Murder Offstage (2 page)

Rufus turned a deep ruby red and nodded slowly.

‘I said you
almost
had the story correct, Nosy. I
didn’t have time to tell you the truth. After she disappeared, I went looking for
Georgie up in our rooms, and as I was about to come back downstairs, defeated,
I saw her in the entrance hall arguing with an elderly foreign-looking fellow
in a tux. Next thing I knew she was taking out a revolver and shooting the
chappie! I called out her name – I thought she was in trouble – but she ignored
me and ran off! The Maharajah diamond was glittering away on her finger as she
left! I swear it! I had nothing to do with
any
of this shooting story.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said the Inspector and gave some
special signal for the policemen to frogmarch Rufus down the stairs. He twisted
backwards and gave Posie an imploring look:

‘Tell my father what’s happened, Nosy. And tell him about
Brigg & Brooks. Please?’

Posie sank into the red armchair, flabbergasted.

‘What did you say about a
stage-name
, Miss?’ asked
the Inspector unexpectedly, lingering on. He had his leather-clad notebook out
and his pencil quivered in the air hopefully.

‘Lord Cardigeon met this chorus girl at the theatre; the
Athenaeum Theatre in Piccadilly, to be precise. I was with him that night.’

‘Really?’ asked the Inspector quizzically. ‘How curious.
I’ve never known Lucky Lucy tread the boards before. Did you actually
see
her on stage?’

Posie shook her head. ‘No. Strangely enough I did not. She
was dressed as a caterpillar.’ Posie realised immediately how silly she
sounded, and then added in a quiet, subdued voice, ‘
If
she was there at
all, that is.’

The Inspector snorted. ‘What nonsense! Now I really have
heard it all,’ he muttered, angrily putting his notebook away. He swung off
down the corridor.

Poor old Rufey, Posie thought to herself. What a day: one
mess after another.

And it would be up to her to sort it all out.

****

Two

It had started to snow thickly again by the time Posie
reached her office on Grape Street. The flakes were falling fast and it was a
relief to close the door on the cold, wintry world.

The Detective Agency was on the second floor, up a narrow
blue-carpeted staircase, which had, like everything else in the building, seen
better days. But when choosing it two years earlier, Posie had decided the
location of the office was perfect. It sat in a shabby triangle enclosed on
three sides by Covent Garden, the glittering Theatre District and musty old
Bloomsbury. The looming silhouette of the British Museum, like the prow of a
great ship, was just visible from the office window. Posie
had
hoped
that clients from all walks of life, from all the worlds that the triangle
quietly intersected, would approach her and use her Detective Agency to solve
their unsolvable mysteries, unravel their unfathomable secrets.

But, as with many things in life, it had not worked out like
that…

****

When she had first opened, Posie had sat solemnly
waiting for her first client to arrive, day after day. She had been flooded
with disappointment when no-one came, despite the bright new bronze plaque
outside on the street which had cost her the earth and which read:

THE GRAPE
STREET BUREAU.
P. PARKER & ASSOCIATES.
Mysteries and Problems Solved. No case too big or small!
(2nd Floor)

She had not dared have ‘Detective Agency’ inscribed on
the plaque – it had seemed too presumptuous somehow. After all, she was just
starting out. And likewise, she had not dared reveal the fact it was
just
her
. She
was
the Detective Agency. She reasoned to herself that a
small white lie never hurt anyone: sometimes you needed to be extravagant with
the truth.

After two months of absolutely no clients, Posie was on the
point of shutting up forever, desperately calculating when
exactly
her
money would run out, when into her office walked her saviour. In the shape of
one Mr Irving.

He had presented himself in her office one morning around
coffee-time, a small startled-looking man in his mid-fifties, in brown tweedy
clothes and a dented homburg hat. There was something ferrety about his manner
– he was the sort of man you forgot instantly, which was, as it turned out, his
business.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he remarked casually, almost
sniffing the air as if to check on its suitability. Posie had simply nodded, it
was
nice, she knew that, but when she had taken on the lease it had been
dank and dirty. With the last of the small capital sum she had received under
her father’s Will she had bought a few sticks of good furniture to furnish the
bare rooms and enough tins of emulsion from the Army & Navy Stores to keep
her busy painting the place singlehanded for a week.

Mr Irving had thrust his cheaply printed card across the
desk at her as he cast an appraising eye around Posie’s neat cream office.

She read:

IRVING &
SON.
PRIVATE DETECTIVE AGENCY.
For all your legal and personal needs.
33B,Lincoln’s Inn West.

‘Posie Parker, at your service. How can I help you, Mr
Irving?’ she had asked in as confident a manner as she could, fearful he would
read in her every move that he was the very first person to ever sit opposite
her in the woefully unused client’s chair.

He tore his eyes away from the only decoration in the room,
a small and delicately painted watercolour of the Cap d’Antibes in France above
Posie’s desk; a riot of bright sunshades and azure sea. It had been painted by
Posie’s father when he was a young man.

‘Nice bit of seaside you’ve got up there. Fancy. Not much
like Margate, is it?’

Posie coughed politely and pointed to Mr Irving’s card
enquiringly.

‘Not a small talk kind of gal, are you? Very well. I’m here
to see if we can
help each other
. Come to an arrangement, sort of thing.
This could be your lucky day.’

‘Go on.’ Posie looked at the man curiously, and with a smidgen
of mistrust.

‘I’ve got a nice little practice going, just ten minutes
from here. In Lincoln’s Inn. See on the card? Not a high-level shindig, more
your
everyday
sort of business. But it pays the bills nicely.’

‘What is it you do?’ Posie asked bluntly, interested.

‘Spy on folks,’ laughed Mr Irving, rubbing his hands
together gleefully. ‘In the trade we’re known as
shadowers
. We get a
tip-off from a lawyer and then we follow people; mainly rich toffs or
businessmen having affairs, or keeping mistresses. Rum-doings. We take photos,
and then the lawyer uses the snaps as evidence
in divorce proceedings
for their clients. It’s lucrative work; we get referrals from more than twenty
lawyers in all. Keeps me and my boy going nicely.’

What horrid work
, Posie thought, trying not to
visibly shudder. Dirty work, somehow; almost akin to blackmail.

‘But I don’t see how our interests coincide, Mr Irving? You
sound as if you are doing well enough already without my help.’

‘Look at the address on the card, Miss. What do you notice?’

She faltered for a minute. ‘Why! Your address is just a
basement! 33
B
. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yep. Good girl.’ Mr Irving nodded. ‘
Just
a basement,
as you say. Only, at the end of this week we won’t even have that. We’re being
thrown out. The basement is being turned over for this newfangled telephone
equipment for the lawyers’ offices.’

A flash of understanding hit Posie.

‘You want to buy me out?’ she asked quietly in a measured
voice. She didn’t know whether she felt happy or sad at this prospect.

‘No,’ Mr Irving shook his head firmly. He was gazing at the
Cap d’Antibes again with a look of longing.

‘I’ve decided to retire. It’s about time. Go some place
nice, perhaps. Grab a bit of sunshine, mebbe. But my boy Len, he needs a job.
He survived the war, thank goodness. He’s a good lad, but he needs a
chance
.
He can carry on just as well as we both did before, using everything he’s
learnt from me. I walked past your sign this morning and I just
wondered…perhaps you need some help too. An assistant? A good detective? Just
you, is it, Miss, working here?’

Mr Irving looked at Posie squarely with his eagle-eyes and
his many years of experience of the very worst aspects of human nature. Posie
held onto the business card tightly. The print had rubbed off all over her
scarlet-manicured hands. No point trying to hide the truth now, she thought to
herself. She nodded:

‘Yes. It’s just me. But I don’t have enough work, even for
myself.’

‘That’s what we’d bring to the table,’ Mr Irving went on
hopefully. ‘Work. Masses of it. Len’s one of the best shadowers in London.
We’ve got cases coming out of our ears, and enough lawyers on our books to fill
your empty bookcases. And more. You’ll never need to worry about paying the
rent here again.’

Posie swallowed. This was all very surprising.

‘But what do you want from me? This is
my
Detective
Agency!’ Posie squeaked, and immediately realised she sounded childish.

‘Don’t worry,’ Mr Irving said reassuringly. ‘Just let Len
come and work for you. The location here is perfect. No need to change your
sign outside, or the name. In our game discretion is key, anyhow. All profits,
after costs, to be split 50/50, between you and Len. How does that sound?’

It had sounded good, dirty work or not, and Posie had put
her scruples quickly aside.

And now, two years down the line, Posie looked back fondly
on that day as indeed being her lucky day. Mr Irving had proved some sort of
ministering angel from heaven, in fact.

Len’s shadowing work alone had kept them afloat for many,
many months. Through it all, and especially at the beginning, dear,
good-hearted Len had never once questioned Posie about her lack of work; never
complained about the days he spent chasing errant husbands all over town while
she sat in the office at Grape Street reading
The Lady
and drinking
sugared china tea, waiting for a suitable case to come in. They covered the
bills and split the profits 50/50 and that was that.

It had only been in the last year that Posie had finally
started to gain some cases of her own: a missing wife here, a Belgravia cook
gone astray there, a minor insurance fraud.

Most recently and importantly, however, she had helped track
down a gang of clever jewellery robbers dressed as choristers who had burgled a
shop at Christmas in the exclusive Burlington Arcade (in what had come to be
known as ‘The Carino Affair’, after the Italian Countess, Faustina Carino,
whose jewellery, in for repairs and cleaning, had been the main target of the
heist).

Posie was relieved she was finally able to bring some bacon
to the table, and glad too that she was finally making a name for herself and
for the Detective Agency. The Carino Affair had landed the Grape Street Bureau
some good press – a small article in
The Times
which was nicely written
– and perhaps more importantly, a friend and supporter in the form of one
Detective Inspector Lovelace, of New Scotland Yard. Posie firmly believed that
you couldn’t underestimate the importance of knowing good people in the right
places, especially at sticky times.

Times such as now, perhaps…

****

Plodding up the stairs and unwrapping her frozen
layers of damp scarf, Posie was jolted sharply back to the present by the sound
of loud, high-pitched laughter coming from the office. She opened the
glass-stencilled front door and peered in.

The little waiting room was bright and warm. The fire was
blazing merrily in the hearth and Len was sprawled all over the sofa. Babe
Sinclair, their glamorous American secretary from New York, sat cosily to Len’s
right, nearest the fire. Her impossibly shiny black hair glinted beautifully
and her sumptuous glittery jade necklace threw off beams of reflected light
from the fire. On the coffee-table next to Len’s beloved camera was a crumpled
green-and-white striped bag from Lyons Cornerhouse.

‘Crumpet?’ Len asked cheerfully. Posie saw that he had
improvised with a stoking iron and that he had been toasting the cakes over the
fire. Posie nodded and slumped down into one of the armchairs. She kicked off
her wet snow-boots and sat in her damp stockinged feet; the likelihood of any
clients wandering in off the street without an appointment on a foul day like
today was very small. She took the crumpet Len handed her gratefully, she
hadn’t realised how hungry she was.

Babe had begun to look at Posie resentfully, for she had
been having a good time alone with Len, who never took anything too seriously.
Babe knew too that she owed her job to Len, who had taken a shine to her at
interview, rather than to Posie, who had only ever been frostily polite. She
had only been working at the Grape Street Bureau for a few weeks, since just
after Christmas, and she was still in her probation period. She realised that
Posie’s return meant she would now have to do some
actual
work, and she
picked up her blue notebook from the floor with an exaggerated weary gesture.

Through mouthfuls of hot crumpet Posie gave Babe brisk
instructions to send three important telegrams. She dictated the exact
contents, which Babe wrote down in a fancy American shorthand which Posie had
never encountered before. Posie gulped the last crumbs down gratefully and
licked her buttery fingers. She noticed that the secretary was still sitting in
her chair, pouting slightly.

Posie sighed to herself:
Was it just possible that they
had managed to hire the worst secretary in the world, ever?

‘What are you waiting for? Please, Babe. It’s urgent. Send
the telegrams now. Take the money from the strong-box on my desk.’

‘But, gee, Miss,’ drawled Babe, ‘it’s kinda snowing badly
outside.’

‘Hang it all! Don’t you have snow in New York every winter?
I would have thought this was nothing compared to that! Now, off you go. And
when you come back I want you to go into your office and start the typing. If
there isn’t any to do, I want you to do the filing. If anything’s not clear,
come and find me. I don’t want you disturbing Mr Irving out here. He’s very
busy.’

Babe gave a
moue
of dislike and then went through to
Posie’s office where she could be heard jangling coins together, and then she
flounced out of the office, wrapping her shorn-black head in several woolly
scarves. Len and Posie listened to her heavy, cross footsteps thumping down the
stairs, followed by the violent slam of the front door onto the street below.

Len gave Posie one of his
I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that
looks.

‘What?’

He smouldered at her. She felt her insides melting.

‘I’m
not
being mean sending her out into the snow.
That’s her job! Anyway, she should be working, not shilly-shallying around with
you out here, eating cakes. What do we pay her for, after all? We can only just
afford it. As well you know.’

Len raised his eyebrow at Posie and smiled gently.

‘We’re sitting out here as our own offices are freezing. I
thought we’d economise and light just one fire. Give her a break – I know you don’t
like her, Po. And anyway, I’m not busy. I don’t have another case on until
tomorrow.’

Posie glowered back at him. Len always had her sussed out,
and he was right; she
didn’t
like Babe, didn’t trust her somehow. It was
just a gut feeling she had.

To lighten the mood he started to skim through a sheaf of
his freshly developed photos on the coffee-table, offering comments as he
flicked through. Len looked at one in particular and threw back his head,
laughing aloud, and the sound of it caught at Posie’s throat, tugging at her
heart, making her look away quickly into the roaring flames of the fire.