by Eric Brown
She kissed the girl again. ‘Climb into bed, my darling, and I’ll show you how much I love you. Just give me a minute to get cleaned up.’
Pandora crossed to the screened-off area of the studio and scrubbed her hands with turpentine.
She was about to rejoin Nancy when her gaze fell on the letter she’d flung aside that morning.
She picked up the single sheet of notepaper and reread the missive.
The infernal cheek of the man – three importuning letters in a fortnight, and after all these years! And what the hell did he mean when he said that he wanted to apologize? She sighed, torn between ignoring this summons, as she had the first two, and satisfying her curiosity by accepting the invitation to spend a weekend at his pile in Cornwall.
She wondered if Annabelle might still be living with him.
If so, did she really want to see the girl? Come to that, did she want to renew her acquaintance with the egotistical Denbigh Connaught? She detested the man – though, she allowed, he had done her a favour all those years ago: their brief fling had put Pandora off men for life.
‘Dora!’ Nancy called out. ‘Are you coming, or what?’
Pandora returned to the studio, undressed, and climbed into bed with the girl.
Monty Connaught came to London as infrequently as possible, but when he did so, he invariably stayed at the Travellers Club on Pall Mall. It was one of the few oases of civilization in this metropolitan hellhole; the food was above average for a country that had emerged from rationing just two years ago, and the wine cellar was excellent. This evening found him enjoying a postprandial port in the library, wondering whether to push off first thing in the morning or spend another day in London visiting friends.
Yesterday he had delivered the manuscript of his latest travel book, White Sails in the Sunset, and in order to kill two birds with one stone had mooted a couple of future titles to his editor: Blue Sea, White Sands, an exploration of the Adriatic islands, and By the Caves of Hercules, a voyage along the coast of Morocco. Old Gilby had jumped at the latter and offered a three-hundred-pound advance. Connaught was delighted. In a day or so he would put this dreary city in his wake and head for the sunny climes of the Mediterranean.
He was contemplating a second glass of port when the waiter ghosted up to his chair. ‘A telegram, sir.’
He ripped it open and read the brief missive.
Heard you were back in Blighty. Need to see you. Urgent. Come down this weekend. Denbigh.
Trust his brother to be so maddeningly vague! And what the hell did he mean by ‘urgent’? What matter could be so urgent that it required his presence at Connaught House after an absence of ten years?
‘Do you wish to send a reply, sir?’
He regarded the telegram, lost in thought.
He could ring his deckhands, Sam and Ginger, tonight and tell them to provision the ketch, presently moored down at Brighton, and be ready to sail at noon tomorrow. He’d catch a train down to the coast first thing in the morning, and they could putter along the channel at their leisure and take a day to reach Cornwall. It was on the way to the Med, after all.
‘Yes. Take this down: Leaving London Thursday noon. See you Friday.’
‘Very good, sir,’ the waiter said, and departed.
What might the old rogue want with him all of a sudden?
He was intrigued.
He decided that he would, after all, have that second glass of port.
TWO
‘Hello, Ryland and Langham Detective Agency.’
‘Is that Mr Langham? Donald Langham?’
‘Speaking. How can I help?’
‘I wonder if I might make an appointment to see you?’
Langham leaned back in his chair and lodged his feet on the desk. He judged the woman to be in her thirties; she had a light, pleasant voice, with the precise consonants and extended vowels of an aristocrat.
‘By all means. I’m free for the rest of the afternoon, all Thursday and Friday. Can I take your name?’
‘Annabelle Connaught,’ she said. ‘I was wondering … When I said I’d like to see you, I really meant to ask if you would be free to come and see me.’
Langham smiled to himself. He wondered if this were another case of a potential client being put off by the agency’s location on Wandsworth High Street. Some people turned up their noses at the very idea of travelling south of the Thames.
‘I’m free for the next couple of hours,’ he said. ‘If you’re in London, that is.’
She sounded relieved. ‘That’s wonderful. I’m staying at the Grosvenor in Victoria. Perhaps we could meet for tea at four?’
He looked at his watch. It was almost three thirty. ‘By all means.’
‘I will be in the Queen Anne tearoom, on the ground floor.’
‘Might I ask why you’d like to see me, Mrs Connaught?’
‘Doctor. And …’ She hesitated. ‘I wonder if we might leave that until we meet?’
‘Right you are. The Grosvenor at four. I’ll see you then.’
She thanked him and hung up.
He wondered, as he swung his legs from the desk and unhooked his suit jacket from the back of the door, whether the meeting would come to anything. If not, then there was nothing lost. Victoria was only a stone’s throw from where he was now living in Kensington. He’d interview Dr Connaught, knock off early and take Maria for a drink before dinner.
My wife … he thought.
The fact still brought him up short, a month after their marriage. He sometimes caught himself wallowing in a metaphorical bathtub of blissful contentment, no doubt with a fatuous grin on his face. In fact, Ralph had caught him at it in the office last week. ‘You’re still on your honeymoon, by the look on your mush, Don.’
Their honeymoon, a week in Paris, had been idyllic, and the weeks following it a continuation of that happy state: even the affairs of the world, with the US and Russia ramping up tensions in the so-called Cold War, and the brewing trouble in Suez, did little to tarnish the patina of his euphoria.
He scribbled a quick note to Ralph in case his partner returned to the office today: Interviewing a Dr Connaught in Victoria. See you in the morning.
He locked the office door, hurried down the steps and crossed the busy pavement to his racing green Rover 90. His beloved Austin Healey had recently, after five years’ loyal service, succumbed to engine failure. Maria had insisted that she buy him a bigger vehicle as a wedding present, and he’d regretfully consigned his Austin to the scrapheap.
It was a mild day, the air humid with the threat of thunder. To the north, slate-grey clouds were gathering in preparation to inundate the capital. That evening he was due to take Maria out for dinner at the Moulin Bleu in Highgate. He smiled: let it rain.
He tooled north through the busy streets, crossed the Thames on Wandsworth Bridge, and made his way into central London.
‘Connaught, Connaught …’ he said to himself. It wasn’t that common a surname, and it came to him that he’d heard it somewhere else of late.
As he approached Victoria, big raindrops spattered the windscreen, and over the grey buildings of central London even greyer clouds massed, shot through with probing searchlights of late-afternoon sun.
He parked in a side street around the corner from the hotel, waited five minutes until a minute before four, then hurried through the rain to the Grosvenor.
A sign on a polished walnut pedestal in the foyer directed him to the Queen Anne tearoom, and he paused for a few seconds to take stock of his reflection in a floor-to-ceiling mirror beside a stand of ferns. He wondered if he would ever shake the feeling of social inferiority in places like this, where men in dress suits and women in fox stoles strolled around as if they owned the world. Which they probably did, he thought. It didn’t help that his jacket was frayed and his shoes scuffed. Maria had suggested she buy him a new wardrobe for work, but he’d explained that it was all part of the calculated effect. According to Ralph, punters didn’t t
rust private detectives who were too well dressed. ‘You see, Don, we’re like servants, and clients like to feel superior to servants, geddit?’
Langham had declined to debate the contention, and anyway he was happy with his worn threads most of the time.
He straightened his tie, slicked a hand through his hair, and strode into the tearoom.
Only three tables were occupied: one by a pair of elderly dowagers, another by a middle-aged couple and the third by a silver-haired woman in her fifties. By a process of elimination, Langham made his way across to the woman and smiled in greeting. ‘Doctor Connaught …’ He held out his hand.
The woman scowled up at him. ‘Doctor? Did you say “Doctor”? I think you have the wrong person, young man.’
He was muttering an apology when he heard a voice behind him. ‘Mr Langham?’ She sounded breathless. ‘I’m sorry, I was delayed. I had to make an important phone call.’
He turned to see a Pre-Raphaelite beauty in her early thirties with a tumble of auburn hair and a flawless oval face whose full lips were pursed with ill-concealed amusement at his faux pas. She wore a well-tailored two-piece suit in light green twill and carried a tiny matching handbag.
She crossed the room to a spare table and smiled as she sat down. ‘Did you really think,’ she said, ‘that I sounded that old? Why, she’s sixty if a day!’
Flustered, Langham took his seat. ‘I had little choice,’ he said. ‘At least I didn’t approach …’ He gestured to the dowagers by the window.
She laughed. ‘I should hope not! Now, will you have tea, Mr Langham?’
They ordered Earl Grey from a waiter, declined the offer of cakes, and Langham sat back and regarded the woman.
He had to admit that she was a cut above the usual run of clients who brought their woes to the Ryland and Langham Detective Agency. In the past month he’d dealt with a Brixton market-trader who suspected his accountant of diddling him out of fifty guineas a quarter, an ex-Fulham footballer who was being blackmailed for certain sexual indiscretions, and the usual bevy of spouses seeking the surveillance of unfaithful better halves.
He was curious how he might be able to help Dr Annabelle Connaught.
The tea arrived; she poured. He took his cup and crossed his legs. ‘It isn’t every day I interview clients in such plush surroundings.’
‘I would have come down to Wandsworth, Mr Langham, but time is pressing. I really must catch the five-thirty train back to Cornwall.’
He wondered if that was an excuse. ‘If I might ask how you came by our number?’
She drew a silver cigarette case from her handbag and offered him one, which he declined. She lit a Chesterfield with a pearl-inlaid lighter and lifted her head to blow smoke to her right.
‘I’m not in the habit of employing private detectives, Mr Langham, and when I came to do so, I wanted the assurance that I was approaching the … the right people.’
He sipped his tea. ‘And how can you be assured of that?’ he asked, intrigued.
‘I came upon your name quite fortuitously. You see, my father is the novelist Denbigh Connaught.’
The penny dropped. That’s where he’d heard the surname recently. Just last week Maria had mentioned that her partner at the literary agency, Charles Elder, had received a letter from Denbigh Connaught: the writer had sacked his agent and wanted Elder and Dupré to represent his interests.
Langham knew of Connaught by reputation only: a gifted novelist whose books sold well and pleased the critics, but who was, by all accounts, a cantankerous bully with few friends in literary London and none at all in Cornwall where he lived the life of a hermit.
He frowned. ‘I see … But I don’t quite get the connection.’
Dr Connaught regarded him over the rim of her cup, her cigarette smouldering in the same hand. ‘I like to keep abreast of what my father is doing. When he sacked his agent and told me he was considering Elder and Dupré, I made enquiries. I learned that they represented you, and when I read on the back-flap of one of your thrillers that you worked part-time as a private detective, and were engaged to the daughter of the French cultural attaché here in London … I was in need of a private detective, and you seemed to fit the bill admirably.’
Langham smiled. ‘This is the first time my agent has ever, however indirectly, landed me detective work,’ he said. ‘How can I help?’
She sat back, regarding him. ‘Last year my father hired a young man by the name of Wilson Royce to act as his business manager. He’d muddled along quite adequately by himself for years but wanted more time to devote to his writing.’
Sensing her displeasure at the arrangement, Langham asked, ‘And how did you feel about this fellow’s appointment?’
‘At the time, it didn’t concern me in the slightest.’
‘But since then?’
Annabelle Connaught sipped her tea, her green eyes distant. ‘I’ll be perfectly frank and admit that I don’t like the man one bit, and I’ll be even more candid and admit that I have no palpable grounds for my prejudice. But I set great store by my intuition, and something tells me that Wilson Royce is … I was about to say evil, but I’m not sure I believe in evil. Let me just say that Royce is corrupt.’
She withdrew a black-and-white photograph from her handbag and slid it across the linen tablecloth. The picture showed two men. One he recognized as the novelist Denbigh Connaught, a huge ursine figure scowling at the camera. The other was a tall youth in flannels, with a hatchet face and a glint in his eyes which, even reproduced in the unreliable medium of the grainy monochrome snapshot, struck Langham as untrustworthy.
‘Royce comes up to London once a week, on a Wednesday, usually returning on a Friday. He has a mews flat in Chelsea – you’ll find the address on the back of the photograph. I’d like you to follow him, find out what exactly he is up to here.’
‘Does he come up by car?’
‘That’s right. He drives a rather sleek Morgan, in keeping with the “flash” image he likes to project.’
‘And the ostensible reason for his trips?’
Annabelle Connaught shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Literary and financial business on my father’s behalf, meetings with my father’s agent and publisher.’
‘You do realize that I might find nothing … and that my services don’t come cheaply.’
Her lips essayed a superior smile. ‘I think my funds will cover whatever your fees might be.’
Langham held her gaze as he said, ‘Three guineas an hour, plus expenses.’
She didn’t flinch. ‘That’s perfectly acceptable,’ she said. ‘I will hire you initially for one week, and then I shall assess your findings, if any.’ She took a card from her handbag. ‘This is my address and phone number. I would like you to report to me every day, between eight and nine in the evening. If you could begin in the morning …’
He slipped her card, along with the photograph, into an inner pocket of his jacket. ‘I’ll do that.’
Annabelle Connaught finished her tea, pushed up the cuff of her sleeve with her little finger, and peered at a tiny gold watch. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Langham. Now I really must dash if I’m to catch my train.’
He rose with her, shook her delicate hand, and watched her walk quickly from the tearoom.
THREE
The thunderstorm had broken over London last night, treating the inhabitants of the city to a spectacular display of forked lightning across the northern skyline. This morning the air was clear and the sun was shining brilliantly.
It was ten o’clock and Langham had been waiting in his Rover for the past hour, dividing his attention between the Daily Herald spread across the steering wheel and number ten Saddler’s Way, where Wilson Royce had his London home. Royce’s car, the silver-grey Morgan two-seater that Annabelle Connaught had mentioned, was parked outside.
Langham wished that Royce would make a move, then reminded himself that Dr Connaught was paying him well to sit on his backside.
Last night over dinner at the Moulin Bleu, Langham had told Maria about Annabelle Connaught’s request that he tail Royce, and asked her about the novelist Denbigh Connaught. It turned out that she knew very little about him, other than what was reported in the literary journals, and that just last week Connaught had contacted Charles Elder with a view to being represented by the agency.
‘And I take it that Charles agreed?’
‘For some strange reason, he refused to discuss the matter,’ Maria had replied. ‘I was surprised. Connaught is a big name; not only does he sell well, but he’s feted as a great novelist by those in the know. It would be a feather in the agency’s cap. I said that we should meet him and discuss terms.’
‘And what did Charles say?’
‘Very little. He said he’d think it over, then changed the subject whenever I brought it up.’
‘Strange.’
‘I suspect there is – how do you say? – bad blood between the two. They were at school together, many moons ago.’
‘Hmm … That might explain it. Indiscretions in the dorm, perhaps?’
‘Oh, you’re a naughty man, Donald!’
Langham wound down the side window and read a report on the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal, hoping that the British government would have more sense than to get drawn into that political quagmire. He turned, for relief, to the sports pages, and was reading about the forthcoming test match against Australia when the front door of number ten opened and a tall young man tapped down the steps with all the grace of the lead in a Busby Berkeley musical. He was dressed in honey-coloured tweeds and sported a canary-yellow cravat.
He slipped in behind the wheel of his Morgan and raced off along the mews.
Langham gave him ten seconds, started the engine and set off in pursuit.
Royce turned left along Fulham Road and headed east, then took a right down Beaufort Street. Langham followed at a distance. The traffic was light this Thursday morning, and Langham had no difficulty keeping the Morgan in sight. The young man turned left along the King’s Road; Langham did likewise.
