by Sara Rosett
I sat in a chair with a tubular metal frame. “How did you get into the flat?”
“With Alfred’s key.”
“Did you take it from his room when you took the notebook?”
“No, silly. Alfred gave it to me weeks ago. When Mum and Daddy were so upset with me about him, Alfred gave me a key and told me if things got too grim at Parkview to come stay here. Oh, you needn’t look so scandalized. It wasn’t like that. He was usually gone. He spent a lot of time at Archly Manor. He meant I could stay here when he wasn’t here.”
“So did you visit him here?” I asked, wondering if the hall porter had been mistaken in the identity of the woman who’d visited Alfred’s flat after all.
“No.” Violet looked down at the sofa and picked at one of the buttons on the upholstery. “I could never get up the courage to do it.” She looked at me from underneath her lashes. “I like to think I’m avant-garde, but I’m actually quite conventional. It’s a rather lowering discovery.”
“Aunt Caroline would be so relieved to hear that.”
“Don’t you dare tell her.”
“You have to keep her on edge, is that it?” I asked.
“It’s why I get so much. Gwen never pushes. I do. Mum and Daddy know I’m going to push, so they give in to me more than they do to her.”
I didn’t say anything about the hall porter identifying Gwen as a woman who had visited Alfred. Instead, I asked, “How did you get past the hall porter?”
“I made a friend of the lift boy. He was easy to bribe with sweets. He kept a lookout and let me know when the hall porter was gone. He whisked me upstairs, and no one was the wiser.”
“And your lift boy, has he been bringing you food?”
“His taste runs to fish and chips, which I am getting a little tired of.”
“You’ve been here since yesterday?”
Violet nodded. “I came directly here from Archly Manor.”
“I thought so. Gwen was sure you’d gone to Parkview Hall, but I didn’t think you would do that.”
Violet looked horrified. “I’d never go back there. Not now—not after they found that cufflink. I’m sure that’s the first place the police went to look for me.”
“I believe you’re right.” I’d heard from Gwen that the police arrived shortly after she did and made a complete search of Parkview Hall. “Your parents are distraught.”
Violet jumped up and walked to the curved windows. “I’m sure they are, but I’m distraught as well. Don’t they realize if I go to Parkview I’ll be arrested?”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly true.”
She turned quickly from the window. “But it’s a possibility.”
“An outside possibility, I’d say.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not going back there.”
“Well, you can’t stay holed up here indefinitely.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“For one thing, this flat will probably be let soon. They might even start showing it.”
Violet frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I suppose it’s a question of who owns it. Did Alfred rent the flat?”
“I have no idea. He never said.”
“You don’t know?” I asked.
“Alfred and I had better things to talk about than property,” Violet said. “That’s something Daddy would be interested in, not Alfred.” She plunked down on the sofa again.
“Violet, I discovered something about Alfred you should know.” My tone must have conveyed the seriousness of what I was about to say because she looked up, her eyebrows drawn together. She held completely still as I told her what Jasper and I had discovered. When I finished explaining that the village Alfred said he was from didn’t exist, she blinked several times and then dropped her head back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling. “I felt as if something else was coming—something terrible about Alfred that I didn’t know.” She closed her eyes briefly and rocked her head back and forth against the cushion. “I didn’t know him at all.”
“He never told you anything except his fake name and the made-up bit about India?”
“No. Never. He didn’t want to talk about his past, but I thought it was because the death of his parents bothered him. One doesn’t push about things like that.”
“Of course not.”
I looked around the flat, which had an impersonal feel to it. The contemporary furniture was serviceable and plain. No portraits or photographs were displayed, and no books, magazines, or newspapers had been randomly discarded. “I hoped to have a look around the flat, but it doesn’t feel as if Alfred lived here long.”
Violet tilted her head. “How did you get in?”
“I bribed the hall porter.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Well done. I didn’t think of that.”
“What do you say we have a look around? Perhaps we’ll find some hint of who Alfred really was.”
Violet sat up. “Let’s take this place apart.”
Violet tackled the job with a ferocity that surprised me. From the living room, I could hear her slamming drawers and muttering to herself as she went through the bedroom. It didn’t take me long in the living room. I looked through the few drawers in the side tables, which were empty, then checked the drinks cabinet, but it only contained liquor. I went to join Violet, but stopped short on the threshold of the bedroom. “It looks like a bomb went off in here.”
She looked up from her seat on the floor. “What?”
“The room. It will take forever to put everything back.”
She waved a hand. “Never mind that. Come look.”
Printed playbills surrounded her. “I found them in an envelope under his socks. Vaudeville—Alfred was a performer. Here, look at this.” She thrust one of the playbills at me and pointed about halfway down the list of performers to a photo of two men in tuxedos. The younger man was definitely Alfred, but the name listed under his photo was different.
“Clyde Roberts?”
“It has to be him. It’s the only name in common on all of these.” Violet was sorting the playbills into stacks. “That one is the most recent—last year—and shows he had a partner, but these others, the older playbills, all list Clyde Roberts in various acts—singing, dancing, and acting.”
I read the name of Clyde Roberts’s act from the playbill, “The Dapper British Gents. Tap dancing and repartee most posh—”
The snick of a key sliding into the lock of the flat’s front door startled both of us.
Chapter Twenty
Violet and I exchanged an alarmed glance, then she hunkered down behind the bed. She would be hidden from the view of anyone walking down the hall, but I was in the bedroom’s doorway. The handle of the front door turned. I stepped behind the open bedroom door, but didn’t have time to shut it before the front door opened.
Someone with a heavy tread strode in, shoving the door closed. I looked through the crack between the door and the frame, then mouthed the word Sebastian to Violet.
Her eyes widened as she popped up from behind the bed to have a look. I waved her back down, but she ignored me.
Sebastian had been in the process of pocketing his keys as he walked down the hall, but he glanced into the living area and came to a sudden stop, his hand half in his pocket. He surveyed the room, then his gaze darted to the bedroom.
Violet stood up, hands on her hips. “Sebastian, you gave me a terrible fright. What are you doing here?”
He let the keys fall into his pocket and frowned at her. The hall was dim and the light coming in from the living room highlighted the hollows around his eyes and gaunt cheeks. “I think the question is, what are you doing here?”
“Staying for a few days while I figure out what to do. Alfred wouldn’t mind. How did you get a key?”
A small smile crossed Sebastian’s lean face. “It seems I should ask the same thing of you. This is my flat.”
“Your flat?”
“Yes,
I lent it to Alfred.”
Violet swallowed and seemed to be speechless for a moment. I decided it was time to announce my presence. I stepped out from behind the door. “Hello, Sebastian. This being your flat makes perfect sense.” I handed him the playbill Violet had given me. “I have the feeling you were the one person in London who knew Alfred’s true identity.”
He stared at the playbill a moment before he took it from my hand. He blew out a long stream of air through his nose. “The cat is well and truly out of the bag now.”
“You knew?” Violet advanced around the end of the bed.
Sebastian didn’t say anything for a moment, so I said, “Sebastian would have to know. He made Alfred’s deception possible.” I turned to him. “Didn’t you?”
Sebastian didn’t reply. Instead, he went through the door to the living room and across to the windows. He stared at the view for a moment. Violet and I followed him into the room. Without turning, he said, “Yes, it’s true. I did know. Alfred was”—he lifted the playbill—“Clyde Roberts.”
“But why?” Violet asked. “Why would you do that—deceive everyone?”
Sebastian dropped the playbill onto the crowded side table, then took out a cigarette and lighter. He lit his cigarette and began walking back and forth in front of the windows. “It was a rag.”
“A rag?” Violet’s voice was faint, barely above a whisper. She plunked down onto the sofa.
“A joke?” I asked. “This whole thing was a rag?”
Sebastian rubbed his forehead with the heel of the hand that held the cigarette as he paced. “I didn’t intend for it to go this far.” He gestured at Violet. “I had no idea—or intention—that it would get so out of hand.”
Violet gripped the arm of the sofa. “I want to hear exactly what happened. Tell me all of it, the whole story.”
“All right. You deserve that.” Sebastian sat down in the chrome chair I’d occupied earlier and hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees. I slid into the matching chair across from him, but he didn’t seem to be aware of my movement. His thoughts seemed to be focused inward. Without lifting his head, he glanced at Violet out of the corner of his eye. “You knew I went to America?”
“Yes, New York.”
“New York was the first place I visited. I was with my father, and he had an invitation to visit an old school chum who lived in Chicago. So we went out there and spent a few weeks with him. His son took me to a vaudeville performance.” Sebastian tapped the playbill. “Alfred—or Clyde, as he was calling himself—performed. He was the epitome of a dapper but daft English gentleman. He and his partner wore tuxes and interspersed tap dancing with a running commentary of jokes. They brought the house down, and the girls in the audience swooned over him. My friend and I hung around the stage door afterward, trying to meet two of the female dancers who had been in another act. They let us take them out to dinner, and somehow Clyde managed to get himself invited along as well. After dinner, the girls insisted they had to get back to their boardinghouse because they had an early train to catch the next day.”
Sebastian drew on the cigarette, blowing the smoke up to the ceiling. “Once the girls left, the conversation shifted back to the performances. I’d been surprised when Clyde spoke with an American accent throughout dinner. I genuinely thought he was a Brit. Turned out, he had an affinity for accents and could pick up anyone’s. At dinner he ran through his repertoire—German count, British gentleman, Australian rancher, Irish pub owner, French playboy. My American friend who had brought me to the show said he thought that if Clyde was in England, he could impersonate a British gentleman without raising any eyebrows.”
Sebastian leaned back in his chair and examined the end of his cigarette. “That was how it started. A throwaway line at dinner. But it seemed like it could be a great deal of fun. It would require careful planning, but if I could pull it off, it would be spectacular, the rag to end all rags—elaborate and extended.”
Of course the idea would appeal to Sebastian. “It would be quite a coup, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “Even better than fooling the dean at your college into thinking you were a prize-winning scientist.”
Sebastian frowned. “As I said, I never intended for it to go this far. It was supposed to be a joke that would last a few weeks. A delightful little diversion to liven things up. We would fool everyone then reveal the truth.”
“Alfred—Clyde, I mean—dropped everything and came with you to England?” I asked.
Sebastian drew on the cigarette and said through his exhale of smoke, “I said I’d finance the whole thing and threw out a number that I’d pay him if he left the vaudeville circuit that night and came back to England to participate in my little—er—show. Alfred said one show was as good as another, and he was getting tired of the vaudeville circuit. I took him to my friend’s tailor the next day and outfitted him with enough clothes for the return voyage. We also agreed on a new name. We picked Alfred Eton. We both thought it was a great joke—a royal first name combined with an elite school.”
“But what about his family?” Violet asked.
“Alfred was an orphan. He wanted a fresh start in a new country. I told him he could come with me and fulfill the role for a few weeks. Then when the truth was revealed, he could keep the clothes and the ‘salary’ I’d agreed to pay him. He could set himself up in England.”
I said, “So the bits about India, his dead parents, and you being his godfather were all manufactured.”
Sebastian stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray and leaned back in the chair, smoothing his hand over his slicked down hair. “I’m afraid so. A history in India made it plausible that he wouldn’t know anyone in England. He needed a connection, someone who could sponsor him in society. The relationship of godfather was distant enough that I might not have been in touch with him for years, but it gave me a reason to know him and introduce him around town.” He looked at Violet and pressed his lips together for a moment. “He was only to play the part for a few weeks, and then it would’ve been over.”
I said, “But your creation got away from you.”
“Yes, my little Frankenstein came to life and wouldn’t follow directions.”
“Why didn’t you just expose him? Tell everyone the truth?” I asked. “After all, you were in charge of the whole thing. Once you removed your support and financial backing”—I glanced around the apartment—“Alfred’s impersonation would collapse.”
Sebastian rearranged his suit jacket, which already fell in a perfect line. “A—um—difficulty arose.”
I leaned forward. “Alfred had something on you,” I said as the thought popped into my mind.
Sebastian looked as if he’d experienced a physical pain.
Violet said, “He was blackmailing you too.”
Sebastian tensed. “There were others?”
“Alfred had a proclivity for blackmail,” I said.
“Nasty habit,” Sebastian said. “No wonder he ended up dead.” He threw an apologetic look at Violet. “Sorry, my dear. I’m rattled. I had no idea.” He straightened his already flawlessly arranged suit jacket again. “How do you know this?”
I looked to Violet. “It’s your story.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have said anything, should I?” Violet rubbed a hand across her forehead and looked toward the door.
“The word is out now,” I said. “You’d better tell Sebastian.”
Violet shook her curls back from her face and let out a long sigh. “I suppose I must now. I found a notebook of Alfred’s with a list of names—well, actually, they were nicknames—and amounts. But I don’t remember anything that could have been related to you, Sebastian. Did he ever ask you for money?”
“No.”
Violet looked at me, her brows drawn together.
I said, “Continuing the masquerade as Alfred was more valuable to him than money. He wanted Sebastian’s silence.”
“Correct,” Sebastian said. “He wanted use of the flat an
d the motor and my credit with shopkeepers.”
Violet shifted back to Sebastian. “What hold did he have over you? You don’t seem to care at all what people think of you.”
Sebastian ran his thumb down the perfect crease in his trousers. “He found a photograph I took of a certain woman.” He hesitated, then said, “The wife of an ambassador. It was a bit . . . risqué, or at least some people would consider it improper. He threatened to release it to the newspapers, and I couldn’t have that. I may be a scoundrel, but I draw the line at besmirching a lady’s reputation.”
Violet smoothed the folds of her dress. “I had no idea Alfred was so . . . so . . . selfish. I suppose he thought the whole thing was a great joke, and he was enjoying it too much to give it up.”
“I think that’s partly true. He did enjoy the trappings.” Sebastian glanced around the apartment. “But I believe he sincerely cared for you and didn’t want to lose you. I suppose he was afraid if you knew the truth—that he was a penniless orphan from America—you’d want nothing more to do with him.”
“That’s not true,” Violet said, looking down at her lap.
Sebastian and I exchanged a look. I knew those words were more wishful thinking than fact. Appearance mattered to Violet, and I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t had a clue about the depths of Alfred’s personality or his true motives. She simply wasn’t interested in things like that. Bright, sparkling fun—that was her main concern, or it always had been. Perhaps her attitude might change after this.
Sebastian cleared his throat. “So I was not the only one Alfred blackmailed?” His tone was halfway between amusement and irritation. “I should have realized if he blackmailed me, he would do it to others.”
“Yes, he certainly didn’t stop with you,” I said, “but I’m afraid we don’t have proof of it.” I looked toward Violet.
“What?” Violet looked up. “I’m sorry. I missed what you said.”
“Proof. We don’t have it.”
“Oh. Yes.” Her shoulders slumped. “My fault,” she said to Sebastian. “I burned Alfred’s notebook. I wasn’t supposed to have it, you see. I panicked, thinking that the police would arrest me if they found I had it.”
