Sick of Shadows (14 page)

Her scalp became increasingly itchy as the day wore on. She rang for her lady’s maid. “Turner, would you see if I have a rash on my scalp?”

Turner took the bone pins and pads out of Rose’s elaborate hair-style and brushed out her long hair.

“My lady, you have lice!”

“Lice!”

“Head lice. I will fetch a tooth comb and disinfectant.”

Rose spent an agonizing hour bent over a sheet of white paper while Turner combed out the lice with a toothcomb soaked in disinfectant. Then her hair was washed several times.

Rose remembered that Mrs. Harrison’s hair had been bound up in a tight turban. She could only be glad that she was free of social engagements that evening. What if all the lice had not been discovered and some fell on the captain!

When she went to sleep that night, she dreamt she was floating down the river in the rowing-boat with Dolly. “You’ve missed something. It’s right under your nose,” said Dolly. Rose awoke with a start. Someone had said something or done something recently that was important. She racked her brain, but could not think what it was.

EIGHT

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

—
OSCAR WILDE

Harry visited Kerridge the next day. “Did you ever interview Lord Berrow?” he asked.

“Yes, but got nothing but the usual bluster out of him.”

“He is a nasty, brutal man. Maybe he knew Dolly was going to run away. I really feel you should interview him again. I’ll come with you. He’ll still be at his town house.”

“I’ll try anything. I don’t like unfinished cases, particularly murder ones.”

Accompanied by Inspector Judd, they went to Lord Berrow’s home. When Berrow heard that a detective superintendent from Scotland Yard had called, he could almost feel his heart shrivel into a tiny knot of panic.

“Very well. I will see this person,” he told his butler loftily. “Put him in the library. Has he come alone?”

“There is a police inspector with him and a Captain Cathcart.”

Berrow wondered whether to make a run for it out of the back door or bluster it out. Bluster won.

He entered the library with a breezy, “What ho! One of my servants been stealing the silver?”

“I have neglected to ask you, my lord, what you were doing on the evening that Miss Tremaine was murdered.”

Relief flooded Lord Berrow’s corpulent body. “Get out of here. You are insolent. Do you know who I am?”

“Answer the question,” said Harry in a level voice.

Berrow stared at him for a long moment. He was sure it was Cathcart who was behind the taking of that dreadful photograph.

To Kerridge’s amazement, Berrow said mildly, “Sorry. But you caught me on the hop. Let me see. It’s a while back. I was at The Club. You can ask the other members. I stayed there until two in the morning. Went home, went to bed. That’s it.”

“You do not have any connection with criminals, do you?” asked Kerridge, thinking that if Berrow had hired an assassin, it didn’t really matter what sort of alibi he had.

“My dear fellow, I do not know such types. I consort with the highest in the land, including our King.”

Kerridge fixed a flat-eyed gaze on him. Berrow shifted uneasily, not knowing that Kerridge was dreaming of him being shot by a firing squad at the people’s revolution, masterminded by himself. He could see this fat lord trembling as he shouted, “Fire!” Then he realized to his consternation that he had shouted aloud.

“What fire? Where?” Berrow looked wildly around. “I don’t have electricity.” People in homes lit by electricity often sat with cushions at the ready to throw at the skirting as the occasional over-powerful surge of electricity caused it to burst into flames.

“My apologies. I was thinking of something else.”

They questioned him further, Berrow growing more and more relaxed when he realized there was to be no mention of that photograph.

But when they had left, he phoned Cyril to tell him of the visit. “I can’t take any more frights like this morning,” he said. “We’ve got to get that negative.”

“He might keep it at his office. I’ve heard there’s only a secretary there.”

“We’ll watch his office.”

“He might see us. I’ll send a servant to let us know. We’ll wait in a coffee shop nearby.”

Ailsa Bridge, Harry secretary, was not her usual placid self because she had run out of gin. While she knew her employer kept drinks in his inner office, she dismissed the idea. That would be stealing. But she began to make mistakes in her typing. She looked longingly at the door of the inner office, where the bottles in the cupboard seemed to be singing a siren song to her.

It was too much. She got to her feet. The telephone rang, making her jump guiltily. It was Harry. “I won’t be back for a couple of hours,” he said. “I don’t have any appointments, do I?”

“Three o’clock is the next one,” said Ailsa.

“Good. I can trust you as usual to take care of anything that arises.”

Ailsa replaced the receiver and stood, lost in thought. If she went out to buy gin, he wouldn’t know. But what if some important case came up and she wasn’t there?

“Just a little fortifier,” she murmured and headed for the inner office. She crouched down by the cupboard. “Whisky, brandy, sherry, but no gin. Blast!”

Whisky would have to do. She extracted the cork with her teeth and took a large swig, feeling the spirit coursing through her veins. And then she heard footsteps on the stairs. She rammed the cork back in the bottle when she heard a man’s voice say, “The place is empty. Let’s get to work before the bastard gets back.”

Ailsa, the prim, spinsterish daughter of missionaries, had been in a lot of difficult situations in Burma. She carefully took the revolver Harry kept in his desk and, holding it behind her thin figure, emerged from the inner office.

Two masked men stood there. The heavy-set one advanced on her. “Sit down and keep your mouth shut,” he growled, “or it will be the worse for you.”

Ailsa produced the revolver from behind her back. “Get out,” she said calmly.

They both stopped short. The other man gave a sniggering laugh. “A little lady like you shouldn’t be playing with guns.”

Ailsa levelled the gun and shot him in the foot. He screamed and fell down. Ailsa picked up the receiver and said, “Police.”

“Let’s get out of here!” screamed the injured one. “I’m dying!”

Helped by his companion, they both stumbled out of the office and down the stairs.

The injured party was Cyril Banks and he had to wait, moaning and crying, while Berrow found a doctor who would keep his mouth shut, knowing that the police would be checking the hospitals. Because he was an inveterate smoker and kept a spare cigarette case inside his elastic-sided boot, his foot was only badly bruised.

After the doctor had left, he and Berrow sat down to think up ways and means of getting that photograph back.

Harry knew who the culprits probably were and told the police. But when they called on Cyril, it was to find he appeared to be walking normally and there was no sign he had been shot. Threatened with everyone from the king to the prime minister, the police backed off with apologies.

When he heard the news, Harry assumed that they had hired a couple of men. “Maybe,” he said to Ailsa, “you should take some leave. They will try again.”

“I am not afraid,” said Ailsa, “although I did have a fright. I am afraid I helped myself to some of your whisky.”

“That’s all right. But be vigilant. There is a police guard now on the door downstairs.”

“We need to be subtle,” said Berrow. “She looked like a real dried-up spinster. What about getting someone to romance her? Let me think. Who needs money?”

“Most of London society.”

“We need a charming wastrel.”

“There’s Guy Delancey. Still owes me a packet from a baccarat game. But if he courts her and gets that negative, maybe there’s another print with it and he’ll see that photograph.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell him how we were set up.”

The dark days moved on to Christmas. The earl was preparing to remove to Stacey Court in the country. Harry had been invited to join them, and to Rose’s amazement had accepted. He had been at her side as much as he could, but always at social occasions, and had not seemed to make any push to be alone with her.

Rose still diligently worked at the soup kitchen, forgetting in her zeal that the idea had originally been to get her photograph in the newspapers. She now wore her hair tightly bound up in a disinfected turban. At times she wearied of the smell and degradation of the people she was serving and could only marvel at Miss Friendly’s unremitting and cheerful manner.

A hard frost had London in its grip. The earl ordered that the water pipes outside the town house were to be lagged with old sheets because he could see the burst pipes of less diligent owners glittering with long icicles.

Ailsa was leaving work one evening. She stopped outside a butcher’s shop and looked up at the fat geese hanging from hooks.

A light pleasant voice behind her said, “Which one would you like?”

Ailsa turned round. In the light of the shop, she saw a fashionably dressed man with a dissipated face and his tall silk hat worn at a rakish angle.

“I am admiring the birds, sir,” she said. “I will not be buying one.”

“Going to be alone at Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too. Look, it’s dashed cold evening. Why don’t you join me for a drink in that pub over there?”

Ailsa surveyed him from under the brim of her black felt hat ornamented with a pheasant’s feather. She had not had much to drink that day. Although Harry paid her a good salary, a large part of it went to an orphans’ charity, some on food and rent and the rest on gin.

A pub was a public place. Nothing could happen to her there. Also, she was curious to find out why this man had waylaid her.

“Very well, sir,” she said. “But just one. I have a weak head and I am not accustomed to strong liquor.”

Guy Delancey felt relieved. Berrow had said to charm her, get her drunk and either get the office keys out of her reticule or make her so besotted with him that she would turn over the negative.

He took her arm and guided her across the road through the traffic, which had ground to a halt as usual. The newspapers were complaining that the whole of London was seized up with too much traffic.

He found a corner table in the pub. A waiter came bustling up. “What will you have, miss? Champagne?”

“No, I might try some gin. My mother used to like gin.”

“Gin it is. Make it a large one, and I’ll have a large whisky.”

When the drinks arrived, Guy introduced himself. Ailsa thought of using a different name but then gave him her real one.

“Drink up,” said Guy.

“My father always used to say, ‘Bottoms up,’ and drain his glass. I’ve never tried that.”

“Let’s try it now.”

“Bottoms up,” said Ailsa and knocked back her glass in one gulp. Guy followed suit.

He called the waiter and ordered another round. “That poor waiter, running to and fro,” said Ailsa. “Why does he not just bring the bottles?”

“Good idea!” Gosh, thought Guy, she’ll be putty. A few more glasses and she’ll do anything I want. He surveyed Ailsa with her flat chest, thin pale face and hooded eyes. Probably had nothing stronger than a glass of sweet sherry in all her life.

The waiter, as ordered, brought a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin to the table.

“I’ll be Mother,” said Ailsa, just as if she were pouring tea instead of liquor. “Bottoms up!”

Guy soon began to feel his senses reeling. “I shay,” he said, “where d’you work?”

“I work for an orphans’ fund,” said Ailsa. “This is fun. Bottoms up!”

“You mean you don’t work for Captain Cashcart?”

“Never heard of him,” said Ailsa. “Bottoms up!”

Guy lurched to his feet. He had made a dreadful mistake. He had followed her from the office in Buckingham Palace Road. But there were other offices there.

“Gotto go,” he said thickly.

Ailsa watched as he staggered from the pub.

Lady Glensheil was late for a dinner party. She opened the trap on the roof of her carriage with her stick. “The traffic has cleared, John,” she shouted to her coachman. “Go faster. Spring those horses.”

“Very good, my lady.”

Guy, lurching out of the pub onto the road, never saw the carriage hurtling towards him until it was too late.

At the sound of the scream and the crash, everyone ran out of the pub.

Ailsa gathered up her scarf, gloves and reticule and walked out. A carriage was lying on its side and an autocratic lady was being helped out. Guy was lying on the road, blood pouring from his head.

“Are the horses all right, John?” called Lady Glensheil.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Thank goodness for that. I would not like to think good horseflesh had been ruined by some drunk.”

The conspirators did not hear the bad news until they read the following day’s
Evening News.
“Young man-about-town, Mr. Guy Delancey, was killed when he walked in front of Lady Glensheil’s carriage. Witnesses say he had been drinking heavily in the Fox and Ferret with a lady. Police are urging his companion to come forward.”