Skylark

by Sheila Simonson

  I kissed him. "Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Ann cleared her throat. "He'll send a car, he says. Fifteen minutes?"

  "Fine."

  * * * *

  I spotted ferret-face halfway through the second page of photographs Sgt. Wilberforce showed me. Ann had already had her turn and was waiting for me in Thorne's office.

  "That's the one."

  "Are you quite sure, Mrs. Dodge?"

  "Quite," I said coldly. I hadn't forgiven Wilberforce for Sunday, and I don't think he'd forgiven me, either.

  "And you can't identify the other man, the assailant?"

  "I saw his shoulder and the back of his head as he left the train. I might be able to pick out his suit fabric but not his face."

  He closed the book, and I rose.

  "Mrs. Dodge?"

  "What is it?"

  "If I spoke too heatedly on Sunday I beg your pardon."

  I stared at him. He did not look or sound penitent, but neither was I. "I think you meant what you said, sergeant, and anyway I gave as good as I got."

  At that he smiled slightly. "True."

  I nodded. "It's okay. Is there anything else you'd like me to look at?"

  "No. Inspector Thorne wants to speak to you."

  "Certainly."

  Sgt. Wilberforce cleared his throat. "Were you really an Olympic basketball player?" Ah, the background investigation. They had been thorough.

  "I was chosen for the 1980 team. If you recall, the U.S. team wasn't allowed to go to Moscow that year, so I didn't make it to the Games."

  "That must have been disappointing."

  I gave a rueful grin. "You can say that again."

  He laughed. "I can but I won't." He showed me into Thorne's office, seated me beside Ann, and reported that I had identified the same man Ann had also recognized.

  Thorne rubbed his hands, beaming. "Thank you very much indeed, ladies. Happen we'll have chummy in custody this time tomorrow."

  "Who is he?" Ann asked, taking the words out of my mouth.

  "An old lag, name of Albert Parks. Sparks, he's called. Pick-pocket, burglar, failed con-man, general handy-man to the big boys when he isn't behind bars. I wouldn't have thought of Sparky in this case. He's an old-fashioned crook, not violent by nature. I shall have words with Master Parks."

  I said, "The woman on the Tube, er, Mrs. Watt, did she identify him, too?"

  "She wasn't sure. He was one of three she thought were possible. She also gave us a possible on the knife-artist."

  "Milos's assailant?" Ann asked, breathless.

  "Yes. Do you think you might be able to pick that one from a line-up?"

  "I saw his profile for a second." She lifted her huge purse to her lap. "I'll try, certainly. Inspector?"

  "What is it, lass?"

  Ann was pink with embarrassment, but she spoke steadily. "I was so worried over Milos's disappearance, I reported it to the people at the Henning Institute."

  Thorne's smile faded. "Eh?"

  She lifted her chin. "The Henning Institute. They have offices in Blooms..."

  "I know who they are. Why, Mrs. Veryan?"

  I could see Ann swallow, but her grave voice didn't falter. "I still think Milos was spirited away from that hospital against his will. I told the woman I contacted all the circumstances and explained what I knew of the papers. I think the Czech secret police may have abducted him to keep him from revealing information their government wants to hide. You've had Milos's papers for a week now. Have they been translated?"

  "They have." He spoke without expression. "I'm not at liberty to tell you the contents, but they are not germane to my investigation."

  Ann returned his gaze. "Very well, inspector. I thought I ought to let you know what I'd done. I'll apologize--when I've seen Milos and talked to him."

  I thought Ann might add a flurry of soothing phrases, but she rose with great dignity, shook hands with Inspector Thorne, and smiled at Wilberforce.

  I said, "Congratulations, Inspector. We'll sleep easier when Parks and his partner are in custody." I, too, shook hands.

  Thorne said heavily, "In the matter of Miss Beale's murder, I trust neither of you will leave town without notifying me."

  "I've learned my lesson." I looked at Ann.

  "I'm just sure you'll find him and that he'll spill the beans right off." Ann was gushing a little. "He looked like a weak personality."

  I shook hands with Wilberforce. "You're an inch or two too short to play professional basketball, sergeant, but I hope you'll try the game for fun. It's an exciting sport at any level of skill."

  Wilberforce inclined his head. "I think there's a court in Chelsea."

  "Good morning, ladies," said Thorne in tones of dismissal. We left.

  Chapter 12.

  When we got home I rousted Jay out, and we ate lunch while I told him about our identification of Parks. I think all three of us were relieved to put a name to one of the criminals. I know I was.

  After lunch Ann and I took Jay off for a look at Parliament--Ann's idea of the minimum a tourist should see in London--and a nice walk along the Embankment to the Tate Gallery--mine.

  Jay was being biddable. He gawked obediently at Westminster Hall, deplored the fact that we would have had to wait until Wednesday evening to see a session of the House of Commons, and strolled with us through the hordes at Westminster Abbey. We made him admire the statues of Churchill and Emmeline Pankhurst. He said good things about Rodin's Burgers of Calais, too, but I think he preferred the equestrian statue of Richard I riding loftily off in the direction of Pimlico. At the Tate, I was merciful. We drank in the Turners and left the rest for later.

  The three of us dined at a pub off Sloane Square and took the Tube home. We had to show Jay exactly where the assailants had got off, and he scouted their possible escape routes. It was nearly ten when we climbed on a westbound car. He made us wait for a Circle Line train, in case its carriages were different from those on the District Line. I think they were, marginally. Something to do with the doors. He stopped just short of making Ann and me reenact Milos's stabbing.

  It was early for theatergoers and late for everybody else, so the carriage was almost empty. I nearly overbalanced showing Jay how I had caught Milos. He wanted to know my angle of vision and Ann's. The handful of passengers watched us, wide-eyed, as we got off at South Kensington.

  Jay wasn't particularly interested in the South Ken station, though the scene there, where we had waited for the paramedics to come for Milos, evoked the experience more vividly for me than Sloane Square. The last of the news vendors was packing it in as we left the station. Ann bought the Evening Standard.

  It seemed strange, approaching the house in the dark, not to find the constable standing on the steps and a reporter or two lurking. The press had definitely gone on to better things. I missed the policeman.

  I almost tried to unlock the gate to the areaway. Trevor's light was on in the basement flat.

  We entered the murky foyer, I batted the light on, and Ann sprinted for the door of our flat, key at the ready. Jay didn't follow us in immediately, and when he entered he was carrying a filthy lightbulb.

  "What's that for?"

  "I'm going to replace it." He began rummaging in the kitchen cupboards.

  "Won't the landlord object?" Ann asked.

  "His exalted lordship clearly hasn't seen the place since 1928." Jay found the light bulb stash and extracted a hundred watt bulb.

  "Yeah, but the janitor mops once a week," I said. "And collects the garbage."

  "Then he's in for an illuminating surprise."

  "He'll replace the bulb."

  "You can keep substituting stronger bulbs. Maybe he'll get the point. Show some initiative, Lark. I don't want you and Ann coming into a dark foyer while I'm off in Yorkshire."

  Ann was heating water for tea. The kettle shrieked. "When do you go north, Jay? Friday morning?"

  "Yes, around ten. Harry Belknap will meet me at the Y
ork railroad station and drive me to Thirsk."

  "I want to come, too," I blurted.

  He frowned. "There are no facilities for families where we're staying, and the sessions will run late."

  "I could hire a car and stay at a B & B near Thirsk. It's supposed to be pretty country."

  "Hmm. That's a thought." He took the light bulb out into the foyer, leaving the door ajar, and returned almost at once.

  "No sign of neighbors." He was covered with dust. He headed into the bathroom.

  Ann was rattling teacups. She fixed Jay's herbal stuff in one of them and carried the laden tray into the living room. "Maybe you and I should hire a car in London and drive north to Thirsk, Lark. That is, if you don't mind company."

  "Good idea."

  Ann poured two cups of real tea, and removed the bag of wet herbs from Jay's cup. "Inspector Thorne just wants us to let him know when we leave and where we're going. He didn't say we couldn't leave."

  Jay reentered and sat in one of the armchairs. Ann handed him his cup and tried the idea out on him.

  He smoothed his mustache. "If Thorne makes an arrest, he'll want you to identify his suspect."

  I said, "We can't sit around waiting for that forever. If we had a car, Ann and I could drive back when he needs us."

  "Let's see what happens in the next couple of days."

  Ann gave me my cup of properly creamed and sugared tea. "I have to stay in London until the Henning people contact me."

  "Surely they'll act soon." I sipped, burnt my tongue, and set the cup on the end table. "Won't they?"

  Ann sighed. "Let's hope so, honey. Hanging around London indefinitely could get expensive."

  We batted the idea of going to Yorkshire around for a while then Ann went off to bed with her newspaper under one arm.

  Jay came over and sat on the couch beside me. "Do you want to come north?"

  "I want out of London." I wriggled against him. "And I want to be with you. Why don't you stay overnight with me at the B & B? Ann can rent a separate room, and I can drive you to the conference and pick you up in the evening."

  "And you and Ann can spend Saturday and Sunday exploring. Sounds good to me." He gave me a hug. "Time for bed, woman."

  "All you do is sleep."

  He gave me an exaggerated leer. "Not all."

  I think he had another nightmare that night. At least I dimly remember him getting up around two and coming back several hours later. I tried not to wake him when I got up at seven. He came out at eight-thirty, yawning and looking reasonably rested. Since Ann was up and in the kitchen, too, drinking coffee and reading the paper, I didn't question him.

  Ann was going to the public library, she said, and then meant to ramble around the Earl's Court area. I volunteered to call Thorne to see what he thought of our leaving for York.

  I reached him around ten. He didn't want us to leave London altogether but said he thought a weekend in Yorkshire would do us good. He could contact us via Jay's police conference. He even suggested that Ann and I travel up with Jay by train because of the horrors of driving through London. We could rent a car in York. I thanked him for the idea and hung up.

  Jay and I stared at each other.

  "Well, here we are," I muttered.

  "Undeniably. Are you going to show me Scotland Yard and the Old Bailey?"

  The thought didn't fill me with enthusiasm, but it was something to do.

  Jay found the area around Scotland Yard disappointing. I think he wanted something hung with gargoyles and flying buttresses, but the Metropolitan Police have existed less than two hundred years, and that part of the city was heavily bombed during the Second World War anyway. Except for St. Paul's, the architecture is nineteenth and twentieth century.

  Since we were so close to the Barbican Centre, I took Jay to see the fateful cafeteria. He thought the complex looked like a second-rate suburban mall. I thought it looked like a first-rate suburban mall. We settled our difference of opinion amicably by visiting the Museum of the City of London, which is unlike anything in any suburban mall, being one of the most human museums anywhere. Jay fell in love with the fire engines. We looked but did not eat at the cafeteria.

  In fact, we hopped on the Tube during the rush hour--at roughly the same time Ann and Milos and I had boarded the carriage the week before. I was feeling phobic by the time we reached Charing Cross, but I gritted my teeth and didn't say anything because I owed Jay a panic attack. At least the train didn't halt in the tunnel.

  Beside me, Jay was doing a very unEnglish survey of our fellow passengers. I almost asked him not to stare. The train lurched and swayed, passengers swarmed on and off the car, and I recited my mantra under my breath. When we decanted onto the South Kensington platform, I pulled Jay over to the bench Ann and I had sat on.

  "Hey, you showed me this last night."

  I said through clenched teeth, "Let me breathe for a minute."

  He sat beside me. "What is it...oh. I'm sorry, Lark."

  "It's the rush hour crowd. It was like this when Milos was stabbed." I closed my eyes, wondering if I'd have to put my head between my knees.

  Jay took my hand and sat with me as the commuter tide ebbed and flowed. He didn't say anything. The P.A. system crackled out its garble. A train pulled in on a gust of stale air.

  I opened my eyes. "Okay. Let's go."

  There was no point in sprinting with three or four train-loads of commuters surging like spawning salmon up the grimy staircase and through the toll gates. We flowed upstream at their speed, but I was half-running by the time we reached street level and the open air. We dashed across the traffic island to the far side of the Old Brompton Road.

  Jay touched my arm. "Slow down, ace."

  I was gulping air. "Okay."

  "Show me the famous car dealership."

  I reversed course in front of the Post Office, and we inspected shop windows. My stationer-copyist, the pharmacy, a travel agent, a tiny bureau de change. The car broker's window displayed a glowing BMW in metallic blue-grey and a carmine Porsche. A salesman was showing the Porsche to an upscale couple in matching tan burberries. There was no sign of Trevor--unsurprising, given the late hour. The dealership would close at six.

  We strolled on. I rarely approached the flat from that side. Jay found the gardens interesting--the burglar's egress. The wrought-iron fencing and elaborate gate looked impenetrable to me, but he suggested half a dozen ways to get in. Getting out was easy. We walked all the way around the cul-de-sac on which the terrace of houses lay and came in from the opposite direction.

  Ann was cooking southern. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cole slaw. The only things missing were okra and peach pie. We contented ourselves with a peach sorbet she had found in one of the shops and didn't miss the okra. Ann and Jay settled down for a look at the news, and I took the telephone into our bedroom to call my father. No dice, no package.

  Thursday the weather finally broke. The day dawned clear and almost balmy. A few fat puffy clouds sailed across the sky, and the wind was light. It was ideal touristing weather. Unfortunately we had to do laundry and pack. A tiny Laundromat, which I had learned to call a launderette, lay only four blocks away near the Lycée Charles de Gaulle. It opened at half-past eight, so Jay and I headed for it while Ann held down the fort. She was still waiting for the telephone call from the Henning people, and she had also volunteered to make train and B & B reservations for the northern jaunt. In return I would wash her clothes, and we could all sightsee in the afternoon. That was the deal.

  I let Jay haul the duffel bag full of dirty laundry the four blocks while I toted the change. English coins are heavy and English Laundromats expensive, so the burden was not as unequal as it sounds. I did carry the detergent.

  Jay and I sat on the stiff wooden benches and read our morning papers--for some reason he had decided to patronize the Telegraph--while the four loads, two white and two colored, whirled and sloshed. He had made it through the night without bad dreams and wa
s full of energy. He wanted to see the British Museum in the afternoon. That seemed reasonable. I intended to poke through the Bloomsbury bookshops.

  Five other people, one the attendant, filled the tiny establishment to capacity. None of the four customers spoke English. That gave Jay and me status with the attendant, and she actually changed a pound coin for us. The others pantomimed their desire to change assorted bills, but the woman just compressed her lips and shook her head. Another bewildering example of London retailing.

  In all likelihood three-fourths of the launderette's customers would lack the right change, yet there was neither a coin machine nor a till. I knew from sad experience that none of the surrounding shops would make change either. A greengrocer had ticked me off so rudely when I asked to change a pound coin that I had since boycotted him, though his produce looked luscious. He probably lost a lot of customers that way. So did the launderette. By nine all but one of the other patrons had wandered disconsolately off, dirty clothes bags trailing, in search of the right change.

  Jay watched them go and gave me a grin that showed he was onto the situation. The attendant poked a batch of clothes into one of the driers, humming cheerfully to herself. Maybe she was xenophobic. The machines whirled and spun. I had finished the Independent, and Jay and I were loading the communal wash into two driers when Ann entered.

  "What's up?" I asked. She looked pink and rather pleased.

  She glanced at the attendant who was watching us with bright-eyed curiosity. "Uh, we had a call. Parks has been picked up. Mr. Thorne wants to see us right away."

  I looked at Jay over a load of wet sweats.

  "Go ahead, Lark. I'll bring the stuff home when it's dry."

  "Thanks." I handed him the remaining coin hoard and gave him a hug. "See you at the flat in an hour or so."

  "No problem."

  Ann and I caught a cab at the taxi rank in front of the Norfolk Hotel, and we were being ushered into Thorne's office within ten minutes, me in jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, Ann looking proper in her flowered dress.

  Thorne entered beaming. "Well, ladies, we finally nicked Sparky. I trust you'll pick him out of the line-up."

  I had been trying to visualize the tout all the way to the station. "I hope so."