Murder Offstage (21 page)

He tailed off into silence.

‘Cecil was good at his job. He caught Lucy and brought her
back here. Home. But I had no idea he was going to kill her. And you were
right: she didn’t deserve to die like that. I couldn’t forgive him. He had to
die sooner or later. I had given him too much power, you see. At heart, he was
always a magician. You were right about that too – he was a show-off, and he
liked to live dangerously. When I told him to get rid of Lucy’s body I had no
idea he would simply throw it in a cupboard at my own nightclub and make it
look like a suicide, albeit shoddily done. It must have appealed to his sense
of humour, to try and ruin her beautiful face and make it look like she had
taken the cowardly way out too: he and Lucy had come to despise each other;
they were always rivals in a sense, competing for my attention. He was simply
delighted she was out of the picture.’

He sighed. ‘And likewise, when I told him to store the
Maharajah diamond somewhere secure for the next few days, I had no idea he
would do something as reckless as storing it in a pigeon-hole, unguarded!’

Posie stared at the man. Everything fitted together now, and
yet somehow, she still didn’t understand.

‘Miss Price, please untie Miss Parker from her chair. I want
her to come over here.’ The Count gesticulated loosely at the board he was
standing in front of.

Dolly darted forwards and Posie felt her trembling,
fluttering hands at her back, untying the rope. Dolly bent near her and made a
show of having trouble with the knots, stalling for time, whereas Posie knew
the bindings were already unfastened.

‘Be careful, lovey,’ whispered Dolly under her breath. ‘I’ve
seen him in action, don’t believe his mild manners. He’s a devil of a man. He’s
much more dangerous than his horrible side-kick the Chicken ever was.’

The telephone was ringing again. Under cover of its noise
and the Count answering, Posie rose from her seat, whispering urgently:

‘And Len? Where is he? Have they got him bound up in some
cupboard here too?’

Dolly shook her head almost imperceptibly: ‘No, you’re
wrong, Posie. He’s not here. Never has been.’

A great shuddering wave of relief rippled through Posie and
it was with a much lighter heart that she trotted across the wooden floorboards
to the corner with the maps. The Count had finished on the telephone and looked
pleased with himself.

‘I said I was going to show you my empire. And here it is,’
he waved expansively. ‘Some of it anyhow. The most important bits to me. See
these? These are my diamond mines in South Africa.’

Posie stared at a map of a country she had never been to, a
huge expanse of green. The green was studded with black pins, and in places
they were so close together that it looked as if a great swarming mass of
horrible insects were crawling over the paper. Tiny white paper inserts with
incomprehensible details in miniscule writing were attached to each pin. The
Count rubbed his hands together gleefully. In a few places, no more than ten or
fifteen places perhaps, a bright red pin was attached to a slip of paper. Posie
raised her eyebrow inquisitively.

‘These red pins are mines I do not yet have. But I want
them. They are next on my list. In fact,’ and here he drew out one red pin and
replaced it with a black one, ‘I have just acquired another. You probably heard
me earlier on the telephone. A beauty.’

Posie looked down at the man. She realised for the first
time that she was taller than he was, a good couple of inches taller. ‘But what
I don’t understand is, if you own so many mines and you smuggle stolen jewels
too, why on earth are you stealing the Cardigeons’ diamond, when you could
obviously afford to just buy it from them yourself?’

The man laughed and his dull brown eyes were suddenly lit up
with an incomprehensible fire.

‘I love everything about diamonds, everything. I collect
rare treasures. And the black diamond of the Maharajah – it is perhaps the most
famous in the world – do you really think it could be
bought
? That the
Cardigeons would sell it to me? Of course not! To steal it is the only way.
Even now my spies have located it. They have just telephoned me. It is to be
sent out tomorrow on the
HMS Endeavour.
My associates will make sure it
never leaves the country.’

Posie realised she had been wrong again. The man was mad,
but it was a particular kind of madness, a driven sort of madness she had not
encountered before. A wild, craven possessiveness.

‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ the Count said, his
face becoming serious again. ‘I have more: castles in France and Belgium;
mountain lairs in Switzerland; ranches in South America; nightclubs and
speakeasies in New York. And money,
my
money, flowing everywhere.’ He
tapped one of the brown-paper bundles stacked next to the skirting-board.

‘You mean counterfeit money? Produced in Soho using your
photographic equipment and using Lucky Lucy’s forgery skills acquired at the
Belgian mint?’

‘How astute of you,’ he half-bowed. ‘Although I am a pretty
good forger myself, you know.’

The telephone rang again. He had been expecting the call, it
seemed, and after the Operator had connected the caller, the Count simply
nodded.

‘I understand,’ he said quietly and replaced the receiver.
He turned to Posie and smiled. ‘Whilst I dearly love London as my headquarters,
I fear it is time to be on the move again. For a while at least.’

Posie shrugged. Why on earth was he telling her all of this?
Surely he knew she would go straight to the police and tell them all she knew?
Why was he being so reckless? They stared at each other.

‘What do you want with me?’ she said in a half-whisper.

He laughed indulgently.

‘Oh, come, my dear. Surely you know the answer to that?’

She shook her head. Behind her she felt Dolly slip her tiny
clammy hand into her own in a show of solidarity.

Count della Rosa moved to the very end of the wall and
flicked another spotlight. A baize screen was set up there, and what was
illuminated made Posie sick with shock. Dolly gasped behind her. It was covered
entirely in photos and newsprint. Everything was about Posie.

At the very centre was the recent photograph of Posie which
had been printed in the
Associated Press
the day before
.
Red pins
and tiny slips of paper covered the board in a seething mass. The board was the
plotting of a madman, a crazed mind at work. An obsessive. Posie turned,
open-mouthed.

‘You want
me
?’ she whispered, although her voice did
not sound entirely her own.

Caspian della Rosa tilted his head to one side and nodded.

‘Yes. I told you I collect rare treasures. I found one once
in Lucky Lucy and I was fortunate enough on Monday to find you at the Ritz,
sauntering in out of the snow as fresh as a daisy. I knew Lucy had betrayed me
and I needed a replacement. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you! And so I
tracked you down, and I tricked you, and I lured you into my web, my world; the
mysterious and glamorous world of the
La Luna
club. Why else do you
think I made Cecil pretend to be me and invite you for a drink? He was a
honey-trap; designed to get your attention before you met the real ‘me.’ But
you declined and played hard to get! So then I instructed him to drop the
matches as a clue; I knew you would find the club…And why else would I tease
you on with my clever little notes from “Lucky Lucy” to whet your appetite? I knew
you were the kind of girl to rise to a challenge and try and uncover the truth!
The only fly in the ointment was your finding Lucy’s body at
La Luna
–
for which, my apologies: I would not have wished that on you a thousand times
over. Oh, and you were not supposed to find the diamond, of course. That forced
me to move pretty quickly today, let me tell you! I
need
it, almost as
much as I need you.’

He laughed shrilly. ‘We will be a great team, I know it. You
are resourceful and brave, and I have already watched you play one part with
conviction. I was watching you every minute at the nightclub; you made a
spectacular Countess Faustina! We will disappear, and then return again in a
few years. Build up the theatre again, the business…it will all be fine, my
darling. Don’t worry about a thing. But we must go. That telephone call was my
man at the club in St James. The police had arrived, so they will have this
address by now.’

He looked at his wristwatch. ‘We have approximately seven
more minutes, by my calculations, until they get here. Let’s go, my darling. I
have an escape route. It’s fail-safe. We use it for distributing the packages
of money.’ He looked at her expectantly, his brown eyes dog-like in their
adoration.

Posie remained rooted to the spot. Dolly’s hand, now cold
with fear, was still locked in her own. She was torn between great fear and
impossible outrage. She stamped her foot suddenly like a small child, a
feverish toddler:

‘What if I don’t
want
to go with you?’

But immediately Posie saw her mistake: there was no choice
in any of this. The Count, smiling as usual, had picked up Mr Minks again and
was rubbing his head with the smooth butt of the revolver. He took a step
forwards.

‘Now, Miss Parker, don’t spoil things when we were getting
on so famously.’ He pulled the gun properly out now, and rather than aiming it
at the cat, his eye and his gun were both trained on Dolly.

‘Ah! My Wardrobe Mistress. So disposable, don’t you think?
If your answer is still “NO” in five seconds, Miss Parker, I will shoot her.
After that, I will shoot your cat. And if your answer is still a negative, I
will have no choice but to shoot you too, my darling. It will be a shame.
Remember. Time is of the essence. So. I will begin. FIVE. FOUR. THREE…’

Posie drew a great breath, and released her hand from
Dolly’s grip. She put both hands up as if in surrender and stepped forwards.
She began to speak:

‘No…it’s fine. I’ll come…’

Just then, and as Dolly screamed, there was a movement
behind them and to their left. A perfect shot, like a deadly reprimand,
whistled past Count della Rosa’s ear, the bullet lodging itself with pin-point
accuracy into the centre of the board covered in pictures of Posie behind him.

A second shot whipped through the air and narrowly missed
the Count’s outstretched arm. Surprised, the Count dropped his revolver and
ducked. Mr Minks squealed and jumped away. Turning, her heart in her mouth,
Posie expected to find Inspector Lovelace or the boys from Scotland Yard, but
both she and Dolly yelped in surprise.

It was Rufus.

****

Twenty-Four

He strode forwards into the room, the gun which had
nearly been his undoing earlier in the week trained firmly on the Count.

Rufus looked in control, totally calm and collected. There
was not a whiff of the drunkard about this man, and everything about the hero,
the man who had won not one, but
two
Victoria Crosses in the trenches in
the Great War, saving his men.

‘What ho, girls!’ he said from behind his Webley. He smiled
and it was a smile of pure triumph, but his gaze was steely, and it remained
fixed on the Count:

‘I know who you are, della Rosa, but you don’t scare me. All
I know about you is that death and violence follow you about like a bad smell.
I know that somehow my girl died because of you, or your stupid foolish
friends.’ He looked contemptuously for a second over to the body of Cecil
Chicken.

‘And now here you are, at it again. But I’m not going to be
cheated out of happiness a second time by a fellow like you.’ He darted a look
of concern over to Dolly, who promptly burst into tears.

Rufus turned his focus back on the Count:

‘But see here, old thing; I’m the kind of fellow who can’t
abide violence. So how about we do this peacefully? You confess everything to
the police and we’ll go quietly. They’ll be here any minute. I stole a look at
that Members’ Address Book at the club before the police managed to get to it.
Seems you’re not the only one able to bribe a crooked club Manager, eh, old
chap? Now, put your hands above your head, where I can jolly well see them.’

The Count did as he was told, his gaze lingering
expressionlessly and calmly on Posie’s face. She was worried. Surely it
couldn’t be this simple? A man like the Count would have a few tricks up his
sleeve, she was sure of it.

And here it was.

A loud crashing sound, subtle as a bull in a china-shop, was
filling the room and flooding the house. There were shouts and shrieks from
downstairs and a violent thumping of boots on the narrow stairs. Was this
possibly the whole of the Count’s gang? The rest of the Athenaeum orchestra,
now released from jail and come to help him? Were they masters of perfect
timing, or just lucky? Either way, there were sure to be more guns involved,
and Rufus was, after all, just one man against what sounded like an army… Posie
screwed her eyes shut as she anticipated the ruckus. The door flung open, and
crowds seemed to flood the room. She opened her eyes and dared to look.

Mercifully, it was Inspector Lovelace, and behind him came
Sergeants Rainbird, Binny and what seemed like twenty other uniformed bobbies
bustling into the room. Inspector Oats came lurching in too, his eyes darting
this way and that; taking in the body, the maps, the trays of developing
solution. Yet more policemen were swarming up the narrow stairs and through the
small door.

The police turned
en masse
and saw the Count, his
hands still above his head, his face a calm mask of surprised contrition.
Inspector Oats was already taking a pair of silver handcuffs out from his
pocket, his face set in a hard but satisfied line. Posie breathed more
normally, and noticed that Dolly had slunk behind Rufus, who was still training
his gun on the Count with determination.

‘Okey-dokey, let’s be ’avin yer, Mister der-la Row-sa!’ said
Oats, advancing.

It was then that it happened. The oldest trick in the book.

The whole room, previously floodlit, was plunged into sudden
darkness with the click of just one light-switch.

‘Don’t let ’im get away!’ shouted Oats.

Screams and the sound of people falling over followed. The
telephone started to ring again, urgent among the chaos. Beside her, Posie
sensed swift movement and heard the scraping and thudding of something heavy
being pulled along, the whispering of low voices. Then a sharp bang.

‘Don’t shoot! Don’t anyone DARE shoot!’ She heard Inspector
Lovelace shouting.

People were fumbling for matches, torches, for switches. For
anything. After what felt like an age someone worked out that one entire side
of the room was covered in blackout blinds and they started to rip them down haphazardly.
The room was instantly flooded with natural daylight. All eyes were trained on
where the Count had been standing.

But of course he was gone.

So too were the packets of brown-paper covered money, and so
too were the South African mining maps and the scrap-book cuttings of Posie on
the baize-covered board.

In fact, the entire wall behind the pin-board, familiar as
it was to anyone who had been to the
La Luna
club due to its strange
metal casing, looked different. It was revealed as a vast door, swinging open
just a crack.

‘It’s a door! He’s escaped that way!’ shouted Sergeant Binny
and ran over to it. Half of the policemen scurried past and followed him
through.

Inspector Oats was loitering near the huge floor-to-ceiling
windows, and Posie saw for the first time that the house looked straight out
onto the river Thames, its garden ran down directly to the river bank. The
brown pulsing waves could be seen flowing beneath the swirling snow-clouds.

Posie saw instantly that this was Caspian della Rosa’s
escape plan. Perhaps there was a genius lurking in the man after all? For while
the police had bottle-necked themselves into this high-up room in the Mews
House, blocking the stairs and sealing off the road outside with their cars and
road-blocks, she was certain no-one had thought of the river outside, of an
anonymous little motor boat parked ready as a getaway, loaded up with precious
cargo.

‘Oh my gawd!’ shouted Inspector Oats at the window. ‘He’s on
the river! He’s sailing off! Let’s be ’avin him, boys. Get down there now! Put
alerts out!’

Inspector Lovelace was standing in the middle of the room,
stock-still. He knew the uselessness of pursuing the Count. He was already too
far ahead of them, in many ways.

The Inspector came over to Posie who had started to shiver
uncontrollably. He put his arm around her.

‘Did you see that?’ The Inspector nodded subtly towards the
empty baize-covered board, where one tiny piece of paper was pinned in the very
middle, stuck with one red pin.

‘I think it’s meant for you.’

Posie advanced. She took the paper down and read it before
screwing it up into a tight ball as if it meant nothing in the world to her.

But they were words she knew she would never forget:

I WILL COME
FOR YOU.
I AM YOUR NEMESIS.

****

Outside on Winstanley Mews the police were milling
around with that now-familiar defeated stance, lounging against the parked
cars. Inspector Oats and the two Sergeants had managed to beg a neighbour’s
boat and had tried to pursue the Count upstream, but no-one held out much hope
of their success. Dolly and Rufus were sitting in the back seat of a police
car, huddled together like survivors of a shipwreck.

Posie stood blinking, quite alone in the street.

She found she didn’t have a single thought in her head. Mr
Minks was nestled warmly in her arms.

Then, at the far end of the Mews she saw a familiar lone
figure advancing, running, in fact. She screwed up her eyes against the London
snow, and then she saw she was right. It was Len.

‘Po, what on earth?’ He was breathless, doubled-over,
wheezing and gasping for air. ‘Are you all right? I found your map on the floor
of your office with the pencil-marks ringed around this street. I thought you
had left me a clue! I thought the worst. That you had been kidnapped or
something! Crazy, right?’

Posie scrunched the ball of paper in her hand hard.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, furious all of a
sudden. A late white knight is no knight at all.

Len looked up in surprise at her angry face.

‘Why, I’ve been on a job, you noddle. I told you yesterday!
Turns out the lawyer who instructed me saw us on our way into the
Associated
Press
building on Fleet Street! A case of good timing! It was a very
well-paid job too. But it took me almost twenty-four hours to get what I
needed. Besides, I’ve sent several messages and even a telegram to Grape
Street, telling you not to worry. Didn’t you get them?’

Posie shook her head and pursed her lips together. Babe
needed to go; double-dealing little madam that she was. But that could all wait
until tomorrow.

First, home. A long hot bath was in order. And she didn’t
care if Mrs Rapier screamed the house down about it.

****