The Lost Empress (15 page)

The railway tracks on the Prince of Wales Pier were on the same level as the walkway, although Alice hadn’t seen any trains coming or going from this pier, supposing it was no longer in use. She passed the clock tower that marked the entrance to the pier and cycled towards the passenger steamer she had seen earlier from Admiralty Pier, with its twin funnels. It bore the letters ‘SECR,’ which she knew stood for the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. Further on, she had to slow for the passengers waiting to board the ship, and then she pushed on to the lighthouse at the end of the pier, knowing that from there she would have the best view of the convoy of warships as they came into the harbour.

Every minute Alice had to wait, the tenser she became. After the first few minutes had passed, she began to ride around the lighthouse, and after that she rode to the steamer and back so as to keep on the move. She was glad all those passengers were there because they gave everyone else something to focus on other than her. When at last the first flash of battleship grey appeared in the mouth of the harbour, Alice stopped pedalling and took out her chart and notepad. A few minutes later she could see all three ships, and she quickly recorded a Dreadnought class battleship and two destroyers similar to the one she had seen anchored in the Channel, the view to which was now obscured by the harbour’s Southern Breakwater.

Keep moving,
Alice told herself.

She put everything back into her bag and got on her bicycle, having decided she had recorded enough information for now. As she came onto the pier, she saw by the clock tower that it was still early afternoon, so she thought she would go in search of some light refreshment. She could come back afterwards and loiter by the harbour and the docks until sunset, which for Alice could not come soon enough. As she began to pedal, however, she saw the man in the tweed suit again, and she stopped abruptly, causing her brakes to judder. She stared at the man long enough this time to see that he had a crooked nose that appeared slightly squashed on his face, as if he might have been a boxer, or had at least seen his share of street brawls.

He was on foot as before, but this time a moment of startling recognition flashed between them as they locked eyes, and in that moment Alice knew beyond any doubt that he was following her. More alarming was the determination on his face and in his manner as he came directly towards her. It was clear that his intention was to challenge her, and what then? He would discover her treason, and all would be lost. She was trapped at the end of the pier, and there was only one way back.

Alice looked around, quickly weighing her options. They appeared to be few: the sea or the steamer. Then she decided there was one other option open to her. It was bold, but she couldn’t see how jumping into the sea would save her any more than she thought she could escape him by boarding the steamer. She turned the bicycle around and began to pedal back to the lighthouse. A quick glance over her shoulder told her that the man in the tweed suit had started to run after her. She kicked harder. She needed speed.

The lighthouse was wide enough so as not to slow her down as she came to it. She kept going, all the way around it, pedalling faster until she was heading back along the pier. The man was less than twenty feet from her now, and Alice gave it everything she had. Faster and faster she went, heading right at him. As she arrived, she saw the troubled look in his eyes just before she ducked her head down. She saw a flash of tweed out of the corner of her eye, and she felt the man grab at her coat, but she was going too fast. His grip gave out, and she was away, pedalling for her life, it seemed. When she chanced a look back, she saw the man pick up his hat and dust it off as he stared after her.

Chapter Seventeen

It was late evening by the time Alice returned to Hamberley, having taken a hansom cab from the railway station. Thankfully, she saw no more of the man in the tweed suit that day. After leaving the pier, she had cycled away from the harbour, through the town and out the other side, not daring to chance her return train journey so soon after the ordeal on the Prince of Wales Pier. She had feared her pursuer would suspect she had arrived in Dover by train and would go to the main station to look for her, so she had waited almost four hours, counting on the idea that any man’s patience would have run out by then.

As the train sped Alice back through the dark Kent countryside, she had plenty of time to reflect on who the man could have been. She thought it unlikely that he had followed her all the way to Dover, so she supposed he must have been watching Drescher at the Burlington Hotel and that he had become suspicious of her when she made contact with him. If the man was on to Drescher, then Alice could only conclude that he must have been a spy catcher of sorts, perhaps working for the Special Branch of the police or for the Secret Service Bureau her father had mentioned after breakfast that morning. Whoever he was, Alice knew she had made a narrow escape.

Hamberley was all but in darkness when she entered. The air was cool and quiet save for the perpetual ticking of the clocks, and she was glad she had thought to take a key to the side door with her, because her parents had clearly retired for the night, and she didn’t want to disturb them. She lit a candle from the kitchen and removed her shoes so as to make as little sound as possible. Then she made her way along the corridor that led to the main staircase, wondering how well Chester had recovered and thinking to look in on both of her children on her way to bed.

She was about to climb the stairs when she heard a sound that drew her eye to her father’s study. Was it a voice? She thought it was, but she couldn’t be sure. She held up her candle and saw that the study door was closed, but there was a faint amber glow filling the gap beneath it. She thought her father must still be up, working late. But whom was he with? She went to the door, proposing to find out and to let him know she was home again, but as she drew closer, she heard the voice again and faltered. It was not her father. She was certain of it. She couldn’t make out whose voice it was, but he was talking in whispers, and Alice believed her father incapable of talking so quietly—and why would he in his own home?

Alice pressed her ear to the door, momentarily thinking that spying was becoming second nature to her. She could determine the words that were being spoken, always from that same hushed voice, and she quickly realised that whoever was in the room was talking on the telephone: her father’s telephone in her father’s study. She thought it must be her uncle. Oscar Scanlon had reportedly taken so many liberties since he and her Aunt Cordelia had taken up residence at Hamberley that Alice supposed he now considered her father’s study as much his own as the contents of her father’s wine cellar.

But why is he whispering?

Alice was intrigued, and as much as she knew it was wrong to remain there, given the late hour and the clandestine nature of the conversation, she felt there was something underhand taking place and considered it her duty to stay.

‘I see,’ the man said. ‘Yes, it’s all arranged.’

Alice couldn’t fathom what the hushed conversation was about.

‘A minor complication,’ the voice continued, ‘but it’s all in hand.’

Alice wondered what was arranged and what was in hand. Was it another one of Uncle Oscar’s dubious business deals? What she heard next almost made her drop her candle.

‘Come the day, we shall both be very wealthy men. Now I must go.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, until then.’

Alice heard the telephone rattle back into its cradle, and she ran silently from the door, blowing out her candle as she went. She quickly found the shadows in one of the alcoves and hid, trying to control her breathing as the study door opened. She wanted to look to see who it was, but she resisted out of fear of discovery. She heard footsteps on the wooden flooring. Then they stopped suddenly, and Alice stopped breathing altogether. She heard another sound then, as though someone was sniffing the air. She realised she could smell it too. Her candle was still smoking. She squeezed the hot wick between her thumb and forefinger, hoping it hadn’t already given her away. A moment later the footsteps continued, and she breathed again. When the footsteps were distant, she came out into the dark hall and followed after them.

The squeak of a dry door hinge drew her to the passageway on her right. She saw light spill out from an open door, and then it closed again. It was the door to the games room. She went to it and listened again and immediately picked up another conversation. There were two people this time, and their words were not whispered, but spoken clearly and confidently, without regard for being overheard. It seemed they were playing cards and were soon laughing about something. Alice recognised the voices as those of Oscar Scanlon and Frank Saxby.

She wondered what Saxby was doing there so late and concluded there were any number of reasons. ‘Uncle’ Frank needed no invite to Hamberley. She supposed that while he was there, her real uncle had enticed him into an after-dinner game of cards to try to win some money from him. It didn’t matter to Alice how or why either of them were there. What did matter was which of them had just been in her father’s study.

Come the day . . .

Those words replayed through her mind, and she wondered whether she was just becoming paranoid, like so many other people in England, about German spies and the threat of invasion. Yet she herself was proof of their existence, if any were needed. Could there really be another spy at Hamberley besides herself? Alice could not deny her own ears, but which of them was it? She turned away from the door and went up to her room, deep in thought. She was unsure of the answer, but she was going to find out.

Chapter Eighteen

Present day.

Jefferson Tayte awoke from a restless sleep, squinting at the bright sunrise that was pushing through the gaps in the blind at his hotel room window. He rolled out of bed in the Hershey’s boxer shorts Jean had sent him for Christmas and made straight for the coffee machine, noting along the way that it was just after eight—Wednesday already. Following the research at Davina’s apartment the night before, Tayte hadn’t stayed long. His body clock was still running on DC time, and his second glass of Jack Daniels just made him want to sleep. So, as soon as their line of research had been concluded, he’d made his excuses and called it a day, much to Davina’s disappointment. Tayte imagined she would have stayed up researching with him all night if he’d had it in him.

As he switched the coffee machine on, his thoughts were already back on the articles he’d read in
The Times
Digital Archive about Admiral Waverley’s heart attack and the question of what he was doing at Tilbury Docks in the middle of the night, and of the discovery of his wife’s decomposed body, found in the Thames two weeks later. He considered that much speculation, but no solid conclusions, had been drawn to explain with any certainty how their deaths had come about, but he thought it was useful information to have.

The connection to Charles Metcalfe that had led him to the articles had proven tenuous at best—Lord Metcalfe having been called upon to assist in the official enquiry, both as a Lord of the Admiralty and a close friend of the late Admiral Waverley, for whose character Charles Metcalfe had gone on record to defend, stating that Admiral Waverley was as devoted a patriot as King George V himself. In reading the accusations against Waverley, of stealing Admiralty secrets prior to his death, and of the concern over his missing service revolver, Tayte could not help but wonder, given the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Waverley’s wife so close to his own, whether the Admiral had been put under pressure to obtain those naval documents for someone. He wondered, then, whether there was a connection to Alice. Were the same people forcing her to spy for them?

Tayte decided he wasn’t ready to shower and dress just yet, so he slipped his guest bathrobe on, poured his coffee and sat down at his laptop, thinking to move his research on. From his briefcase, he pulled out Davina’s photograph of the Metcalfe family-and-friends gathering, which she’d let him hold on to. Standing beside Admiral Waverley was Lord Ashcroft, and the Ashcroft family had interested Tayte, not least because of the young boy standing in front of his father in the image, whom Davina had told him was known as Archie.

Tayte thought a visit to the current descendants of Lord Ashcroft could prove fruitful, so he called up the 1911 UK census to find out where they were living at the time the census was taken. He checked his notebook and saw that he didn’t have a first name for Lord Ashcroft, whom he thought was likely the head of the household, so he entered the search criteria for the only full name he did have: first name, ‘Archibald’; last name, ‘Ashcroft.’ In the place-of-residence field he entered ‘Kent,’ which was where Davina had said she believed the family were from.

Hitting the search button presented Tayte with a single entry that showed a birth year of 1889; the subject’s age in 1911, which was twenty-two; and an entry in the district column showing ‘Medway,’ all of which gave Tayte confidence that he was looking at the right record. He preferred to do his own transcribing where possible, so he clicked to view the original page, knowing such a page often contained more information than could be found on the general transcripts. When he saw that the head of the household was listed as ‘Lord Thomas Ashcroft,’ and that his profession was listed as ‘Royal Navy, Board of Admiralty,’ he had no doubt that he was looking at the right family.

Archibald’s relationship to the head of the household was recorded as ‘son,’ which was as Tayte expected. It told him that Thomas Ashcroft’s wife was called Lydia and that they had another son, Ernest, and a daughter who was no longer alive in 1911. Several members of staff were also listed on the report, along with a large number of rooms, which said a good deal about the status of the family—again, to be expected for such a high-ranking naval official. For his records, Tayte took a screen shot of the page, which contained so much more information that was useful to someone in his profession, such as the civil parish of each member of the household, as well as the person’s place of birth. Then he wrote down the address in South Gillingham as it was recorded in 1911, hoping that the descendants of Lord Thomas Ashcroft still lived there.

He opened another browser and brought up a map application. A few seconds later he was looking at an aerial photograph of a mansion and grounds that were not far from his current location, but he knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get in touch with the occupants—he didn’t expect to find their number in the phone directory. He reminded himself of the welcome Raife Metcalfe had given him at Hamberley when he’d first arrived in England, and he decided he didn’t want to turn up unannounced again this time.

DI Bishop
. . .

Tayte thought that as Bishop had managed to get him an interview with Reginald Metcalfe at Hamberley the day before, it was worth a phone call to find out whether he could help out again with the Ashcrofts. Tayte checked the time again and thought it a little too early to call to find out, so he made for the shower, thinking that if DI Bishop couldn’t help, he’d go along to the address anyway, if only to find out whether the Ashcrofts still lived there.

Two hours later, Tayte was sitting in the front passenger seat of DI Bishop’s unmarked police car, briefcase between his feet, heading for an address the Inspector had told him was no more than a fifteen-minute drive into the Kent countryside, to the south of their present location. When Tayte had called, he’d thought Bishop sounded far from enthusiastic about the prospects of visiting the Ashcroft family, but Bishop had offered to see what he could find out. He’d called back an hour later, having confirmed in that time an appointment with the current Lord Ashcroft, who was descended from Archibald Ashcroft’s brother, Ernest.

‘They’re having a tennis lesson until eleven,’ Bishop said, chewing on one of Tayte’s Mr Goodbar Hershey’s miniatures. He pulled the car out of the hotel car park onto the main road.

‘It’s a fine morning for it,’ Tayte said, gazing out the window and up into the blue, wondering what new information he might discover today. ‘Did you have any trouble persuading the family to see us?’

‘None at all. Once I’d explained who you were and the nature of our visit, I was informed that Lord Ashcroft was only too happy to see us.’

‘That makes a nice change,’ Tayte said, reminding both of them that his occupational penchant for digging up the past wasn’t always welcome.

Bishop laughed under his breath as they continued through Chatham’s suburbs in the seemingly ever-present traffic.

‘I was hoping to see you today, anyway,’ Bishop said. ‘With any luck I should have something to show you later.’

‘With any luck?’

‘It might be nothing, but if it is, how are you fixed this afternoon?’

Tayte thought his schedule was far from crowded. ‘No plans I can’t change,’ he said, thinking that he had to pick his car up from Gillingham Marina where he’d left it because he’d taken a taxi back to his hotel the night before. ‘I thought I’d call on Mrs Scanlon at some point. She’s understandably keen to help find her husband’s killer, and she’s proving to be very helpful.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she’s pinning a lot of hope on your assignment. I do hope all this is leading somewhere.’

So did Tayte. He couldn’t miss the sideways glance Bishop had given him as he said that, letting him know that he remained sceptical about the value of Tayte’s assignment in his murder investigation.

They turned off the main road, leaving the town behind them, and the landscape seemed to change in an instant from concrete grey to emerald green.

‘How long have you been in law enforcement?’ Tayte asked.

‘I’ve worked for Kent police since I dropped out of university partway through my second term,’ Bishop said. ‘I suppose I rejected my further education at Canterbury as a protest against my parents. They seemed determined to dictate the entire course of my life, but I can see now that they meant well. They wanted me to become a barrister, and with a family history embedded in the judiciary for generations, I suppose law at one level or another was always on the cards for me.’

‘But you didn’t want to be a barrister?’

‘I was young. I think I just didn’t want to be what my parents wanted me to be. So I chose to help tackle crime at the source—prevention over prosecution, as it were.’

‘Well, it’s an admirable profession,’ Tayte said.

Bishop laughed. ‘I wish everyone shared that view.’

They continued in silence for about half a mile, when Tayte’s thoughts turned back to the events of the day before. ‘Did you turn anything up after the break-ins at Mrs Scanlon’s properties?’ he asked. ‘Any leads?’

‘Nothing to get excited about. It’s amazing the amount of material our modern forensics teams can gather from a scene, but it takes time to analyse. And even if they do find a match with anything found at the scene of Lionel Scanlon’s murder, it only tells us that the same person was likely present at both locations. Unless he’s on file, it’s unlikely we’d be able to confirm his identity until we have a suspect to bring in.’

Tayte was beginning to wonder how anything he might uncover by digging up Alice Stilwell’s past life might lead to a suspect here in the present, although it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. ‘Are you any closer to finding a motive for Lionel Scanlon’s murder?’

Bishop gave a wry smile. ‘That would be nice, but I’m hoping that’s where you come in. His killer clearly wants something he thought Mr Scanlon had with him in his workshop that night. If the same man was responsible for the break-ins, then I have a good idea of his height and build, although both are pretty average, which doesn’t help.’

‘You’ve seen him?’

Bishop nodded. ‘In a manner of speaking. There are plenty of CCTV cameras at the Marina. The images from the floor covering Mrs Scanlon’s apartment show a man wearing blue maintenance overalls and a grey ski mask, exiting the lift. He collects a fire extinguisher from the rack on the wall and hammers at the apartment door until the lock gives out. Then in he goes. He’s inside no more that five minutes before he’s seen going back into the lift. Job done.’

‘What about the other cameras?’ Tayte asked. ‘Was he seen anywhere else?’

‘Not in any way that he could be recognised. My guess is that he’d checked the camera locations beforehand and planned his exit so as to avoid them. I suspect he changed out of the overalls and removed his mask in the lift.’

‘It wasn’t covered by the security cameras?’

‘No, and he must have known that, too. They’re generally not too hard to spot, mind you.’

‘I don’t suppose he was careless enough to leave the overalls and mask behind?’

Bishop drew a breath through his teeth, shaking his head as he turned the car onto a lane bordered by farmland—wheat still young and green in the sunlit fields. ‘No, and he’s proving to be anything but careless. The overalls were marina issue, for maintenance staff. They wouldn’t have been too hard to pick up, and without the mask he’d have blended right in, even if he was still wearing them when he came back out of the lift. The only other people who show up on the various cameras around the time of the break-in can be accounted for. They’re mostly staff and a few people who live at the marina, or have boats moored there. None of the people we interviewed afterwards saw anything unusual. It’s like he just vanished, but as I say, you just have to know where the cameras are.’

They reached a junction and turned right, plunging into shade beneath a leafy canopy as the road rose before them.

‘We’re almost there,’ Bishop said. ‘Have you got your questions worked out?’

Tayte smiled to himself. ‘I don’t really work to an agenda like that, but yes, I’m all set. I often find it best just to set the ball rolling and listen. Folks generally like to talk about the past once they get started, and who doesn’t like an excuse to get the old family photos out?’

As they came to the brow of the hill and emerged from the canopy of trees, Tayte saw the house they were heading for to their left. He recognised the bold red brickwork and the general landscape of fields and trees from the aerial view he’d seen on his laptop earlier. Drawing closer, he thought that it was not on the same stately scale as Hamberley, but it was nonetheless a fine English mansion, with several thick chimney stacks on two main floors, Dutch gables and a tower-like main entrance that was topped with a pediment.

When Bishop turned the car onto the drive and proceeded past what appeared to be the ruin of the former gatehouse, Tayte began to wonder just how close Alice had been to the young Archibald Ashcroft and how much the descendants of his brother, Ernest, knew about their time together before the First World War. As Bishop stopped the car on the limestone gravel outside the main entrance, Tayte supposed he was about to find out.