Something Wicked (24 page)

‘No, I . . . I wasn’t scared,’ Verity said, her voice gaining strength but sounding rather bewildered. ‘I can’t begin to explain it to you but I was . . . I was in another world.’

‘You were within a few seconds of being in another world,’ Bert said drily. Four or five uniformed men were running towards the Tiger Moth. ‘Here they come! I’m afraid the powers that be are going to make life difficult for you, Miss Kay. You’ll have to do a full report.’

‘And you’re going to have to do a full technical report. I just couldn’t move the stick,’ Kay responded crisply, regaining some of her customary poise and authority. ‘Bert, could you please take Miss Browne to the mess to rest and recuperate. Feed her coffee and brandy while I deal with all this.’

A reaction had set in by the time Kay joined them in the mess. Verity’s exhilaration had left her and she felt numb with fatigue. She lay back on a sofa with her eyes closed. Kay sat down beside her and put her hand on Verity’s.

‘Have another sip of brandy. Waiter – a double brandy, please. I need it myself!’

Verity opened her eyes and, seeing Kay’s expression, made an effort to reassure her.

‘I’m all right – just winded. Give me minute or two and I’ll be as right as rain.’

Kay grimaced. She knew that Dr Bladon – and Edward – would blame her for taking Verity up in the Tiger Moth, let alone nearly killing her. That loop at the end had been a stupid idea but there was no reason why it should have gone so badly wrong. The Tiger Moth was a reliable plane in which she had performed much more risky aerobatics than a gentle loop. Bert would go over it nut by nut, bolt by bolt and she ought to have his preliminary report tomorrow but her immediate anxiety was to get Verity back to the clinic and make her confession to Dr Bladon.

Twenty minutes later, Kay helped Verity – half asleep and barely able to walk – into the car. She sank back and closed her eyes.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Kay asked, unnecessarily. It was plain she was not.

‘It was the happiest day of my life,’ Verity mumbled and fell into a profound slumber which Kay thought was too close to unconsciousness for comfort. She put her foot on the accelerator pedal and within the hour drew up with a spray of gravel in front of the clinic. Dr Bladon came hurriedly out of the front door accompanied by two nurses. It was obvious he had been waiting for them.

‘Miss Browne, are you all right? Miss Stammers, I really must protest! I gave permission for my patient to go for a short drive but you have been gone most of the day.’ He looked at Verity and felt her pulse. ‘Good heavens! Nurse, quickly please. We may need a stretcher. What has happened? What have you done to my patient, Miss Stammers?’

Verity opened her eyes and, smiling sleepily, said she was quite all right. Leaning on the two nurses, she managed to stumble into the clinic without recourse to a stretcher.

Kay made as if to leave but Dr Bladon insisted that she accompany him to his office and explain exactly why Verity was so exhausted.

‘I took her up for a spin in my kite,’ she said, trying to make light of it but unable to hide her feelings of guilt. She told him how much Verity had wanted to go up in the plane and how she thought the fresh air would do her good.

Dr Bladon snorted contemptuously. ‘Please don’t be absurd, Miss Stammers. You know perfectly well that “fresh air” does not mean a wild adventure in your “kite”, as you call it.’

‘Well, it would have been all right except for . . .’ Kay hesitated.

‘Except for what?’

‘I had a bit of trouble with the controls and got into a spin. Still, I got her out of it . . . the spin, I mean, so it ended all right.’

Dr Bladon looked at her, his eyebrows raised and his face red with anger. ‘Miss Stammers, from what you say – and I am inclined to believe you have only told me half the story – you have been at the least grossly irresponsible and at the worst criminally negligent. Miss Browne is a very sick woman and, if you have delayed her recovery, or . . . or worse, you will not be forgiven. Good day to you.’

He opened the door of his office and Kay left, feeling that she had been severely but properly rebuked. She knew she had to tell Edward before he heard what had happened from another source and she decided to drive straight to Turton House, but he was not there.

Edward was troubled by a feeling of impending doom. He felt threatened on all sides. Major Stille clearly had some sort of a relationship with Roderick Black and his son Guy. Was that why he was here in Henley? Edward could not believe it was just an innocent visit to watch the rowing and meet old friends. Stille never went anywhere without a purpose.

Then there was Harry. Was he what he seemed, a generous host and loyal ally? Or was he devious and possibly murderous? It couldn’t be ruled out. Then there were the murders he was supposed to be investigating. What had he discovered? Only that Hermione Totteridge, Ernest Lowther and James Herold had all been murdered and that their deaths were linked by the phrases or quotations left on their bodies. He reminded himself that he must telephone Chief Inspector Pride and see if he had made any progress with his investigation into Eric Silver’s gruesome killing. If there had been an arrest, he was sure he would have been told. The newspapers which had paraded the dentist’s killing on their front pages no longer showed any interest in it. Their crime reporters had been transferred to a Liverpool shipowner who had, it appeared, murdered a prostitute to stop her telling all his sordid secrets to his wife. However, Edward knew that when Pride did make an arrest, Silver’s murder would once again be front-page news.

Mulling it over in his mind, he decided that, on the evidence available, Silver’s murder was linked to the other three but tangentially. He was looking for a murderer who was far more savage than the killer of Lowther, Hermione Totteridge or Herold – someone who knew about these murders but had not committed them. Blackmail? Revenge? Or merely a wicked joke? He was being taunted by the entomological connection. He was at that stage in an investigation when he saw parts of the pattern and knew that quite soon – in a matter of days – he might see the whole. Yet his instinct also told him that he was being observed and that there would be more death, more killing before the murderer could be stopped.

‘Something wicked this way comes . . .’ he muttered to himself.

Brooding on these and other matters, Edward strolled along the river bank acknowledging the greetings of coxes, coaches and rowers as they prepared their boats. According to his programme, on this second day of the regatta, there were three races he did not wish to miss. At five past two, Trinity – his old college – was competing against Leander in another heat of the Stewards’ Challenge Cup and at a quarter to three Eton was due to meet Westminster School in the Ladies’ Challenge Plate. That was followed by a heat of the Diamond Challenge Sculls with Guy Black pitted against L. D. Habbitts whom he had said he would be lucky to better.

With time on his hands, Edward decided to hire a skiff and explore Temple Island. As far as he knew, it was uninhabited although someone had told him that, until recently, an old lady had lived there in some style. He particularly wanted to see the two-faced god under whose protection the island flourished. Bruce-Dick had told him the story of the first regatta in 1839 when four races were rowed from the tip of Temple Island to Henley Bridge. Oxford’s Old Etonians had trounced Brasenose College on that occasion and the same evening Trinity, having partaken of mutton chops and ale, had raced
Black Prince
– with the college’s three crowns on her bow – against an eight made up of Old Etonians from several Oxford colleges and beaten them by a canvas. Now, almost a century later, Edward could only feel anguish that the regatta, along with so much he treasured about England, was on the point of being blown to smithereens by evil men – of whom Major Stille was a prime example.

There was not much river traffic round Temple Island as Edward bumped his skiff against the wooden jetty and jumped ashore, wetting his feet in the process. He swore but was soon entranced by the oasis of peace amid the bustle of Henley at the height of the regatta. The island was the shape of a ship and, in the sunshine, appeared to Edward as though it might at any moment set sail and float downstream. The folly itself was much smaller than it had seemed from the
Arethusa
earlier that morning. It consisted of a rotunda decorated with the Etruscan-style reliefs he had heard so much about. It was a charming room several feet above ground level, reached by wooden stairs. When he entered, he found it was a mere five or six yards across with curved windows giving views of the river and the green fields beyond.

Walking to a little lawn on the ‘prow’ of the island, he found a bench from which he could survey the folly. Above the rotunda was the statue of Janus, fenced in or perhaps protected by pillars and surmounted by a delicate cupola. All in all, it was almost perfect – quite useless but pleasing to the eye, beautifully proportioned, sufficiently arcadian to satisfy any romantic poet and reminiscent of paintings by Fragonard and Watteau.

On three sides, only a few feet of grass surrounded the folly and Edward was surprised how close it was to the river. He got up from the bench to look at a small plaque on the wall which marked the water levels reached in years gone by. He saw that on occasion the island must have been almost totally submerged and the little temple half drowned, but this was midsummer and the water was tame and subservient. He thought he might try and climb on to the roof to see the statue close to but the narrow stone staircase was behind a locked iron gate so he had to be satisfied with admiring it from below.

He returned to the bench thinking that he would enjoy the peace and quiet for a few more minutes before returning to his skiff. He closed his eyes and fell into one of those reveries where the mind drifts in shallow waters awaiting the call to return to the waking world.

The hoarse, unlovely cry of a seagull roused him. Stretching, he got up from the bench – noticing to his annoyance that it had left a stain on his white trousers – and went to examine the Janus statue one last time. It was frustrating not to be able to get closer. He pulled at the metal gate and, to his surprise, found it was not in fact locked. He was almost certain that it had been when he had tried it earlier but told himself he must have been mistaken.

He climbed up the stone steps and came out on a lead roof beside the statue. He saw that it stood on a pedestal which resembled a section from a Corinthian column but was much more recent than the statue itself. Now that he was eye-to-eye with it, he saw that Janus needed some attention. One of the statue’s two faces looked towards Henley and the other over the little wilderness at the other end of the island. The stone was flaking and the faces crumbling. There was a melancholy about it which was satisfactorily poetic and Edward wished he had the talent to sketch it or pen some suitable verses in its honour. There was no expression on either face and he imagined that in the dusk they must look quite sinister.

He looked over the edge and wished that the Victorians had not surrounded the temple with such a clumsy wooden balcony. It was quite inappropriate, almost as if they had encumbered it with a chastity belt. He turned back to the statue and, as he was preparing to descend, noticed something metallic pushed between the feet of the god. Tugging at it, he found it to be an old cash box, large enough to hold a sizeable sum of money in banknotes. The box was unlocked and, his curiosity now fully aroused, he opened the catch. There were no banknotes inside but there was a large envelope. Edward was sure that he had stumbled on something secret, something he was not supposed to see. Without hesitation, he tore open the envelope and found inside a sheaf of papers. He had seen such papers before when working on a case in the Foreign Office. They were all marked ‘secret’.

Before he could master the contents, he felt something cold and hard press against the back of his neck.

‘I shall take those, Lord Edward – if you please.’

There was no mistaking Major Stille’s voice.

‘I might have guessed . . .’ Edward growled. ‘In fact, when I saw you talking to Guy Black, I knew you must be here for a reason. Are these papers his or his father’s?’

For some reason he felt quite unafraid. He was standing on a slightly sloping lead roof with no guard rail of any kind. How easy it would be for him to slip and fall either on to the grass below or into the river. It flashed through his mind that he was completely at Stille’s mercy and he knew from past experience that the man had no mercy. Clearly, he had stumbled on a
poste restante
where one of Stille’s agents – probably Roderick Black – left messages and stolen papers for him to collect when it was convenient. Stille was a patriot of sorts, Edward supposed – a man who would do anything to get what he wanted. When his body was recovered, Edward told himself, Major Ferguson or Guy Liddell might suspect who was behind his death but why should Stille worry? His work in England was almost done and he would have no reason to care about his activities being investigated. With diplomatic immunity, the worst that could happen would be deportation. Perhaps, Edward thought, this was his last success – his final coup – and Stille would be as ruthless as his master, Heinrich Himmler, with anyone who got in his way.

Edward glanced to either side and wondered if he could get behind one of the pillars, but that was quite absurd. They were slim and delicate. In any case, he could not move fast on the awkward little roof. He considered shouting but there was no one within earshot on the river – a situation which had delighted him just a few moments earlier. If he opened his mouth to shout, Stille would almost certainly shoot him. There was nothing he could do. He was trapped on a narrow ledge only accessible by a curved stone staircase which was difficult to negotiate at the best of times and he was alone with a man with a gun. He wanted to laugh.

‘Turn round very slowly, please, with your hands in the air.’

Edward did as he was told. In one hand, he still held the papers he had taken from the cash box. Stille was smiling. He had obviously read Edward’s mind as clearly as if he had spoken and had watched him come to the only possible conclusion.