Dressed to Kill

by Patricia Hall

  ‘A lawyer.’

  ‘Nope,’ Abraham said. ‘No one like that. I ain’t got no money to pay attorneys anyway.’

  ‘You need one,’ Barnard said. ‘You should have had a solicitor with you when you were questioned. I’ll find out what’s going on.’

  The door behind them opened and the custody sergeant put his head in. ‘He’s due in court at ten,’ he said to Barnard. ‘I need you out of here now.’

  ‘Fine,’ Barnard said. ‘Can you make sure he has legal aid?’

  ‘Your guv’nor gave the orders last night,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t one of his priorities.’

  ‘The magistrates will ask questions,’ Barnard said angrily as he pushed his way out of the cell. ‘Look at the state of him. I should clean him up before you send him over there if I were you.’

  ‘The bruises don’t show on his skin,’ the sergeant muttered contemptuously as he passed. ‘I shouldn’t think they’ll even notice.’

  Barnard went back up the stairs two at a time to the CID room where the desks were gradually filling up, hung up his jacket carefully and dropped into his chair. But before he could even open the Jenny Maitland murder file on his desk a colleague put a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  ‘The guv’nor was looking for you, mate,’ he said. ‘You’d better get up there toot sweet.’

  ‘Did he say what he wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope, but he didn’t look a very happy bunny.’

  Barnard pushed his chair back, picked up his file, put his jacket back on and made his way upstairs and down the corridor to DCI Keith Jackson’s office and tapped on the door before putting his head round cautiously.

  Jackson was sitting at his immaculate desk looking thunderous. ‘Where the hell did you get that tie, laddie?’ he asked, looking Barnard up and down censoriously. ‘You’re looking more and more like a poofter every day.’

  ‘Strictly a lady’s man, me, guv,’ Barnard said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Jackson growled. He picked up a slip of paper on his desk and handed it to Barnard. ‘See this man at the American Embassy,’ he said. ‘He’s got access to records of US citizens who have served here in their armed forces, right back to when they came into the war in 1941. He should be able to track this black bastard down. I’ve got someone at the Home Office looking for naturalization papers for him as well. With a bit of luck we’ll be able to get him out of the country even if we can’t pin the Jenny Maitland killing on him.’

  ‘I’ve not got anything to link the girl to anyone inside the club yet, guv,’ Barnard said mildly, glancing at the name the DCI had given him. ‘Does this bloke know who we’re interested in?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Jackson said. ‘But apparently there are lists of soldiers who didn’t go home when they should have done and it’s easy enough to track down the coloured ones because they were in separate groupings. They mostly kept to their colour bar.’

  ‘So I heard,’ Barnard said neutrally, not wanting Jackson to know he had gleaned that information from Muddy Abraham himself. He could not recall ever seeing an American serviceman as a boy during the war, let alone a black one.

  ‘Get on with it then,’ Jackson said. ‘We’ll oppose bail at the magistrate’s hearing this morning for further inquiries but we can’t get away with that for long just on a marijuana charge. We need a confession or evidence for the murder charge and we’ve got neither so far. He’s an obstinate bastard. So chop, chop, laddie. Chop, chop.’

  NINE

  Kate O’Donnell clung uncertainly to her seat in the front of Roddy Broughton-Clarke’s muddy and dilapidated station wagon in which he had met her, as promised, at Amersham station at the end of the Metropolitan Line. She had been somewhat surprised to discover that in this direction the familiar London tube train headed out above ground into green and wooded countryside far beyond even the suburbs of the city. Roddy, in wellington boots and a waterproof jacket, had met her at the station exit and ushered her into the car where two large, bedraggled and rather smelly dogs occupied the rear, both of them panting heavily in the confined space.

  Roddy took off at speed out of the town and into winding country lanes at a rate which Kate reckoned could only lead to disaster if they met anything coming the other way. But the journey concluded quite quickly and without incident as he braked suddenly and swung through open gates, down a winding drive and on to a forecourt flanked by high yew hedges with, immediately ahead of them, the entrance to a four-square stone house with tall windows and a tiled roof and ornate chimney stacks, one of them supported rather precariously by some sort of scaffolding.

  ‘The family pile, Broughton Hall,’ Roddy said, getting out of the car and releasing the excited dogs from their temporary captivity. ‘Eighteenth-century facade slapped on the front but parts of it unreconstructed fifteenth century behind. Bally nightmare to maintain. The Broughtons never had enough cash to keep it in good nick back as far as one can see. Married into the Clarkes in the hope of doing better but even that didn’t work in the long run. Driven to sell off most of the land in the end after the First World War – agricultural depression, you know – leaving my father, and then me, with a whole heap of problems. Still, maybe Tatiana will become dress designer to the Queen. Stranger things have happened. So come on in. Come on Robbie, Bruno! Heel!’

  The two retrievers fell in behind their master and Kate followed behind as Roddy opened the front door and led the way into a chilly stone-flagged hall filled with huge pieces of dark furniture and with a wide staircase leading into the dim upper regions of the house. The place felt as if it was permanently cold and looked dusty and uncared for, although Kate was sure that the old furniture was genuine and probably worth serious money. She had never been anywhere like it before.

  ‘Tat, we’re here,’ Roddy bellowed and Tatiana appeared like a genie at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Kate, welcome to the Hall,’ she said as she made her way down. ‘His lordship will give you the grand tour while I finish off the lunch. I don’t have any help at the weekends so it’s something fairly simple. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kate said.

  Roddy’s dogs followed Tatiana towards the back of the house while Kate found herself being steered through the nearest of the doors off the hall into a huge room furnished not as any sort of sitting room but with chairs and small tables around the walls and a small polished area of wooden floor where people could presumably dance. It was not cheaply furnished but it was not at all what she had expected of what must once have been an elegant salon for the resident family.

  ‘When we party, we hold the drinks reception in here to get them going, then a buffet a bit later when everyone’s nicely warmed up. Later on they can dance in here, if that’s what they fancy.’

  ‘You charge, of course,’ Kate said.

  ‘Oh yes, and with a bit of luck I make a profit. People like to visit old places like this. If they can come and have a bit of a do laid on they like it even more. And of course, it’s very private. We’re not even near a village. If people want to come with other people they are not quite attached to, if you know what I mean, they are at liberty to do that. Or maybe meet people here. We get some single people too. It’s all very free and easy. And very discreet.’ He led her through several more reception rooms pointing out where the meal was served and where people could play cards.

  ‘So people want pictures taken even if they’re not with their wives or husbands?’ Kate asked.

  ‘They do, they do,’ Roddy assured her, leading the way upstairs. ‘You don’t have any moral objections, do you?’

  ‘Not really,’ Kate said uncertainly, wondering what difference it would make if she did. If she was here to snap the visitors she could hardly ask to see their marriage lines in advance, she thought.

  Roddy hurried her on. ‘But as I said to Andrei, once you’ve printed them off I do insist on having the negatives back here. Just in case of any embarrassment. I make sure
the prints only go to the people concerned.’ He flung open a few doors upstairs, revealing comfortably furnished bedrooms. ‘Bedrooms are available for a small consideration.’ He grinned at her wolfishly. ‘You won’t be required up here, except by special request.’

  From below they heard Tatiana calling them for lunch.

  ‘Come and eat,’ Roddy said putting an unwanted arm round Kate’s waist and steering her back to the stairs. ‘You can talk to her about her fashion shoot. This place might make a good backdrop for that too, don’t you think? Do you think she can make some money out of this designing business? Honestly now.’

  Kate pulled away from her host and shrugged. ‘Her designs are very bold,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure they’d go down well with the old guard. I don’t think I’m qualified to judge whether or not they’ll sell to the general public. Fashion’s changing so quickly at the moment.’

  Roddy grunted.

  ‘Well, we need something to sell,’ he said. ‘Or this old place will have to go on the market. Which after six hundred years in the family would be a ruddy shame.’

  There was, Kate thought, a note of real desperation in his voice.

  The following Monday morning, Kate O’Donnell stood on Waterloo Bridge, leaning over the parapet, with the River Thames ebbing swiftly eastwards beneath the arches, and the sun glittering on the panorama to either side. On the north bank, Westminster and its Parliamentary towers stood stiffly alongside the fast running water, its familiar gothic outline very definitely not what she was looking for. While to the south, on both sides of the bridge, a more promising prospect unfolded, not pretty, in fact in some ways deliberately stark, but far more in tune, she thought, with Tatiana’s geometric clothes. Better in many ways, she thought, than the old manor house in the Chilterns.

  The Royal Festival Hall she had never seen before, though she vaguely remembered that it was all that had survived of the Festival of Britain, of which she had seen pictures when she was at school. She liked its strangely curved roof with the small colourful shield on the left, and the sharp horizontal rows of windows facing the river. The whole modernist structure was oddly complemented by what looked like a much older circular tower or chimney, with small windows running up the side, almost like a decapitated lighthouse plonked down far from the sea.

  Across the river itself ran the metal lacework of the Hungerford Bridge across which green trains trundled at regular intervals, and to the east there were tantalizing glimpses of more chimneys and towers, an almost industrial landscape in sharp contrast to Westminster and the dome of St Paul’s on the opposite bank of the river. She felt a shiver of excitement. There was grist to her mill over there, she thought. She could do interesting things with Tatiana’s clothes against that backdrop. She dropped down from the bridge and took a brief excursion along the embankment and her pulse quickened. This would work, she was sure. This was undoubtedly the place to set her shoot. She pulled out her camera and spent twenty minutes snapping the area from every angle before glancing at her watch.

  She did not have much time to get back to Lubin’s studio in time for the afternoon session he had planned. She worked her way through the walkways and tunnels that surrounded the Festival Hall and took the underground from Waterloo station back to Oxford Circus and walked slowly down into the narrow streets of Soho, which were relatively quiet as the lunch hour came to an end. She was anxious about Sylvia, who was having her operation today, although she had no idea where. And she wondered if she could persuade Tatiana that she was experienced enough to launch herself on to the fashion sea where the current captains were like cruising destroyers circling anxiously and looking for the chance to blow each other out of the water. Did she stand a chance in that company, she wondered?

  The studio was bustling when she arrived and Andrei Lubin soon had her fully occupied organizing the girls and making sure their clothes were just so. She was surprised when half way through the afternoon Sylvia sidled through the door. Andrei glanced in her direction briefly.

  ‘I wasn’t well this morning,’ she said in little more than a whisper.

  ‘You look like death warmed up,’ Lubin said with no trace of sympathy. ‘I should get home to bed. You’re no good to me looking like that.’

  The girl’s eyes filled with tears but she turned back to the door and Kate, who had been making coffee, followed her. On the narrow landing outside she put an arm round Sylvia’s shoulders. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

  ‘OK, I suppose,’ Sylvia said. ‘She gave me some aspirins for the pain and told me to go home to bed.’

  ‘Then I should do that if I were you,’ Kate whispered. ‘Don’t come in to work until you feel better. If you feel too bad, get yourself to the hospital. These things sometimes go wrong you know.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ the girl said miserably. ‘It’s illegal, what I’ve done. They’ll arrest me.’

  ‘I’m sure they won’t if you need help,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, go home and go to bed for now. Can you get there by yourself?’

  ‘I expect so. It’s not far.’ Sylvia said.

  Kate looked in her purse and gave her a ten bob note. ‘Take a cab,’ she said.

  Sylvia nodded and turned away and Kate watched her make her way awkwardly up the street towards Shaftesbury Avenue. There would be plenty of cabs there, she thought, and walked slowly back to Andrei Lubin’s shoot upstairs. The way these girls were exploited and thrown away like used rags infuriated her but she could not see how she could do anything about it while she was working for him herself. If the commission for Tatiana went well she would tackle Ken Fellows again and try to extricate herself from the current arrangement. But she knew he would not do anything unless she had proved that she could produce fashion pictures on her own that were acceptable to the magazines. Until then she was trapped and she hated it.

  She ploughed through the afternoon and once the shoot was finished she developed the shots she had taken on the south bank of the Thames and walked back along Oxford Street to Tatiana’s fashion studio. She found Broughton-Clarke in the cutting room, working on a mannequin and lengths of white and black fabric, her mouth full of pins. Tatiana nodded in Kate’s direction and held up three fingers, which Kate took to mean that she would be free to talk in three minutes or so. She took her pictures out of her bag and spread them out on the large wooden table and eventually Tatiana joined her, pin-free, and cast her sharp eye over Kate’s exhibits.

  ‘The south bank?’ she said, slightly doubtfully.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ Kate said. ‘All sorts of ultra-modern buildings in amongst older stuff. Look at this tower thingy. What’s that, for goodness’ sake? It looks like a lighthouse. Your designs will fit the area like a glove. If you’re not sure we could go down there with a single model and take some shots. Set the whole thing up on a small scale and see what it looks like. We don’t have to go the whole hog first time out. Take it a step at a time.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Tatiana said. ‘I’ve got a couple of dresses we could try out.’ She picked up a couple of sketches showing two short shift dresses in geometric shapes of black and white. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  Kate shrugged. She did not really know what to make of these new fashions and Tatiana laughed at her non-committal expression.

  ‘You’ll be wearing them yourself in six months’ time, you’ll see. Fashion never stands still and I think it’s on the verge of a revolution. I need to be at the front. In the meantime you just take the pictures, dear. That’ll be your contribution.’

  Kate nodded. ‘I’ll run these prints past Ken Fellows tomorrow. Show them to him with some of the stuff Vogue is using. See what he thinks as well.’

  Tatiana shrugged. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘We’ll give it a whirl. Midweek some time, maybe?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Kate said, well satisfied. ‘As soon as you like.’ There was a way, she thought, that she could escape from Andrei Lubin’s studio, even if it did mean tying herself to his cousin. At least
Tatiana wanted her for her skills not her body.

  DS Harry Barnard strolled the short distance from the nick through Mayfair, enjoying the weak sunshine and the classy shops that he longed to patronize, across Grosvenor Square to the still stark new American Embassy on the west side of the gardens. He was admitted without much ceremony to the office of a uniformed army officer who got up from his desk when he was shown in and held out a beefy hand.

  ‘Lieutenant Tony Saprelli,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Glad to meet you.’ Taking his hand back, feeling as if it had been put through a mincer, Barnard took the seat he was waved into.

  ‘Good of you to help,’ he said.

  ‘From what your boss told us it looks as if we might be helping ourselves,’ Saprelli said with undiminished enthusiasm. ‘We didn’t lose many soldiers on the way home. We made it pretty attractive for them to go back, college places, all that razzmatazz. But there were a few strays, and some of them we have unfinished business with. So tell me what you’ve got. I’ve already had a look at our lists and sorted out the coloured guys who went AWOL.’

  ‘Our man is calling himself Muddy Abraham, plays the saxophone in a jazz band, apparently spent some time in Liverpool before coming to London. There’s a long-standing black settlement in Liverpool, former seamen mainly, so he could blend in without too much trouble up there in the forties and fifties. He doesn’t seem to have got himself naturalized here, not under that name any way, so he’s likely still a US citizen.’

  ‘Probably some fancy woman at the bottom of it,’ Saprelli said. ‘Let’s have a look at my list, see if we can pin him down.’ He flicked through the papers he had in front of him and underlined a couple of names. ‘No one with Abraham as a surname, but two with Abraham as a given name, Abraham Lincoln Stevenson and Abraham Moses Davis. You got a picture of this guy you’re holding?’

  Barnard took a copy of the mugshot that had been taken when Abraham was arrested and handed it to Saprelli. ‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘He’s a big man, over six feet and broad with it, a heavyweight, not a man I’d like to tangle with, though our dealings with him have been pretty amiable so far.’ He thought it best to glide over the beating the musician had suffered when he was questioned.