‘I don’t know what to believe anymore,’ she said flatly, struggling with the new and doubtful information.
She shrugged. ‘I know I never came across any evidence for a Count at all. It seemed at points that he was just a myth. But people speak of him as if he really does exist, and usually in tones of fear. Are you saying all of that was you?’
‘Yes. And you have observed accurately that in my business dealings I am always very discreet. That is how we Swiss are; masters of secrecy. By necessity. I run an empire with connections stretching out all over the world, mainly run by Belgians; a clever people, with a great expertise in jewels. Hardly a soul outside of my staff at the Athenaeum Theatre would recognise me or know exactly who I am. Not one piece of paper will link me to anything, but here I am all the same: the most powerful man in all of Europe.’
Posie was certain now the man was deranged. She had to play this carefully. She kept an eye on the gun.
‘Of course you are,’ she smiled insincerely. Behind her, next to the body of Cecil Chicken, Dolly was silent and had not moved once. It was as if she had been turned to stone.
‘I will show you evidence if you will not believe me. But you know, Miss Parker, I am slightly disappointed in you. I thought you were a great detective…We have met before. Several times, in fact. Do you really not recognise me?’
Just then Mr Minks jumped up onto the man’s lap and started purring happily, unfaithful cat that he was. He looked cosy sitting there on the strange man’s lap. The scene reminded Posie of something. Just then the man looked over at Posie and laughed. He changed his parting and then slicked his hair forwards messily and when he spoke it was with a perfect English middle-class accent.
‘And now?’
Posie took a sharp intake of breath – it was the man who had visited Grape Street and pretended to be a client in order to take away Mr Minks! But what a difference a gesture, an accent made! These slight adjustments and he was another person entirely.
‘You should have been an actor,’ Posie said with what she hoped sounded like admiration rather than sarcasm. Behind her she heard Dolly stifle a yelp of fear.
The man spoke again in his normal voice:
‘Ah! Now you have hit the nail right on the head, Miss Parker! I knew we would get along fabulously. When I was a small boy all I could dream about was acting, and owning a theatre. But alas, in a noble family such as mine, I was told to forget all about my dream. There were other, grander plans laid out for me. But I continued acting off and on, over the years, even though it was almost always offstage. And this last year I finally got to realise my dream of owning a theatre.’
He turned and smiled widely. ‘And just this last week, what a lot of chances you have given me, Miss Parker, for acting! I have followed you around in all manner of disguises.’
Posie stared at the man in horror. So it was he who had been tailing her in his brogues and taking snaps, not the man she now knew to be Cecil Chicken.
He stood up and sauntered across to the wooden trestle table, carrying Mr Minks in his arms. He kicked the body of his wingman out of the way. He reached for the remaining stack of photos which Cecil Chicken had not thrown at Posie. He sheaved through them, smiling to himself:
‘I was busy on Monday: I was a photo-journalist at the Ritz, hungry for news of a murder. And then I followed you along Whitehall in the evening, and then I played a club servant at No 11, St James. And I was kept busy on Tuesday too: I was a shoddily dressed client with a fondness for tennis and stealing cats in the afternoon, and later on at my own nightclub I played a police forensics photographer. The next day I was an old Catholic priest. And today I have been a dawn cat-walker, and then a policeman! And I’m secretly thrilled you didn’t recognise me as being one and the same person. Quite a compliment.’
Posie’s head was spinning. He was right: she had not thought for one minute that one person could possibly be all these different people, some of whom she had noticed and others whom she had barely glanced at. But it made sense: what was it Len had said recently when he had slipped under the police tape at the closed La Luna club in search of Mr Minks?
‘That’s the thing with photographers…we’re almost invisible.’
And it was the same thing with a club servant, a priest…these people had been almost invisible somehow, blending into the background. Bit parts. Insignificant parts.
It was the same too with this strange man here who seemed so proud of himself. He was forgettable. He was like a blank canvas and if Posie had tried to sketch his face later on today she would have found it very difficult. It wasn’t that he was ugly; just that he didn’t register much of an impression. A perfect character actor, in fact, but one who would never, ever be a leading man. Not like the stunning man lying dead at their feet.
‘And it turns out you’ve been carrying a photo of me around with you all of today. I suppose without realising it.’ Across the man’s face flickered the merest glimmer of hurt. Then came the slow smile again.
‘Miss Price, please open Miss Parker’s bag and put the only photograph you will find within it on the table in front of her.’ He was whistling now, straightening photos and instruments on the wooden table as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Dolly fumbled with the catch on the carpet bag, breathing raggedly. She found the Belgian press-photo and put it on the glass table, avoiding the pools of still-wet coffee. She waited at Posie’s side.
Posie gulped and scanned the photo. The brightness of Lucky Lucy and the man she had thought of as Caspian della Rosa was undimmed, and she had trouble focusing on anything else. She forced her eye along the group, and now she saw him where she hadn’t even bothered to look before. The man who claimed to be the real Count della Rosa, the man just a couple of feet away from her now was the man with the ventriloquist’s dummy.
‘Oh!’ she gasped. She looked up. ‘So you all knew each other a long, long time, then?’
Posie looked again at the photo and now she noticed tiny, tiny details she had missed at first. She saw now that this man’s eyes had been locked firmly onto Lucky Lucy, and that he was wearing the same cool, calm smile that he wore right now; his grip on his ventriloquist’s dummy tight. Posie knew then that he had been wildly in love with Lucky Lucy. And she realised that somehow he had been the brains, the power behind the whole posed picture. He had stage-managed it. He had wanted it to look like this.
She knew in that instant that the man was telling the truth, that he was who he claimed to be.
‘The war years were happy times for us,’ he smiled. ‘We were forced to leave England for a while, but we all got the chance to act. They were productive days.’
‘I heard a rumour you were trading in weapons,’ Posie shot at him.
‘Productive days,’ he repeated mildly, ignoring her taunt. ‘Do you know what I called my ventriloquist’s dummy?’
Posie shook her head.
‘Cecil!’ he sniggered, kicking the body at his feet lightly. ‘It humiliated poor dear Cecil of course, on a daily basis, but then I pulled his strings in real life too, and paid him handsomely, so he couldn’t complain too much. And he received other benefits.’
‘Like what?’
‘Helping to run my vast empire, of course. And as you can see from that photograph, he got to pose around the place with my girl, my greatest love. Although it was just an act.’
‘Why did you let him?’
The man looked up at Posie directly and with a look of sheer incredulous surprise on his face.
‘Why do you think? A girl like Lucy was so beautiful that she lit up any room she walked into. Do you really think people would have believed she was my girlfriend? A man like me?’
For the first time Posie felt a tiny stab of pity for the man. He went on:
‘To all the world, Cecil was her perfect, beautiful match. Besides, too much attention on me in public would have exposed me. People would have questioned who I really was. It was alway
s paramount that I was never centre-stage. Cecil was my shield.’
The man had crossed to the other side of the room and flicked on another light-switch. Yet more boards covered in maps were revealed. Boxes wrapped in brown paper and string were stacked neatly along the far wall. The man seemed preoccupied, and nestled his chin in Mr Minks’ fur as if for comfort. He was standing looking at a map, consulting his wristwatch. All this time Dolly stood in silence.
Just then the strange atmosphere of the room was broken by a penetrating ringing noise. It sounded like a telephone, but could it be? Who on earth had a telephone in their own house? Posie tried to catch Dolly’s eye but the girl was watching her boss in silent stricken fear. The man crossed the room, past the brown-papered parcels. He released the cat and picked up the receiver and took the mouthpiece.
‘Yes, I’ll accept the call,’ he nodded. He waited a few seconds before speaking to someone he obviously knew quite well. He sounded irritated.
‘Which one? Kimberley, you say? I’ve transferred the money already, you fool. Get on with it. You know the score. Sign the papers. Get the place opened up and get mining.’ He slammed the receiver down and returned to look at a map.
Posie swung herself around as much as she was able to. Her fear had begun to ebb a little. She wanted to know the full story, and the man seemed talkative enough.
‘So why did you kill her, Lucky Lucy?’
The man stepped back into a shadow, and didn’t speak for what felt like a long time. When he spoke at last it was in a soft and resigned voice:
‘I didn’t kill her. I would never have been able to do that. I loved her too much. From the very first moment I set eyes on her on stage in Belgium, years ago. I loved her even though she betrayed me, and everything we had worked for. I didn’t see it coming: it was just a normal job for us, although the prize was very special.’
‘You mean the Maharajah diamond?’
He nodded. ‘I had been after it for years, ever since I had heard about it as a boy. We knew she had it at last. I had spies watching her. It was on her finger! All she had to do was get into our waiting car. I was sitting watching her in the Palm Court at the Ritz, unobserved as usual, drinking a soda-and-lime behind a newspaper. I had brought along a few men from the theatre as I suspected there might be trouble. I had seen something different about her in that last week; a brightness, a strange energy. Something told me she was going to steal that black diamond from right under my nose and run away. I was in danger of losing them both.’
‘The curse was at work again, you mean?’
He shrugged in the shadows. ‘I don’t believe in that really. But when she made a run for it I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised she had a gun on her, and I was surprised she shot poor old Le Merle. But I told Cecil to go after her and catch her up and I would try and sort out the mess she had left behind, clean up a little. That’s when I first saw you, tripping up the stairs…’
He tailed off into silence.
‘Cecil was good at his job. He caught Lucy and brought her back here. Home. But I had no idea he was going to kill her. And you were right: she didn’t deserve to die like that. I couldn’t forgive him. He had to die sooner or later. I had given him too much power, you see. At heart, he was always a magician. You were right about that too – he was a show-off, and he liked to live dangerously. When I told him to get rid of Lucy’s body I had no idea he would simply throw it in a cupboard at my own nightclub and make it look like a suicide, albeit shoddily done. It must have appealed to his sense of humour, to try and ruin her beautiful face and make it look like she had taken the cowardly way out too: he and Lucy had come to despise each other; they were always rivals in a sense, competing for my attention. He was simply delighted she was out of the picture.’
He sighed. ‘And likewise, when I told him to store the Maharajah diamond somewhere secure for the next few days, I had no idea he would do something as reckless as storing it in a pigeon-hole, unguarded!’
Posie stared at the man. Everything fitted together now, and yet somehow, she still didn’t understand.
‘Miss Price, please untie Miss Parker from her chair. I want her to come over here.’ The Count gesticulated loosely at the board he was standing in front of.
Dolly darted forwards and Posie felt her trembling, fluttering hands at her back, untying the rope. Dolly bent near her and made a show of having trouble with the knots, stalling for time, whereas Posie knew the bindings were already unfastened.
‘Be careful, lovey,’ whispered Dolly under her breath. ‘I’ve seen him in action, don’t believe his mild manners. He’s a devil of a man. He’s much more dangerous than his horrible side-kick the Chicken ever was.’
The telephone was ringing again. Under cover of its noise and the Count answering, Posie rose from her seat, whispering urgently:
‘And Len? Where is he? Have they got him bound up in some cupboard here too?’
Dolly shook her head almost imperceptibly: ‘No, you’re wrong, Posie. He’s not here. Never has been.’
A great shuddering wave of relief rippled through Posie and it was with a much lighter heart that she trotted across the wooden floorboards to the corner with the maps. The Count had finished on the telephone and looked pleased with himself.
‘I said I was going to show you my empire. And here it is,’ he waved expansively. ‘Some of it anyhow. The most important bits to me. See these? These are my diamond mines in South Africa.’
Posie stared at a map of a country she had never been to, a huge expanse of green. The green was studded with black pins, and in places they were so close together that it looked as if a great swarming mass of horrible insects were crawling over the paper. Tiny white paper inserts with incomprehensible details in miniscule writing were attached to each pin. The Count rubbed his hands together gleefully. In a few places, no more than ten or fifteen places perhaps, a bright red pin was attached to a slip of paper. Posie raised her eyebrow inquisitively.
‘These red pins are mines I do not yet have. But I want them. They are next on my list. In fact,’ and here he drew out one red pin and replaced it with a black one, ‘I have just acquired another. You probably heard me earlier on the telephone. A beauty.’
Posie looked down at the man. She realised for the first time that she was taller than he was, a good couple of inches taller. ‘But what I don’t understand is, if you own so many mines and you smuggle stolen jewels too, why on earth are you stealing the Cardigeons’ diamond, when you could obviously afford to just buy it from them yourself?’
The man laughed and his dull brown eyes were suddenly lit up with an incomprehensible fire.
‘I love everything about diamonds, everything. I collect rare treasures. And the black diamond of the Maharajah – it is perhaps the most famous in the world – do you really think it could be bought? That the Cardigeons would sell it to me? Of course not! To steal it is the only way. Even now my spies have located it. They have just telephoned me. It is to be sent out tomorrow on the HMS Endeavour. My associates will make sure it never leaves the country.’
Posie realised she had been wrong again. The man was mad, but it was a particular kind of madness, a driven sort of madness she had not encountered before. A wild, craven possessiveness.
‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ the Count said, his face becoming serious again. ‘I have more: castles in France and Belgium; mountain lairs in Switzerland; ranches in South America; nightclubs and speakeasies in New York. And money, my money, flowing everywhere.’ He tapped one of the brown-paper bundles stacked next to the skirting-board.
‘You mean counterfeit money? Produced in Soho using your photographic equipment and using Lucky Lucy’s forgery skills acquired at the Belgian mint?’
‘How astute of you,’ he half-bowed. ‘Although I am a pretty good forger myself, you know.’
The telephone rang again. He had been expecting the call, it seemed, and after the Operator had connected the caller, the Count
simply nodded.
‘I understand,’ he said quietly and replaced the receiver. He turned to Posie and smiled. ‘Whilst I dearly love London as my headquarters, I fear it is time to be on the move again. For a while at least.’
Posie shrugged. Why on earth was he telling her all of this? Surely he knew she would go straight to the police and tell them all she knew? Why was he being so reckless? They stared at each other.
‘What do you want with me?’ she said in a half-whisper.
He laughed indulgently.
‘Oh, come, my dear. Surely you know the answer to that?’
She shook her head. Behind her she felt Dolly slip her tiny clammy hand into her own in a show of solidarity.
Count della Rosa moved to the very end of the wall and flicked another spotlight. A baize screen was set up there, and what was illuminated made Posie sick with shock. Dolly gasped behind her. It was covered entirely in photos and newsprint. Everything was about Posie.
At the very centre was the recent photograph of Posie which had been printed in the Associated Press the day before. Red pins and tiny slips of paper covered the board in a seething mass. The board was the plotting of a madman, a crazed mind at work. An obsessive. Posie turned, open-mouthed.
‘You want me?’ she whispered, although her voice did not sound entirely her own.
Caspian della Rosa tilted his head to one side and nodded.
‘Yes. I told you I collect rare treasures. I found one once in Lucky Lucy and I was fortunate enough on Monday to find you at the Ritz, sauntering in out of the snow as fresh as a daisy. I knew Lucy had betrayed me and I needed a replacement. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you! And so I tracked you down, and I tricked you, and I lured you into my web, my world; the mysterious and glamorous world of the La Luna club. Why else do you think I made Cecil pretend to be me and invite you for a drink? He was a honey-trap; designed to get your attention before you met the real ‘me.’ But you declined and played hard to get! So then I instructed him to drop the matches as a clue; I knew you would find the club…And why else would I tease you on with my clever little notes from “Lucky Lucy” to whet your appetite? I knew you were the kind of girl to rise to a challenge and try and uncover the truth! The only fly in the ointment was your finding Lucy’s body at La Luna – for which, my apologies: I would not have wished that on you a thousand times over. Oh, and you were not supposed to find the diamond, of course. That forced me to move pretty quickly today, let me tell you! I need it, almost as much as I need you.’
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