‘It’s Daphne you need to speak to – she knows the place inside out. I can’t see anything different, really. Everything that belongs here seems in place. I’m worried about her, though. She’s a reliable sort and, well, in effect, she’s missing. Normally there would be a few of her things about the place, and they’re gone.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘She works here. The ashtray, for example. Her overcoat. Notes.’ Mirabelle didn’t want to betray the girl but at the same time Daphne appeared to have disappeared. She bet the television set would be gone, too, but telling Sergeant Belton about it would have been too much of a giveaway. ‘She has lunch here every day,’ Mirabelle wound up. ‘But I can’t see anything of hers – not even a cup and saucer. Do you think she might have been spirited away for some reason?’
Belton considered this. ‘That’s a bit dramatic, surely,’ he said, leading them back through the hallway to the head of the stairs. ‘Perhaps she had the day off and took her things home for cleaning. It might be that we’re not dealing with a break-in at all. She could’ve left the door open by mistake when she left. You’ll need to leave a description of her. Don’t worry though. We’ll run her down one way or another.’
‘Would you like us to check the kitchen?’ Mirabelle asked.
Belton shook his head. ‘No, there’s nothing in there worth lifting. We’d have noticed. It’s all tiles and ironmongery.’
Mirabelle noted that Daphne’s Primus stove had probably disappeared along with any supplies. As they returned to the vestibule, the sergeant gestured towards the door and nodded to Vesta. ‘Thanks, and give Charlie my best. I might pop in tomorrow and hear him play.’
Vesta grinned. ‘He’d like that.’
‘In the meantime, I don’t want you two ladies going anywhere. All right?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Stay in Brighton. We might need you. This friend of yours is the acquaintance of a murder victim. And you’re her acquaintance.’ Belton’s voice was expressionless. It didn’t sound like a threat and yet somehow it felt that way. ‘If you were at the scene of that poor woman’s death yesterday, you’re also witnesses. Besides, if this is a break-in it might be tied to the old woman’s murder. I’m surprised the policeman in charge didn’t instruct you to stay in the vicinity yesterday. We might need to be in touch. Don’t leave Brighton. Neither of you.’ Belton’s voice brooked no question.
Mirabelle couldn’t help but feel slightly miffed. McGregor wouldn’t give her that kind of order. Of course he would know she was innocent, quite beside the fact that he wouldn’t dare.
Sergeant Belton kept an eye on the women as they walked down the pathway.
‘Well, either Daphne packed up . . .’ Vesta began to postulate.
Mirabelle put her hand on Vesta’s arm to stop her talking until they were out of earshot. They were almost at the main road when she considered it safe to continue. ‘Packing up would be both odd and suspicious,’ she agreed, ‘but it looks that way.’
‘Well, it’s either that or she was taken. But if she was taken, who took her? Absconding is far more likely, and, if so, there’s a chance Daphne’s the killer. Perhaps she murdered Mrs Chapman and Joey Gillingham. Maybe she panicked and ran off. We might have had a lucky escape yesterday – she had us in there. Alone. We could have been in all kinds of danger.’
Mirabelle couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Daphne Marsden cut a man’s throat? Do you think she might have tied us up and stabbed us with an eighteenth-century fruit knife? Or poisoned the cleaning lady? Honestly, Vesta, I can’t see it.’
‘Why does everyone think that Mrs Chapman is irrelevant because of her job?’
‘You know I don’t think that. Come on. Belton isn’t going to get very far finding the girl. It would be best if we track her down. We need to get back to the office.’ Mirabelle picked up the pace.
Vesta glanced forlornly in the direction of the Lanes and her long-overdue fish pie. ‘Can’t we just go . . .’
Mirabelle was adamant. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said.
The women turned down East Street and straight into the doorway of the office building. They ran up the stairs and Mirabelle drew out her key. Vesta had become jumpy in the three minutes it had taken them to get back.
‘Do you think it’s some kind of dreadful plot?’ She was beginning to panic. ‘I mean, Daphne might be anywhere. Anyone might have her. Some monster – some absolute beast.’
It ran through the girl’s mind that she might have known. Mirabelle had a nose for this kind of thing. The minute she got interested in a case, it was a dead cert there’d be something serious. Vesta had been kidnapped two years before. She’d been released safely, but the man she’d been taken with hadn’t been so lucky. Maybe Daphne was tied up somewhere, praying desperately for someone to come and get her.
By contrast Mirabelle remained calm. Her fingers fluttered a little, but that was all. ‘You need to work from your last certainty, Vesta. Haven’t you learned anything?’ she scolded as she reached for the telephone and called the operator. ‘Be sensible,’ she mouthed as she turned her attention to the voice at the other end of the line. ‘Could you put me through to the Headquarters of the National Trust?’
Vesta lingered.
‘Don’t fuss. It won’t help,’ Mirabelle whispered sternly with one hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Sit down,’ she gestured. ‘Eat something.’
The girl drew out the last of her Jelly Babies for comfort. One orange and one lime sweet fell onto her palm as she up-ended the bag. She passed the green one to Mirabelle who scrutinised it as if it was a deadly insect.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘I wonder if I might speak to someone about Daphne Marsden, an employee of yours who has been involved in restoration work at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton? . . . I’m trying to get in touch with her, and I hoped you’d have her contact details.’
At the other end of the wire, the woman’s voice was so shrill that Vesta could hear every word. ‘What is it in connection with?’ the woman squawked.
Mirabelle thought quickly. ‘A bereavement. I need to get in touch with Miss Marsden as soon as I can, but she isn’t at the Pavilion today. I don’t want her to miss the funeral, you see.’
‘Hold, please. I’ll check the records.’
The telephone clicked. Vesta felt calmer. The situation was in hand. She eyed her friend with pride. Mirabelle really was unflappable. She was tenacious, too – she’d follow every lead right to the end. Vesta wondered where Mirabelle had learned to sit so straight. You could crown the woman with an ostrich feather and it wouldn’t so much as flutter.
The lady at the National Trust office returned. ‘Hello. I’m afraid I have no Brighton address for Daphne, but you might be able to contact her through her family. I’m looking at the file now. They live, let me see, in Cambridge. This form has been filled out entirely incorrectly,’ she tutted, ‘but her father is a professor, it seems. I’m sorry – I don’t have an address, and really I should – but I’m sure if you phoned the university and asked for him they’d point you in the right direction. Peter Marsden – he’s Professor of Architecture at Downing College.’
Mirabelle smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She put down the phone with a satisfied click. ‘There, that’s a good start.’
Vesta stared. ‘She might not be there.’
Mirabelle looked doubtful. ‘She might not,’ she admitted, ‘but we’re a step closer.’
Vesta chewed her Jelly Baby. Mirabelle might be right, and, for that matter, admirable, but sometimes she could also be infuriating. ‘What do we do now?’ she mumbled. ‘Ring them?’
Mirabelle slipped the green Jelly Baby into her mouth and sucked. ‘Oh no. We have to go there,’ she said slowly.
‘Where?’
‘Cambridge, of course. When you think about it, it ties in very nicely. Architecture, you see. It’s quite masonic – or it can be.’
Vesta decided not to ask. Not just yet.<
br />
Mirabelle picked up her handbag. ‘Right,’ she said, checking her watch and winding it thoughtfully, ‘if we catch the next train to London we can make it to Cambridge just as they’ll be finishing dinner. We’ll have to stay over.’
Vesta got to her feet. ‘But Sergeant Belton said we shouldn’t leave Brighton.’
Mirabelle’s eyes twinkled. ‘You stay if you like. I’ll be back tomorrow. There’s no substitute for meeting people, Vesta – you pick up so much more. If the girl has absconded then her family might have an idea where she’s gone, if they aren’t sheltering her at home. Most people go home, you see, when they get into trouble. It’s only natural.’
Vesta considered the matter. Home for her, she realised, was her little bedsit now, not the brick-built house where she’d grown up. That’s how it felt.
‘When did we ever listen to a policeman, anyway?’ Vesta shrugged her shoulders.
When Mirabelle got in one of these moods it was best to hang onto her coat-tails and hope for the best. She’d leave a message for Charlie with Mrs Agora.
Chapter 18
Secrets are tyrants waiting to be dethroned.
The women bought pork pies from a stall at Victoria Station before they caught the Tube to King’s Cross for the Cambridge train. It felt good to be back in London, if only for a few minutes, thought Mirabelle. The city still clung to the vestiges of Coronation fever that had pulsed through the whole country only a few weeks before, and the streets around Victoria were busy with people heading to and from St James’s park. Descending into the Tube to cross town, Vesta stowed the pies in her capacious handbag. Only a few minutes later the women exited King’s Cross on Euston Road. They could hear someone playing an old wartime hit on a piano in a nearby pub. A tatty Union Jack was still hoisted from an upstairs window. On the north side of the station women on the game leaned in doorways, smoking and chatting and dressed to the threadbare nines. Several cars were waiting at the traffic lights on the road towards Bloomsbury, their engines a background purr. Mirabelle liked it here. London always felt like the biggest and best city in the world. Gritty and glamorous, its streets would always be scarred by the Blitz though now the worst of the city’s wounds were slowly closing over.
The women decided to go to the station bar for some sustenance. Inside, Vesta pushed through the crowd and bought two bottles of beer, which she also stowed in her handbag for the second train.
‘Something for the journey. That’s us all set.’ She laughed as they hurried to make their connection.
The carriage rocked like a cradle and the women fell silent, sipping the beer, eating the pies and staring out of the window as the city receded. The down-at-heel trackside houses turned in due course into factories and then fields. As they left town, the train stopped at a series of small stations with glossy green benches and tubs of forget-me-nots, pansies and primroses. Almost at Cambridge the sun began to sink into the fens. In the half-light Mirabelle could just make out Ely Cathedral as she finished her drink.
‘We’re almost there,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it?’
‘Did you study here?’ Vesta asked.
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘Quite the reverse. Oxford.’
Vesta giggled. If anywhere was the opposite of the University of Cambridge it was Southwark Secretarial College where she had taken her shorthand qualification and had learned to type. To Vesta the two august institutions were interchangeable.
‘I visited Cambridge now and then in my university days,’ Mirabelle reflected. ‘I was keen on debating. It was quite competitive.’
Vesta tried to imagine it. For someone who now said so little it was curious to think of her friend banging her fist on a wooden lectern as she argued and difficult to conjure an image of Mirabelle that was younger and more argumentative. What had she worn, Vesta wondered, as she expounded her opinions? How had she done her hair? Mirabelle seemed perpetual – like a statue set in stone, without a past or a future. And now Vesta came to think of it, even in company Mirabelle never really functioned as part of a team. She was always slightly detached. She’d known Mirabelle for two years and still had very little idea about her personal life, even where she’d come from, let alone what she’d done in the mysterious office where she’d worked during World War II.
‘I’ll bet you were good at debating,’ she said.
Mirabelle checked her hat was in place and gently smoothed Vesta’s collar where it had twisted. ‘We used to stay in rooms at St Catharine’s, but there was a nice B&B near the Fitzwilliam Museum. We’ll book into that one,’ she said decisively. ‘I hope it’s still there.’
The train pulled in just after nine and Cambridge appeared all but asleep. As the handful of other passengers dispersed, the women slipped into a taxi. Vesta took in the deserted winding streets and shopfronts. Even the pubs appeared only half-open. A dull glow in the windows was the only sign that anyone might be inside. A multitude of bicycles lined both sides of the road. The gold lettering from the university outfitters shimmered in the headlamps, and shop after shop appeared to sell nothing but books and sports equipment. Occasionally a high wall or a closed gate denoted college grounds. Ancient stained-glass windows set into the outer walls looked as if they were lit only by candles, and signs seemed for the benefit of insiders only. ‘Reach Library By The Backs’ one said, and ‘Silence During Evensong’, without any indication of the time of the service. The taxi slowed to give way to a white-faced boy in a black academic gown who scuttled across the street without looking left or right.
‘Doesn’t anyone eat?’ Vesta asked, straining to make out a bakery, a restaurant or a grocery – anywhere that might provide food. The evening air was devoid of the smell of cooking.
‘Well, there can’t be many people about. It’s the end of term now. In any case, mostly people dine in college,’ Mirabelle remembered.
Cambridge, after all, was smaller than Oxford. The university dominated everything. It wanted its dons on campus not carousing in town. When the locals went out to eat they chose pubs and restaurants on the river with views over the countryside. There wasn’t much to do in the city centre apart from buy books and drink beer.
‘Tomorrow, if we’ve time before we go back to Brighton, we can pop into Fitzbillies,’ she offered. ‘Very good rock buns.’
Satisfied with this, Vesta settled into her seat as the cab turned onto a wide road of Victorian houses and shops. A little way along, the driver pulled up next to a grand gate set into a high brick wall. ‘Downing College, ladies,’ he announced.
‘Quiet night,’ said Mirabelle as she handed him their fare.
The driver shrugged. ‘I’m off home now. I just live round the corner. Thank you, Miss.’
Vesta rang the bell beside the gate. When the porter arrived he was a cheery fellow in a bowler hat who beamed when Mirabelle mentioned Professor Marsden.
‘He’ll be glad to see you two.’ The fellow winked, eyeing Vesta up and down. ‘I can take you over, if you like.’
‘Just point us in the right direction, if you don’t mind.’ Mirabelle scanned the grounds.
The man raised a hand as if he was directing traffic. Downing College was lavishly laid out with wide pathways and long quads between the buildings. It was just starting to get dark. One by one the outside lights were switching on.
‘Down the path,’ the porter gestured, ‘past the chapel and then the library. You’ll see it when you get there. It’s the third block on the left.’
As the women started down the pathway, the man retreated into his office, removing his bowler hat before he’d even made it through the door.
‘Benji, that dog Marsden’s got another two up there,’ they heard him say, his accent as broad as it was leering. ‘Frisky old sod.’
Mirabelle peered over her shoulder. The professor, it might be deduced, was one for the ladies. A veritable Cary Grant.
A beautiful landscape of well-kept lawns and terraced college buildings opened
before them. It seemed vast in comparison to the cramped streets they’d seen on the way from the station. Some of the lawns had been laid over to fruit and vegetables. Mirabelle spotted rows of leeks and potatoes as well as raspberry canes and what looked like a plot of green beans and marrows. Downing had evidently done its bit, dug for victory and was still going strong. Somewhere in the distance Mirabelle could hear the contented cluck of chickens as the dusk fell. The college must have its own supply of eggs. Despite generating its own food by turning its quads into farmland, the place still felt grand.
To Mirabelle the feeling of coming off a street into a hidden world was familiar. The last time she’d been in Cambridge she’d visited a pub called St Radegund’s. The group had gone there after the debate was over. The pub was far enough away for the students to be able to let down their hair – on King Street, near Jesus College, a fifteen-minute walk from where they were staying. Women hadn’t been welcome but the landlord made an exception for her – the only girl on the debating team. Ironic, she remembered thinking, as St Radegund was female. Once the pints had been pulled and gin poured, the doors were locked and the debating teams of both universities got down to unofficial argument jammed against each other in the cramped, smoky room. Coming back into the college afterwards it felt as if the world had disappeared beyond the walls. She remembered feeling sophisticated – ‘a female pioneer’ her tutor had said. In the morning she’d woken to sunshine and cherry trees scattering petals like confetti across the quad. It had been 1934. It felt like a million years ago.
Now, she took in the surroundings. Downing was a relatively modern college – late Georgian she guessed. The boundary was skirted by a long stretch of high railings that separated the college grounds from those of the institution next door. To the right a classical chapel built of Portland stone loomed out of the balmy half-light. Further along there was a library fronted by a row of columns. Above them symbols were carved beneath a stone apex. It was too dark to make out exactly what they were, but there was a scale of justice in the centre. Was that masonic?
England Expects Page 14
