The Mask of Sumi (4 page)

“Mannering.”

“John, has your inquiry for the passenger list anything to do with the Thai jeweller who was found dead in a Bayswater hotel this morning?” demanded Chittering.

“Not a thing,” Mannering said promptly. “There might be a woman on board the
East Africa Star
who brought in some diamonds when she shouldn't. I'm a long way from certain and if a whisper of it gets into the
Globe
you could have a big action for libel on your hands. But if Dottie will help me, then I'll do what I can for you both if anything breaks.”

“You can't say fairer than that,” conceded Chittering. “Thanks, John.”

Mannering felt that he had lied in a good cause, and now knew exactly what line to take with the woman reporter. He tidied his desk, left Larraby to lock up, and went to a small car park where he kept his Bentley. He drove through rush-hour traffic and reached Chelsea, where he lived, just before six o'clock. His flat was at the top of one of three old buildings, the only ones left out of what had once been a handsome terrace. New flats in small, rectangular blocks were on either side of the three houses. He had room to park his car, went in and waited for the small lift which had been installed fairly recently. As it crawled upwards he thought he heard a woman call out. As it stopped and the gates opened automatically, Lorna – his wife – appeared.

“John, hurry!” she exclaimed. “There's a call for you from Bangkok.”

 

 

Mannering squeezed Lorna's hand as he passed her and went into the flat. The door of his study was wide open, and he saw the telephone receiver off its cradle. He picked it up quickly.

“Hallo.”

“Mr. John Mannering?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“I have a call for you from Bangkok, Thailand. Hold on, please.”

“I'll hold on.”

The usual buzzings on the line followed. Lorna came in and sat on a pouffe near Mannering. She moved with unusual grace for a tall woman, was still raven-haired, had a near-perfect complexion. In repose her heavy eyebrows gave her an almost sullen look, but any kind of animation drove that away. Now her clear grey eyes were bright, and her lips were parted so that he could just glimpse her teeth.

“
Is it about Nikko Toji
?”

“
I expect so
.”

“
Is everything all right
?”

“
It will be
.”

“Mr. Mannering?” A woman's voice sounded carrying a lilt which certainly wasn't English.

“Speaking.”

“One moment, please. Miss Toji wishes to speak to you.”

Toji's daughter,
Mannering mouthed to Lorna. He glanced at her. She stood up and went to a carved Jacobean court cupboard where they kept the drinks. She took out whisky, a syphon of soda, and some gin.

“Mr. Mannering, this is Pearl Toji,” a woman said in good English which had a noticeable American accent. “Will you please tell me, did you see my father before he died?”

Mannering wished he could see the girl's face, or that there was some way in which he could make her feel his sympathy. This young woman was so far away, and it was difficult to talk naturally over the telephone anyhow.

“I saw him for a few moments,” he said.

“Did he speak to you, please?” She was very eager.

“No, I'm sorry to say. He had no chance to.”

Disappointment replaced the eagerness in Pearl Toji's voice. There was a pause before she said: “You mean you had no word with him?”

“None at all.”

“Mr. Mannering, he told me everything that he was going to talk to you about. Will you see me if I come straight to London?”

“Of course,” promised Mannering.

“Thank you. I will be there the day after tomorrow,” she said simply. “There is one other thing now.”

“If there is anything at all I can do to help—” began Mannering.

“There is one thing,” Pearl Toji repeated almost fiercely. “You can believe that my father did not kill himself. I do not care what anyone says – the police, the Consul, the newspapers – anyone. I want you to find out who killed him, Mr. Mannering. That above all other things.”

Very slowly and deliberately, Mannering said: “If I can, I certainly will.”

“Thank you,” said the dead man's daughter. “Thank you very much. My father had the highest regard and trust for you. Always,” she added, and her voice seemed to fade. “Goodbye.”

The line went dead.

Mannering seemed to hear her voice still in his ears. He replaced the receiver slowly, only just aware of Lorna moving about. He was in a different world – a world filled with that Thai girl's voice.

Lorna handed him a glass, without a word. He looked at it blankly at first, and then took it. He sipped, and the taste of the whisky seemed to release him from the spell which the girl had woven.

Mechanically, he said: “Cheers.”

“Is she coming here?” asked Lorna.

“Yes.”

“What does she want you to do?”

Mannering said: “Find her father's murderer.” He tossed the drink down, put the glass on a table, and went to Lorna and slid his arms round her. “Hallo, my sweet!” He kissed her and held her very tight for a moment or two, then set her away from him. He became brisk and alert. “Dottie Mills of the
Globe
will be here any minute, and she drinks like a fish. Do you want to put any make-up on?”

“Not for Dottie,” Lorna said. “Why is she coming?”

“Stand by and you'll hear it all,” Mannering said. “Stall her for five minutes if she comes before I'm ready, will you?”

He went into the bathroom, washed briskly in cold water, then went into the long and lovely drawing-room. The décor was pale blue and grey, and the room was filled with Regency pieces each selected with an expert's eye. Over the mantelpiece was a head and shoulders portrait of a cavalier. People coming in to this room for the first time were always startled, for the handsome face, the curve of the lips, the very air of the cavalier were the image of Mannering, as if it were a portrait of Mannering in costume.

That was exactly what it was, a portrait painted by Lorna, who was one of the best known portrait painters in England.

Mannering sat back in an armchair, his eyes closed, trying to think clearly and to decide exactly what he wanted to find out from Dottie Mills, and also trying to decide whether to tell her the truth or not. In some ways that might pay dividends, but if there was even a rumour in the Press that he thought that someone involved in the theft was on board the
East Africa Star
it could be disastrous. He decided to keep up the pretence that he was interested in a diamond smuggler.

The front door bell rang.

“Why, Mrs. Mannering, how delightful to see you again. We haven't met since your simply superb exhibition at the Tate, have we? Absolutely divine, and if you don't mind me saying so I think your work is actually getting
better.
How do you improve on the best, though? Is your husband in? He told Chitty that he thinks he is on the trail of some wicked smugglers. I do hope he is!”

She went on and on until her voice was cut off by the closing of a door.

Mannering gave her five minutes alone with Lorna, then went into the study.

No one quite knew very much about Dottie Mills. She jumped up from an oak settle as Mannering entered; it was like a spring uncoiling after severe contraction. She was immensely tall, angular, bony, and breezy. She must be fifty but wore a girlish short-skirted dress which fitted her so tightly that every movement seemed a shimmy. Her little breasts poked out like two tennis balls, making her almost ludicrous. She had a big mouth, big teeth, and a hooked nose.

And she gushed.

She took Mannering's hand and held it tightly in cold, bony fingers.

“Mr. Mannering, how
wonderful
you look.” She was taller than he, but bent her knees so that she could stare up, as if adoringly, into his face. “And how delightful Mrs. Mannering is, as always. I really cannot tell you how grateful—”

She went on like that for several minutes, between sips of her drink. The glass empty, she gushed.

“I told dear Chitty I was
sure
you wouldn't ask me here unless it was
very
confidential.”

“It certainly is,” said Mannering.

“Any minute now you're going to say ‘off the record', you naughty man!”

“Off the record only for a short while,” Mannering assured her. “I know I can rely on you.”

“I should be utterly desolated if I thought you thought you couldn't!” Dottie drew nearer, fluttered her fingers at Lorna, to draw her closer, and asked conspiratorially: “
Was it the blonde?
”

“Blonde?” ejaculated Mannering.

“The blonde beauty who came on board late.”

“Was there one?”

“
Are
you after a blonde, Mr. Mannering?”

“I thought she would have dyed her hair before coming aboard.”

“Oh, my dear man!” Dottie glanced at Lorna as if to ask: “How naïve can the male sex be?” She leaned even closer and he could feel her breath on his cheek. “She
was
dyed.”

“Oh,” said Mannering.

“About five feet seven,
beautifully
sexed, so vitally statisticated to coin a word, and so
very
anxious to find out whether she had been followed. Is that the woman you're after, Mr. Mannering?”

“It sounds very much like her,” Mannering felt excitement racing.

“From the moment dear Chitty told me you were interested I found myself thinking of Melody Yesling,” declared Dottie. She thrust two bony fingers down the V of her dress and drew out several folded sheets of paper. As she unrolled these she went on conspiratorially: “Here is the passenger list. Melody Yesling booked only yesterday, and she was very lucky to get a single cabin. Isn't that interesting? Above everything else she
had
to have a cabin to herself, and by great and good fortune the Maharajah of Somewhere cancelled at the last moment, some marital problem or other, and so she took his, at
great
expense.

“Could she possibly be a kind of
Mata Hari
of the smuggling world, Mr. Mannering? Do say she could.”

 

Dottie Mills had gone, gushing to the last, outwardly convinced that she was on the inside of a story of diamond smuggling, and outwardly completely assured that in due time Mannering would make sure she had a scoop. Mannering and Lorna were thoughtful over dinner, while Mannering filled in the details. They had coffee in the drawing-room, where Lorna took up her favourite position on the pouffe, and sat close to Mannering's side.

“There isn't any certainty that the blonde took the mask on board, is there?” Lorna asked.

“None at all. But presumably she would want it out of the country as soon as possible.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Where does the
East Africa Star
call?”

“First stop, Gibraltar,” Mannering answered. “After that Port Said, Aden, Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, and places south.”

“So she could take the mask off at any one of those ports.”

“Yes,” agreed Mannering, grimly.

Lorna said: “Darling, why has this come to mean so much to you?”

“Are you sure it has?”

“I know the look in your eyes,” Lorna said. “Is it because of Nikko Toji?”

“It's because Toji believed the blonde was my messenger, and he died because of his trust in me.” That was the simple truth and his depth of feeling robbed the words of any pomposity.

Lorna was looking straight up into his eyes.

“It's a waste of time telling you that it isn't your fault by any stretch of the imagination,” she said. “Oh, how I love you!”

The passion in her voice took him completely by surprise. Suddenly, they were hugging each other, the years rolling back to the early days of their life together. Mannering knew exactly what had passed through Lorna's mind; a flash of the past, when an incident like that of Toji's death would lead him, Mannering, out of a happy and secure daily life into a danger which could bring death.

Lorna freed herself.

“I know I'm a goose,” she said. “No, don't say anything.” She pressed her hands against her thick black hair. “Do you really think that Dottie's Melody Yesling is the blonde of the taxi?”

“Don't you think it's likely?”

“I suppose so,” Lorna admitted. Dottie had described how the woman had arrived only half-an-hour before the ship had sailed, carrying one suitcase. Dottie ‘had happened' to notice her; Dottie's nose was even longer metaphorically than it was physically, and she missed nothing. Her description of the way the last-minute passenger had watched the gangway and the quayside had been very vivid. “Yes,” went on Lorna, “I expect it was the same girl. What are you going to do? You know the obvious thing, don't you?”

“Tell Bristow.”

“Yes.”

“I've left it late,” said Mannering.

“There's still time to tell him. The police could have Melody Yesling questioned at Gibraltar.”

“There's always a chance she was eloping, and afraid her father was on her trail,” said Mannering lightly. “I don't want to send Bristow haring after the wrong woman. Besides—”

Lorna drew in her breath. “Yes?”

“Bristow thinks that Toji committed suicide,” Mannering said. “I can't really believe it, and his own daughter doesn't. I think we ought to wait until Pearl Toji arrives. The
East Africa Star
won't be at Gibraltar until Tuesday. There'll be plenty of time to fly to the Rock and check up on Melody Yesling after I've talked to Pearl. There's one peculiarity,” he added. “The blonde gave her name as Yates, and there aren't many people whose name begins with Y. I wonder how she signed that register?”

He rang the Compton Hotel, and spoke to the grey-haired Smith.

“She signed as Miss Mary Yates,” Smith insisted. “I assure you I had no idea at all that it wasn't her real name. The initials were on her travelling case – I actually saw that myself as it stood on the dressing-table.”

“That clinches it,” said Mannering to Lorna, when he rang off. “The label wasn't stuck on properly and fell off behind the dressing-table. Mary Yates and Melody Yesling are one and the same person.”

“Do you think she took the Mask of Sumi with her?”

“It's the most likely reason for her sailing,” Mannering said. “The real question is whether she knows where the other jewels are.”