The car lurched all over the place: Caspian della Rosa was a very bad driver. As the car jolted suddenly, Posie sensed the change of direction and guessed they were now following the river along the Embankment, moving westwards through the town. She smelt the snow in the air, and the sharper tang of the briny river water filling her nostrils, and she knew they must nearly be there.
The car came to an abrupt halt, sending the three in the back seat nearly flying into the glass divide, and the man to her right cursed under his breath.
‘I know where we are,’ Posie said boldly from behind her hood. ‘Don’t think I don’t know.’ She was determined to retain the upper hand.
‘Where, then?’ drawled Caspian, as if enjoying a joke.
‘Winstanley Mews, SW3,’ she replied curtly.
There was a stunned silence in the car. The man to her right sighed wearily. ‘We must give you credit, Miss Parker. You really are very good at this detective game.’
They all bundled out of the car, and Posie was pushed forwards, blind-folded, over slippery cobbles. The air changed suddenly around her and she knew she had been pushed through a front door into a warm hallway. She was inside the very Mews House she had been meaning to visit this afternoon with the police in tow.
But how long would it take the police to get here now? She had not had the chance to share her information with anyone, and she knew that getting a Search Warrant for the club in St James could take a while; hours maybe.
She comforted herself with the knowledge that Inspector Lovelace would eventually find this address in the Members’ Address Book at the club, hopefully within the next few hours: she felt sure she would be able to keep herself alive for that long, at least.
She was pushed roughly up several narrow flights of stairs and as she took slow baby steps she breathed in a warm fuggy scent which she half-recognised: the smell of zirconium, very strong here; a lingering note of cat-nip; and above it all, a sweet, heavy perfume she knew must have been Lucky Lucy’s, and which, rather like a restless ghost, would not leave the place.
They went up at least three levels, and Posie realised this must be a very large Mews House indeed by London standards. She found herself standing at last on a flat, level surface and she was shoved roughly alongside a sharp-edged table, and manoeuvred backwards clumsily into a chair. Her bound hands were tied tightly to the chair behind her. A door closed somewhere and footsteps receded. She sat in the dark isolation of her black hood. Posie strained her ears for the sound of voices or for a hint of birdsong or the occasional horn of a car on the road outside. But there was only silence. She was left alone for what seemed like an age, with only the scared thumping of her heartbeat to keep her company.
The room was very hot, and the stink of zirconium was strong here. Posie started to feel drowsy, and against her will she felt herself nodding off. She had no idea how long she sat like that. She woke as the door behind her was yanked open and footsteps pounded the wooden floorboards around her.
Was that a muffled protest she could hear? Someone being dragged along? Someone struggling, shuffling along against their will? Was she at last going to be reunited with Len? With Dolly?
‘Who’s that?’ she shouted from behind the hood. ‘Who’s there?’
She heard more muffled sounds; it was a girl’s silenced voice, of that she was sure. She sensed someone squirming to her left, possibly at another seat, and she smelt the rancid stink of old sweat and fear. Dolly? Praise be if it was.
Suddenly she felt a familiar furry twisting motion at her feet and she heard loud purring.
‘Mr Minks!’ she cried with undisguised joy and was rewarded by the cat climbing against her legs, scratching her ten-denier stockings to pieces.
There was a clanking, clinking sound, as of teacups being set out around her. What sort of strange drama was taking place now?
Suddenly and surprisingly the hood was pulled off her head and she opened her eyes, expecting to blink against strong daylight, for it could only be early afternoon at the latest. But the room that met her eyes was dark; drawn with heavy curtains and blackout blinds and her eyes refocused in the dim light.
She surveyed the scene in a quick expert half-second: she was seated at one end of a long glass table and it was huge; it could have seated at least twelve comfortably. Directly opposite her sat Caspian della Rosa, smart in a dark suit, and beside him sat a smallish, plump man she had never seen before, although he seemed perhaps just a little familiar; his face was in the shadows, and he was immaculate in a pinstriped suit of an exquisite cut. Her eyes took in the shiny revolver which rested innocently on the glass table just in front of the Count’s crossed arms. Her stomach lurched.
In the same half-second she looked quickly to her left and sure enough, a few seats along and looking absolutely dreadful was Dolly. Relief flooded through Posie like a surge of fresh energy, but where was Len? Would he be brought out later as some final party piece? But at least Dolly was alive, just. Tears pricked Posie’s eyes at the sight of her friend, and at the memory of the disloyal doubts she had been harbouring towards her. The small girl was almost unrecognisable in her dirty and torn Pierrot costume from the night at the La Luna club; her small pretty face was a mask of pure terror, and her thick white and black days-old greasepaint was smeared and blurred by the tracks of many tears. She was bound and gagged and tied to her chair and she was staring at Posie with a mixture of relief and abject horror in her eyes.
‘It’s all right, Dolly,’ whispered Posie, horribly aware that she could be heard clearly at the other end of the table. ‘We’ll get out of here in time for supper. Just you see.’
Caspian della Rosa threw back his head and laughed. A third man was darting around pouring coffee into fine bone-china cups. Posie recognised him as the lanky man who had been dressed up as a policeman earlier, who had convinced her to get in the ‘police car’. A cup was set down in front of her and the coffee was poured, although Dolly did not get any. The lanky man then left the room.
A quick glance around told her she had been right: the Mews House was enormous; it must originally have been two houses which were then knocked together. Count della Rosa must be impossibly rich, richer than she had thought likely. The top floor of the house was one gigantic room, but it was not like a room from a normal house: its walls were covered on all sides by the same lead casing she had seen everywhere at the La Luna club, sound-proofed. Pieces of paper were taped up all over the metal walls. It was a workroom, a base. It had the effect of looking like a police investigation room, but more sinister.
Out of the corner of her eye on the nearest wall Posie saw maps: maps of Europe and what looked like South Africa and South America. Arrows and notes were pinned up over all of them.
‘Tell me how I’m supposed to drink this with my hands bound behind me?’ Posie said flatly, indicating with her eyes downwards at the coffee and then looking directly at the Count.
‘First, tell me you’re going to help me. Then I’ll see what I can do.’
The Count smiled and played with the gun in front of him casually, like a toy. The man to his side flicked it very softly and it spun neatly out of the Count’s reach and into the shadows. Dolly shrieked beneath her gag. It was the first audible noise she had made.
‘Me? What can I do for you, Count della Rosa?’ Posie answered, genuinely surprised.
The Count laughed again. Dolly had started squirming frantically in her seat and was flashing warning looks at Posie. She was squeaking loudly under her gag like a petrified canary.
‘Be quiet, woman,’ the Count barked at Dolly, his irritation showing for the first time. He smiled his wolfish smile. His eyes, even in this dim light, were blazing.
‘You took something which belonged to me earlier,’ he smiled. ‘Now tell me where it is and I’ll see about that coffee.’
‘The black diamond of the Maharajah, you mean?’ Posie said, head held high. She sensed both men across the table stiffen with tension.
She continued assuredly:
‘It isn’t yours. You know that the Earl of Cardigeon has it. I expect that horrid little Manager at the No 11 club in St James has already told you. You weren’t as clever as you thought you had been, were you? I managed to track you down there, through a spider-web of documents. I know all about you, Count della Rosa! You don’t scare me at all. You’re nothing but a lousy show-off and a murderer to boot: whatever Lucky Lucy did to you, she didn’t deserve to die like that. You beast.’
Dolly was squeaking furiously now behind her gag, her eyes rolling in fear. Something Posie had said caused something in the Count to snap, and his smiles and laughter were now gone. He stood up angrily. His eyes flashed violently:
‘Tell me where he will put it. Back in the bank vault in the name of his idiot son?’
‘Sorry. I’m not telling you,’ Posie replied tartly. ‘And where is Len exactly?’
The Count looked faintly amused for a second, then thumped the glass table furiously. He clawed to his right and searched for the gun in the shadows. For some reason he couldn’t locate it. Instead, he marched around the table empty-handed, furious, and untied Dolly from her chair, pulling her upwards by her short crop of bleached hair. She screamed behind the gag.
He pulled Dolly along, behind where Posie was sitting. As he passed Posie’s chair he leant over and hit her coffee cup deliberately, causing it to smash. Splinters of china and scalding hot coffee ran across the table-top, and cascaded down over Posie’s lap. Mr Minks mewed in terror and leapt away. Posie could only twist and turn, trying to avoid the hot liquid as best she could, feeling her good tweed coat absorbing the worst of the flow.
Suddenly there was a CLICK, and the area next to their glass table was brightly flooded with harsh electric light.
Posie twisted her body around to look at what was happening. The Count had marched Dolly over to a long rough-wood trestle table which had previously been hidden in the shadows, and Posie now saw that the room was used, among other things, as a developing studio for photography. Shallow trays ran the length of the trestle table containing shimmering liquids and dark viscous solutions. No wonder the air in here was so noxious.
A pile of finished photographs were stacked neatly at the end of the table. With one hand still gripping Dolly’s hair, the Count grabbed at the top photograph.
‘Recognise yourself?’ he sneered and threw it at Posie. The photo was a blurry snap of Posie at the Ritz Hotel, stepping over the body of Lionel Le Merle, on her way to find Rufus on the Monday afternoon. So then: she had been trailed by this lunatic since this whole sorry mess had started.
‘Or these?’ Caspian della Rosa was throwing others her way in a manic rush: a photo of Posie standing petrified, arms outstretched on the top step of the club at St James on Monday evening; a picture of her squatting near the body of Lucky Lucy at the La Luna club on Tuesday night, among policemen and photographers; a snap of her walking in the street, among crowds and umbrellas, turning around, looking nervous. That had probably been taken yesterday, after the Inquest.
‘Still not scared? You see, Miss Parker, I know all about you, too. And there are more. Many more.’
She looked at the Count full-on and did her best to shrug as if it meant nothing to her.
‘You don’t frighten me.’
‘Don’t I? Oh, but I should. Oh, dear. I seem to have misplaced my gun temporarily. But there is more than one way to skin a cat, Miss Parker, is there not?’ he smirked. ‘If you will forgive my choice of words.’
He grabbed Dolly’s head and pushed her face almost fully into one of the trays on the table, holding her just centimetres above the gloopy liquid. He emitted a manic burst of laughter. Was it possible the man was actually deranged? Dolly was whimpering like a dog who knows its final hour has arrived.
‘Do you know what this chemical is, Miss Parker? It is pure liquid cyanide. If I hold your little friend’s face under for just a couple of seconds the show will be all over. Don’t believe me? I’ve had lots of experience. Most recently here on Monday afternoon when Georgie, who you know as Lucky Lucy, took a little bath in the stuff. I think it took about three seconds for her to die. Not much of a curtain call for an actress, would you say?’
Posie gasped, her heart was thudding like a hammer against her chest.
‘So tell me about the diamond.’
‘Of course!’ she stuttered, her words running over themselves, her horrified gaze never leaving Dolly’s stricken face.
‘The Earl doesn’t want it in his family’s possession any longer. It will be returned to the Maharajahs who originally owned it. It will leave on the first boat out of England, on course for India.’
‘When?’ snapped the Count. Posie shrugged:
‘Look up the newspaper listings. Perhaps as early as tomorrow? Now let Dolly go.’
For a second the Count looked across to where he had been sitting before, at the glass table in the far corner.
‘Good, I will track it down. Thank you. It should not be difficult.’
Posie exhaled in relief as she saw his grip on Dolly loosen, and she saw a blind moment of panic in the girl’s eyes as she too looked over to the glass table where Caspian had been sitting, where the silent second man still sat alone in the shadows. Posie had forgotten all about him.
She twisted her head back again suddenly as the Count started to laugh again. His laugh chilled Posie to the bone and she saw that he was indeed a man unhinged. He grabbed at Dolly again and with his free hand pulled off her gag, forcing her face downwards again into the tray of liquid cyanide.
‘Worthless little wretch!’ he shouted just before Dolly hit the pan of liquid. ‘Did you really think I would let you live?’
‘No! No! What are you doing!’ Posie screamed. ‘That’s not fair! I’ve given you the information!’
But at the same time she was conscious of a sudden movement in the corner of the room, in the shadows. Someone was standing up, a low voice resonating through the room, filled with a quiet authority:
‘No. Enough now.’
And at the same moment she heard the soft click of the trigger of a gun, a whizzing sensation and a bullet passing within a hair’s breadth of her face, skirting past Dolly and coming to rest in the lithe chest and treacherous heart of Count Caspian della Rosa.
For a second the Count looked shocked, disbelief etched across his handsome face, before collapsing backwards onto the wooden floorboards. Dead as a doornail.
Dolly stood wide-eyed and totally silent. She didn’t look at the dead man at her feet at all. She glanced instead into the corner at the second man who had saved her.
Posie wished she could stand up, take the girl in her arms. She felt sick to the bottom of her stomach but she had to be strong. ‘Dolly, come here, untie me. We’re safe now. Caspian della Rosa is dead.’
Dolly covered her mouth and trembled.
‘You’ve got it all wrong, lovey. I was tryin’ to warn you,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not dead at all. You should be very, very scared. Everyone else is.’
Posie tried her best to laugh – the body on the floor was not moving at all. Was poor Dolly delusional after her traumatic ordeal?
CLICK.
More lights flicked on and the whole glass table was suddenly harshly illuminated. The head of the table was now occupied by the small, stocky man in the pinstriped suit; the man who was such a brilliant shot. An expert killer in fact.
‘Your friend is right,’ the man said in a melodious, foreign-lilting voice, tilting his head to one side in slight amusement, playing with his coffee cup.
‘I am the real Count Caspian della Rosa; the Swiss aristocrat who contacted the police today to complain about my invasion of privacy. I hoped to put them off my scent. They swallowed it too. Hook, line and sinker.’
He smiled reassuringly. ‘Have no fear. I can assure you I am one hundred per cent the genuine article.’
****
Twenty-Three
Posie swallowed. ‘I don’t understand. How can it be that this dead man here has been posing to everyone as Count della Rosa?’
‘Oh, but he didn’t. Only to you.’
The man took a calm drag of his coffee, and wiped his lips with an immaculate strawberry-pink handkerchief.
‘But why?’ Posie stammered.
‘Because I told him to, of course. He always did everything I told him to. Well, until recently anyway. He was my wingman. My mouthpiece.’
‘But why did he lie to me? Why did this man pretend to be you?’
The man smiled briefly. ‘I needed you to fall just a little bit in love with a glamorous idea…’ The man trailed off into silence: he seemed to be hundreds of miles away.
Posie had no idea what he was on about. She decided on a more concrete tack:
‘You don’t seem very upset now he’s dead…’
The man shrugged easily. ‘Cecil was a paid thug. A useful one; a handsome one. But he was a thug all the same, and just lately he was becoming reckless in many ways. Dangerous for me. He had to go.’
‘Cecil? So the Inspector was right…and I was wrong…he was Cecil Chicken?’
‘The very same. It was his real name too! A laughable name, is it not? But sometimes, you know, the truth is far better than fiction. All of my workers are required to work under their own names, unless of course I instruct them otherwise. It makes things easier; more plausible if they are ever questioned.’
Posie exhaled. She stared at the man seated in front of her. He seemed personable enough, but was he just another crank, some madman? She hoped to goodness that the police would arrive soon. The gun, she assumed the Belgian revolver so reverently spoken of by the Forensics Officer, Mr Maguire, still lay horribly close to the man’s plump little hands.
She looked at the man narrowly. ‘Who are you? Be straight with me.’
‘I’ve told you already. I am a Swiss Count. I can trace my family back at least six hundred years, in fact. I could show you my papers and my passport but I sent them across to Scotland Yard, to that nice Commissioner, first thing this morning. Just about now one of my associates will be picking them up for me. They are one hundred per cent genuine. But I see by your face that you still don’t believe me, Miss Parker?’
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