The Bee's Kiss (6 page)

‘You, Westhorpe? A Wren?’ Joe couldn’t disguise his astonishment. ‘But surely you were aware . . . they were disbanded after the war?’

‘I am perfectly well aware that the Wrens are no longer officially in being as one of His Majesty’s auxiliary services, of course,’ she said stiffly. ‘Perhaps you didn’t know that the association continues in an informal way? Dame Beatrice was gathering about her an elite and useful group of girls like me, a group whose abilities will be valued in the event of a future war. The armed services appear to know how to make intelligent use of their recruits. Goodnight, sir. Shall I send up . . . Armstrong, was it?’

‘Armitage. Thank you, Tilly. Yes. Please do that.’

She left, dragging Joe’s thoughts after her. He was left feeling uneasy with his decision to retain the services of Armitage at the expense of Tilly and began to rehearse his explanation to Sir Nevil. There was no obligation to justify himself – after all, it would have been most irregular (unprecedented even) to make use of a woman constable in the way Tilly had apparently assumed she would be used. He recognized and admired her intelligence and strength and, unusually for a man in his profession, did not feel threatened by her presence. He was aware of a general hostility from the other men in the force to the employment of women but, while he could understand and allow for this, he could not share it. His own mother and older sister Lydia were cut from the same cloth. He had grown up in a family where females were regarded as, at the very least, the equal of males. Delightfully different, occasionally intimidating, but always competent and reassuring, was Joe’s experience. His mother had for years managed the family estates in the Borders following his father’s crippling accident while Lydia, he knew, helped to run a suffragist group which had splintered from Emmeline Pankhurst’s. Married to a wealthy, indulgent, charming but lazy man with a grand house in Surrey, she led a life which suited her exactly. While raising her two children and running a hospitable household with an indoor staff of twenty and an outdoor staff so numerous Joe had never counted them, Lydia found time to involve herself with the advancement of women, with prison reform, the welfare of retired pit ponies and other good causes. Quaker blood, Joe thought. It led to Quaker conscience and a belief in the redeeming nature of hard work. Could be a curse.

‘Still here, sir?’ Armitage’s brisk voice cut through his increasingly rambling thoughts. ‘Why don’t you go off home and leave me to clear up the bits and pieces?’

‘Thanks, Bill, but we’re almost done for now. Look, I’ll be telling my boss that I want you moved from whatever you were doing to join me in this case. It would be good to be working together again.’

Armitage allowed a flash of eagerness to light up his stern features for a moment and then he replied soberly, ‘I’d consider it an honour. And a pleasure, Captain.’

They smiled at each other with mutual regard.

‘Before we both head off into the night, Bill, one last thing. You were very quickly on the scene . . . on patrol outside, I understand? Did you notice anything untoward? Crash of breaking glass too much to hope for, I suppose?’

‘I’ve been going over and over it, sir.’ Armitage almost ground his teeth with frustration. ‘Didn’t hear a thing. I could have been round the other side of the building and it’s a windy old night, sir. Sorry I missed it. I circled the building using my flashlight at intervals. I gave the ledge outside a good dowsing. It runs all the way round and I’d marked it as a useful platform for anyone wishing to gain unlawful entry.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I saw nothing. Not even a stray moggie. Disappointing that. I was . . . hard to explain . . . keyed up the whole evening. Sure something was about to happen.’

Joe nodded.

‘And I’d persuaded myself that if there was going to be trouble it would come from outside.’ Armitage succinctly filled Joe in on his observations of the company in the party room. ‘I’d ruled out that lot as pretty useless. Couldn’t see any man jack of ’em staggering further than the nearest taxi.’

‘You say no one left the room immediately after Dame Beatrice except for old Lady What’s-er-name and Westhorpe?’

‘That’s right, sir. Of course, I’d no idea at the time she was a lady policeman. She was just a pretty girl in a rather revealing silver frock to me. It must have been about ten past midnight when she went out. That would have been five minutes after the Dame. I went out on patrol at twelve fifteen and got back inside about twelve fifty by which time there was quite a stir-about in the manager’s office and I was sent straight up here with Robert to keep the lid on, sir.’

‘So thirty minutes, near enough, separate your last sighting of Dame Beatrice and Tilly’s finding her body?’

‘Yessir. I beg your pardon, sir, but . . .’ Armitage was uncharacteristically hesitant.

‘Go on, Bill.’

‘Well, I’ve learned in this business to trust no one. And I did come upon the young lady bold as brass standing over the corpse . . . no real idea of why she should have been in the room at that hour . . . nothing she was prepared to confide in me, anyhow. I checked up on her movements downstairs.’ His tone was of defiance rather than pride.

‘Quite right. And?’ Joe was serious but encouraging.

‘Well, I thought it was a bit off, her taking nearly half an hour to get up here, so I asked about that. She was observed rendering assistance to the old lady who was feeling a little unsteady and that took up some of the time. She finally turned the old dear over to the care of an attendant whom I have interviewed, sir, then she went up to the reception desk where she joined a queue for some minutes to find out the number of this room – as she said, a large theatre crowd had just come in. Then she went up by the stairs. The lift boy has no recollection of a young lady in a silver dress taking the lift but he can’t swear to anything much as every lift load was a full one around that time. It would have taken her inside ten minutes to get up here and locate the room. I’ve just timed it, sir. Though she is a rather . . . um . . . athletically built young lady. She could have sprinted up.’

‘You’d really like to pin this one on Miss Westhorpe, wouldn’t you, Bill?’ said Joe, amused.

Armitage flushed. ‘I can’t deny the thought has its attractions, sir.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘And wouldn’t
you
give a lot to hear her exchanges with the judge! Can’t say I haven’t tried to work out how she could have done it but . . .’

‘But you keep coming back to the picture of Tilly Westhorpe in spotless gloves and gown (apart from the hemline) snooping around the crime scene?’

Armitage sighed and nodded. ‘We’re looking for someone covered in blood, sir, with an emerald necklace, a jemmy and a bloodstained poker concealed about his person.’ He grinned. ‘Constable Westhorpe’s get-up didn’t even conceal Constable Westhorpe!’

‘No indeed. As you say – an athletically built young lady! But how likely is it that it was the murderer who got in through the window?’

‘
Somebody
broke in and he didn’t come to change a light bulb! I’ve looked at that window. Those marks were made from the outside. The glass shattered inwards. Look at the way the shards have fallen. Could you fake that?’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘Do you think we’re playing at detectives, sir?’ he burst out in some anxiety. ‘Over-egging the pudding? Poncing about being clever when all we should be saying is it’s a burglary gone wrong? I must say, common sense says that’s what it is.’

‘I’d like to come to that conclusion,’ said Joe, ‘but there is something distinctly odd about this set-up and I think you’ve seen it too. Constable Westhorpe certainly has. I’ve heard from her. Now
you
stop poncing about and tell me clearly what are your impressions.’

‘It’s the violence I don’t like, sir. Cat burglars don’t kill. We all know that. If our lad had got in in the hope of lifting the odd necklace left lying about while its owner was in the bath and he’d been disturbed, he’d have legged it back the way he came or even, if he had the nerve, said, “Excuse me, madam, wrong room!” and strolled out of the door. It’s been done.’

‘Westhorpe thinks the Dame caught him at it and went for him with the poker.’

‘Could have something there,’ said Armitage grudgingly. ‘But he could still have run. I must say, face to face with a poker-wielding, six-foot redhead, I’d scarper. And, anyway, one blow would have incapacitated her, wouldn’t it? Why go on and on? Did you count the wounds? Four or five, I’d have said. Sort of damage you get in a domestic altercation, sir. No, there’s more to it than just a burglary.’ Armitage sniffed the air. ‘It’s gone now but it was still lingering when I got up here to find the body. Can’t explain it scientifically, sir, but . . . well . . . you remember in the trenches how you could smell . . . I mean really
smell
fear?’

Joe nodded.

‘The air in here was thick with – not fear, no – the opposite, violence and anger . . . yes, anger. It was a red smell, sir. As though there’d been a blazing row. I think the killer got in through the window but it wasn’t an opportunistic, random visit in the line of burglary. It was surely someone who knew and hated her, you’d say.’

‘Her emeralds were stolen but he hadn’t searched the room professionally,’ Joe commented. ‘Westhorpe found a diamond necklace secreted in a rather obvious place.’

‘He took the emeralds because they were easy to snatch to make it look like a burglary.’

‘And disordered the clothes to add the extra dimension of rape, to exercise the coppers’ minds?’

‘Ripping the dress to make it look like a sex crime? Bloody amateur! Who does he think he’s fooling?’

‘Obviously the chap has never seen the victim of a rape other than in his own imagination, I agree, Bill. And there was something about the gesture . . . so unnecessary . . . that makes the skin crawl.’

‘It’s all linked up with the personal aspect, sir. Whoever killed her knew her, hated her, wanted her dead and wanted her corpse to lie exposed to view. There was an element of display there that you couldn’t miss. You and I, sir, we were being manipulated by this sadistic bastard, being involved by him, being invited to leer at her in her degradation.’

Joe looked curiously at the sergeant, intrigued by his vehemence.

‘You’ll think I’m getting carried away,’ said Armitage, reading his thoughts, ‘but I saw the lady, don’t forget – I know
I
never shall – only minutes before this happened. She was full of life, having a good time, flirty, sexy, irresistible. She was taking Monty Mathurin’s eye all right and, I have to say, he wasn’t the only man in the room calculating his chances. Myself included,’ he finished defiantly. ‘Zero,’ he added with an apologetic grin.

‘Mathurin was at the party?’

‘He was. And there’s another I wouldn’t mind pinning it on!’

‘Nasty bit of work, Mathurin, if all I hear is halfway correct,’ said Joe, ‘but I doubt he fits this frame. He’d have trouble catching a 42 bus – there’s no way he could have undertaken a climb of this nature.’ Joe sighed. ‘I think at this stage we’d better arrive at a portrait of the killer. Firstly, he would have to be young and extraordinarily agile – that’s not an easy climb on a dark, wet night. Probably wore gloves – Cottingham’s dusted the window area for prints and there’s no sign of anything we can use.’

‘Let’s say under forty, fit and probably known to the victim. That’s Mathurin out of it on two counts. I’d say our man knew her well – family, friend, work colleague, lover or ex-lover, sir? Don’t know anything about the lady’s private life, do we?’

‘Ah, well, thanks to Westhorpe’s drawer-searching expertise we have a clue there.’

Armitage listened with a gleeful expression as Joe told him about the device found in the underwear drawer. ‘And you’re saying the little minx appeared familiar with such a contraption?’ he wanted to know. ‘Well, bugger me!’

Joe registered that his sergeant’s thoughts were dwelling on Westhorpe and not the Dame. Again he seemed to have touched the animosity running between these two.

‘You don’t have a high opinion of the constable, I think, Bill?’

‘I’m not unusual in that, sir! Most of the men on the force resent the women. Jobs are hard enough to come by. There’s good men starving on the streets, unable to support their families. Hard to see why she’s not at home, married and producing little ’uns for the next lot, some would say.’

‘Are you among them, these critics?’

‘Not all the way. I’m one of those who can see they have their uses but this particular one – well, I’d like to know what she thinks she’s doing, with all her advantages; hobnobbing with riff-raff on the streets and taking orders from the likes of us.’

‘Mmm . . . not sure Westhorpe takes orders from anyone in spite of her lowly rank, even when she’s mouthing, “three bags full, sir”.’

‘Water off a duck’s back, sir. I’d noticed. It’s the class. It’s that look in the eye that says, “I’ll listen to what you have to say and if it makes sense, then I’ll probably agree to do what you suggest, but never make the mistake, my man, of assuming your stripes give you any influence over me!”’

To Joe’s surprise, Armitage’s supple voice had taken on the carefully enunciated archness of Mayfair and he remembered that Bill had shown considerable talent for picking up accents and languages.

‘You won’t be dismayed, then, if I tell you I’ve asked her to return to her regular duties?’

‘She’s off the case?’

Joe was puzzled by his sergeant’s reaction. He had expected relief, gratification, vindication – perhaps, even a flash of triumph. He hadn’t expected surprise and disappointment. Good Lord! Could it be that those blue eyes, icy though they were, had found a target?

‘Pity that! I was looking forward to teaching that little madam how the world works.’

Joe eyed him steadily. ‘You know, Armitage, I think Westhorpe could have taught
us
a few things.’

After an intensive ten minutes of checking and comparing notes, issuing orders and taking a last look at the scene, Joe finally called it a day. ‘Look, it’s late, Sarge.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘I’m going downstairs to the office to put through the dreaded call to the lady’s mother in Surrey. I’m driving there tomorrow afternoon and I’d like you to come along. It’ll be another long day, I’m afraid, Bill, and I’m not sure what your domestic arrangements are . . . a wife to placate, perhaps?’