been interviewed the day before.

‘First of all, we have talked to Mrs Marten and she has told us all about the Rosenberg family and how you, Kenneth and Lena all came to Britain.’

Joe gave a deep sigh and slumped down in his chair.

‘Yes, she phoned me. It happened so long ago. Yes, the story Nelly told you is true. We went to get the Rosenbergs out of France but they had been taken away by the German SS officers.

‘Because I was a British subject I had to escape as well and the other two joined me. I remembered this place from my childhood, it belonged to my grandfather. My mother always told me she had inherited it and that it would be mine one day. So we decided to come here. We had to keep our heads down and try not to attract much notice but after the war ended, Nelly came up with the idea of an antique business.

‘When my mother was seventeen she gave birth to an illegitimate son called Kenneth Drummond. He died when he was six months old but I found his birth certificate amongst my mother’s effects when she died. So we thought up the idea of Lena and I pretending to be married and passing Kurt off as her brother Kenneth. My mother had married my father, Arthur Lamont, but he disappeared. She later found out he was dead and when she met Wilhelm Marten in a hotel in Dundee, they fell in love and got married. Because Nelly’s husband was a second cousin of her father, she didn’t have to change her name when she married.

‘That’s how I went to Holland with her and became stepbrother to Nelly and Lena. The business did very well, mostly because of the furniture and paintings from the Rosenberg house, plus all the jewellery. Nelly’s husband, Hans, had taken it over legally and, in the eyes of the law, it all belonged to him. Of course, it was all supposed to go back to the Rosenbergs after the war but they all perished in Auschwitz.’

Joe looked at Charlie. ‘And that’s the whole story. Everything would have gone on as before if Nelly hadn’t made that stupid proposal to Kenneth.’

But Charlie knew there was more. ‘Tell me about the wound on your wife’s arm.’

Joe looked astonished. ‘How did you know about that?’

‘Never mind how, just tell us how she came to have such a bad, septic wound.’

‘It was all so stupid. Lena and I were at the docks one day, at the shipping office when this man appeared. “How are you keeping?” he said. Lena looked at him and asked “Do I know you?” The man, who looked as if he was a seaman, said he had worked on the boat that brought us all over here, in 1940.

‘Well I thought Lena would faint, she went white. I told her to just say hello and thank him. I don’t think he was trying to be anything other than friendly but she ran after him and I heard her ask him to meet her that night at the docks. She wanted to repay his kindness but she had to go to the bank to get some money.

‘She said afterwards that he had tripped and fallen into the water; that she had had nothing to do with it. The next morning she was back at the shipping office when she saw this old man and his dog sniffing about, she said, and asking questions about his disappearance.

‘Well, Lena being the way she was, followed him. She told us afterwards that she kept following him and tried to stop him going on about the sailor. One day, she followed him to a graveyard and saw that the man’s name was Harry Hawkins. She got it onto her head that this Harry Hawkins had told this old man everything; She said she just wanted to stop him poking his nose in, but the man’s dog went for her and gave her a very nasty bite.

‘Of course, she wouldn’t go to the doctor to see about it and began treating it herself and cleaning the wound with Dettol.’

Charlie was puzzled. ‘But your wife had her arm in a plaster. How could the dog have bitten her?’

For the first time, Joe laughed. ‘Oh yes, her plaster. She went around telling everyone that someone had tried to murder her. The truth was she fell down the stairs and sprained her arm, but she went around telling everyone, including Kenneth, that her arm was broken. She would never have told me but I caught her one morning winding the bandage around her arm. It was never a plaster but a thick white bandage. She always wore long-sleeved dresses to hide it. When it suited her, she removed the bandage and her arm was perfectly all right. She liked to think she was the injured party here and even hired that McQueen woman to come and work for her. Well, it backfired, didn’t it? Kenneth fell in love with her and Lena was furious. I was suspicious of Molly McQueen. I couldn’t understand what game Lena was playing because I knew her arm was all right so I asked Mike to check up on her but as usual Mike’s macho way with women spoiled our chances of discovering that agency woman’s motives. He even stole a handbag from a stranger on the ferry. He said he thought it was Molly and seemingly they both looked similar, at least from the back.’

‘Miss McQueen had no ulterior motive. She was hired by your so called wife to come and work here. And another thing Mr Lamont, why didn’t you tell Kenneth about Lena’s deception?’

‘I wish I had now but Lena begged me not to tell him and I stupidly listened to her. Quite honestly I had had enough of Lena and all her dramas.’

Charlie looked over to PC Williams who was writing everything down in his notebook, his eyes like saucers at all the revelations.

Joe crossed his arms and it looked like the interview was over. Charlie could almost hear his sigh of relief. Although he had no evidence he decided to make one last stab at getting the whole truth. Nelly had said that something had gone seriously wrong on that journey thirteen years ago. But what?

‘Mr Lamont, what went wrong when you went to rescue the Rosenbergs? Nelly said you were all in a panic according to the captain of the ship but he had no idea why.’

Joe glared at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Charlie leaned forward. ‘Oh I think you do. Don’t you think this all has to end here? Something happened and I think you should get it off your chest. Then you can make a new life for yourself and start again.’

Joe hesitated. Then it all came out.

‘We made our way to the town to pick up the Rosenbergs and found an abandoned house just outside the town. Kenneth told Lena to stay there while we went to fetch them. Of course, when they weren’t there, we were confused and as we didn’t have a lot of time, became a bit panic-stricken. Then, some neighbours of the Rosenbergs told us that SS officers had picked them up. They had been taken away and hadn’t come back.

‘So we hurried back to the house but when we got there we found a young soldier, a sergeant who had left some injured men in the forest and was looking for medical attention for them. Stupidly, Lena had locked him in a bedroom. She said he had tried to question her and she didn’t know what to do.

‘We gave him a meal and some tea from our stores and Kenneth and I decided to slip the key under the door as we left, so he could let himself out. We were on the verge of leaving when Lena said she would take the man some tea. Then we heard a shot.

‘She had brought a little pistol that she owned but we didn’t know she had it. She said he had tried to escape but that was a lie. He was still on the bed and still alive. Kenneth said we could carry him to the doctor in the town and say we found him on the road but we hadn’t reckoned with the retreat at Dunkirk. There were soldiers everywhere but we managed to get the poor man to the doctor and we left him there. I don’t know if he survived or not.’

‘He didn’t.’

They all turned in astonishment to see Christie standing in the doorway. He walked over and handed a sheet of paper to Charlie. It was creased and written in pencil. On the reverse side was a drawing of a clown, obviously done by a small child.

Dear Mum,

I’ve been taken prisoner by a woman and two men. From the snatches of conversation I’ve overheard it seems they are on a mission to rescue some people called Rosenberg but they failed. They are leaving on a boat tonight. I trust the two men but the woman scares the life out of me. The men say they will release me when they leave. I’m hoping to make my way into the small town and get medical aid for my four wounded comrades. If I survive this then I’ll destroy this note.

Your loving son, Colin.

Charlie said. ‘Who is this Colin?’

‘He was my brother.’

Joe stood up, astonishment written all over his face. ‘But the soldier was Scottish.’

‘My father and mother separated when we were small. I went to Canada with him and Colin stayed with Mum.’

‘Where did you get this note?’ asked Charlie

‘The doctor who treated him found it in his boot. It was addressed to my mother and, after the war, he posted it on to her. He was buried in a small cemetery in the town.’

‘How did you end up here?’ Charlie asked.

‘It was the name Rosenberg. My father is an antique dealer and when the jewellery first came on sale it was marketed as theirs. I came over to Scotland when my mother was ill and she begged me to find these people and get closure for Colin. When she died last year I decided to stay on and try and trace the people and my enquiries led here.’

He turned to Joe. ‘I’ve been investigating you all for ages and I was almost ready to confront Lena with the death of my brother. I found the strongbox with the jewellery in it and Nelly’s letter.’ Although the letter was written to Kenneth, he gave it to Lena. It was in the same drawer as the strongbox.

Joe said, ‘So you’ve been spying on us?’

Christie admitted that he had.

‘Where’s this strongbox now?’ asked Charlie.

Joe said, ‘It’s upstairs in Lena’s room but she lost the key. Lena was frantic, she said the key had been stolen.’