The Tango School Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  "I'll be with you in ten minutes," I said and replaced the receiver.

  Figgis's eyes asked the question.

  "Gervase's housekeeper," I said. "It sounds like bad news. I'll call you when I've seen her."

  I jumped up and hurried from the room.

  Chapter 18

  The doors of Gervase Pope's private lift opened and I stepped into his apartment.

  Estelle Daventry was over by the window looking out to sea. She turned as I walked into the room. She was holding an envelope like it was a live hand grenade.

  Her eyes were moist and her nose was pink. She'd been crying.

  She hurried across the room to me holding out the envelope.

  She said: "I'm beside myself with worry."

  I took the envelope. Whoever had sent it chose quality stationery. It had been made from thick bond paper. With an envelope like this, you'd be impressed even before you discovered what was inside. This was the kind of envelope you'd get if you were being invited to take tea with a duke. Or you were being offered a knighthood by the Queen. Or, perhaps, you were getting one of those chance-of-a-lifetime investment opportunities from a scam artist in Bermuda.

  I looked closely at the envelope. Just eleven words had been typed on the front: Private and Confidential: For the attention of Mr Gervase Pope only. The counter - the area enclosed by a letter's form - of the "e" was smudged. The e key on the typewriter had probably filled with paper dust and not been cleaned.

  I said: "Do you know when this letter came?"

  Estelle sniffed. "I couldn't say. It must've been during the night. I noticed it in our post box in the lobby when I went to collect the milk about half an hour ago."

  "Why does it worry you?"

  "Because the envelope is the same as the one Mr Pope received before he left."

  "The letter you told me about last time - the one he locked in his desk drawer?"

  "Yes."

  "And the one he replied to and posted himself?"

  "Yes."

  I held the envelope up to the light. Couldn't see anything inside. I squeezed the envelope. Its texture compressed pleasingly between my thumb and forefinger. But it didn't feel as though there was much in the envelope.

  I said: "I'm going to open this."

  "No, you can't." Estelle said. "It's private."

  "And confidential," I added. "But Gervase Pope has too many secrets and it's about time some of them were made to blink in the light of day."

  I inserted a fingernail under the envelope flap and flipped it up.

  I took out a single sheet of paper and a photograph.

  The photograph showed the stretch of a river as it passed through a sweeping curve. From the white caps on the water, the river was flowing fast. Perhaps because at that point the river passed through rapids. Or perhaps because there'd been heavy rain before the photo had been taken. To the right side of the photo a rough track passed close to the riverbank. Reeds had grown to obscure part of the track. It looked like the kind of place that rarely saw even a horse and cart.

  I unfolded the sheet of paper. My eyes widened in surprise. The paper held a poem - typed using the same typewriter as the envelope. The poem read:

  Once was a beauty, loved as a sister,

  Then came a man who loved her as well,

  Won over her heart 'cos he couldn't resist her,

  Asked her to marry him and with him dwell.

  Took her one night for a drive by the river,

  But the car plunged in and then she was gone.

  Failed to rescue her, failed to deliver

  Her. Now he must pay the price, forty years on.

  I handed the paper to Estelle. She read it and looked at me. Her eyes were misty.

  "What does it mean?" she asked.

  I frowned. "It means someone is planning to kill Gervase."

  My brain had just stepped up a gear. I could almost feel the neurons tingling.

  So this was why Gervase had disappeared. He wasn’t planning to kill Oscar Maundsley. An assassin was planning to murder him.

  I said: "The poem suggests Gervase had a love affair with a girl forty years ago - that would be in 1924. But the girl died when a car Gervase was driving went into a river. I imagine this photo shows the spot where it happened. This poem has obviously been written by the girl's brother. He's Gervase's potential killer. Has Gervase ever talked about any of this?"

  Estelle slumped on a chair. "No."

  She leant back and looked out of the window. I waited while she gathered her thoughts.

  She turned back to me. "Mr Pope has never mentioned anything like this directly. But I remember a few years ago, he'd had a little too much brandy after his dinner one night. He was looking at old photographs from his album and became quite maudlin. I recall he rambled on about a girl. Something about having loved and lost being better than never having loved at all."

  "Did he say who this girl was?"

  "No."

  "Had he been looking at her picture in the album?"

  "No. I remember he'd had so much to drink I had to help him to his room. When I came back into the sitting room, I noticed he'd left the album open at the page he'd been looking at. It showed a group of young men in a formal kind of pose. I think it was a photo from his university days."

  "Does Gervase still have the picture?"

  "I don't know. He still has the album because he keeps it in his study. But whether the picture is still in the album…"

  Estelle voiced the thought running through my mind. If Gervase had taken the first envelope from his mystery correspondent when he disappeared, perhaps he'd taken the photo as well.

  "Could I see the album?"

  "I'll fetch it." Estelle hurried from the room. She was back in less than a minute, carrying the album. It was one of those old-fashioned jobs, bound in brown cloth with stiff card and pages separated by tissue paper.

  Estelle put the album on a table by the window and flipped the pages.

  "The photo's not here. No, wait…"

  I hurried to her side. Estelle had opened the album at a page near the back. There was a single photo held on the page with little stick-on corner pieces. The photo showed two rows of young men dressed in white tie and tails. In the front row six men were sitting on chairs. In the back row seven were standing behind the chairs. Thirteen men. Unlucky for some. Certainly, it seemed, for Gervase.

  Five of the men had moustaches. Two wore glasses. Seven had folded handkerchiefs in their breast pockets. All had the glassy eyes and slouched postures of men who've dined well but not wisely. Three held brandy snifters. Two were smoking cigars. One was laughing. Four looked bored.

  The photo had been taken indoors in a room with oak panelling and hung with fancy chandeliers. One of the chandeliers appeared on the right of the picture. The floor was made of dark flagstones. There was no carpet. No pictures on the wall behind the men. The men were sitting on upright wooden chairs. The kind not made for comfort. The kind you find in British Rail waiting rooms.

  I gently pulled the photo out of its corner-piece fixings and turned it over. In neat script, someone - presumably Gervase - had written on the back of it: Cambridge University Blunderbuss Club dinner, Lent Term, 1923. Then followed a list of the names of the six men in the front row: Toby Herrington, Jarvis Plunkett-Winterbourne, the Honourable Richard Gascoyne, Lord Timothy Bridlington, Harry Williamson, J G McMasters.

  Then came the names of the seven in the back row: Glyn Olwen-Thomas, Freddie Harbottle-Smythe, self - as Gervase had identified himself - Felix Delaunay, the Honourable Charles Stuart, Archibald ffoulkes, Tarquin Tirconnel O'Henry.

  I showed the back of the photo to Estelle.

  I said: "Have you ever seen any of these names before?"

  Estelle said: "I didn't know the gentlemen in the photo were identified on the back. But, no, none of the names are familiar."

  "You don't remember Gervase mentioning any of them?"

  "No."

>   "Did he ever speak about the Blunderbuss Club?"

  "No."

  "But presumably you knew he'd been at Cambridge University?"

  "I did know that. I remember once the subject of universities came up in conversation and I asked him whether his days at Cambridge were the happiest in his life. He muttered something I didn't hear and walked out of the room. I never raised the subject of his time there again."

  I said: "I need to keep the envelope with the paper and this photo for the time being. Thank you for your help."

  I moved towards the door.

  Estelle hurried after me.

  She said: "Do you think Mr Pope is safe?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Perhaps for the moment, but it's clear from this paper that someone intends to kill him."

  Estelle slumped down on a sofa. Her mouth had dropped open in a silent scream. Her hands trembled.

  "Who would want to kill him?" she asked.

  "I don't know, but I think we'll be able to find out. I need to use your phone."

  Estelle's arm quivered as she pointed at it.

  I strode across the room, lifted the receiver and called Figgis.

  He was silent while I explained what I'd discovered.

  I said: "If Gervase was in love with a girl who died in a motor accident, His Holiness must know who she was. If he can give me the girl's name, we can track her brother down."

  "Leave it to me," Figgis said. "I'll speak to Pope immediately. Come straight back to the office. I'll have the name by the time you get here."

  "What do you mean you don't know where His Holiness is?"

  I was in Figgis's office. It was less than twenty minutes since I'd left Estelle at Gervase's apartment.

  Figgis had slumped in his chair. He looked smaller than usual, as though he'd been dipped in a bath and shrunk. He seemed distracted. He picked up a tube of peppermints and put the end in his mouth, as though it were a cigar. Realised what he'd done and tossed the mints back on his desk.

  "What do I mean? Just what I've told you," he said. "Our editor has left the building and I don't know where he is. And it's at times like this that I miss my Woodbines."

  "But you told His Holiness about the girl, about the accident, about the death threat in the poem?"

  "Yes."

  "What did he say?"

  "He sat there looking as though the gates of Hell had just opened in front of him. His face couldn't have looked paler if you'd slapped on a coat of whitewash. Then he stood up and left the room. I assumed he was making for the lavvy. He looked as though he wanted to throw up. The next thing I know Joan Fotheringay, his secretary, is in the room telling me Pope has left and she doesn't know when he'll be back."

  "So you didn't get to ask him the name of the girl?"

  "No."

  "From which we could have discovered who the brother was. The brother that wants to croak Gervase."

  "No."

  Figgis's shoulders sagged. The lines on his forehead looked deeper than ever. There were black smudges under his eyes. His right hand worried away at a stray paperclip on his desk.

  I said: "I think we may be able to work out who Gervase's stalker is."

  Figgis looked at me with a flash of hope in his eyes. "How?"

  I showed him the photograph of the Blunderbuss Club members.

  I said: "Estelle told me she once caught Gervase looking at it and he seemed moved. At least his eyes were moist, which may not be the same thing. But I think we can conclude the photo meant something to him. This photo is dated to 1923, so it was taken a year before the motor accident mentioned in the poem."

  "So how does that help us?" Figgis asked.

  "I think the girl who died was the sister of one of the men in the picture. That's why Gervase was getting sentimental about it."

  "But we have no idea which one - there are twelve of them, apart from Gervase."

  "We can narrow the field. I think the brother we're looking for attended Harrow, the public school."

  "How can you know that?"

  "The poem reads like a verse from Harrow's school song. It even ends with the song's title - Forty Years On. The first time I visited Gervase's flat, I saw a picture of him at Harrow. The man we're looking for knows that Gervase would recognise the poem and take it as a serious threat."

  "So get on the dog and bone to Harrow and ask for a list of old boys who were at Cambridge in 1923."

  "I don't think so. For a start, the school would ask why I wanted the information. I could probably come up with a false answer but when they discovered the real reason they'd be off to the Press Council with a complaint. We'd both be in the firing line."

  "So what?"

  "We know the Popes have been a Sussex family for generations. Wherever this accident happened, there would have been an inquest on the girl's death which would have involved Gervase and possibly other members of the family. There's a strong chance we'd have carried a report of the inquest. The answer could lie in the morgue."

  Now there was a bit of hope, Figgis had regained his customary vigour. He reached for the peppermints and fiddled with the wrapping. Looked up and saw me watching him.

  "So why are you still sitting there?" he said.

  Henrietta Houndstooth crossed her arms and gave me her stern-eyed schoolmarm look.

  "We can't possibly do that today," she said. "Do you know how much extra work a general election creates for us in the morgue?"

  She was sitting at her desk. Two tall heaps of files threatened to topple onto the floor. Across the room, the Clipping Cousins - Mabel, Elsie and Freda - looked up from the files they were leafing through.

  "We have to check the file on every candidate," Mabel said.

  "Of every party," Elsie said.

  "In every parliamentary seat in Sussex," Freda added.

  "They're for the profiles the political reporters have to write," Henrietta explained. "So we simply don't have time to do what you want."

  Because the clippings files went back just twenty-five years, they wouldn't contain any information from 1924. So I'd need to look in the bound copies of the newspaper held on shelves at the back of the morgue. A much bigger job than pulling a clippings file.

  I'd asked Henrietta and the Cousins to help. If there was a report on the inquest it would carry the name of the dead woman. Depending on whether the reporter had stayed awake during the proceedings, it might also include more detail about what had happened when the car plunged into the river. And, if I was really lucky, it might even tell me which reach of which river.

  But it looked as though I'd have to do the job myself.

  I'd hefted one of the volumes of the 1924 copies off the shelf. It was bound in heavy cloth-covered board and smothered in a thin film of dust. It smelt like I'd just opened an old sock drawer. I leafed over a few pages to see what the job would involve. The paper ran to an average of twenty pages a day back then. So with six papers a week, there'd be 120 pages to scan each week, 6,240 pages during the whole of 1924. Double that if I had to look at 1925 - because inquests don't always happen soon after a death, especially if the circumstances are complex. Especially if lawyers get briefed. And as this involved the Pope family, I was certain m'learned friends would have been crawling all over the case.

  It would take me days to search through all the papers. I could never do it. Especially as Figgis would be pressing me for copy on the Clapham murder investigation and the Tussaud's robbery.

  But wait a minute… Would I need to search all the papers? Was there any way I could narrow down the hunt? The poem sent to Gervase had said that it was "forty years on" from the date when the events it described happened. It was now 1964 - so when I'd read the poem I'd taken it to mean what happened had taken place any time in 1924. But suppose the meaning was more precise than that. It was curious the writer had taken the trouble to deliver the poem in the early hours of the morning. Could that mean the forty year reference was more precise? Could today's date, in fact, be an
anniversary?

  Today was Friday 25th September, 1964. Could the tragic event have taken place on the 25th September 1924?

  I marched over to the shelf holding the bound back issues of the paper. Took down the volume for September. Turned to the paper for the 26th September, which would report events that took place the day before. The pages of the paper had become stiff and fragile over the years, but I turned them as quickly as I could.

  And there it was on page four.

  I felt my heart do a tango that Dolores Esteban would be proud of. It beat to a faster rhythm and I felt the flush that always appeared around my neck when I was excited.

  The story was a down-page piece because there were few facts. But there were enough. A Sunbeam 14/40 two-seat tourer had plunged into a stretch of the river Ouse at Barcombe Reach. The driver was a Mr Gervase Pope, an undergraduate at Cambridge University. He'd had a passenger, Miss Harriet Delaunay, believed to be from a well-to-do family living in the West Country. Miss Delaunay had drowned in the incident but Mr Pope had managed to scramble to safety.

  I followed the running story in subsequent issues of the paper. The pay dirt came in the report of the inquest. I used the report and the earlier cuttings to construct a narrative of the events that night.

  Gervase and Harriet had been on their way to a fancy-dress party at the country house of some friends. Gervase was dressed as a wizard in a long cloak covered with stars. Harriet was dressed as a witch, complete with conical black hat and a besom broomstick. On a lonely stretch of road by the river, the car slipped sideways. It hung suspended from the river bank with the two passenger-side wheels in the water, the two driver's side wheels clinging perilously to the land.

  In evidence, Gervase claimed he tried to pull Harriet to his side of the car. But the car slipped further. He climbed out hoping that he could gain a foothold on the bank and hold the car steady. But the loss of his weight from the land side of the car made the whole vehicle topple over into the water. Harriet slipped from the passenger seat and was trapped under the car. Gervase claimed he'd plunged into the water to pull Harriet to safety, but that she'd drowned before he could do so.