“I’ll come with you,” said Kingstone.
“Lunch in half an hour, drinks in ten minutes!” Lydia shouted after them.
AS THE TWO men passed through the front door and onto the gravel sweep, Joe paused and turned to Kingstone. “Anything you’d like me to be aware of before we delve any deeper, Senator?”
Kingstone, whose face had lost the flush of triumph and taken on a tense expression, managed to look him in the eye and reply, “Wish there were, Joe. I have imaginings. Thoughts I try to suppress. You’d despise me for wrapping them in words. I despise myself for thinking them. Let’s do this together, huh?”
“So long as you let me keep control of the keys,” Joe said lightly. “I don’t want to see Mister Toad taking off into the blue yonder shouting, ‘Beep, beep!’ ”
They turned again to look at the car. Joe grabbed Kingstone by the arm. “Look there. What’s that? Something white lying on the gravel by the near-side door. And the door’s open. It wasn’t open when I set out with the London men earlier.”
They ran over to the cedar tree. Joe chased after and picked up the object that had caught his attention as a gust of wind caught it and bowled it along the path. “Panama hat,” he said unnecessarily. He turned it over in his hand “A very good one. Pink and purple band. Club colours? Not quite Leander …” In sudden alarm, Joe drew his Browning from his belt and stepped in front of Kingstone. “Watch it! They may have had a third man with them. Directing operations?”
Joe flung the rear door open and they both peered inside.
Joe put his arm around Kingstone’s shoulder and tried to pull him away from the shocking sight on the back seat. “Step aside, Cornelius. Leave this to me.”
“The hell I will! I said we’d do this together. It’s her, Joe! It’s Natalia. The swines! They’ve dumped her body.” He stared and exclaimed under his breath. Joe stared with him, a supporting arm under his, lost for words.
Finally, Kingstone turned to him and muttered indistinctly. Joe thought he heard, “I have drunk and now I’ve seen the goddamn spider.”
Abruptly, the senator shook himself free and headed off towards an accommodating old rose bush, where he was violently sick.
He came back two minutes later, pale but calmer, stuffing a hanky into his pocket. “I knew she’d end up dead. I was prepared for it. But I hadn’t imagined it quite this way. Right—I’ve ‘cracked my gorge’ in the approved way. I’m ready to help you with this. And, before you ask—no, I’m not okay. No need to keep asking. Just take it that I’m shocked to my core, devastated and sad. But I’ll go till I drop to get to the bottom of this filthy business. Let’s do it.”
Again Joe acknowledged that Rippon had been right. Knowing the worst had freed the man to square up to the truth and, Joe would have said, to launch himself on the war path. He nodded and went straight to business.
“Cabriolet, isn’t it? Do you know how to lower the roof on this thing?” Joe asked. “We’ll break our backs reaching about in there otherwise. It’s a big car but they’ve not left much leg room in the back.”
In a few seconds Kingstone had pulled on levers and struts and lowered the roof.
“I did wonder why those louts were so unwilling to give me the keys and let me park it. I also wondered why they had the roof up on a day like today. Not a spaniel they had in the back but … a corpse or their … prisoner?” he finished awkwardly.
It would have been kinder to leave her in the deeper shadows, Joe thought, but at least now he could get his elbows out and go through the motions of feeling for her pulse and heartbeat. Both men knew it was a vain flourish but Joe was determined to do things by the book. He turned to Kingstone. “Can you identify this lady?”
“It’s Natalia Kirilovna. I can supply you with an address, her age and names of relatives when we’re done here.”
Joe looked and grieved. Even sprawled in death she was perfectly lovely. He was struck at once by her resemblance to that other dancer they’d pulled from the mud. He now appreciated just how shaken Kingstone must have been—as maliciously intended—when those features had been revealed to him on the pathologist’s slab. Her face was framed by the thick waving dark hair he had admired in the photograph in Kingstone’s room. Her eyes were closed. One arm was extended towards the door.
After a few moments checking and prodding Joe looked up, his face ashen. “Look, if I’m not mistaken, she’s not been dead long. An hour or two? Difficult to estimate in the temperature. We’ll need an expert to tell us. When did they get here? Nine fifteen or thereabouts … She died, from all appearances, from a bullet through the head. Right between the eyes.” They looked at the small neat black hole. “There isn’t much damage. A small pistol. Twenty-two caliber perhaps? Judging by the stains on the upholstery.” He pointed them out. “I’d say she was killed right here where she sat, in the middle of the back seat. She lolled over as she died and that hat—could it have been hers?—rolled off the seat and fell out through the door. She was most probably shot at by someone approaching the car from that side—by the tree. Perhaps she saw him approaching, coming out from behind the trunk—that’s a pretty wide one—and she reacted by opening this other door preparing to escape …”
“Rules out Onslow and Cummings then. They didn’t have that sort of gun on them and they were with you at that time coming out to the lake. The only shot they fired between them was into the scarecrow—you checked. All the other gun-users were with us in the woods.”
“In fact, it rules out the whole household,” Joe said. “Unless Lydia popped out with a gun she doesn’t have, to kill a girl she’s never met, for no reason at all.” He sighed. “Did the killer journey down from London with her? Making polite conversation together on the back seat? Shot her out here in the middle of nowhere and then disappeared into the shrubbery on foot and miles from a bus stop? Why didn’t he just make off in the Maybach? Equally unlikely—it was an intruder. It so rarely is, I hesitate to use the word,” Joe said uncertainly. “Whoever it was, it wasn’t someone who reacted violently on the spur of the moment. That bullet has been placed neatly, to the millimetre.”
Joe picked up her hands and examined her wrists. “No sign of ligatures, or anything of the sort.” He checked her ankles, pushing up the legs of her smart navy linen walking suit. “Nothing here either. It looks as though she was not coerced into coming here, not held under restraint in the days before as we’d feared. No sign of any violence until this last definitive piece. Suitcase? Was she expecting to stay somewhere or go straight back to London?”
“Hang on, I’ll look in the trunk. Hand me those keys, will you?”
Kingstone busied about at the rear of the car and stood up again shaking his head. “Cleaned out. Apart from one overnight bag with the Sandilands label on it. Gives this address and confirms how they tracked us down. But they failed to deliver it. Nothing else. What would you bet the glove locker’s in the same state?” A moment later: “Same story here. Not even an ownership document.”
They bent solemnly over the body again, perplexed, consulting the sleeping face as though, if they asked the right questions, it could answer them.
“Handbag?” Joe asked. “Wouldn’t she have had a handbag?”
“Of course she would, you twerp!”
They hadn’t heard Lydia approach. They had no idea how long she’d been standing behind them, a glass of champagne fizzing in each hand.
“I gather these will be inappropriate in the circumstances,” she said. “A libation to the dead? Is that what we should be offering?” In distress Lydia hurled the glasses into the trees, one after the other. “May I see her?”
Joe knew better than to refuse.
“If she had a handbag, the lady whose hat you are holding, Joe, would have had it by her feet. Have you looked in the foot-well? They sometimes slip into the gap under the front seat.”
“Natalia,” Kingstone told her. “It’s Natalia. She’s been shot.”
Lydia wen
t straight to the body and stared in astonishment. Recovering from her surprise, she elbowed Joe out of the way and went to work, expert fingers producing confirmation of his pronouncements.
“Not dead all that long. You’d agree?” Joe prompted. “I think we can be more precise than that. She died at nine thirty-two.”
“What was that? But how …?”
“Oh, that’s not a medical conclusion—not entirely. I heard the shot, Joe. After you disappeared off into the woods I was in the hall ringing the Chief Constable as you told me to do. Just as I put the phone down I looked at my watch and turned to go back to the kitchens. I heard a single shot. I thought something had gone wrong and peeked through the window. Nobody about. I knew the place was bristling with guns of one sort or another and assumed some clot had been clumsy and shot one off by mistake.”
“Well, you were told to keep your head down,” Joe reminded her. He drew in a tight breath in his anxiety. “Just as well you didn’t go out to investigate. God knows who you might have run into.”
Lydia looked sharply at her brother. “Not sure about God but I think you know, Joe, who was out here. A professional killer. Not someone using his gun at random, not in a rush of emotion and not at a distance. Small wound, the least possible damage done. It seems a cold killing but … oddly intimate.” She grimaced at her own choice of word. “He could have spoken her name … held her still by the shoulder … And, had you noticed? The eyes? Someone’s closed the lids. I shouldn’t imagine you’d close your eyes yourself, the moment someone puts a gun to your face. You’d stare and stare, wouldn’t you? You’d be hypnotised by the weapon or the man holding it. Pleading, hoping to the end … You wouldn’t be able to open your eyes wide enough! Isn’t that what happens?”
Joe and Kingstone both nodded.
“So whoever shot her, closed her eyes. It’s a very ancient gesture. A burial rite. It signifies respect … honour … regret … A last farewell.”
She turned to the senator standing dejected by the car. “Oh, Cornelius! I’m so sorry!” She ran out of words and held out her arms instead. He came forward hesitantly and, managing somehow to accommodate his bear-like frame to her slender shape, he accepted his comforting hug with the natural grace of a small child.
Joe found the crocodile skin bag where Lydia had said it would be. He looked about him hopelessly, picturing the cascade of makeup and personal items that might spill out. “Can’t deal with this out here. I’ll take it inside to examine it. And ring up the Chief Constable again. Hope he’s not on the golf course by now.”
“No. He said he’d stand by,” Lydia said. “Not sure he’ll like having this thrown into his lap though. Armed intrusion successfully defused is one thing, murder accomplished is another.”
“I’ll need his permission to transfer the case to the Met. As the perpetrators are most likely to have come down from London, he won’t object.”
“Go ahead, Joe,” Kingstone said. “Look—I’ll stay here with her until they can send an ambulance. I’d like a quiet moment.” He sat down on the back seat and took one of the dead hands in his.
Joe sighed and prepared to object. This was highly irregular. But then—irregularity had seemed to be the pattern from the start of this sorry mess.
“That’s well understood, old man. Rejoin us whenever you feel like it. Let me know when they get here and I’ll instruct the crew.”
With a thin smile, Kingstone handed the keys back to Joe. “Better have these back. Wouldn’t want you to worry.”
LYDIA LEFT HIM with the telephone in the hall. “Get hold of the Chief and make your arrangements. I’ll go into the drawing room and fill Marcus in on the latest occurrence. Oh, dear, he’ll be on to his second glass of champagne by now. I shall have to sober him. And tell cook to hold back lunch.”
All was quiet and calm when Joe joined them, his requirements graciously acceded to by the capable Surrey officer. Marcus had laid out the objects dredged from the pockets of the gunmen on a table and made a list of each man’s possessions. The handbag, untouched, was standing ready for his inspection.
“The hat, Joe,” Lydia moved straight in. “It looks like a man’s but it was hers. The label inside is Aspinal’s ladies department. Like the rest of her outfit—smart but sporting. Just what a cosmopolitan woman would think right for a trip out into the country. Very practical actually, like all Chanel’s things. You can move about easily in them. Run if you have to. If you’re given the chance.”
“One thing before you get started on the lady’s bag …” Marcus was eager to speak. “Here’s a puzzle. May not be anything to it but I’ve learned over the years to cultivate a suspicious mind. This here page from the paper you took from Onslow’s inside pocket …”
“The racing sheet? I’ll look at that later.”
“No, no … now might be better. It’s more than it seems. It is indeed about racing but it’s one of the back pages torn out of this morning’s Daily Mirror. Early edition. Out on the London streets from six A.M. Good reporting they do, on sports. It was the headline that caught my eye. Lord Astor’s nag—crème brûlée, if you please—was beaten in yesterday’s Manchester Cup. Surprise that! I had a fiver on him! And then, I was half way down the article when I noticed it. Turn the paper sideways and you’ll see someone’s written something in ink in the margin. A note to himself by Onslow? I don’t think so. Take a look, Joe.”
“Black ink. Woman’s writing, would you say? What do we make of this? Odette invites Siegfried to join her for Act 4 of original version.”
“Last act of Swan Lake?” Lydia suggested. “But why write on the sports page? They have an Entertainments section, don’t they?”
“Any other single sheet torn out would have asked a question. Called for a closer inspection. Racing tips found in the pocket of a London thug hardly merits a second glance. As we demonstrated! It’s just our good luck that Marcus was intrigued by the article … Good Lord! He was going to show this to Kingstone. He’d recognise the writing and understand the reference—she was dancing the part of Odette when he first clapped eyes on her in New York. He’d see from the date that she was still alive—at least she was early this morning—and know she was out there waiting for him. It’s an identification and an assignation. Both.”
“What’s the significance of ‘original version’ do you suppose? How many versions can there be?”
The men turned to Lydia.
“Lots! Some have happy endings, some tragic. Choreographers will keep playing with the story. Tchaikovsky wrote his original version in eighteen seventy-seven. His brother changed the ending in the eighteen ninety-five revival.”
“The first one, Lyd, how does it end? The one we’re talking about?”
“Happily. Odette is a princess who’s been turned into a white swan by day, under the spell of a wicked sorcerer—Von Rothbart …”
“A German gentleman, would that be?” Joe asked.
“Probably. This was straight after their invasion of France, remember. Not the last but the eighteen seventy invasion. The Franco-Prussian business. Paris had been besieged, Parisians starved to death, the city pounded to rubble for weeks by German artillery. ‘Big Bertha,’ I believe their ghastly cannon was called. Bogeymen and villains and large bossy ladies all acquired Prussian names in storytelling circles.”
“Even Conan Doyle was at it,” Marcus offered. “Who can forget his villainous adventuress Fraulein Adler and her association with Wilhelm Gottsreich something or other von Ormstein!”
“I can, for one,” Joe said. “Get on, Lydia.”
“Well there’s no duelling scars or lederhosen on display in the ballet,” Lydia pressed on. “It’s pure fairytale. A prince catches sight of Odette by the lakeside with the other bewitched swans and lingers long enough to watch her transform back into her human form after sunset. They fall in love. Unfortunately, at a ball, the prince is tricked into a flirtation with the Black Swan, the evil daughter of Von Rothbart—Odile—who is
her double. The black and the white swans are danced by the same ballerina and, of course, are never on stage at the same moment. Just as the sorcerer believes he has everyone in his power, the prince pulls himself together, returns to the lake, finds a despairing Odette, apologises and is forgiven. He fights Von Rothbart and tears his wings off, so destroying his powers. He marries Odette and they live happily ever after.”
“That’s it?” Marcus was expecting more.
“Well, it’s the dancing that’s important.”
“What happens in the other versions?” Joe asked.
“They both die.”
Joe glanced at the door. “No need to speculate further on this—we can ask Kingstone what he makes of it when he joins us but I’m thinking these few words are more than an identification. They would have meant a great deal to him.”
“Oh, yes. It’s a proposal of marriage,” Lydia confirmed.
“It was bait. Best quality bait. He would have taken it.” Marcus said shrewdly.
“Right—the bag?”
Joe opened it and began to set out the contents one by one on the table. “Wallet … thirty pounds in there. Change purse … a few half crowns and sixpences for tips. Two handkerchiefs, unused … lipstick … powder compact. Ah, fountain pen.”
He unscrewed the cap and, anticipating his need, Marcus pushed a newspaper towards him. Joe scribbled a few words and compared them with the ones on the racing page they’d found on Onslow.
A Spider in the Cup Page 23
