by Nicola Upson
Josephine was so absorbed by the narrative she was creating that it took her a few moments to spot the obvious flaw. She was being ridiculous, of course; if Marta were Elspeth’s mother, she’d be behaving very differently now. She’d seen enough of Marta since Friday night to know if she were grieving for a lost daughter: that wasn’t the sort of thing that could be kept hidden. No, she could just about believe that Marta was capable of keeping her 244
composure while Lydia discussed Arthur’s murder in front of her, but the tragedy of a daughter’s death was not something that could be borne in private. In any case, with Elspeth gone there would be no more need for secrecy.
Nevertheless, there was still something that bothered Josephine about Marta. She might have woven an intricate fantasy around the woman’s past, but she had not imagined the echoes of Vintner’s first novel in her manuscript, nor her strange behaviour just now on the telephone. Things needed to be clarified and there was only one way to do it. She picked up her gloves from the table in the hall and took her coat from its hook, then – without really knowing why – she went back to fetch the flower. As she walked across the cobbled courtyard and out into St Martin’s Lane, she could not quite rid herself of a niggling suspicion that it wasn’t Lydia who was in danger after all.
The five-minute journey back to Scotland Yard seemed one of the longest Penrose had ever taken and he was relieved to be back in its long corridors, surrounded by the familiar police-station smell of disinfectant and typewriter ribbons. As he walked through the building to find Fallowfield, he tried to plan – as far as he could –
the next few hours of the investigation. Exploring Vintner’s background and tracing his son was now a priority, and he needed to bring his sergeant up to date and then talk to Lydia. After that, it was time to call a conference with the whole team to discuss the murders from every angle, review the work done over the weekend and take advantage of all the information that could be gleaned from the Yard’s various expert departments. It was the first duty of any detective in charge of a case to co-ordinate this complex web of knowledge, ensuring that every detail – no matter how insignificant it seemed – was available to everyone. He enjoyed his role tremendously: it gave him the chance to test his own thoughts on the case and to gain a full understanding of other lines of enquiry which might come unexpectedly into play. In other words, it satisfied him that he was in control.
He found Fallowfield in the long, pillared CID office, studying 245
a wall of maps which showed every street in the London area. The Sergeant was talking to Seddon, who listened intently to every word, and – not for the first time – Penrose blessed the day he had been given such a competent second-in-charge. He had always respected the way Fallowfield handled the team, giving them friendly encouragement and guidance without ever losing his authority, and he looked now with admiration at the scene in front of him – a room full of men engaged in the methodical and frequently tedious aspects of police work, but tackling it willingly and with great determination.
As soon as he saw Penrose, Fallowfield got up and made his way over to him through a sea of desks and green filing cabinets. His excitement was obvious. ‘Good timing, Sir. We’ve just got the breakthrough we needed. Constable Seddon’s got through to the number on Aubrey’s desk – the one down south that no one was answering.’
‘And?’ Penrose asked, glancing approvingly at Seddon.
‘The number belongs to a landlady in Brighton, Sir,’ Seddon explained after a nod from Fallowfield. ‘She runs two boarding houses down there which provide digs for theatre people on tour.
Apparently, Bernard Aubrey had been in touch with her recently, asking her to confirm some bookings she had a couple of years ago for the cast of Hay Fever. He sent her a programme to look at to see if she recognised any of the actors – and she did. She telephoned Aubrey on Saturday night and told him.’
The boy’s excitement was infectious. ‘Who was there?’ Penrose asked urgently.
‘It was someone called Rafe Swinburne, Sir. She recognised his face from Aubrey’s programme, but the name confused her. You see, when he was in Hay Fever he wasn’t listed as Rafe Swinburne.
He was listed as Rafe Vintner.’
‘Rafe Swinburne? You mean we just stood there and watched Vintner’s son walk away?’ Penrose was furious with himself. ‘That wasn’t an overnight bag – he was packing to leave right in front of me.’ He could scarcely countenance the nerve it must have taken for Swinburne to answer his questions with such casual arrogance 246
when he knew how much was at stake, but it fitted the audacity of both murders perfectly. ‘It’s his father’s egotism all over again.
How could I have been so bloody stupid?’
‘To be fair, Sir, you didn’t know what we were looking for then,’
Fallowfield said, but logic only made Penrose’s expression even more thunderous.
‘Put the call out right away,’ he barked at Seddon, whose sense of triumph was fading fast, ‘and get his photograph in the next Gazette along with a description of the bike. It’s an Ariel Square Four – do you know what that looks like?’ Seddon nodded.
‘Christ, he could be anywhere by now on that thing. There’s no point wasting manpower at the stations. He’s not stupid enough to risk public transport, so I want every available car on the main routes out of the city.’ Seddon hurried off but Penrose called him back. ‘It was good work to keep on that number, Constable,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He turned to Fallowfield. ‘Is Lydia Beaumont still here, Bill?’
‘Yes, Sir. She’s waiting downstairs to see White.’
‘Good.’ Penrose brought him quickly up to date. ‘If Swinburne
– or should I say Vintner – has done a runner, at least she’s safe for now, but I still want to talk to her. Will you tell her I’ll be down in a minute or two and reassure her about Hedley? Then go and see him again – find out what he knows about Swinburne’s background and see if it was Swinburne who put him up to the alibi after all.’ If Vintner did turn out to be their man, he thought, how on earth would Hedley feel when he realised he had shared rooms with Elspeth’s killer? ‘We need to get to the truth about that because at the moment it works for both of them.’
‘Right, Sir. Anything else?’
‘Yes, just a second.’ Penrose picked up the telephone on the nearest desk, but there was no answer from his cousins’ studio. If Marta had arrived and they were deep in conversation, perhaps Josephine would ignore the telephone? ‘I want someone to keep an eye on 66. Get one of the officers at the theatre to pop over the road and make sure everyone’s all right. If Josephine’s there, I want someone on duty outside.’
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‘What shall I tell him to do if she’s not?’
Penrose thought for a second. If Marta hadn’t turned up, might Josephine have gone to look for her? ‘Get Lydia’s address – it’s somewhere off Drury Lane – and send him there instead. Let me know as soon as you find her.’
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Fifteen
Even late on a Sunday afternoon, Longacre seemed too narrow to hold all the traffic that wished to pass through it. Pleased to be on foot, Josephine hurried down the busy thoroughfare, and walked on through the heart of Covent Garden. At the end of the street, she turned right into Drury Lane and was relieved to be within a stone’s throw of her destination; what little sun there had been seemed to have given up on the day before its time, but it was more than the gloomy bank of cloud and encroaching cold that made Josephine quicken her pace still further.
Lydia’s lodgings were on the first floor of one of the artisan dwellings which had replaced the slums at the southern end of the street. Her rooms were instantly recognisable, even from a distance, thanks to a pair of typically flamboyant window boxes that underlined each sash with red and yellow wood and spilled their contents down towards the floor below. Lydia always joked that they were a way of keeping her hand in for the big house in the country
when it finally arrived but, in truth, she had a gift for making a home anywhere; despite her mutterings about the impossibil-ity of putting down roots, her digs were always welcoming, elegant and utterly her, and Josephine usually looked forward to spending time there. But not today. As she crossed the road, uneasy about the reception she would get from Marta, she noticed an elderly woman coming out of the house and recognised her as the occupant of the top-floor rooms. They had met once or twice at Lydia’s spur-of-the-moment parties, and now she waved a cheerful greeting.
‘I’ll save you the bother of ringing, dear,’ the woman called, 249
holding the front door open. ‘I hope you’ve got your tin hat with you, though. It didn’t sound like a lazy Sunday afternoon when I went past.’
She was gone before Josephine had a chance to ask her what she meant. Perhaps Lydia had come home earlier than expected and they were ‘sorting through things’ as Marta had put it. If that was the case, it would be tactful to beat a hasty retreat but that didn’t solve the problem of Lydia’s safety and it didn’t answer any of the questions she had for Marta. No, she’d have to brave it, if only briefly.
She had barely climbed half a dozen steps when Marta’s voice rang down to meet her. ‘If you’d been where you were supposed to be all weekend, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you since last night –
where the hell were you? You must have known I’d want to speak to you. And what are you doing here now? I told you never to acknowledge me when I was with Lydia.’
‘Make your mind up – either you want to see me or you don’t.’
The exchange certainly sounded like a lovers’ quarrel but it was a man’s voice, unfamiliar to Josephine and with a petulant quality which she instantly found disagreeable. Could Marta be having an affair? That might explain her moods and the mysterious flower, but Josephine found it hard to reconcile with what she had seen of Marta’s feelings for Lydia. ‘Anyway, your sainted Lydia isn’t here, is she?’ the man continued. ‘I watched her leave. She looks a bit peaky, though – it must be the distress of losing a close friend.’
‘Oh shut up and act your age – this isn’t a game.’ Marta’s words were defiant, but she sounded upset rather than angry. ‘I hate it when you behave like a child. We’ve got to stop what we’re doing
– it just doesn’t make sense and innocent people are getting hurt. I can’t live with it any more – I’ve got to tell Lydia.’
Even as she reached for the door, Josephine knew that the sensible decision would be to turn around and leave, but it was too late: carried forward by her curiosity and her concern for Lydia, she committed herself to the scene before weighing up the consequences. Inside the room, Marta stood next to Lydia’s small piano, 250
talking to a man who reclined on the low divan in front of her. He had his back to Josephine, but she could see his face reflected in a full-length Venetian mirror; he was handsome, although his features were marred by a sulkiness around the mouth which matched his voice, but what struck Josephine most was how unperturbed he seemed. Marta, on the other hand, had clearly been crying, and her tears seemed to bear out the vulnerability hinted at in her exchange with Lydia the night before.
‘Josephine! What are you doing here?’ she asked, her expression suddenly filled with horror.
Josephine ignored the question. ‘What’s going on, Marta? What have you got to tell Lydia? And who’s this?’
Marta hesitated and tried to compose herself, but the fear in her voice made the attempted casualness of her next words sound absurdly false. ‘It’s Rafe Swinburne. He’s from the theatre.’
Josephine recognised the name of Terry’s choice for Bothwell in Queen of Scots but, before she could speak, Swinburne leapt to his feet and walked over to her.
‘There’s no need to be so coy, surely,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Stage names are for strangers, and Josephine’s practically a friend of the family.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Rafe Vintner,’ he said. ‘I believe you knew my father.’ He noticed the flower she was holding and turned back to Marta. ‘I left that at stage door for you. I’m quite hurt that you should have given it away already.’
‘You left it? Why?’ Marta looked astonished, and Josephine could see very clearly who was in control of the alliance – whatever the alliance was. She remembered what Archie had said about Vintner’s son, and realised the danger she had put herself in. How could she have been so stupid?
‘I don’t know why I left it, really,’ Vintner was saying. ‘Let’s call it filial affection, shall we?’
‘Rafe, don’t – not in front of . . .’ but Marta was interrupted before she could finish.
‘Oh, the game’s up, Mother,’ Vintner said. ‘It’s a shame, I agree –
my career was going rather well and I really did want that part in Queen of Scots. But it’s time we called it a day. You see, I happen to 251
know that a little bird’s just flown down from Berwick-upon-Tweed to spoil the fun we’ve been having. In fact, she’s probably doing it as we speak. That’s why I’m here now – to tie up a few loose ends.’
Marta looked at her son as though he had gone completely insane, but Josephine was piecing together the most terrible of pictures. When she had considered a connection between Marta and Elliott Vintner, the stumbling block had been Marta’s lack of grief for Elspeth; could the explanation for that really be that she was somehow implicated in her murder? Like most people, Josephine was reluctant to believe that a mother was capable of harming her child, and she stared at the woman she thought she had been getting to know in utter disbelief. What sort of monster would con-spire with one of her children to destroy the other? Marta looked back in desperation, as if pleading with Josephine not to judge her, but suddenly her expression changed to one of pure fear. Turning round, Josephine saw that Rafe Vintner had placed himself in between her and the door. He had removed a scarf from a battered leather holdall and was now carefully unrolling it. Inside was a gun.
‘Don’t Rafe, please!’ Marta cried, but Vintner was already moving back towards Josephine. Before she had a chance to register what was happening, he had grabbed her arm and turned her roughly round and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. The barrel of the gun was pressed hard into the small of her back and, in that moment, she understood what it meant to know true fear.
She had written about it many times and, in the past, had been afraid for others – for Jack, of course, and for her mother as she lay dying – but this blind terror was something altogether different. It was a selfish, humiliating emotion, stronger than anything she had ever known.
‘Don’t you think it’s a little late for such a sudden change of heart, Mother?’ Vintner said, emphasising the last word in a way which scorned the relationship. For a second or two, he removed the gun from Josephine’s back and used its barrel to trace the contours of her face. The steel was cold against her cheek and she tried to fight back the tears of anger and frustration, but in vain.
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Vintner laughed quietly. ‘So this is the great but elusive Josephine Tey,’ he said. ‘You know, Mother, she’s not at all like the woman you described to me at the railway station when you were trying to tell me who to kill. How could you have got it so wrong? Still, there’s always a second chance.’ He turned back to Marta. ‘You believe in second chances, don’t you Mother? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Being a family again after all these years. So don’t go soft on me now – we started this together and we haven’t finished yet.’
This time, the shock served to strengthen Josephine’s resolve rather than destroy it. ‘You told him to kill me?’ she asked, looking incredulously at Marta. ‘Why the hell would you want to do that?’
Marta stayed silent. ‘Perhaps I was being a little disingenuous there,’ Vintner said. ‘It was my idea. After what you did to my father, you surely can’t wonder why I would want to kill you?
Mothe
r just offered to help me out. We’ve been estranged for a while, you see, and she was so pleased to see me that I think she’d have agreed to anything.’ Marta opened her mouth to speak but he interrupted her. ‘There’s no need for secrecy now, not with our little friend here,’ he said, gesturing with the gun. ‘And I’m sure Josephine would like to know that you weren’t exactly opposed to the idea of bumping her off.’ He put his mouth closer to Josephine’s ear. ‘In fact, it was her idea to do it in a crowd – she thought it would be a nice tribute to your little crime novel. And she had her own reasons for wanting you dead. It’s a shame you don’t have time to talk to her about them.’
‘But you killed . . .’ Josephine began, but Vintner put his hand quickly over her mouth. ‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘I see you’re a few steps ahead of us, but all in good time. It’s a shame to rush a good story – you should know that.’ He paused. ‘Where was I? Ah yes –
your murder. You see, Mother was supposed to point you out to me and make herself scarce. The thing is, she was a little bit hasty in getting out of the way. She didn’t wait to meet you properly and confused you with someone else, so she gave me the wrong information. Before you got here just now, she was even blaming Lydia 253
for saying something about a hat.’ He shrugged his shoulders and added sarcastically, ‘A tragedy.’
With a mixture of horror, incredulity and pity, Josephine realised that Marta had no idea who her son had killed at King’s Cross. As if to prove her right, Marta spoke again.
‘You’re frightening me, Rafe. This is not what the plan was.
We’re no nearer to finding your sister now than we were when I agreed to help you, and you promised we’d be a family again. I thought you wanted that as much as I do.’
‘Aren’t I enough for you then?’ Vintner spat the words out, and the bitterness in his voice was almost as palpable to Josephine as the gun which rested in her back. She could not see his face, but she could tell from the growing fear in Marta’s that the agreement which she had believed to exist between them was gradually being exposed as a lie. ‘Do you have to have your bastard daughter to play happy families?’ he continued, and Marta flinched as if the blow had been a physical one. ‘Anyway, if you want to talk about promises, what about your promises to me? Like the one you made to add a little something to Bernard Aubrey’s whisky. Thank God I didn’t trust you to carry that off.’
