The Bee's Kiss (16 page)

He took a card from his pocket. ‘Here are my details and the telephone number of my office at the Yard,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything you want to communicate, please do give me a call.’ On impulse, he took out a pen and wrote a number on the back of the card. ‘Look. My sister Lydia lives not far from here . . . just this side of Godalming . . . She’s a capable, resourceful lady with two little daughters of her own. If you should feel the need of a sensible woman’s advice or help, ring this number.’

Mel took the card, looked at it and put it away in the drawer with the photographs. ‘Thank you very much, Commander,’ she said seriously. ‘I may well do that but only to tell her what a very nice brother she has.’

Joe collected up his assistants and after a further short conversation with Orlando and a long look at his painting set off back towards the house. He had vaguely looked for Dorcas to see them off the premises but it was Reid who was watching out for them.

‘I will inform Mrs Joliffe that you are ready to leave, sir. If you will come through to the hall?’

He handed them their hats and left them standing at the foot of the rather grand staircase. The late afternoon sun had left the façade and slanting shadows were beginning to creep over the chequered marble floor. A handsome grandfather clock whirred, clicked and cleared its throat before launching into its tuneful strike and, as the last note died away, they were joined by Mrs Joliffe. She rustled in with the discreet swish of silk, a Whistler symphony of grey and white and black.

‘Reid, you may return to your duties. I will see our guests out.’ She looked around in an exaggerated way, her eyebrow twitching with austere humour. ‘I see you have taken no prisoners, Commander? Has no one confessed?’

‘I’ve heard several confessions, madam, all surprising, but none of them to murder,’ said Joe politely.

A door to one of the upper rooms banged loudly and all turned their faces to look upwards. A figure in red was drifting along the landing, one hand trailing on the banister. Mrs Joliffe’s hand flew to her throat and she gasped, ‘Bea! Bea?’

The figure came slowly on, now descending the sweeping staircase. The old lady’s shock turned in a second to savage anger and her voice rang out, cold and peremptory. ‘Come down at once!’

A barely recognizable Dorcas continued, unflinching, her stately progress, holding up the trailing hem of the dress in one hand. Joe peered through the gathering shadows. Yes, it could only be Dorcas but a Dorcas transformed. The red dress of some floating fabric reached to her ankles though she had attempted to hitch it up with pins at the shoulders. Her face was made up with darkened eyes and bright red lips. She was biting her lower lip with the effort of concentrating on her hazardous descent.

Joe’s jaw sagged. Armitage, standing behind him, breathed, ‘Coo er! Well, I never! What a little corker!’

Mrs Joliffe was the first to recover. ‘Well, the question
is
,’ came her withering comment, ‘
can
Dorcas wear
tomato
?’

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Dorcas gave her grandmother a wide berth, holding out a hand to each of them in turn. In a formal voice she said goodbye and that she looked forward to seeing them again. They all murmured politely in kind and, with a nod to Mrs Joliffe, stepped out, closing the door behind them.

On leaving, Joe had looked back at the tiny, vivid and ridiculous figure of Dorcas and caught her swift, frightened glance over her shoulder at her grandmother. ‘Walk on, the two of you, will you? I’ll join you at the car in a moment.’

He bent his head and shamelessly listened at the door. Even the thick oak was not equal to the task of muffling the angry voice.

‘What
do
you think you’re about, you stupid little creature? No – don’t bother to explain. It is plain enough! Trying to attract the attention of the sergeant, were you? Are we now to expect you to parade yourself before every handsome young man who calls here? And stealing clothes to do it? How like your gypsy mother! How can you think you could ever fit into
anything
of Bea’s? You look unnatural and debased – go and wash your face!’ And, working up to a pitch of rage, ‘If it’s colour you want, I’ll give you colour!’

The resounding slap spurred Joe to fling the door open and stride back into the hall. ‘Ladies! I do beg your pardon,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I fear I left my notebook in the drawing room. No!’ He held up a hand. ‘Please carry on. Don’t let me disturb you. I’ll get it. I know exactly where I left it.’

He hurried into the drawing room, pulled his notebook from his pocket and returned, waving it with a smile of triumph. Mrs Joliffe was standing frozen and unbelieving, speechless with embarrassment. Dorcas was drooping, tears beginning to flow, one hand hiding a spreading red mark on her left cheek. Gently, Joe pulled her damp hand away and with formality kissed the dirty little fingers.

‘You look like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June,’ he said. ‘And my sergeant thinks you’re a “little corker” – whatever that is! Now, just be careful where you go pointing your arrows, Diana. I don’t want to be called back to arrest you.’

When he spoke the last sentence, his eyes locked with the defiant gaze of her grandmother and held it until she looked away.

They had reached the end of the drive before either of his companions spoke.

‘Ugly scene back there, sir?’ said Armitage, negotiating the tight turn between the gateposts.

‘Not pretty,’ said Joe heavily. ‘Sadly, I fear Orlando has it right – there
is
something evil lurking about that lovely house.’

‘It’s Granny,’ said Armitage decisively. ‘She’s right in the middle of it all, I’ll bet. Pity they can’t just paint her out of the picture.’

‘Imagine what the atmosphere was like when Beatrice was alive and kicking!’ Westhorpe found her voice. ‘The two of them together! Must have been unbearable. They really made poor Audrey’s life hell on earth.’ She paused tantalizingly for a moment. ‘I expect you’re both dying to hear what she had to say?’

‘Do tell,’ encouraged Armitage.

Westhorpe cleared her throat and composed herself. ‘I take it you both understand what is meant by the term “lesbian”?’

The car appeared to hit a rut but the sergeant quickly had it under control.

‘Well, she was one. A lesbian. According to Audrey who, you must agree, was supremely well placed to judge.’

They nodded.

‘But that’s not all and here, I’m afraid, my knowledge of the correct sexual terminology threatens to let me down and I have to rely on my readings of Havelock Ellis which are –’

‘Get on with it, Westhorpe!’ said Joe. ‘Four letter words will do if they’re all that come to mind.’

‘Very well. According to Audrey, who, having a theatrical background, is unsurprised by these things – and I interpret what she had to say, you understand – her vocabulary is decidedly –’

‘Westhorpe!’

Westhorpe cleared her throat. ‘The Dame was a psychosexual hermaphrodite.’

‘Come again, Constable?’ Armitage was mystified.

‘She alternated between heterosexual activities and a subordinated but significant tendency towards sexual inversion.’

‘Sir – what’s she on about?’ Armitage appealed to Joe.

‘I think she’s established that the Dame batted for both sides,’ said Joe, bemused.

‘Is that what they say?’ Tilly took up the tale again. ‘Well, anyway, she had male lovers, she had female lovers.’

Armitage was stunned. ‘What? At the same time?’

‘Ah. That much I can’t say. Consecutively – certainly; simultaneously or orgiastically – who knows? Audrey didn’t go in for titillating details of that nature. She was very direct.’

‘All the same,’ said Armitage, understanding dawning in his voice, ‘I can see why Miss Blount shied away from taking the lid off all this in front of a mixed audience. Good Lord! Dirty old devil! Well, who’d have thought it! I mean, I quite fancied her myself. The Dame, I mean.’

‘Many men did,’ said Westhorpe coldly.

‘But she looked so . . . so . . . female . . . I mean . . .’ Armitage was still struggling to reassess the Dame’s allure.

‘Well, of course she did,’ snapped Westhorpe. ‘I don’t believe women of this persuasion choose to go about looking calculatedly unattractive. If you were imagining a monocle-wearing Burlington Bertie from Bow, Sergeant, you would be way off beam. That’s all very well in the music hall but I’ll bet when Ella Shields has taken her last curtain call she puts out her cigar, unscrews her monocle and climbs into something short and silky to go home to her husband. I don’t believe transvestitism,’ she stumbled over the word, ‘should be confused with inversion.’

‘No indeed,’ said Joe, trying to keep a straight face. He was playing with the outlandish picture of a crop-haired female in ginger plus-fours in the tattooed arms of a chief petty officer. ‘But tell us, Westhorpe, was any mention made of her male lovers?’

‘Her principal male lover was what Audrey called “her bit of rough stuff”. An ex-naval man. The Donovan that her mother handed to us on a plate. Good-looking and plausible, according to Audrey, and he seemed to exert a strong influence over Beatrice. Though it could well have been the other way round, don’t you think? They were, at all events, closely associated in dubious goings-on in London. She’s no idea what was involved.’

‘A naval man?’ mused Armitage. ‘One accustomed to climbing rigging, I wonder? With a good head for heights?’

‘I don’t believe rigging features strongly in the modern ship,’ said Tilly. ‘All that went out with Trafalgar, surely? But it’s a thought. He’s definitely worth investigating, sir, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Certainly would. I’ve got him booked in at the Yard for tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp,’ said Joe. ‘He’s the blighter, according to Inspector Cottingham, who informed the press of last night’s occurrence. Audrey wouldn’t, perhaps, be aware that this gentleman is now working as a night porter at the Ritz?’

Armitage turned to Tilly with a broad smile. ‘
That’s
why he’s a Commander, miss!’ he said.

‘Tell me, Tilly,’ said Joe, ‘you mentioned your readings just now of the works of Dr Henry Havelock Ellis. I’m intrigued! His books are available legally only to the medical profession – and the odd policeman who has a professional need for clarification and enlightenment on a murky subject. I had a particularly distressing case two years ago where information of this nature was vital to my understanding of the crimes committed. I had the devil of a job to get my hands on the books. How come you managed it?’

He turned to see Tilly blushing. ‘Nothing underhand, I assure you, sir. I haven’t broken any law! My uncle, my father’s brother, died last year. He was a doctor and left an extensive library. I offered to catalogue it and prepare it for sale. It contained a collection of Dr Ellis’s works.’

‘Ah.
Sexual Inversion
?
Erotic Rights of Women
?’

‘Those, among others, featured in the collection, sir. I have to say, they have provided a useful theoretical framework to the practical aspects of my work. In my duties at the railway stations and public parks, I witness and, indeed, have to deal with displays of aberrant human behaviour which would be inexplicable without some guidance.’

Armitage grunted. ‘I could have written a book by the time I was fourteen! And all researched within ten yards of Queen Adelaide Court off the Mile End Road. Mind – we didn’t go in for any of that trans-what’s-it and inversion stuff you’re talking about!’

Joe smiled. ‘Those chapters’ll be reserved for the nobs, I expect,’ he said. If they’d been alone he would have reminded the sergeant of the additional research done in France. There was no doubt that having a woman aboard, however bright and effective she was, changed the atmosphere. He was immediately ashamed of the thought.

‘I’ll need time to sort through this lucky dip,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m going to close my eyes and ponder it. Look – let me know when we’re getting into town, will you, Bill, and you can drop me off at Hyde Park Corner. I’m going to my club and I can walk from there. And why don’t you continue up Park Lane and deliver Tilly safely home, then drive to the Yard and leave the car there? I can take a cab in the morning. And I’d like to see you both in my office at . . . shall we say midday? You are both clear about what you have to do tomorrow?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Joe pulled his hat down over his eyes and nodded off.

It was twilight when he stepped from the car and watched it draw away to the north. When it was out of sight he turned his back on Piccadilly and St James’s which would have led him to his club and started out in the opposite direction. After five minutes’ brisk walk down Knightsbridge he turned off to his left and entered a small square of neat Victorian houses, secluded from the road by banks of thick greenery. The lamps had just been lit and Joe walked quietly along, avoiding the pools of light they created. He reached the house he was looking for and paused in a patch of thick gloom on the pavement opposite, watching.

A casual observer would have assumed that a party of some kind was breaking up early. Taxis were drawing up, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce purred away from the kerb. A couple, chattering excitedly, climbed into their parked Dodge and set off in fits and starts. A weeping lady being comforted by two escorts was handed, unseeing, into a taxi. Strange guest-list! Joe counted eight people. Some were in an emotional condition, distraught or openly in tears, some were exclaiming and gesticulating. Joe waited until the last motor car had pulled away then he crossed the road and walked quietly up the secluded drive and tugged at the bell-pull.

The door was opened at once by a maid in ribboned cap. Joe stepped inside and handed her his hat. ‘No need to announce me, Alice,’ he said, making for the drawing room.

A dimly lit and heavily curtained room greeted him. A fire was sinking in the hearth, discreet electric lamps illuminated a polished table, chairs had been carelessly abandoned. There was a lingering scent of cigar smoke on the air but no trace of food or drink. Head in hands, a dark-haired woman sat at the head of the table. Her low-cut, sleeveless dark red gown revealed a magnificent if unfashionable bosom and white shoulders. She raised her head, sighed, took off her earrings and unpinned her glossy black hair which fell to her shoulders. The simple gesture had the effect of changing her appearance from that of a tone-deaf duchess who’d just endured the whole of the Ring cycle to that of a tired girl in dressing-up clothes.