Murder Offstage (14 page)

Fifteen

The waiting seemed to last forever, but it could have
been no more than forty minutes in all.

Rufus sat huddled in a blanket, shivering, while Len sat
reading the Sam Stubbs piece in the
Associated Press
, over and over
again, studiously avoiding looking at anyone. His handsome face was flushed
darkly with anger and nerves. You could have cut the atmosphere in the
interview room with a knife.

Inspector Lovelace had gone off to interview Mr Blake, and
Posie sat watching a cup of grey, insipid tea growing cold on the table before
her. She poured another from the thermos flask which had been provided, but it
was not much better.

‘Good piece this, after all,’ Len said begrudgingly, putting
the newspaper down at last. He smiled in grim satisfaction. ‘The police don’t
come out of it too well though; it makes it sound like you busted the joint
single-handed. Your name, everywhere. Even a big photograph of you, you’re not
looking too shabby, either… It should have the desired effect, anyway. Should
make della Rosa furious, especially if he’s innocent. He’s definitely going to
make contact with you or the police now. Practically names him as the murderer!’

Len drummed his fingers on the table in boredom, echoing the
heavy rain outside. Posie wondered how Inspector Lovelace was getting on with
Mr Blake and his side-kick Reggie. She remembered Caspian della Rosa saying
that they would never talk. She sighed in exasperation.

The clock on the grey-painted wall ticked loudly on. An
annoying grating sound.

‘Come with me,’ she grabbed Len suddenly by the shoulder,
jolting him upright. She needed to do
something
. She opened the thick
metal door and frogmarched Len along the dark corridor back towards Reception.
It was deserted now save for the Duty Sergeant scribbling in his jotter at the
counter.

They stood on the porch steps together. It was almost
totally dark now outside, pin-points of lights from cars and horse-drawn
carriages on the main road behind the wrought-iron fences glittering strangely
through the slanting rain.

‘What have I done now?’ asked Len waspishly, lighting a
cigarette under cover of his coat collar and taking a deep drag. His face was
half in shadow.

‘Nothing. I need you to do something for me. Now. All that
waiting around in there is driving me crazy.’ She pulled out some change.

‘I need you to go and buy two large bottles of Scotch.
Nothing fancy, no single malts. Just make sure it’s very strong stuff. And
bring it back in a brown paper bag. Hidden.’

Len frowned at her, before taking the money and nodding
knowingly:

‘I understand. For Cardigeon, is it? I thought he’d be
better off with a spot of drink inside him too, but I never thought
you’d
be the one to get it for him. That’s the trouble with the toffs – they can’t do
anything without a drop of the old grog. Addicted. Saw it in the trenches time
and again.’

Posie said nothing, too tired to argue or explain. Sometimes
Len could be annoyingly narrow-minded, for all his gorgeousness.

‘I’ll be back in ten minutes. There’s a place I know over at
Victoria Station, Moonshine Harry’s.’ He squeezed her hand, then winked and
left.

She watched from the doorframe as Len cut across the
rain-swept yard, a jaunty figure disappearing into the darkness who, under
normal circumstances, she would have longed to run alongside and accompany,
keen not to be parted from.

But these were
not
normal circumstances and he was
acting like an oaf, and she was pleased to be rid of him for a few minutes: she
had forgotten how much Len hated the upper classes, so perhaps his conflict
with Rufus was not so surprising, after all. He reminded her suddenly of
Inspector Oats, and she suppressed a laugh: for surely that was one comparison
she could never, ever make out loud.

****

Ten minutes later they had the news that Dolly Price
had
not
returned home to her bed-sit in Billingsgate market the night
before, and had not been seen since.

The fat ruddy-faced policeman looked worried. He flicked
through his fob-book for the details:

‘Miss Dolly lives alone in a bed-sitter on the top floor.
But there’s an old woman wot lives in the flat below, above a fish and chip
shop. She’s a font of all knowledge. She seems to have made it her duty to keep
an eye out for Miss Dolly; she said Dolly always came home late at night, on
account of her work at the theatre, but in all the years she’d known her, she’d
never known her
not
to come home at all. The old woman was on the verge
of calling the police herself when I showed up. Most upset she was…’

Posie nodded, but she felt sick to the bottom of her
stomach. It seemed certain now that Dolly had been kidnapped, and it was all
her fault that Dolly had ended up in this position. An image of the dead,
vacant face of Lucky Lucy floated up before her eyes: Posie had to get to Dolly
before she ended up like that; discarded like so much rubbish.

But
how
? And where could she possibly be?

****

Rufus was packed off in a taxi to his father’s club,
with strict instructions to have a hot bath.

Len looked on in surprise when Posie returned to the empty
interview room and threw most of the contents of the thermos flask down a
ceramic sink in a corner. She deftly unscrewed the two cheap, evil-smelling
bottles of whisky which Len had managed to procure at Moonshine Harry’s, and
she tipped them neat into the empty thermos. She poured the last cold dregs of
her cup of tea on top and shook the flask roughly after sealing it up.

Just at that minute Inspector Lovelace put his head around
the door:

‘I’ve just heard the news about Dolly.
Rotten
luck. I’m so sorry.
We’ll add it to the list of things to do. I’m busy
now but I’ll see you at six-thirty, as planned?’

His eyes caught the newspaper still lying on the table and
he looked towards Posie impatiently:

‘I take it you have your reasons for
that
,’ he said
coldly.

Posie nodded and tried to explain. At his stony silence
Posie blundered on: ‘Did you have any joy talking to Mr Blake and the
programme-seller?’

‘No. Not a dicky-bird out of either of them. Both of them
clammed up tight, won’t say a word. Absolutely useless.’ He ducked out of the
doorway.

Posie and Len lingered at Reception.

‘Where are the cells please?’ Posie asked the Duty Sergeant,
smiling. He looked at her suspiciously, before waving her back down the
corridor they had come from, indicating to take a sharp left at the bottom and
go down a spiral staircase.

The row of cells loomed ahead, ceramic-tiled walls arching
above a concrete floor which was damp and sickly with fresh disinfectant. Ten
little doors with barred windows stretched along the horrible corridor, all set
behind a locked, iron-barred gate. Poor old Rufus had had to stay down here two
nights in a row, and Posie felt tears pricking her eyes.

‘Now what?’ hissed Len anxiously. ‘What on earth are you
playing at, Po?’

Posie glanced around nervously but as luck would have it the
ruddy-faced constable who had just been sent to Billingsgate to look for Dolly
Price was coming out of one of the cells at the far end, jangling a big bunch
of black keys.

‘I say!’ shouted Posie sweetly. ‘Can you help me?’

The policeman frowned and then came towards them, unlocking
the iron gate. He looked at Posie keenly.

‘I know Mr Blake, the Theatre Manager. He’s down here, isn’t
he?’

The policeman nodded and indicated to the cell nearest him
with a backwards jerk of his thumb.

‘Inspector Lovelace said he’d let me give him a flask of
tea. It’s just the stuff we didn’t drink upstairs. Could you possibly…?’

She passed the police regulation thermos flask to the
policeman and held her breath. She hoped against hope that he wouldn’t open it,
or come too close and smell it, but she was lucky: he flicked the small barred
window of the nearest cell and shoved the flask through it with a rough warning
to the man inside to ‘be grateful for small mercies.’

Posie nodded her thanks and turned on her heels and walked
as fast as she could out of the police station, Len just behind her. She
breathed in big gulps of air outside, pleased to be out at last, more so
because she had the feeling she had been skating on particularly thin ice all
day long. She heard the chimes of Big Ben coming muffled through the heavy
rain.

There were two free hours before she needed to be back again
with the Inspectors. And she swore she would use the time well.

****

The offices of the
Associated Press
on Fleet
Street were a stark contrast to Scotland Yard. Huge glass windows ran the
length of the building from floor to ceiling; in the daytime the building was
simply flooded with natural light. It was an art-deco landmark, a stopping-off
point for visitors looking at the recent architectural splendours of London.

Inside, the offices were open-plan, all white lacquer and
silver metal, and each of the seven floors was visible from the huge entrance
hall, glass elevators speeding up and down connecting the floors at what seemed
like a giddying speed. Everywhere there was movement; smart young journalists
tearing to and fro, beautiful girls wearing thick make-up and high heels
trotting endlessly backwards and forwards.

‘It’s just in here,’ Sam Stubbs called out, cheerily. Gone
was the nervous manner of the ink-smeared boy they had met last night at Sal’s
caff, and in his place was a confident, eager-to-please young journalist who
felt, quite rightly, that he was at the very beginning of a promising new
career. The scoop had obviously worked a treat, and now it was pay-back time.

The Archive Room was on the ground floor, just off
Reception, and like the rest of the place it was ultra-modern and brightly lit.

‘What are you after exactly?’ he asked, head cocked to one
side.

‘Anything you have on a certain Count della Rosa,’ Posie
said. She needed to be doing something and having been excluded from the action
at Scotland Yard, as she had known would be the case, she felt a relief at
being able to get stuck in here.

‘No go, I’m afraid, Miss Parker.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, don’t you think if there was anything to find I’d
have used it myself in the story? A picture tells a thousand words, after all.
But I hunted around in here for one and found nothing. No photographs, no old
reports. Zip. He’s either new in town, your Count, or else he’s using a
pseudonym. If you find out what his
real
name is, then we’re talking.
That would be very worthwhile.’

Posie hadn’t thought this far ahead. She had expected it to
be simpler somehow, that there should be a trace, a mention of him
somewhere
.

‘What about Lucky Lucy?’ she asked. ‘You have files,
clippings on
her
, I take it?’

Sam Stubbs grinned and took them over to a white lacquered
filing cabinet. ‘Plenty,’ he said proudly, rolling back a smart modern drawer
and bringing out three fat files. ‘These should keep you busy for a while.’

Posie and Len spread out the files over a shining white
desk.

‘We’re looking for photos, or any names mentioned in
conjunction with hers,’ she hissed.

Len nodded and they started to work. The room was silent
apart from the swishing noise of their file pages turning, and the very
occasional ‘snap’ as one or the other of them brought out a photo or a cutting
and placed it in the middle of the desk. The electric lights hummed quietly and
apart from one other reader they were undisturbed.

‘Oh, excuse me! Mr Irving?’

It was one of the beautiful, carefully made-up girl
assistants. She approached their table with a smile.

‘Hullo. I’m Pattie. Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ she fawned,
‘but it’s the telephone for you. Apparently it’s quite urgent. Would you like
to follow me?’

‘A call for me? Here?’ Len’s eyebrows knitted together in curiosity
and Posie watched him follow the girl out. Two minutes later he was back,
grabbing his tweed jacket from the back of the chair and stuffing his arms into
his raincoat.

‘Sorry, Po. It’s one of my lawyer clients,’ he said crossly.
‘I couldn’t hear him very well but apparently I’ve got to go now to take a
photo of some Judge with a call-girl. It’s a piece of evidence they’ve been
waiting more than a year for, and apparently this evening it couldn’t be easier
to catch the poor devil at it. I’m sorry.’

He shrugged and swung his camera over his neck. ‘It should
pay very nicely, anyhow. I should be back at the Yard later, and if not, I’ll
see you first thing tomorrow at Grape Street.’

Posie nodded and watched him leave, swinging out of the
smart glass door. She heaped the tiny pile of photos and cuttings they had
collected before her and stared vacantly out of the rain-drenched window for a
split-second, before a horrible thought came crashing into her mind:
How on
earth could a lawyer client possibly have known where Len would be, at that
exact moment?

Nobody knew they had come here. Unless they had been
followed.

Her heart jumped into her mouth and she started to run,
breaking out of the Archive Room at high speed and running across Reception,
though the revolving doors out onto the dark, wet pavement of Fleet Street
outside. Cabs and carts crowded the wide street, and the pavement was
chock-full of umbrellas and men in bowler hats crushing through the rain
towards the Tube. She looked frantically for Len’s tweed homburg hat sailing
among the others, but she realised in desperation that she had no idea which
way he had gone, or even – as he sometimes did – if he had jumped into a cab.