The Mannequin House (21 page)

‘No, sir. You know me. Never touch a drop. On account of what happened to my old man.’

Leversage seemed unconvinced but said nothing, catching sight at that moment of Quinn and Inchball. He reverted to French: ‘
Reprens-tu à travailler! Vite, vite!
’

To Quinn he said, in English: ‘You again.’

Quinn pointed to Arbuthnot. ‘Am I to take it that this is the gentleman who, along with Miss Mortimer, found Amélie?’

The young man’s face flashed apprehension.

‘I would like a word with him, if that’s possible, Monsieur Hugo. I shall not keep him long. And after that I would like to ask you a few more questions, so please don’t go far.’

Monsieur Hugo moved away, muttering and waving his hands in what he no doubt judged to be a Gallic manner. ‘
Moi? Je ne peux pas du tout sortir de cet Salon! Pas du tout!
Vous comprenez? Il faut travailler. Toujours travailler!
’

Quinn turned to Arbuthnot. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. I just want to check your account next to Miss Mortimer’s.’

Arbuthnot gave a shudder. ‘Funny woman. Very odd. Don’t you think?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘She didn’t seem all there to me.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Take that business with the picture.’

‘You are talking about the picture in the hallway? The one which you broke?’

‘
She
broke it.
She
moved the chair, not me. I didn’t ask her to move the chair. There was no reason to move the chair. We could have got round it perfectly easily. I swear I had nothing to do with it. What business does she have telling you I broke it?’

Quinn nodded with satisfaction, as if he had learnt something he particularly wished to know. ‘Did you notice anything unusual about the key when you got into the room?’

‘I didn’t really think about the key. I was more bothered about Amélie.’

‘Of course. Mr Blackley had sent you round there to see what had become of her, is that correct?’

‘Well, yes. He gave me a message for her.’

‘I see. What was the message?’

‘It was for her ears only. He made me promise not to tell another soul. I could lose my job.’

‘You will be in far bigger trouble than losing your position if you do not tell me. You will be charged with obstructing a police officer in the conduct of his duty. It is a custodial offence.’

Arbuthnot shook his head. ‘I gave my word.’

‘You have been drinking, I think. What is the punishment for drinking during shop hours?’

Arbuthnot didn’t answer, although the fresh misery of his expression was eloquent enough.

‘If you tell me what he said, he need never know. However, if you don’t tell me, I shall see to it that he is informed of your inebriation. That is a promise.’

‘Oh, you’re a devilish hard-hearted individual and that’s the truth!’ Arbuthnot squeezed his eyes closed in distress, shaking his head violently. A sheen of perspiration slicked his forehead. ‘I was to tell her that he was sorry. That he begged her forgiveness.’

‘For what?’

‘He didn’t say.’ Arbuthnot opened his eyes again, releasing a flash of genuine fear. ‘Listen, you promise you won’t tell Mr Blackley that I told you?’

‘I shall certainly be discreet concerning your drinking. That is what I promised, I believe.’

‘You said he need never know.’

‘That was before I discovered the significance of the message.
He need never know
does not constitute an undertaking. It is, rather, a conditional statement – conditional upon factors unknown at the time.’

‘I’m done for.’

‘Mr Blackley need not know that I heard about it from you.’

‘Who else would you have heard about it from?’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t help that. But I assure you that you have nothing to worry about. The law will protect you. You cannot be fired for assisting the police in their enquiries. Now, if you don’t mind, would you please tell Monsieur Hugo that I wish to see him?’

Arbuthnot fixed Quinn with a look bereft of hope. He went away, shaking his head and muttering, ‘That’s a hard, hard-hearted man.’

After a moment Leversage reappeared, sniffing the air disdainfully. Quinn decided there was no time for pleasantries. ‘According to the medical examiner’s report, Amélie was raped before she died. Do you know anything about that?’

The shock that registered on Leversage’s face was clearly unfeigned. ‘Oh, that poor girl.’

‘You must understand, as the only male resident of the mannequin house, suspicion naturally falls on you.’

‘But . . . but I loved Amélie . . . as a
sister
. I would never do anything like that.
It’s not in my nature!
’ Leversage’s eyes implored Quinn to understand the full meaning of his emphatic denial.

‘Very well. Let us accept that you did not. But some other man did. Do you still maintain that Mr Blackley was not in the mannequin house that night?’

‘Mr Blackley?’ Again that strange, hesitant stalling that Quinn had noticed the last time he had asked Leversage about Blackley’s presence in the house.

‘He was there, wasn’t he? Come on, admit it, man! It’s either that or be charged with the rape yourself.’

‘But that’s . . .’ Leversage’s look of outrage crumpled quickly into one of defeat. He was suddenly bereft of all illusions and hope. ‘Mr Blackley wasn’t there. That is to say, Mr Benjamin Blackley, the owner and founder of the House of Blackley, wasn’t. His son, Benjamin Blackley Junior, the young Mr Blackley, he was in the house that night. He spent the night in my room.’

Even Quinn had not seen this coming. ‘Good God.’

‘You’re bleedin’ jokin’, ain’ ya?’ said Inchball.

‘It was not anything like that, not what you are thinking. If you are thinking what I think you are thinking. There is nothing between young Mr Blackley and myself – except a certain antipathy. However, I agreed to help him because . . . well, because he had acquired certain information regarding my past which he was threatening to make known to his father – which, if he had, could have made things extremely difficult for me here.’

‘Criminal convictions?’ guessed Quinn.

Leversage closed his eyes and nodded once.

‘So you helped him. To do what, exactly?’

‘To spy on his father.’

‘His father was there, then?’

‘No. Young Mr Blackley wanted to discover if his father was having an affair with one of the mannequins. Mr Blackley had announced his intention to his wife to work late at the store that night. Young Mr Blackley suspected that this signalled Mr Blackley Senior’s intention to visit the mannequin house. You know that people call it his harem, don’t you? And so young Mr Blackley spent all night listening at my door. Well, in truth, all I can say for certain is that he was listening at the door when I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning he was gone.’

‘Where will we find young Mr Blackley now?’

‘He will be downstairs. In the basement. He keeps an office down there, next to his father’s.’

‘Thank you. Oh, one other thing. You haven’t seen that damned monkey around, have you?’

But Quinn did not wait to see Leversage’s confused frown at the unexpected bathos of this parting question.

Quinn led Inchball past a sign that read M
embers of staff only
to descend a grubby staircase. Unlike in the store itself, the electric lights here were of low wattage. They gave off a gloomy, parsimonious glow. One or two bulbs flickered, the evidence perhaps of faulty wiring. Below stairs, evidently, no effort was made to match the impression of opulence and welcome of the store itself.

They passed a row of booths like rabbit hutches, where the back-room workers were busy at their tasks: accounts clerks examining their ledger books, fabric buyers feeling sample books, tea tasters slurping from deep tasting spoons.

At the end of a dim corridor they reached two doors: one marked M
r
B
lackley
, the other M
r
B
lackley
J
r
. A male secretary at a desk outside served as sentinel to both. He looked up at them enquiringly, leaping to his feet in protest as Quinn rushed past and opened the door to Mr Blackley Jr’s office.

There was no mistaking whose son was the young man seated behind the large oak desk. True, he lacked the distinctive mutton-chop whiskers, and instead of an affable smile he wore a look of pinched resentment; but here was the image of Benjamin Blackley, though thirty or so years his junior. To look at him at least, he was a chip off the old block.

‘May I help you gentlemen?’

‘You are Benjamin Blackley Junior?’

‘Yes . . . I . . . What’s this about?’

The secretary was at Quinn’s back, remonstrating. ‘You can’t go in there. Begging your pardon, Mr Blackley.’

‘We are police officers,’ said Quinn. ‘May we come in?’

Young Mr Blackley nodded. ‘It’s all right, Petherington. You may go back to work.’

Quinn closed the door on the secretary. ‘I am Detective Inspector Quinn and this is Detective Sergeant Macadam. We’re investigating the death of Amélie Dupin.’

‘Ah, yes. Of course. A terrible business.’

‘Why have you not come forward before now, sir?’

‘Come forward?’

‘You were in the mannequin house on the night of Amélie’s death. Therefore, we naturally want to speak to you as a witness.’

‘I was there . . . it’s true. But I saw nothing.’

‘You were there to spy on your father, is that right?’

Young Blackley hesitated, momentarily abashed. ‘Yes.’

‘You suspected him of having an affair with one of the mannequins?’

‘One of them? Everyone knows he takes his pick from them all!’

‘If everyone knows it, why was it necessary to spy on him?’

‘There had been this fellow . . . making trouble.’

‘Spiggott?’

Young Blackley gave a slight frown of surprise. ‘Yes. He’d been round to the house. Upsetting Mama.’

‘He was trying to blackmail your father?’

‘Oh, it wasn’t that! If it was just that we would have bought him off.’

‘What was it then?’

‘He claimed . . . he claimed that the old man was
his
father! Claimed that he’d seduced his mother when she worked here as a shop girl years ago. That he had even promised to marry her. And that Father’s rejection of this slut had led to her subsequent alcoholism and death. He was threatening to go public with this whole sordid story. He was demanding a share of the company. Equal shares with me and my brother and sister, for God’s sake! With Daddy’s real children.’

‘Why did this make it necessary for you to spy on your father?’

‘Mama was at the end of her tether. She’s put up with a lot over the years, you know. We had just begun to hope that the old man was over all that. Of course, this was ancient history, but it reopened an old wound. We had a family meeting. Father promised that it was all in the past.’

‘But you didn’t believe him?’

‘Mama deserved to know the truth.’

‘She asked you to spy on your father?’

‘Good God, no! I did it on my own initiative. Mama knows nothing about it.’

‘And what did you discover? Did your father make an appearance in the mannequin house that night?’

Young Blackley’s brow furrowed in momentary consternation. ‘No.’

‘You may wish to reconsider that answer, sir. We have evidence that Amélie was raped before she died. If your father wasn’t responsible then you become our most likely suspect.’

‘Raped? No. That’s not possible.’

‘Was your father there, Mr Blackley?’

‘No. I swear on my mother’s life that he wasn’t.’

‘Then you place us in a difficult position. We may be forced to charge you with the rape of Amélie Dupin.’

‘Do you really think I would rape a girl my father had slept with? What kind of a monster do you think I am?’

‘I don’t think you’re a monster at all. I think you may well be the son of a monster. Which creates within you . . . divided loyalties, shall we say? A confliction of emotions. You love your father. At the same time, you hate him for what he has done to your mother. And for what his past misdemeanours threaten to do to you. You must be worried that the arrival of this illegitimate son on the scene will diminish your inheritance. God knows how many other bastards there might be waiting to come out of the woodwork. How many more could he still create if he carries on with this behaviour? You want to rein him in, but you don’t want to destroy him. You’re prepared to confront him with evidence of his peccadilloes in the hope of controlling him. But it’s another thing to expose him to public scandal. Be careful, Mr Blackley. One can understand your reluctance to destroy him. When all’s said and done, he is your father. The danger is, if you’re not careful, he may well end up destroying you.’

Quinn took out a business card and handed it across the desk. He smiled encouragingly as Blackley Jr accepted the card. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten quite what you saw or overheard at the mannequin house on Tuesday night. Perhaps you need some time to go over it again in your mind. If anything comes back to you, please do not hesitate to get in touch.’

At the door, Quinn turned back to Blackley Jr, shaking his head in gentle remonstration. ‘Your
mother’s
life? Really, Mr Blackley? Your mother’s life is worth less than your father’s preservation?’

The young man dipped his head.

T
he very first time Quinn had glimpsed the arched opening on Kensington Road he had felt drawn towards it. A breach in the facade of Blackley’s dominion, it seemed to promise revelations and discoveries. There had been something personal, too, in the fascination it held for him. As if what he would discover when he ventured through it would have significance for him outside of the case he was investigating.

As he approached it now on foot, he felt that it held the promise of benign mystery. After the pressures of his last case, together with the catastrophe of the previous day, there was something more than inviting about the entrance. It exercised a powerful, attractive force.