Blackstone and the Burning Secret (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 4)

by Sally Spencer

  ‘That doesn’t matter now,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, it bloody doesn’t. I’ve no wish to belong to a Force which colludes in giving way to blackmail. Don’t you realise what damage you’ve done? From now on, any serious criminal who wants to raise some cash in a hurry has only to hold the Government to ransom. Because you won’t be able to hide from the London underworld what you’ve done. Trust me, it’ll be the talk of the East End pubs by tonight.’

  ‘Then it will be nothing but idle gossip—because no money has been paid,’ Todd said.

  ‘If that’s the case, why are Mouldoon and Rilke fleeing the country?’ Blackstone demanded.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Todd said, ‘but from what I have heard of them, this country is far better off without them.’

  He sounded so sure of himself, Blackstone thought—so convinced of the rightness of what he was saying.

  ‘Perhaps the ransom was paid without your knowledge,’ he suggested to the Assistant Commissioner.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Todd said flatly. ‘I have many friends at the heart of the Government. They would have told me if such a thing had occurred. Besides, the only member of the Cabinet in favour of paying the ransom was Lansdowne himself, and, as you know, he has been completely discredited.’

  ‘Then why…?’ Blackstone asked, confused.

  ‘You may leave now, Inspector Blackstone,’ Sir Roderick said. Then he added, with some relish, ‘And if I were you, I’d start packing up whatever personal effects you have in your office, because, after this display, I can almost guarantee that you’ll be thrown out of it by nightfall.’

  *

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Blackstone complained to Patterson. ‘None of it makes any sense. The whole operation was about money, and yet Mouldoon and Rilke are leaving the country without a penny.’

  ‘Then maybe—just possibly—it wasn’t about money at all,’ Patterson suggested.

  ‘What else could it have been about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the Sergeant admitted. ‘But there’s been something distinctly odd about this case right from the beginning.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for a start, the arsonists didn’t do anything like as much damage as they could have done.’

  ‘We’ve already explained that,’ Blackstone said impatiently. ‘Lansdowne wanted to get his hands on the money, but he didn’t want to hurt his own country too much—especially when it was at war.’

  ‘Then there’s all the clues,’ Patterson said.

  ‘What clues are you talking about?’

  ‘The ones that just seemed to fall into our laps. Take the ones that led us to identifying McClusky, for example. He didn’t need to personally bribe Constable Quail to leave the letter on the fire engine. He could just as easily have used somebody else to do it, but—’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to make absolutely sure that I received the message,’ Blackstone interrupted.

  ‘…but if he had used someone else, Quail would never have smelled the workhouse soap on him. If Quail hadn’t smelled the soap, you would never have gone to St Saviour’s. And if you’d never gone to St Saviour’s, you wouldn’t have found the money and passport wrapped up in the House of Lords notepaper.’

  ‘So McClusky, acting through over-eagerness, made a big mistake,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Then there’s the fact that Davenport just happened to have a business card from the Austro-Hungary Club on him when we fished him out of the river. If he hadn’t had that card, we’d never have gone to the club. And if we hadn’t gone to the club, we’d never have met Mouldoon and Rilke, nor got our description of Lord Lansdowne.’

  ‘We always rely on a few lucky breaks in our job,’ Blackstone argued. ‘You know that yourself. At least half the cases we work on would never be solved without them.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ Patterson conceded. ‘But doesn’t it strike you—even for a moment—that this case has been just a little too easy?’

  ‘It hasn’t felt easy at all,’ Blackstone countered, his tone an uneasy mixture of irritation and perhaps a little doubt. ‘If it had been easy, Sergeant, we’d have had all the criminals locked up by now. And what do we have instead? The dead body of one of the arsonists, and the sure and certain knowledge that the rest of them are going to get away with it!’

  ‘But get away with what?’ Patterson asked. ‘If they don’t have the money, they haven’t actually got away with anything.’

  It was true, Blackstone thought, suddenly feeling sick. If they hadn’t got the money—and he now didn’t believe that they had—then they were coming out of the whole business with nothing at all!

  The phone rang, and Patterson picked it up.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Yes, this is Sergeant Patterson. What can I do for you?’ There was a pause, while he listened to what the man on the other end of the line was saying, then he continued, ‘I think it might be better, under the circumstances, if you talked to my boss.’

  Blackstone shook his head lethargically, but Patterson still held out the phone to him.

  ‘It’s the American Consul-General,’ the Sergeant mimed.

  Lacking the will to fight against Patterson’s obvious insistence, Blackstone took the phone. ‘How can I help you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s more a question of how I can help you,’ the Consul-General replied, chuckling.

  The man seemed pleased with himself, Blackstone thought. Inordinately pleased.

  ‘I take it you have some information that you wish to impart to us, sir?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘Indeed I do. It’s about our friend—the one who calls himself Mouldoon,’ the Consul-General said, not the least put off by Blackstone’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘I know who he really is.’

  It didn’t really matter now whether he was Robert Mouldoon or Billy the Kid, Blackstone thought. Whatever his real name, the man would be on a boat to France within a few hours.

  ‘So who is he, sir?’ he asked, doing no more than just going through the motions.

  The Consul-General chuckled again. ‘He’s what I like to call—strictly for my own amusement—a robber baron,’ he said.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A robber baron. Or, to be more accurate, the son of a robber baron.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, sir,’ Blackstone confessed.

  ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t have,’ the Consul-General agreed. It’s kind of complicated. Why don’t you and your sergeant come round to the Consulate and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  *

  The three travellers were sitting in the dining car of the Dover Express. They had done no more than pick at the food they had ordered, but they had already almost drained their third bottle of the best vintage champagne that the railway company could offer.

  The train pulled into a small station, and a number of passengers disembarked.

  ‘The Brits have got a real nerve to call this a main railroad line,’ complained the man who—until now—had been known as Mouldoon, as he looked out of the carriage window. ‘Hell, back in the States, our kids have got model railroads this size—laid out on the lounge floor.’

  ‘Everything in America is big,’ responded the man who was travelling under the name of Rilke. ‘Great Britain, on the other hand, is not “great” at all. It is a mere pocket handkerchief of a country.’

  ‘You got that right,’ Mouldoon agreed.

  ‘Yet somehow,’ Rilke continued, his voice thick with contempt, ‘this pocket handkerchief country has contrived to control the destiny of so many other peoples—including my own.’

  ‘But not for much longer,’ Mouldoon said.

  ‘No, not for much longer,’ Rilke agreed with a complacent smile. ‘And you, my friend, must lay claim to much of the success of our little venture. You have done absolutely splendidly.’ He turned towards the third member of the party—the woman—and
raised his glass high in the air. ‘And you, too, Madam! You also have done splendidly.’

  The woman glanced down at the table, with a modesty which was as becoming as it was false.

  ‘It was easy for me,’ she said, raising her head again after silently counting three beats. ‘I’ve had the training. But you two have been truly amazing. To take over the leading roles without even having a walk-on part before—that is a dazzling achievement.’

  Most men find it hard not to bask in the approval of a beautiful woman, and Rilke and Mouldoon did not even try.

  ‘If you’d played the same roles on Broadway, you’d have had all the critics positively falling over themselves in excitement,’ the woman continued. ‘The reviews would have been wonderful.’

  ‘Yes, it is kinda sad, in a way, to think that our performances will never get the acclaim they deserve,’ Mouldoon said.

  Rilke chuckled. ‘Come, come, my dear friend, you are not an actor, but a hard-headed businessman,’ he said. ‘True, you may not get the acclaim which these thespians thirst for, but you certainly get your reward—which is much more important to you.’

  ‘Still, a good review would be nice, especially for me,’ the woman said wistfully.

  ‘If you ever wish to tread the boards again, that should present no problem at all,’ Rilke assured her. ‘My country is truly a land of opportunity, as America once was. Your husband is taking full advantage of that opportunity—so why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘That’s true enough, honey,’ Mouldoon said. ‘If you want to appear on the stage, well, hell, I’ll just buy you a theatre.’

  ‘Champagne!’ Rilke said, signalling to the waiter. ‘We need more champagne.’

  33

  The American Consul-General looked as pleased with himself in the flesh as he had sounded over the telephone. ‘Yes, sir, I pride myself on my ability to remember faces,’ he said, ‘but this has been a real tricky one. See, ever since the scandal broke, people of quality have been giving his family a pretty wide berth.’

  ‘Scandal?’ Blackstone said. ‘What scandal?’

  The Consul-General chuckled. ‘I guess that will be obvious to you when I reveal the name of the man in the sketch.’ He spread his hands in a flourish. ‘The man we’re talking about is no other than Lucas Tyndale.’

  ‘Who?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Lucas Tyndale! The son of Hopgood Tyndale!’

  ‘I’m still not following you,’ Blackstone admitted.

  The Consul-General looked disappointed. ‘Well, I guess our famous families just aren’t as well known to you Limeys as we sometimes think they are,’ he said regretfully. ‘Have you heard of him, Sergeant?’

  ‘I’m afraid not?’ Patterson confessed.

  ‘This Lucas Tyndale is famous?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Very,’ the Consul-General replied. ‘Although some people I know would much prefer the term “infamous”.’

  For the first time in hours, Blackstone began to feel his interest in the case quickening. ‘Tell me about him,’ he said.

  ‘A lot of guys made a lot of money out of building the railroads across the States,’ the Consul-General said. ‘Cornelius Vanderbilt made the most—the last I heard, he was still the richest man in the world—but there was still plenty left over for families like the Tyndales to gather up with their greedy little hands.’

  ‘So these Tyndales own railways?’

  ‘Railroads, we call them.’

  ‘Railroads, then.’

  ‘The Tyndales used to own railroads, but like I said, that was before the scandal broke.’

  ‘I still don’t know which scandal you’re talking about,’ Blackstone said, hiding his impatience.

  ‘You really don’t know much about us, do you?’ the Consul-General asked, wonderingly. ‘Here we are—the Young Giant, the country set to be the most powerful in the world—and you’re as ignorant about us as you are about some tiny country in the Balkans.’

  ‘So educate me,’ Blackstone suggested.

  ‘Be glad to,’ the Consul-General told him. ‘Nearly forty years ago we had a conflict which President Lincoln insisted was no more than a police action, but which most people think of as the Civil War.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ the Consul-General said. ‘Anyway, after the Civil War was over, the country really started to open up. There were plenty of opportunities for anyone prepared to grab them, and one group of men—I call them the robber barons—were prepared to do just that.’

  ‘Robber barons,’ Blackstone repeated.

  ‘Don’t quote me on that,’ the Consul-General said, suddenly sounding slightly alarmed. It’s not a very diplomatic thing to say.’

  ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ Blackstone promised.

  ‘These robber barons—these entrepreneurs—weren’t always exactly fastidious in the sort of business methods they used,’ the Consul-General continued. ‘One of them in particular had a personal motto which ran something along the lines of, “If it’s not nailed down, then it’s mine. If I can prise it up, then it wasn’t nailed down properly.” That wasn’t the official motto of the Tyndale family—though it might as well have been.’

  ‘Go on,’ Blackstone said encouragingly.

  ‘The Tyndales broke so many rules that in the end they couldn’t even bribe their way out of trouble. So Hopgood Tyndale found himself faced with two alternatives—give up control of the railroad, or go to jail. Matter of fact, by choosing the first alternative, he managed to come out of the whole mess with most of his personal fortune still intact. But he was still smarting, anyway. The Tyndales don’t just want money—they want to build empires. And that path’s pretty much closed off to them now.’

  ‘You’re sure that this Lucas Tyndale is the man in the sketch?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I’m convinced of it.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know if he’s had a falling out with his family—if he might, perhaps, have been disinherited?’

  ‘Far from it. Once I’d worked out who the guy in the sketch was, I rang some people who still know the family, and it seems that Lucas is as much the apple of old man Hopgood’s eye as he ever was.’

  But that made no sense at all, Blackstone thought. Why should a man who was due to inherit a fortune in America travel to London to become a pimp? Perhaps, despite the Consul-General’s assurances, they weren’t talking about the same man at all.

  ‘Lucas Tyndale could have changed since the last time you saw him, sir,’ the Inspector suggested. ‘He might, in fact, look very different to the man in the sketch now.’

  The Consul-General chuckled again. ‘He’ll not have changed,’ he said confidently. ‘He’s like that character in the book by Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Dorian Gray?’

  ‘That’s the guy—Dorian Gray! Sold his soul to the Devil, so he’d never look any older. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Lucas Tyndale—and his whole family, for that matter—had done just the same thing. They’re a good-looking family—angelic on the outside, pure poison from within.’

  But a pimp? Blackstone thought. Working as a pimp? It just couldn’t be the same man.

  ‘Besides, it’s no more than a couple of years since I last saw the guy myself,’ the Consul-General continued. ‘It was in Boston. He was with his new wife—a real stunner, I thought. She’s probably the reason I remember seeing him there at all—I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Matter of fact, now I think about it, I seem to recall that she was an English girl. I believe she was some kind of actress before she got herself married to Lucas.’

  Blackstone felt a shiver run through his body.

  It had all been too easy, Patterson had said earlier—and now he was starting to think that perhaps the Sergeant had been right.

  ‘Could you describe the woman to me?’ he asked.

  ‘I can do better than that,’ the Consul-General told him. ‘You really got my curiosity aro
used, so while I was waiting for you to get here, I looked through some of the society magazines that my wife likes to read—and I’ve found an actual photograph of her!’

  Blackstone’s hands were starting to twitch. ‘Can I see it?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure. Got it right here on the bookcase.’ The Consul-General reached for the magazine, and flicked through it until he came to the right page. ‘That’s her—Emily Tyndale.’

  It was a photograph of a group of women—all wearing large hats and carrying parasols—who were standing in a formal garden. The caption below said that the woman in the middle was Emily Tyndale, but Blackstone needed no such help to recognise her.

  ‘We’ve met,’ he told the Consul-General.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘That’s right. But she was using a different name then. Actually, she was using two different names.’

  ‘That’s incredible,’ the Consul-General said.

  ‘But nonetheless true,’ Blackstone countered, taking a second look at the photograph of Emily Tyndale—alias Sophia de Vere and Molly Scruggs.

  *

  The famous White Cliffs of Dover were no doubt still there, but any visitor wishing to catch a passing glimpse of them would have had that desire frustrated by the sea fog which had rolled in off the Channel.

  ‘We didn’t plan for this,’ Lucas Tyndale said.

  ‘No one can plan for the weather,’ replied the man who was still travelling under the name of Rilke. ‘But there is no cause for concern.’

  ‘If Blackstone finds out—’

  ‘Blackstone will find out nothing—or, at least, nothing that we do not wish him to find out. That has always been the beauty of our scheme—it has allowed us to maintain control over every stage of the operation.’

  ‘If he somehow manages to discover who we really are—’

  ‘It will do him no good whatsoever. In this country, for all its other failings, a man may still use whatever name he chooses to. We are perfectly safe.’

  ‘Then why did we leave London?’

  ‘Because that is what you wanted to do. For my part, I would have been perfectly happy to stay there, and watch our scheme come to its final fruition.’