by Donald Bain
Chapter Twenty-one
“I can’t believe you did this without consulting me, Jessica,” Lucas Darling said as he paced the floor of my suite. Seth Hazlitt and Morton Metzger were there, too. It was nine o’clock the following morning. Sunshine blazed through the windows of the suite, but the weather forecaster on the BBC predicted that a storm of some magnitude would be hitting the city by late afternoon.
“Lucas, you are simply going to have to trust me,” I said from where I sat at a rolling table on which my breakfast had been served.
“The lobby is swarming with press people again,” Lucas said.
“Think of the publicity.”
“I have been, but that’s not the point. You simply cannot spring these bombshells without talking to me first. I am, after all, the secretary.”
“I know, I know, Lucas, and please stop pacing. Sit down, and let’s discuss this quietly. When you get this upset, your voice goes up an octave and you sound like a countertenor in a bad opera.”
He sat.
“Let me see if I have this straight, Jessica,” Seth said. “You got up to the microphone at the end of dinner last night and said you would be making a major announcement soon concerning the authorship of Gin and Daggers?”
“That’s right.”
“What Mr. Darling here is gettin’ at, Jess, is that you shouldn’t be comin’ up with such surprisin’ announcements,” said Morton.
“No, I suppose I shouldn’t, but I did, and that’s that. In the meantime, I suggest we enjoy the day. We won’t be here much longer.”
“Just because the conference is coming to a close doesn’t mean you can leave,” Lucas said. “No one can until Marjorie’s murder is solved.”
I ate the final bite of my English muffin.
“When do you intend to make this announcement, Jess?” Seth asked.
“Tomorrow,” I said, dabbing at my mouth with my napkin. I crossed the room to where I’d tossed my raincoat on a chair.
“Where are you going?” Lucas asked.
“Out for a good, brisk walk before the bad weather sets in. Anyone care to join me?”
Lucas jumped to his feet, ran to the door, and splayed himself across it. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me more about this announcement.”
Seth and Morton came to my side; together, we formed a defiant trio. “Coming with us, Lucas?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said glumly. We went downstairs and got into a waiting taxi. “Kensington Gardens,” I told the driver. “The Albert Memorial.”
“Why are we going there?” Morton asked.
“No special reason,” I said. “It’s a pleasant place to walk, and I haven’t been there in a long time.”
We left the cab and stood at the foot of four wide flights of granite steps leading up to the neo-Gothic spire that juts 175 feet into the air and is ornamented with mosaics, pinnacles, and a cross.
“Who was this Albert fella?” Morton asked.
“Prince Consort to Queen Victoria,” I said. “Come on, let’s head for the palace and pond.”
As we walked, Lucas asked, “Where did you go after the dinner last night?”
“To my room.”
“I tried you there a number of times and you never answered.”
“I heard the phone, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I let it ring. The hotel operator took your messages.”
Lucas looked at me skeptically. I smiled in return and picked up my pace. There was no need for him, or anyone, to know just then that after making my announcement at dinner, I’d gone to my room and called George Sutherland at his home. I felt a little guilty inviting him out for a drink because he must have assumed I wanted to pursue the idea of a personal relationship. He suggested a pub in Covent Garden called the Punch and Judy. We met in its quiet upstairs bar overlooking the piazza and I had an old tawny port, while he had a Courage best bitter. I tasted his; it had a wonderful nutty flavor, but I stuck with my port. We talked for an hour, and he drove me back to the hotel, which I entered with trepidation, but was relieved to find that no one I knew was in the lobby.
Lucas, Seth, Morton, and I strolled the parklike gardens of the palace where Victoria, and Queen Mary, wife of George V and grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, were born, the only inhabited royal palace in London whose state apartments are open to the public.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I said as we left the palace grounds and walked to the Bayswater Road in search of a cab. We approached a small stand from which a young boy sold newspapers. He shouted out the most provocative headline of the day: “AINSWORTH MURDERER NABBED. READ ALL ABOUT IT, AINSWORTH MURDERER NABBED.”
Lucas literally jerked the paper from the boy’s hand and stared at the front page. “Look, Jessica.”
We gathered around him and looked down at the headline. Sure enough, that’s what it said.
“You look, you pay,” the boy said. Seth handed him money and we moved a few feet away. Lucas read the short front-page article aloud to us. The gist of it was that Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector George Sutherland had announced that evidence had been gathered to support a murder charge against Count Antonio Zara, Marjorie Ainsworth’s Italian brother-in-law. Italian authorities had been notified, and once an arrest was made, extradition proceedings would begin immediately.
“I never did trust him,” Lucas said.
“Nor did I,” I said.
A line at the end of the story indicated that other material concerning the Ainsworth murder could be found on an inside page. Lucas turned to it. The lead item was my announcement at the ISMW dinner that I would be revealing startling information about the true authorship of Gin and Daggers. My picture accompanied the story. Lucas looked at me and said, “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
“About what, Count Zara being accused of Marjorie’s murder? Of course I didn’t. If I had, you would have been the first to hear.”
His expression was a mixture of skepticism and confusion.
“Let’s get back to the hotel,” I said. “There’s an empty taxi.” We ran to it and got in.
“This was a lovely stroll, Jessica, but I don’t see the purpose of it.”
“Lucas, must there always be a purpose to everything? I just felt like a walk, wanted to soak up a little bit of London before we left. Now that the murder has been solved, I suppose we’ll be able to leave on schedule.”
“Fine with me,” said Mort Metzger. “I can’t stay forever. I don’t have many vacation days left.”
I patted his knee. “Morton, it was so good of you to use your vacation to come here to give me support.” I said to both Mort and Seth, “You are dear friends, and I am very fortunate to have you.”
We pushed our way through a large crowd of press people at the Savoy who shouted questions at me, most pertaining to the announcement I promised to make, some dealing with the news that Ona Ainsworth-Zara’s husband, Count Antonio Zara, had been charged with Marjorie’s murder. I stopped and said, “The announcement I promised will be made tomorrow. As for the charges against Count Zara, I can only assume that the painstaking investigation undertaken by Chief Inspector Sutherland of Scotland Yard has successfully pointed to Count Zara, which comes as a relief to every other suspect… including this one. Please, I have nothing else to say until tomorrow.”
Lucas, Seth, and Morton wanted to come up to my suite, but I dissuaded them. I went there by myself, locked the door, and sat down at the desk. The Times had been delivered to the room, and I carefully reread the front-page story and the inside items pertaining to Marjorie Ainsworth.
I went downstairs and used the rear entrance shown to me early in my stay by the assistant manager, grabbed a cab, and said, “Pindar Street, please.”
Jason Harris’s landlady was sitting on the front steps smoking a cigarette with a neighbor. She screwed up her face when I approached as though trying to remember where she’d seen me.
“Good morning,” I said. “Has Mr. Maroney return
ed?”
She cackled. “No, and not likely he ever will.”
“I want to leave another note under Mr. Harris’s door.”
“No need to do that,” the landlady said. “She’s up there.”
“She?”
“The little dark one, Harris’s bird. She paid up his rent, she did. Can’t take that from her.”
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping between the two older ladies and going up the stairs. Jason’s door was partially opened. I pushed it open the rest of the way and said, “Maria.”
Maria Giacona stood by the window holding a handkerchief stained with blood to her nose.
“Maria, what happened?” I asked, going to her. Now I saw a purplish yellow lump above her left eye. “Who hit you?” I could think only of Jason Harris, of course.
She looked at me with those large, brown, pleading eyes and sat on a crate used as an end table. She continued to cry and to attempt to stem the flow of blood from her nostrils. I crouched down and placed my hand on her knee. I was about to ask her again who’d struck her, but the question was suddenly rendered unnecessary. I raised my face and sniffed the unmistakable scent of Victorian posy in the small room, certainly not the sort of fragrance Maria-or Jason Harris-would use.
“Maria, was Jane Portelaine here? Was she the one who hit you?”
She shook her head. I didn’t believe her.
“We should get some ice for your nose and eye,” I said. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll find a pharmacy. That nasty-looking bruise is getting bigger every second.”
She slowly moved the handkerchief away from her nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. “Lie down with your head back for a few minutes,” I said.
“No, I have to go.”
She started to get up, but I pushed down on her knees. “Maria, you must tell me if Jane Portelaine did this to you, and why.”
She gently touched her nose with her index finger, and examined it for fresh blood. She said, “I heard what you plan to do, Mrs. Fletcher. You are going to announce that Jason wrote Gin and Daggers?”
“You read the paper.”
“Yes, and saw it on the television. Are you really going to say that?”
“Yes, because I believe it to be true. I would do anything to avoid injuring the memory of my friend Marjorie Ainsworth, but I think there is a greater truth at stake here. Although Jason is no longer alive to receive the accolades he deserves, his talent should be recognized.”
A small smile came to her face.
“I knew you’d be pleased, Maria. Where have you been? You disappeared so suddenly.”
“I had to get away, Mrs. Fletcher. Jason’s murder was too much for me to bear.”
“I understand. I just wish you’d kept in touch, that’s all. Why did you come to the flat today? The landlady said you paid Jason’s back rent.”
“Yes. I thought I would live here for a while. I couldn’t bear to be near this place after he was killed, but now I have a need to touch everything that was his.”
“I understand that, too.” I did, of course. I’d gone through similar shifts in emotion after Frank died.
I suggested again that we find a pharmacy, and this time she was agreeable. We went downstairs and I asked the landlady for the location of the nearest one. She looked at Maria’s face and shook her head.
I repeated my question, and she told me there was one two streets away. Maria had started to walk in the direction the landlady pointed. I quickly asked, “The tall, thin lady who was here. How long ago did she leave?”
“The scarecrow? No more than fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you.”
The pharmacist invited us into the back room of his shop, where he prepared an icepack for Maria to hold against her face. He said there wasn’t anything else to be done, except report the attack to the police.
“No one attacked me,” Maria said. “I fell.”
“And I’m the Duke of Windsor,” he said. I offered to pay him, but he wouldn’t accept anything.
We left the pharmacy and walked slowly down the street until we reached a small pizza parlor. “Feel like a slice?” I asked. “I haven’t had pizza in a long time. Is the London version as good as we have back in the States?”
“I don’t know. I have never had pizza in the United States.”
“Come, let’s enjoy some pizza and a cold drink and talk a bit.”
She was more relaxed as we sat at a Formica table in the pizza parlor. I said, “Jane Portelaine is supposed to be on vacation in Spain. Why did she come to see you? Why did she hit you?”
“Mrs. Fletcher, I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“I suppose I can’t make you, but I have tried to be helpful. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Ms. Portelaine. Was it someone else?”
“Why do you think it was her?”
“Because I could smell her perfume. She uses a great deal of a fragrance known as Victorian posy. I smelled it in the room.”
“I might as well tell you what happened, Mrs. Fletcher. There’s nothing mysterious about it. I’d only met her once, through Jason, although I knew a lot about her. He would tell me what an ugly, nasty person she was, how much he hated her. He’d used her to get close to Marjorie Ainsworth, and said he wanted to stay close. Then she learned that Jason and I were lovers.”
“Why would it bother her that you and Jason were lovers?”
“Because…”
“Because she’d been Jason’s lover, too?”
Tears formed in Maria’s eyes. I said, “I’d heard about them having a relationship of some sort, although I can’t imagine she was nearly as meaningful to him as you were. Did you know about any romantic or sexual involvement between them?”
“No, I did not. I always assumed Jason was faithful to me.”
“Had the relationship between them been going on right up until the time he died?”
The tears came freely now and she shook her head, not as a denial but as a signal that she wanted to stop the conversation. I said, “Yes, I understand. This must be very painful for you. Frankly, I’m not only surprised that Ms. Portelaine is here in London, but that she would actually strike you. She’s never impressed me as the type of person who would resort to physical violence.” I’d no sooner spoken the words than I realized they weren’t exactly true-there had always been an edge to Jane’s personality.
I finished my soda. “Now that Jason is dead, Maria, what would cause Ms. Portelaine to attack you? I could better understand it if a relationship between them were going on at this moment, but Jason is dead.”
She wiped her eyes with a napkin, careful not to press on her nose or left eye, and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Fletcher, you’re a very kind person. I think what you are doing tomorrow, letting the world know that Jason wrote Gin and Daggers, is a wonderful thing.” She stood, turned on her heel, walked from the pizza parlor, took a right, and, by the time I reached the sidewalk, was lost in a crowd of people.
The press was still at the hotel when I arrived. So was Lucas. He bounded toward me, grabbed my arm, and said, “Trouble, Jess.”
I assumed he meant the press, and laughed it off.
“Not down here, Jess, up in your suite.”
I didn’t have a chance to ask questions because Lucas literally propelled me through the crowd and to the elevator, where a Savoy security guard kept others from getting on. We said nothing on the ride up, but the minute we were in the hallway, Lucas said in a stage whisper, “Everybody who’s ever been involved with Marjorie is waiting for you. They are furious.”
“Furious about what?”
“At your plans to announce tomorrow that Marjorie did not write Gin and Daggers.”
“Why should they be furious? What if it’s true?”
“Jess, we’re-no, I take that back. They’re dealing with stakes much bigger than your sense of honor and fair play.”
“Who let them in?” I asked.
“I okayed it. I did
n’t know what else to do.”
As we entered the suite, everyone started talking at once.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I take it there is a message you wish to get across to me, but I will get it only if I hear one voice at a time.”
They sat on a long couch-Clayton Perry, Marjorie’s American publisher; Bruce Herbert, her American agent; Archibald Semple, her British publisher; and the London book critic, William Strayhorn.
“Is it true that you are going to announce that Marjorie did not write Gin and Daggers?” Strayhorn asked.
“I really don’t intend to reveal what I have to say until tomorrow, but yes, it does concern that.”
“Are you crazy, Jessica? Do you know what this will do to Marjorie’s reputation?” Perry asked.
“No, Mr. Perry, I am not crazy. Yes, I do know what this will do to Marjorie Ainsworth’s reputation, and, in my judgment, it will do very little. Her preeminence in the field of mystery writing-all writing for that matter-has been established over the course of many, many years and involves countless books. If she did not write this latest book, her fans will still think of her as the writer of all the others that gave them so much pleasure.”
“Don’t do it, Mrs. Fletcher,” Archibald Semple said weakly from the corner of the couch. “She was a British institution, and we do not make it a habit of attacking our institutions.”
I pulled a chair from the desk and placed it in front of them. “Gentlemen, can we please separate concern over Marjorie’s reputation and concern over the loss of profits if people are told that she didn’t write Gin and Daggers?” I looked at Bruce Herbert, who had said nothing. He raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes, and turned in the general direction of the window.
I continued. “No one thought more highly of Marjorie Ainsworth than I did, and no one in this world is more concerned about honoring her memory. However, there is the matter of a young man named Jason Harris, whose throat was slit, whose face was battered, and who was tossed in the Thames. He is the one who should receive literary credit for writing Gin and Daggers. I’m sorry, but I intend to see to it that he receives his just due.”
Strayhorn, the critic, stood and assumed a statesmanlike posture across the room, his elbow casually resting upon the mantel of the suite’s small fireplace. “Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, “I think it is safe to say that you believe in books.”
