‘Nice.’ Posie didn’t really want to know about politics, or want to discuss it. Alaric had famously given up his aristocratic title to become a regular Member of Parliament back in the time before the Great War, and while he was now too busy being an explorer and had given up his duties as an MP, she still had to hear about politics a good deal, particularly when he got together with his best friend, Major Hugo Marchpane.
She tried to look pleased. ‘As long as it doesn’t involve drink I’m happy for you, Rufey darling. Now, cut the niceties and tell me what you want exactly. What’s going on?’
‘Eh?’ Rufus reeled a bit. He seemed to be struggling for words.
‘Well, it’s a bit out of your way to stop off here. This is nowhere near being en route from Westminster to Chelsea, is it?’
Posie stole a look over at the driver of the car. He was probably well within earshot. You never knew who you could trust these days. She’d learnt that the hard way.
‘Let’s walk, shall we? I need to throw this fishy paper away.’
Rufus scowled.
‘It’s not Friday. And it’s hot as Hades. Why are you guzzling down a fish supper mid-week, Nosy? You want to watch that, you know. Don’t you want to fit into your nice wedding dress for Alaric? You used to be quite thin once. And pretty. I fancied you myself for a bit there. A long while ago now, mind.’
The remark stung and Posie flushed red.
‘And you used to be polite, once upon a time. So just you shut up.’
Posie cast Rufus a look filled with malice and took his arm anyway, giving it a good pinch beneath the Savile Row dinner jacket. They strolled in the direction of two huge, reeking metal bins at the end of the street. A boy of only eight or nine, all threadbare clothes and dirty elbows, was rummaging in the nearest bin, propped precariously on a step of an old soap box.
‘Hey you! You clear off! Little tyke!’
Rufus waved his top hat madly at the boy, who climbed down, stuck his tongue out and ran off. Rufus kept his hat off, raking his hand through his sweaty short hair.
Posie cast a loaded look at her old friend. ‘I thought you wanted to help people,’ she said incredulously.
‘There’s people and then there’s people. Posie, you are a noddle sometimes. That boy was a little oik. When will you ever learn?’
‘By jove, Rufus. He was just a wee lad, looking for some dinner. You could have helped him by giving him something. Not everyone’s as fortunate as you, or your well-born daughters, you know!’
Rufus had gone red and squirmed a little beneath her gaze but he muttered something about ‘my daughters!’ in an undertone which Posie didn’t quite catch.
Posie stuffed the paper in a bin and turned to look at Rufus. She wiped her fingers and crossed her arms in a business-like fashion.
‘Now tell me. No-one can hear. Well?’
‘I came here to collect my wife. I tried your flat first, but with no joy. She is with you, isn’t she? In that office up there of yours?’ Posie noticed how Rufus’s jaw muscles were drawn tight.
Posie thought unaccountably of Mr Minks. Fed and satisfied.
She banished the real-life thought of Dolly, in Mr Samuelson’s chauffeured car, speeding towards Chelsea. Hopefully by the time Rufus had turned tail and reached home Dolly would have got there first.
‘She’s fine,’ Posie assured him. ‘She had fish and chips with me and now she’s having a catnap.’
‘Ah.’ A smile of sheer relief spread itself across Rufus’s face. He lit a cigarette with more of his usual manner.
‘That makes sense. Well, I’ll get on over to dinner at the Carlton Grill then. I won’t disturb her. Not in her condition.’
‘Sorry? What condition?’
‘You know, Nosy. Don’t be such a dolt. The pregnancy.’
Posie stared at Rufus and whistled softly under her breath.
So that was it! That was why Dolly wasn’t quite herself at the moment. But why hadn’t she said anything? Posie smiled back, quick as anything.
‘I’ll get her home to you later tonight myself. She won’t leave my side.’
Rufus nodded. ‘Dashed decent of you, old thing. Keep her close. Not a second out of your sight, remember?’
Rufus replaced his hat and walked back to the car, Posie trotting beside him, trying to keep up with his long-legged stride.
‘But what’s going on with this plot you were so wound up about earlier? You haven’t told me anything. I’m going to see the Chief Inspector in half an hour. Obviously I’ll take Dolly with me. But shall I tell him to come and speak to you about some protection?’
Rufus looked down at Posie and she saw something flush his face with scarlet. She knew him well, but couldn’t place it. Was it fear? Anger? He ground out his cigarette stub on the sole of his beautiful black John Lobb shoe.
‘What is it, Rufey? What is it? Have these blighters warned you off involving the police? Is that it?’
They stood uncomfortably close together by the car. At his silence Posie sighed and checked her wristwatch.
‘I’ve got to go, Rufey darling. Have a good evening, even if you’re utterly maddening and won’t tell me anything. But tell me this, is Dolly in real danger?’
Rufus opened the car door. But he turned and nodded and whispered earnestly:
‘Oh yes. Real danger. Of the worst sort. But for goodness’ sake don’t let on. She’s got enough to worry about and I don’t want her worried, not in her condition.’
As she headed back into her Grape Street office to collect her bag and wash her hands, ready for her meeting with Chief Inspector Lovelace, Posie saw the poor lad from the bins slink out of the shadows opposite. He came forwards with outstretched hands, dirty and woebegone. Up close Posie could see how tanned he was from the unrelenting July sun, and she realised how even the London weather was no friend right now to the homeless. White crease lines framed his small blue eyes, which sparkled out of his nut-brown face like two tiny sapphire lights.
‘Penny for me supper, Ma’am? I’m right starvin’ and I’ve no mam. Me dad died in the war. Got three little sisters down High Holborn way to feed tonight, too. Please ’elp me?’
There was something about the lad which reminded Posie of the stringer, Sidney, who Robbie Fontaine used, and she found herself feeling immeasurably glad that Sidney had managed to get himself some sort of paid employment and was at least off the streets.
Posie asked the lad to wait while she ran upstairs, fetched her carpet bag and tipped out the contents of her small change purse into his hands. He ran away, delighted.
‘A soft touch, I know,’ said Posie to herself. ‘But at least my heart isn’t hardening and I’m not turning into a miserable old bigot.’
And she thought of Rufus, and how he seemed to have changed.
****
Seventeen
Posie walked down to the Inner Temple instead of catching a bus or a tram. Her brain was hurting and she tried just to enjoy the walk through central London.
She’d forgotten to bring the note for Carver and Nicholas, and she was cross at herself. It would have to be dropped off first thing next morning.
She was carrying a big green and gold bag from Gamages, the famous toy shop on High Holborn. Inside was a beautiful and costly baby doll in a smart box. It had been sitting under her desk for a good couple of months now, waiting to be given to Richard Lovelace’s daughter, Phyllis, for her first birthday, which had now been and gone. Posie was Phyllis’s Godmother, although she hadn’t managed to see the little girl for ages, and there was definitely an element of guilt involved in the value of the purchase.
Bloomsbury and Holborn and Aldwych all lay spread before her, dusty and hot and bothered, unprepared for summers such as these.
She made her way out onto the Strand, past a row of tiny fashionable cafés on the Aldwych with awnings still out and strings of white fairy lights tacked about the place. In them were youngish lawyers and beautiful girls dressed in past
el-coloured silks and chiffons. All of them seemed to be drinking hard and moving much faster, and Posie tried not to stare too much as she walked by. She looked down at her sensible black dress and pumps and felt old. She also felt unaccountably hot, despite the lateness of the hour. And the dress, sensible though it was, couldn’t be said to be light as a feather.
She had noticed a pair of girls sitting on a man’s lap, both drinking amber-coloured cocktails and she knew without giving them a second glance that these were ‘Bee’s Knees’, the most fashionable cocktail in London right now, an American sticky-sweet treat of gin and honey mixed with lemon and orange juices. She’d kept meaning to try one, but hadn’t had the time, or inclination, or company. Maybe she’d drag Alaric off to one of these bars and force him to buy her one, when he came home.
If he ever came home.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a wolf-whistle and she walked on, looking down at the pavement, passing a bank of black cars whose drivers were waiting patiently for their masters.
‘No, you! You in the black! Come back! Please!’
Posie turned in surprise. A handsome man in his late twenties with sad eyes and a vivid scar on his chin was standing at the front of a café, cigarette in hand, his evening suit rumpled. He had evidently had too many drinks already. He smiled at Posie forlornly and raised a bottle of something in her direction.
‘You’re beautiful! You’d make my night if you’d only step in here and have a drink with me? Join us, won’t you?’
Posie smiled gingerly and was about to reply when her eyes came to rest on a woman among a crowd behind the man with the sad eyes. Posie noted that something in the woman’s manner was dashed familiar.
It was Silvia Hanro. It had to be!
The height, the stance, the long-limbed athletic grace – these were all identical to Silvia. But suddenly the woman turned her back on the street, moving into the dim interior of the café, and in the swirling blur of her apricot-coloured dress, she revealed herself as having long dark hair in an unfashionable plait hanging down her back.
‘How bizarre!’ muttered Posie. ‘My eyes must be playing tricks on me. And why would Silvia be here, anyhow? She’s miles away.’
In the brief moment that she had been staring at the girl in the apricot dress, the man who had wolf-whistled had vanished, without knowing that he had somehow made Posie’s night.
Posie carried on, more cheerful, aware of the bells of St Clement Danes striking the hour. Nine o’clock. She was just on time.
Right now the light was beginning to fade and London was taking on that peculiar twilight colour which was all its own: several shades of purple mixed as if by a lunatic hand.
Crossing Fleet Street by the Royal Courts of Justice and swinging under the old black-beamed Tudor entrance to the Inn of the Inner Temple, Posie felt like she was entering another world. She passed under the heavy oak door, which wouldn’t have been out of place in a fortress.
The busy streets of London with their horses and carts and many motor cars had no place here, and she was struck, as always, by the other-worldliness of the place. It was as if time had stopped still. As with the other three London legal ‘Inns of Court’ the Inner Temple had a calm, unhurried air. In the dusky light, blowsy late roses in a rainbow of colours swayed along the cobbled paths which led down to a great square garden.
On the left-hand side at the end of the path was the famous Temple Church, a perfectly round pearl, which had sat there since the Templar Knights had built it in the twelfth century. Inside the church were a row of memorials of stone-carved Knights, tombs as big as real men, slumbering forever on the floor. They lay there complete with an assortment of dogs and lions and swords and chainmail. The Temple Church was famous for its carol concerts, as well as its Knights, and Posie remembered coming here to sing carols a few years running as a small girl, with both her mother Zelda and her father and her brother Richard. It had been part of a much looked-forward-to December ‘day out’ down in London, topped and tailed by shopping for presents at Harrods and then tea at Lyons on the Strand. She remembered being fascinated by those stone Knights. As Richard had been. Who then could have known that he too would be felled by war? That he too would be destined to sleep forever as a young soldier; not in white-marbled majesty, but lost on some godforsaken foreign battlefield.
Posie had reached the door of the church, now bolted fast, and she saw that an oil lamp was being lit in a glass lantern by a Porter in an official-looking dark and gold livery. She nodded in acknowledgement and sat down on a bench there to wait.
‘You only just made it, Miss,’ muttered the Porter self-importantly. ‘The gates to the Inner Temple close at dusk. I’m just off to bolt them now. Let me know when you want to leave again and I’ll unlock the door. I’ll be in my office.’ And he stumped off.
She didn’t have long to wait.
‘Posie!’
Chief Inspector Lovelace suddenly came into view, silhouetted against a lamp further down the path, towards the gardens and the river. When he came up closer he kissed Posie quickly on the cheek and she felt the rough stubble of his cheek and a sheen of sweat on his skin as he pulled away.
‘Blast this weather. They say it’s the hottest ever summer, don’t you know? I’m positively melting in this get-up.’ He pulled at his collar to let some air in and gulped a few times like a fish out of water.
‘I know,’ Posie agreed. ‘It’s unbearable, but it’s so lovely to see you, sir. And thank you for meeting me like this. I’m mighty happy to speak to you about these death threats. I must confess I feel very out of my depth.’
She continued breathlessly: ‘Oh, here, take this before I forget.’ Posie pushed the green Gamages bag into his arms. ‘This is for that beautiful one-year-old Goddaughter of mine. Give her a big kiss from her Auntie Posie.’
‘Gracious, how lovely of you.’
Richard Lovelace smiled happily as he always did when his daughter was mentioned. He was in his early forties, and scrubbed up well. He was good-looking in a big, capable, freckly-gingery sort of way, and tonight his reddish hair was slicked back neatly and he wore immaculate white tie. Posie noticed that around his neck he wore a blue-and-white striped ribbon and on the end of it hung a very shiny and obviously new gold medal.
‘Goodness me!’ Posie indicated the medal. ‘You said you’d won a prize but this looks top-drawer stuff. What’s it for?’
Even in the failing light Richard Lovelace had the good grace to look embarrassed and a flush stole over his already reddish skin. ‘Er, well. It’s not that much of a thing, really…’
‘He’s only gone and got the highest honour it’s possible to get in the police force without getting killed!’ a familiar voice boomed behind Posie.
It was Sergeant Binny. He was carrying a big canvas hold-all and was dressed in the normal regulation year-round Scotland Yard attire of beige trench coat and dark flannel trousers. He put down the hold-all on the bench and nodded cheekily.
‘It’s only the Blue Plume, Miss! For extraordinary achievement! The Chief Inspector is quite the top dog now at Scotland Yard, Miss Parker.’ Sergeant Binny then turned to Lovelace and tipped his dark homburg hat in a show of mock deference.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, sir. Just a turn of phrase, mind.’
Posie smiled at Binny. He was one of the Chief Inspector’s most capable right-hand men, and, as he had proved earlier that afternoon, he was extraordinarily good at his job.
‘Good evening, Sergeant.’ Lovelace smiled. ‘And thank you for that charming elucidation. Not that I would have put it quite like that myself, mind. Now, let’s get down to business. Let’s stay here on this bench. No-one seems to be about and we can see anyone approaching. But let’s keep it down, eh? Just whisper.’
They all sat. The light had nearly gone and the dark cobbles of the alley were lit strangely by the oil lamp, the shadow of the round church looming over everything like a dark cocoon. In other places the eff
ect might have been sinister, but here in this safe place it was oddly comforting.
‘Best give us an update so far, Posie. You seem to know a good deal.’
‘Right-ho.’
And so Posie described as best and as quickly as she could what had happened today; the death threats and the strange atmosphere at Worton Hall and the many odd characters it seemed to harbour.
There was a short silence.
‘I’ve been thinking this over, what you’ve told me so far,’ said the Chief Inspector after a little bit, rubbing at the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. ‘First, are you sure this isn’t just Silvia Hanro instigating the whole thing? Didn’t you say she has a new film out soon?’
Posie nodded.
‘Well, then. Wouldn’t this be the perfect way to generate a little extra publicity for it? And calling you in adds that little touch of credibility, Posie. And if so, no wonder she doesn’t want to involve the police. We’ve known of such cases, both you and me. Eh?’
Posie thought of the capable girl she had met today who had given away a baby and carried on with her career. Whose single-mindedness obviously included personal sacrifice, a girl who was now holding onto her career by the skin of her teeth, but nonetheless a girl who, Posie firmly believed, did not engage in cheap tricks.
She shook her head firmly. ‘No. With all due respect, that’s utter rot, sir. I thought that might be a possibility at first; it was at the forefront of my mind when I met her. But it’s not possible.’
‘Mnn. Well, what do you think of her?’
‘Regardless of what I’ve since found out about her history, initially I rather liked her. I think Brian Langley is a jolly lucky man to have such a reliable leading lady. She’s wealthy, too: massively so, aside from her own earnings. She’s the beneficiary of a family trust. Not that she likes to share the money around. Not one bit.’
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