****
PART TWO
France and Italy
(June, 1921)
Nine
It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Posie was sitting under a fresh pastel-coloured umbrella at a street café, anonymous beneath her broad straw-brimmed hat and her new sunglasses.
She sipped at a coffee and munched on a croissant, although really she would have preferred a nice shortcake biscuit. She watched the Saturday-morning locals walking their dogs along the promenade, and the tourists in their exotic sunbathing outfits tripping along between the potted palm trees towards the ridiculously blue sea, which sparkled and glittered like a promise out on the horizon.
She had been here an hour now, and she was amused to watch the Cap d’Antibes coming slowly to life around her: it obviously wasn’t a place for early birds, and she guessed that many of the tourists and revellers would not emerge out onto the sun-drenched streets until well after lunch; that they were still now sleeping off the effects of the notoriously glamourous late-night parties which drew the same sort of people back here, year after year. She heard American women’s voices all around her at the other small café tables, and took a good long appreciative look at their impossibly chic attire. Had Len perhaps joined such a crowd?
But such speculation was useless. Better still to wonder at her own motivation, which had seen her swear for the entire journey that she would stay on the train until Nice, only to find herself unaccountably getting off at Antibes station, as if in a dream. She was now ensconced in the safety of one of the numerous cafés which lined the promenade, and she had absolutely no intention of going to the boarding-house where Len had been staying. Somehow it was enough to be here, where he was. She would order one more coffee and then leave.
She had the luxury of one more hour until she needed to be back on the station platform, boarding a local train to Nice, so that she could make her connection to Italy. Posie held the bee coin at her throat between her thumb and index finger, reminding herself why she was here after all. She felt disappointed that she had allowed herself this ridiculous foible.
And then she saw him.
It was unmistakeably Len, coming along the promenade in her direction. But rather than the Len of her memory, the man she had last seen disappearing off into a snowy London evening in February, four months ago, the man walking towards her was sun-tanned and wearing sunglasses; his usual London attire of tweeds and homburg hat had been replaced by light, bright sports clothes in foreign colours of pale lemon and lime. He looked very well, and his handsome face was fixed in its habitual laughing manner.
Before she knew what she was doing, Posie had slapped some money down on the table, picked up her bags and the manuscript of Ianthe’s novel which she had been trying to read, and she found herself running as fast as she could. On she flew over the road with its stream of traffic, on past the ornamental palm trees and onto the promenade and into the direct line of Len.
He smacked right into her and Posie dropped the manuscript, its pages fluttering wildly in the wind.
‘Co-ooee! I’m so sorry, madam. Here, let me help you.’ Len bent to pick it up and return it to her.
Posie had started to laugh under her huge sun hat, thankful for the chance encounter. But then her laugh froze in her throat and she had an uneasy feeling, as if solid ground were slipping away beneath her feet, for as Len passed the manuscript back to her something shiny on his finger caught the sunlight. Posie recoiled in shock – a wide gold circle on his left-hand ring finger was clearly visible – was it a wedding band?
A cold hand seemed to clutch at her heart. She found herself taking her glasses and her hat off in a slow stupor, as if hypnotised. Posie was staring at his hand, and then staring up into his face, and then in the same split-second she realised that Len was not alone.
Next to him, very close by, and holding onto his arm, bobbed a small, stick-thin girl with black shingled hair and a deep walnut tan. She had a small, sharp, pretty face with a watchful, slightly suspicious look about her eyes. She looked typically French and she made Posie feel horribly like an ungainly giant, for she towered at least a head and shoulders above the petite girl.
‘Posie?’ cried Len in disbelief.
He stood as if frozen to the spot, all the sun-tanned colour seeming to have drained from his face. His gorgeous green eyes and his ready smile were transformed out of all recognition and he looked as if he were about to be sick. To make matters worse, the crowds of people who were thronging the promenade and trying to get onto the beach were bottle-necking all around them, nudging and elbowing them out of the way as if they were an accident on a busy road.
‘S'il vous plaît! Please!’ shouted an immaculate French woman with a bevy of small dogs on crystal-encrusted leads, looking far too elegant for this time of the morning. ‘Vous ệtes sur mon chemin! Get out of the way!’
‘What on earth are you doing here, Po?’ Len breathed quietly, somehow moving all three of them to the very edge of the promenade, next to a potted tropical plant.
‘POSIE?’ shouted the black-haired girl, and in that instant all of Posie’s hopes and dreams came crashing down around her and she realised that this girl was not just some fly-by-night French fancy.
This girl spoke with the same cockney London twang as Posie’s friend Dolly Price, although where Dolly managed to sound friendly and companionable, this girl sounded sharp and mawkish. This must be the long-term girlfriend Len had had for years back in Leytonstone: a girl Posie had never met before, and whom she had fervently hoped was well out of the picture. But obviously not.
‘What? This is Posie? Posie Parker, your boss?’ said the girl, turning to Len in a rage. ‘The one who’s always hasslin’ you and writin’ letters to you here? What the bleedin’ ‘ell is she doing here? You didn’t tell me you was havin’ a business meeting! This is meant to be our honeymoon for gawd’s sake!’
Too late, and like an idiot, Posie saw the gold band on the girl’s left hand – a perfect match to Len’s – paired with a whopping great citrine of an engagement ring. How on earth had Len afforded it? Posie thought for just a second that she was about to cry, but she recovered herself and found herself holding onto the manuscript tightly, as if for reassurance, horribly aware that with her bags at her feet and in her sensible flat shoes she cut quite the unglamorous figure.
Posie laughed, a hollow sound which sounded unconvincing, even to her own ears.
‘Oh, golly! Don’t mind me!’ she found herself saying to the girl at Len’s side.
‘I’m just here on business. Pure coincidence to run into you like this! Nothing to do with Len at all! Please don’t worry, or let me disturb you in the slightest. I’m actually on my way to Nice. I just stopped off here for a coffee and to take in the sights.’ She checked her red wristwatch in a convinced manner.
‘Actually, I’d better hurry. I’m due on a train out of here, leaving in twenty-five minutes. It was lovely to meet you, er…’
‘This is Aggie,’ said Len, his face still deathly white beneath the hot sun.
‘As I said, a pleasure. Len, and Aggie, I wish you both a very pleasant honeymoon.’
Posie bent to retrieve her bags, and was just about to turn on her heel and walk away as fast as her feet could carry her when the girl stepped up to her and thrust her small pointed chin upwards, her stance one of confrontation.
‘Not so fast, Miss Parker. You listen to me.’ Aggie came closer.
‘Now, what my Len is too polite to mention here out in the open is the question of the money. But you don’t scare me.’
Posie blinked in utter disbelief. ‘I’m sorry? What money?’
The girl scowled and crossed her arms over her chest, her pretty charm gone in an instant. She reminded Posie of a Billingsgate fishwife.
‘Now don’t you play the innocent wiv me, Miss Parker. You can’t take me in wiv your posh fancy ways, the way you’ve taken my Len in.’
Posie stared at L
en, totally uncomprehending. He had turned bright red and was staring at the patterned tarmacked pavement, avoiding her gaze.
‘Come on, Aggie, give it a rest,’ Len whispered, half-pleading, trying to take the girl’s arm. She shrugged him off angrily.
‘It’s nothing,’ Len muttered.
‘Don’t you tell me it’s nuffin’!’ shouted the girl. ‘It could change our lives!’ She turned again to Posie.
‘My Len told me that you had an arrangement together,’ she snapped. ‘Whatever you earned at that blimmin’ Detective Agency of yours was split half each. He always honoured the agreement, even when you had precious little work on of your own. Do you deny that?’
Posie was almost shaking, but she had no idea why. What was she being accused of here? What had Len been telling this horrible little wife of his?
‘No, of course I don’t deny it! Why would I? But it cuts both ways,’ Posie added, looking squarely at Len, who looked away to the sea on the horizon.
‘Since February I’ve been managing on my own, running the place entirely out of my own earnings, putting aside half of the profits for Len on his return. I’ve been waiting for Len to come back – and of course I totally understand about his father being sick – but am I given to understand he is now better?’
Aggie ignored Posie’s question.
‘But you was given a lot of money, weren’t you? As part of that last fancy case you was workin’ on? The one with the missin’ diamond? My Len was workin’ on it wiv you, wasn’t he? Risked his neck on several occasions; he almost died in some underground club, he told me. And then you was given TEN THOUSAND POUNDS! And by rights, half of that belongs to Len. It’s ours! It could change our lives! But you’ve not mentioned once givin’ half the amount to us! Just spent time braggin’ about it in your letters!’
Posie was struck dumb: she was horribly aware that her face must be as red as Len’s. She felt horribly guilty, and angry too, and caught off-guard. She had written to Len in February about her reward from the Earl of Cardigeon, it was true: she had thought he would be glad for her, and she had been writing under the (obviously horribly misguided) impression that she and Len might have some sort of romantic future together themselves.
She felt terrible: she had never, not even for a second, thought about splitting the reward with Len. Should she have? And now she was almost being accused of theft, certainly of fraud, by this horrible little woman. Posie made up her mind on the spur of the moment, speaking clearly and calmly although she knew as soon as she turned her back on the couple that she would dissolve into floods of tears:
‘You are quite mistaken, Mrs Irving,’ she said, getting past those terrible, difficult words in a shambling gush.
‘Our arrangement was that we would split profits from earnings. That means services to clients that were billed for. What I received from the Earl of Cardigeon and which your husband has no claim on, was a one-off personal reward. I am sorry if you have been harbouring under some misapprehension.’
Posie stared at the huge citrine which flashed for a second in front of her, almost blinding her, before she turned and walked quickly away.
She hated to admit it, but it was a ring she herself would have loved to own.
****
Somehow, in the dry dusty heat of the first-class train carriage, Posie held herself together. Mercifully, she was alone apart from one young woman, who had nodded off in her own corner. It was too hot to cry. And Posie was too angry.
She stared unseeing out of the open window. A hazy glimmer of strong midday heat caused the lines of the tarmac platform and the red-brick station house to shimmy together in a blur. It was simply too hot to be outside, and sensible people had boarded the train early or were staying put inside the station house. Out of the corner of her eye Posie saw a fat old lady wearing a red shawl coming along the length of the train, carrying a basket. In the basket were sticks of French bread and cheese, melting in the heat. She also carried a few bunches of the flower of the region, yellow mimosa. For a horrible heart-wrenching moment Posie remembered the bunch of dusky mimosa she had received in May from Len; a token of remembrance, or so she had thought.
What had Len been playing at, exactly? Had he been keeping his options open, perhaps? Had he been unsure until very recently whether to stay with Aggie, or whether to commit to Posie? Or had their romantic tryst in February all been some horrible mistake? And if so, why hadn’t he just had the guts to tell her so?
Posie realised now what she had always known deep down: that for all his charm, his good looks and his gun-toting chivalry, Len Irving was a coward. He probably hadn’t wanted to jeopardise the comfortable little business they ran together, and he had delayed and delayed his return to England, even after his father had made a good recovery, fearful of how Posie would receive him.
Posie shuddered now to remember the vitriol behind Aggie’s words. She could only imagine what Len had been saying about her to make Aggie think so badly of her. She must have been portrayed as some awful, greedy monster, desperate for money and desperate for Len… Her face burned in shame, picturing Len’s embarrassment at her unabashed joy in seeing him on the promenade.
Just then there was a flurry of action on the platform. Posie looked out of the window and saw that a man had crashed straight into the fat lady in the red shawl. He was searching for someone at the train windows and calling out…calling out her name.
It was Len, still in his sports clothes, but all alone and with sweat pouring down his face.
Suddenly he came level with her window and before she could move away and hide he saw her. The Conductor was just getting on the train and the Station Master was arranging a complicated series of flags and whistles. The fat lady had obviously seen a chance for a quick sale and had come up behind Len, waving a bunch of the yellow flowers in the direction of the window, adding to the general commotion.
‘Posie! Po!’ Len breathed, out of breath. ‘I’m so glad I caught you!’
‘Really?’ asked Posie flatly. ‘Why? What is there to say? What am I supposed to say to you?’
‘Get off the train, love,’ Len panted. ‘You don’t need to go. We can sort this out.’
The Station Master blew his first whistle.
‘You’re wrong, Len,’ Posie said. ‘I do need to go. I wasn’t lying; I’m on a case. I was just passing through. I can’t get off this train, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ Len was looking at Posie with his lovely green eyes full of contrition. ‘We can sort this out, I promise!’
‘Len! How can we sort this out? You’re married! And you couldn’t even tell me!’
Len cast his eyes downwards.
‘I didn’t know what to say to you,’ he muttered apologetically. ‘I couldn’t find the words. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. And we’ve only just got married! Last week, in fact. I was going to tell you. I swear!’
At her silence, Len continued:
‘Please, Po. Get off the train, we’ll sort this all out.’
A flash of understanding hit her: he meant the business, the Detective Agency, their nice little arrangement at Grape Street which seemed so far away now in grey dusty Bloomsbury. He meant that they could work that out, the business side of things. Had it been Aggie who had sent Len after her, desperate to ‘fix’ things, so he at least had a job to come back to when this glamorous little escapade in France was all over?
Posie laughed in disbelief. She was angry but she was practical too, and in the long-run she needed Len in the business as much as he needed her.
‘Of course we’ll sort it out. I’m not going to hold a grudge against you, am I? I’m glad one of us has found happiness, at least. Come back when you want to. Everything is still the same…’
Except everything would not be the same. Not for a while, anyway.
Len looked relieved. The final whistle blew and a lot of hot steam almost shielded him from her view. The fa
t woman came closer, pressing the mimosa through the window. Posie found herself handing over some change and taking a small bunch.
‘Safe journey, then,’ said Len, a half-worried smile lingering on his face.
‘But one thing I don’t understand,’ said Posie just as the train started to move off. ‘Why did you go to the trouble of sending me mimosa from here if you didn’t want to give me the wrong impression?’
Len looked gobsmacked. He started to run alongside the train to keep up.
‘Mimosa?’ he shouted incredulously, as Posie’s heart seemed to fall in on itself.
‘I sent you a couple of postcards. But I didn’t send you flowers! It must have been someone else…’
As Len was left behind, veiled in a misty cloud of engine smoke on the platform, Posie had the sense that she had no idea any more if she had ever really known him. Was he lying to her now as he had been doing for the last few months?
And if not, who the blazes had been sending her flowers?
****
Ten
It was just possible that in the tiny island of Ortigia, part of the Sicilian town of Siracusa, Posie had found her favourite place in all the world. It was a perfect, stony jewel. It also gave every appearance of being a good remedy for a broken heart.
Posie sighed with contentment as she sat on her balcony. It was her first evening at the Locatelli, a comfortable little guesthouse she had found by chance. It was near the harbour, and she had a room which looked eastwards out over the mysterious sparkling Levant. The sea had turned from a dark indigo to rose pink at dusk, and was now a glittering pitch-black, punctured by the lights of tiny fishing-boats and yachts.
She sipped gratefully at her third glass of the local Nero d’Avola wine and remembered the delightful sights she had observed that afternoon in the blistering Sunday heat: the faded baroque stone buildings which rose up majestically to frame the small harbour; the ruined Roman palaces which were to be found on every street; the lush, plant-filled courtyards and dark straggly lanes winding in impossible directions, all colluding together to hide a myriad of secrets.
The Tomb of the Honey Bee: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 2) Page 11
