Posie looked at Dolly disbelievingly. ‘But you’ve got years ahead of you!’ she said, surprised. ‘Why the urgency? At this rate you’ll be having one baby a year! A boy will come along sooner or later.’
Dolly shook her head meekly. Without warning she had grabbed a pair of sharp scissors from the cabinet and cut a thick fringe across Posie’s face. The bang tickled.
Dolly indicated that she had finished and got Alaric’s small round shaving mirror down from a shelf and started swivelling it around behind Posie’s head.
‘That’s where you’re wrong, lovey.’ Dolly smiled sadly. ‘We don’t have forever. I don’t think I ever told you how old I am, did I?’
Posie stared at Dolly, not looking at her reflection. ‘I say, what do you mean? Er, no…I don’t think we ever spoke of it.’
‘Well, save your embarrassment. I’m forty-one. Old. Older than you knew. Older than Rufus knew when he met me. So the twins and this baby I’m having right now are some sort of miracle. But miracles don’t go on forever, do they?’
And Posie, completely surprised and wrong-footed, and not knowing what to say, made a big show of admiring Dolly’s handiwork in the mirror, smiling along.
But secretly she didn’t recognise herself at all; that strange halo of silver which surrounded her face, making her large blue eyes seem even more anxious and scared than they really were, and her cream English-rose skin looking frightfully pale.
She had met a real ghost once, although she hadn’t known it at the time, and he had seemed much more colourful and full-of-life than the way she currently looked.
‘It’s lovely,’ she lied.
****
It had been such a long day, and although she was so tired, Posie found sleep elusive. As she turned and turned in the coolness of her bed, she listened to the rain and the thunderstorm which continued on outside. She had left her window open and the long muslin curtains fluttered in the wind like tattered doves. Her small case containing a red cocktail frock for the Wrap Party was already packed, and a smoke-grey linen day dress, not a House of Harlow number, and her old glacé sandals were waiting ready on her airing rail for her to simply slip into early the next morning.
But her brain couldn’t turn itself off, and she started, without meaning or wanting to, to think about all the people she herself had loved and lost.
Those who had died: her father; her brother, Richard; her first fiancé, Harry Briskow.
And then those she had somehow lost along the way without meaning to, while both parties were still very much alive: her mother, Zelda, who had left her family when Posie was just twelve years old, never to return; Len Irving, her business partner, who had at one time become an almost-boyfriend, but who had cried off at the last minute, deciding instead to remain with his childhood sweetheart; a nephew, Harry, who lived and breathed in nearby Cambridge but couldn’t formally be acknowledged as her dead brother’s illegitimate son.
And now Alaric.
Posie looked at the black-and-white framed photograph of Alaric which lived next to her bed, beside her cold cream and her glass of water. Uncharacteristically dressed up in immaculate black tie for a long-ago ball, Alaric’s hair was slicked back and he was clean-shaven. His magnificent eyes were creased up in a beaming smile which asked the photographer not to be so silly: to stop taking a photograph, right now.
She had found the photo among his papers on the floor one day and he had said she could have it.
That old thing? Of course you can have it, darling.
Posie loved that photograph, although it was from a time before she had known him, and she didn’t know who it was who had teased out that laughing look. But what was certain was that Posie had never managed to make Alaric smile like that, not in all the time she had known him. Not even in bed.
It had probably been taken with Cosima Catchpole, a flame-haired beauty who had been Alaric’s lover for several years, an ill-fated and dangerous love affair which had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths and a lingering, rusty sense of betrayal, as Cosima had been Hugo Marchpane’s wife. The wife of his best friend…
Posie tried not to think of Cosima, hoping that she was a piece of the past which would happily stay there for ever.
Annoyingly, Posie’s scalp itched like mad and she tried not to think about the ‘new look’ which Dolly had created for her, reaching instead for a hair cap which she hardly ever used and throwing herself back irritably on the cushions.
Sleep started to come heavily, and just as it did the black-and-white photograph of Alaric flashed though her mind again, in waves, as if it were being flung at her on a tide, and then pulled out of reach, time and again. She sank gratefully under the water of the almost-dream, drowsy.
And just as sleep came, another photograph, this time of a raven-haired moody movie star, imprinted itself on top of Alaric’s image. It stayed there, vivid, etched on the surface. It was Mark Paris.
Tom Moran. Mark Paris. Tom Moran…
‘Oh, go away,’ Posie muttered drowsily. ‘I want to SLEEP.’
Mark Paris was washing backwards and forwards in a framed photograph, in a sleepy white frothy sea of wedding dresses and cuttings from magazines.
And then Posie sat bolt upright in bed, absolutely and horribly wide awake.
‘The deuce!’
She saw again the photograph of Mark Paris in the cook’s room at Worton Hall, surrounded by the magazine cuttings, clear as day.
She remembered too the conversation she had had with the driver, Fred, in the car back to town earlier. She remembered how he had described the cook, Mrs Thynne, as being married to a gamekeeper in Richmond Park, and, judging by the woman’s age, she had probably been married for several years.
What had struck Posie as being unaccountably wrong earlier was now very clear to her. Why would a seemingly unromantic, middle-aged, married cook have a crush on a dead movie star?
And why would she be making a schoolgirl’s scrapbook about weddings and dresses?
It didn’t make sense. Not one little bit.
****
PART TWO
(Thursday 26th July, 1923)
Twenty-Three
She was woken by the banging of a door somewhere outside. And a dog barking.
Possibly.
It was very early, judging by the colour of the light shining through the thin curtains, and it was crazily hot again, already.
Posie told herself she had just imagined the noise, and was just hunkering down again, sliding under the cosy enveloping sleep which she longed for, when the door of her bedroom burst open. She sat up, startled, still half-asleep.
It was Alaric, bronzed all over and covered in oil and stinking of petrol.
He was standing in a shaft of bright sunlight. And at his heels was Bikram, his liver-coloured pointer.
‘Darling!’
He was grinning, and as she watched, she saw him pull off his crumpled linen shirt in one easy move, straight off over his head. He revealed a rippling chest and torso tanned dark with a southern sun. He started to pull off his belt, and a groan escaped his lips.
‘By Gad, how I’ve missed you.’
She stared at him sleepily. Was he real? Without knowing what she was saying, she mouthed, blearily, ridiculously:
‘You snuck into my room?’
‘Yep.’ Alaric laughed. ‘We are engaged, after all. And Bradley isn’t here yet to be shocked. It’s early, darling. Not yet six o’clock.’
Bikram, seeing which way the wind was blowing, took himself off into the shadiest part of the room and curled up in a ball, his back to them both.
‘My gosh! But I didn’t expect you back so soon. And what was so urgent, anyhow?’ Posie forced herself sharply awake, rising quickly through the layers of sleep to hear his answer.
‘Sorry?’
‘You know; the urgent thing you mentioned in your telegram?’
‘Mnnn?’ Alaric shook off his linen trousers and kicked them aside and sto
od as naked as the day he was born on the warm parquet flooring. He was beautiful.
Posie gulped.
‘Dash it all, let’s not talk about that now, eh?’ Alaric smiled and it cracked across his face from side to side, almost but not quite like in the photograph. He bounded over to Posie and dragged off her cotton counterpane, kicking aside the sheets. He got in beside her in bed.
He tilted Posie’s disbelieving face up to his and kissed her, on and on. His caramel-coloured hair, which was too long, flopped into her face and he raked it back impatiently with his long, tanned, weather-beaten fingers. He smelt of cigarette smoke and coffee and sweat and petrol and the scents of travel and hot, exotic climates. It was quite intoxicating.
Posie pulled him closer and closer, thankful and relieved and desperate for him. Her pink sapphire ring with its bevy of petal-like diamonds caught the sun as she grabbed greedily at him and it glittered happily, sending small rainbows of arching lights dancing across the room. Alaric moaned, urgently unbuttoning her camisole, but then he stopped, frowning.
‘By Gad, what’s this, anyhow?’ Alaric had only just noticed Posie’s sateen sleeping cap. He laughed and ripped it off in a trice. And then his strangely green-bronze eyes widened like saucers and he looked aghast. He sat up, shocked, lust on hold.
‘What the blazes?’
He swallowed in a stunned fashion. ‘Darling, what on earth have you had done to yourself?’
Posie patted at her silvery-white hair as if to make sure it was still there. ‘Oh, this?’ she said, mock-casually. But actually she was worried. Alaric, quite disturbed, was sitting quite apart from her now, frowning and swallowing in disbelief.
‘You…you don’t like it, I take it?’
‘Er…well.’ Alaric paused, still staring. ‘I suppose it takes some getting used to. You look quite different.’
But then he smiled. ‘Actually,’ and the lust seemed to flood back into his eyes, which gleamed greener than usual, ‘what shocked me at first was quite how much I did like it. Gracious, you look just like…’
‘Just like who?’
‘Just like Silvia Hanro.’
‘Is that a good thing?’ Posie frowned. ‘I didn’t know you liked her.’
‘There can’t be a man alive that doesn’t like her. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. Not that she’s a patch on you, mind. Now come here, you gorgeous girl. It’s been too, too long.’
He grabbed her urgently, and the movement caused him to knock over the glass of water and the photo on the bedside table and the items went clattering, smashing to the floor.
And just as Posie was wondering quite how much she liked being compared so directly with Silvia Hanro, and wondering too if Alaric remembered meeting her as a schoolgirl, Bikram stopped giving them their privacy and started barking like crazy.
‘What the…’
The door to Posie’s room banged open.
‘Let’s be havin’ yee!’
And there was Constable McCrae, rumpled of uniform and red-faced with broken sleep, wielding an old cricket bat of Alaric’s before him.
‘Oh, oh! I say! I’m sorry, Miss…’
Constable McCrae had managed to put on his policeman’s helmet in all the fracas, but had, in his hurry, put it on back to front, and the effect was comical. It almost covered his eyes. Posie felt her face flush with shame, but at the same time she wanted to laugh, hysterically. It was all too, too much.
‘Lady Cardigeon and I, we heard a noise and thought there must have been an intruder in yer room. I’m so sorry.’
Behind him peeped Dolly, deathly pale without her make-up on and looking nervous, already clutching at an unlit cigarette.
Alaric looked at them both in disbelief, before throwing himself aside in the big bed, grabbing at a sheet to cover his modesty.
‘Some things haven’t changed, I see.’ He smiled, in weary resignation.
****
Ten minutes later, newly-dressed and quite fit for proper company, Posie and Alaric sat at the dining table in the living room, having breakfast.
Posie was wearing much more make-up than usual, and while she had been dabbing black kohl pencil around her eyes in the bedroom, she had outlined her current case to Alaric, and he had given her a potted version of his adventures in Morocco.
Alaric had also protested, at Posie’s questioning, that he had written to her quite a bit, at least once every two weeks. What more had she expected?
Posie had thus resigned herself to Dolly’s way of thinking; that men and letters simply didn’t mix. She was so, so delighted to have him back, and to have rid of that terrible sense of unease which had clung to her now for weeks. Except…
Except there still was some niggling little doubt fluttering there, like a lonely balloon stuck in the branches of a tree.
And marriage – and that pesky wedding – still hadn’t been mentioned, like an elephant in the room. Later, perhaps.
Soon they were joined at the breakfast table by both Dolly and, at everyone’s insistence, by Constable McCrae.
‘You look very fetchin’, lovey,’ said Dolly, nodding approvingly. ‘Nice young dress. For once.’
Over a bag of yesterday’s croissants and slightly squashed Madelaine cakes from Paris, and a pot of piping hot coffee, because no-one could face kippers or anything much, Alaric told them all how he had planned to get back to London even earlier, how he had been due to arrive before midnight.
He’d got a plane ready and waiting at Le Touquet airport, and his old friend and ex-flying partner Major Hugo Marchpane had organised him an evening landing slot at Croydon Aerodrome. It should have been a short flight across the English Channel, not more than an hour.
‘Thing was,’ Alaric said, sipping coffee, and feeding bits of Madeleine cake to Bikram beneath the table, ‘this wretched storm stopped me from doing anything. I had to hang around the airfield in northern France until about two o’clock this morning, when the storm had died out and I was cleared for take-off. Good old Hugo, he was still waiting for me at Croydon; I think he’d slept on a bench there, in fact. He’s a dear friend. He was waiting with Bikram here, who seems pleased to see me again.’
‘He’s not the only one,’ said Dolly in a knowing voice, with a raised eyebrow, looking over at Posie in an exaggerated tell-tale fashion. Posie flushed red and Constable McCrae spluttered into his coffee. Posie noted that the engagement photograph was back out on display this morning, although the white box was, suitably, of course, well-hidden away.
‘We were just talkin’ last night,’ continued Dolly, casually flicking her purple nails against the bone-china mug, and Posie’s heart dropped, for this spelt trouble, ‘about a date for your and Posie’s wedding, Al. You know, my diary is so busy these days, and I’d want to be there for it, even if it is a small wedding. So? Any news, lovey?’
Alaric laughed easily.
‘I take the hint, Dolly. Thank you.’ He looked at Posie next to him, squeezed her hand under the table and looked into her black-rimmed eyes, quite seriously.
‘Yes, we do need to talk about that. It’s just that it’s been so darned busy these last few months, and with me being away in Morocco it didn’t exactly help. I daresay those wretched orange marriage forms from the Camden Registry Office which kept fluttering around the kitchen have now expired, have they, darling, worst luck?’
‘Mnnn, I think they have,’ said Posie, from between a mouthful of croissant. A thought had occurred to Posie, but it was stuck somewhere, inconveniently lodged in the dark recesses of her mind. It twanged now, like an itch.
She came back to the present. ‘I think once you apply to be married you can use them within forty-eight hours, but they expire after a month. And that month was a lifetime ago.’
Constable McCrae was now down on the floor, picking up imaginary crumbs to stem his embarrassment.
‘Well, I was going to talk to you about it later; alone.’ Alaric threw Dolly a half-comical look which was nevertheless l
aden with mind-your-own-business meaning, and turning back to Posie he continued:
‘But as it happens why don’t we talk about it now? I’ve had an invite to Venice, for the end of November and the whole of December. Why not come with me? Len can handle the Grape Street Bureau, and you can stop taking work for five measly little weeks, can’t you? Why don’t we get married out there? It will be easy as anything. That was what was urgent, in the telegram.’
‘Really?’ Posie muttered, incredulously. Then, more hopefully, ‘Venice?’
‘You’ve never been, right?’
Posie shook her head; she had travelled around Italy before, but the magical city of Venice had not been one of the places she had explored. It had been on her list of places to discover for a long time.
‘Fine,’ she breathed. And she smiled. ‘It’s a deal.’
‘Can we still come?’ asked Dolly, nosily, from across the table.
‘Of course.’ Alaric grinned. ‘It will be easy enough. Where we’ll be staying has plenty of rooms. It’s a palace. In fact, it has views right across the main lagoon. It sounds a dream.’
‘A palace?’ asked Posie, slightly surprised. ‘Whose palace would that be?’
‘Oh, you’ve probably never met them,’ said Alaric breezily. ‘I hadn’t until recently. I met a chap called Dickie Alladice while I was out in Tangiers. Nice bird, as it happens. He’s got a sister; she married an Italian Count, and the whole Alladice clan will be out there in November and December. He invited me. And you, Posie.’
‘Why?’ asked Posie.
Alaric shrugged and finished his coffee. ‘Simple courtesy? Sheer interest?’
Dolly was smoking a thoughtful cigarette. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘You’re not on about Bella Alladice, by any chance, are you?’
‘That’s the girl!’ said Alaric happily. ‘You know her? Then it will be even easier!’
Dolly let out a scornful laugh. ‘Nothing is easy with Bella Alladice. Great fat frump of a girl, all tarted up in the current fashions as if that could help her at all!’
Murder of a Movie Star Page 22
