‘Where was Mr Montfleury’s wife while all of this was happening?’
‘She was greeting the guests in the main hall.’
‘So it’s likely that you were the last to see him alive. Where did you go then?’
‘I came into the main hall and accepted a drink from Mr Stuart-Holmesby. A few minutes later I believe the servants went to fetch Mr Montfleury and found him dead. We were all told to stay where we were. The police arrived and searched us. It was all terribly upsetting.’
‘How awful for you,’ said May, ‘I can’t imagine how you must have felt.’
Bryant shot him a desiccating look. He didn’t hold with sympathy.
‘It had to be one of the staff,’ said May as they left the Howard. ‘It’s terrible what sweet girls like that have to go through these days, getting mauled by creepy old politicians.’
‘It beats policemen,’ said Bryant.
May was mortified. ‘Good heavens, you don’t think that I would – I’d never—’
‘I’m joking, I know you’re a gentleman. Mia Waleska arrived with Stuart-Holmesby, who is old enough to be her grandfather. Now what do you suppose first made him decide to take a twenty-three-year-old girl on a trip into the English countryside? He’d booked a room for them in the nearby village of Trant at a pub called the Globe. One room, John. She’s not nearly as innocent as she looks.’
‘You’ve a very cynical nature, Arthur.’
‘So have you, when your suspect’s not wearing a miniskirt and kinky boots. She wasn’t planning on taking any long walks.’
Back at their office, John May received a stack of photographs that had been taken at the party by a freelance newspaperman who had managed to worm his way into the event.
‘Wait a minute,’ said May. ‘Did Coatsleeve Charlie take these?’
‘He thought he’d sell them to one of the Sundays,’ said Bryant, shuffling through the photographs.
‘I thought it looked like his work. Why would he be trying to flog pictures of a boring old Tory fundraiser?’
‘I asked him that. He said he had an idea to do a follow-up to the Christine Keeler scandal. I suppose he managed to get his mitts on a list of those in attendance and saw our four young ladies in amongst the mouldies. You can imagine how these chaps’ minds work. Did you know that Mia Waleska used to do glamour photography on the side? So did Keeler. And, like Keeler, Mia wouldn’t do anything too hard core.’
‘What are you saying? That the girls are involved in pornography?’
‘No, not at all, but Mia is a very beautiful companion for somebody’s arm. Perhaps she’s paid to brighten up otherwise drab public events. Keeler kept bad company but did not make money from immoral earnings. The problem with her was that she and her friend Dr Stephen Ward provided the link between two very different worlds. She had relations with a West Indian thug and the Secretary of State for War. By the time the former was running around firing shots into the wall of Ward’s mews house, the government decided to make an example of them.’
‘Surely girls are more careful now, in the light of what’s gone before?’ asked May. His desire to protect Mia and the others was touching, but didn’t wash with Bryant.
‘I imagine so,’ Bryant agreed. ‘I thought they were being very careful today, don’t you? That’s odd.’ He picked up one of the photographs and held it an inch from his snub nose, staring hard at it. ‘I have to get some reading glasses. Take a look at that.’ He threw the photo at May.
‘I can’t see anything,’ said May.
‘Mia Waleska’s outfit.’
‘What of it?’
‘She’s in a dark trouser suit. It was a hot night. The other three were in miniskirts, as she was today. It’s what all the girls do now. Don’t you think she’d have worn a short skirt to a party like that?’
May shrugged. ‘Only if she was seeking to meet more men like Stuart-Holmesby.’
‘Which is exactly why I imagine she went.’
‘She wasn’t hiding a dagger down her knickers, if that’s what you’re wondering. She was searched like everyone else.’
‘Would she have had any reason to want to kill him?’ Bryant asked. ‘Could they have met before somewhere?’
‘His secretary says absolutely not.’
‘What about this fellow she came with? He clearly said something to Montfleury to make him ask to see her.’
‘We’ve had a stroke of luck there. The secretary heard him make the phone call to Stuart-Holmesby two days before the party. Montfleury was always issuing doom-laden warnings about the government. He said that “the time had come to ring the bells of Westminster”. She wonders if it might have been some kind of warning.’
Bryant dragged out his Bradshaw and began checking train times. ‘As much as I hate the thought of venturing back into so much greenery, I think we need to have another look at the house. The murder weapon has to still be there. Without it we have nothing.’
Algie Forshaw was at the abbey to greet them, just packing up his forensics case. ‘Her dabs are all over the library shelves,’ he said, climbing to his feet. ‘If Waleska did it, she certainly wasn’t too worried about leaving marks.’
‘She’s never been in trouble with the law before,’ said May defensively. ‘Are her paw-prints consistent with her story?’
‘What, that she was asked to get a book down from the top shelf and he used it as an excuse to maul her? Pretty much so.’
‘Algie, you’re married, aren’t you?’ asked Bryant.
‘Yes,’ sighed Algie. ‘She’s still alive.’
‘What kind of clothes does your wife wear in the summer?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never looked.’
‘Well, would she wear black?’
‘Only if someone’s died. Or if it’s formal. We went to the embalming industry dinner-dance last summer and she wore something that looked like a shroud. It’s better that she keeps her legs to herself.’
Back at Bayham Abbey later that afternoon, Simon Montfleury’s secretary reluctantly admitted them again. ‘You people have already stamped your way through the house,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what more you expect to find.’
‘Your boss, he was often photographed for the press, wasn’t he?’ asked Bryant, baring his pegs in what he thought to be a friendly smile, but which looked more like a dog with rabies.
‘He was a public figure,’ said the secretary, folding her arms.
‘Was he photographed here?’
‘Always in his library.’
‘Do you have any of the pictures?’
‘Of course. I keep a press file.’
‘Could I see them?’ He turned to his partner. ‘God, it’s like pulling teeth.’
They went to the secretary’s office and waited while she pulled open various drawers and located the press clippings. Bryant removed a handful and headed back to the library. May was mystified, but followed in his wake.
The only sign that a murder had taken place was the dark stain on the Indian carpet. Bryant held up a Times photograph of Montfleury leaning against his desk with a book in his hand. He grunted, holding the picture at different angles. ‘Does the photographer bring his own lighting?’ he asked.
‘There’s no need,’ said the secretary. ‘It’s bright enough in here, provided we turn the lights on.’
‘What are you doing?’ asked May finally.
‘Turn the lights on, will you?’ Bryant waved his free hand behind him. May did as he was told. Bryant looked up, raising the photograph in comparison. He looked around, found the library steps and rolled them to the far end of the bookcase. Climbing up, then down, he paced back across the carpet and reached a baroque brass grating in the floor. ‘Where does this lead?’
‘To the boiler,’ said the secretary, unimpressed. ‘It’s the heating system. Your inspector already looked down there.’
‘He’s not my inspector,’ Bryant remarked. ‘Did he remove the grille? These screws don’t l
ook like they’ve ever seen a screwdriver.’
‘No, he shone his torch down.’
Bryant had a poke around in his pockets and produced several conkers, a yo-yo, half a cheese and beetroot sandwich, and a scout’s penknife. Settling on his knees, he unscrewed the grille and lifted it off, reaching inside.
‘Well, well,’ he said, sitting up with something held in his fingertips. ‘The question now is whether Mr Montfleury’s murder was a premeditated act. The decision to wear the trouser suit rather suggests it was.’ He rose and bounced over to the library steps. ‘When she came in, he asked her to use the steps, yes? When she got to the top, he slipped his hand – well, we don’t need to know exactly what he did with his hand but let’s imagine he either gave her a fright or she had been expecting something like it. She turned, found herself level with the chandelier and pulled off one of these.’ He held up a scalloped glass dagger. ‘There are, let me see, nineteen of them on the chandelier. And this one, I think, made twenty. After stabbing him with the only weapon at hand, she wiped it clean on her trousers. She could have then left the room and stood over the nearest drain or grating to let it fall down her trouser leg into the drain. But then she saw the heating grille and it fitted perfectly. And of course when Ian Hargreave shone a torch down there, his torch beam just went straight through it.’
‘OK, we’ve got the murder weapon but this is still circumstantial evidence,’ said May. ‘It would never stand up in a court of law.’
‘Then we search for the trouser suit and have it analysed for bloodstains,’ said Bryant.
Mia Waleska had a perfectly plausible excuse, of course. She said that she had only borrowed the suit for the evening, from Lisa. She had been planning to wear a summer dress but found that she no longer fitted it. She had washed the trousers because she had spilled a glass of red wine down them.
There was nothing else to be done. With the discovery of DNA forensics still two decades away, the case against Mia Waleska collapsed. One year later, something happened to open it again.
2.
The Howard Hotel had once occupied an elegant Gothic building overlooking the Thames near Temple Gardens, but it had been replaced by an ugly sixties block of magnolia-coloured concrete. On a sunny morning in late summer, David Stuart-Holmesby, MP for Rotherhithe, was sitting in his usual armchair in the perpetually deserted foyer bar, sipping a coffee into which he had slipped a large vodka, a Scandinavian cocktail known as Karsk. The name derived from an old Norse word meaning ‘agile’ and ‘vigorous’. Stuart-Holmesby was feeling neither, having been out on the town rather too late the night before, and was thinking about giving his luncheon a miss when he heard the ticking of heels on marble.
Looking up, he saw a familiar face approaching across the expanse of green stone. Even wearing huge sunglasses, a little black dress and a large black silk hat, he could tell that Mia Waleska had somehow grown even more beautiful. He had not laid eyes on her since the scandal at Bayham Abbey. He couldn’t risk the contamination of association by being seen anywhere near her.
Now, though, a year later, and in the setting of the empty hotel, where only the bartender stood cleaning a glass, it was an entirely different matter. ‘My dear,’ he said, making half an effort to rise from his extremely comfortable chair. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you. I feel I must thank you for all the hard work you—’
But she had stopped before him and removed a silver pistol from her purse. The bartender ducked down behind his bar. Mia Waleska’s face was a porcelain mask, her lips as frosted and frozen as a Dali brooch. She checked the dainty gold timepiece on her wrist, then aimed and fired once. A single bullet pierced David Stuart-Holmesby’s heart, passing out of the back of the armchair and embedding itself in the wainscoting.
Mia dropped the pistol on the floor with a clatter, then turned and tapped through the marble foyer of the Howard Hotel. She walked out into the sunlight and down to the Victoria Embankment, where she threw her hat into the river and shook out her hair, and left her old life behind for good.
‘Nobody saw her,’ said John May, striding across their Bow Street office and throwing down the morning newspaper. ‘The barman threw himself on the floor and only has the vaguest recollection of a backlit woman in black looking at her watch.’
‘Hardly anyone ever stays in the Howard,’ said Bryant, chewing on his pipe stem. ‘And there’s never anyone behind the counter. You have to wait ages to get served.’
‘Are you taking this seriously?’ May barked. ‘We couldn’t pin her down last time but we’re damned well going to do it this time.’
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said Bryant. ‘Lovely Mia could do no wrong until she made a laughing stock of you.’
‘Us, Arthur, us! She waved two fingers in our faces and walked away, and I’m not letting her do it again. It doesn’t matter that there was no one else in the reception area, she was seen walking into the hotel and heading in the direction of the Strand afterwards. We’ve got her. I can place her at the scene and I have the murder weapon, hopefully with her prints all over it.’
‘When is that forensics-wallah getting back to us?’
‘Any minute now, I hope,’ said May, willing the telephone to ring.
DS Gladys Forthright stuck her head around the door jamb. ‘I’m popping over to the stationer’s for some fresh typewriter ribbons. Can I get you anything?’ she asked.
‘Yes, twenty Senior Service,’ said May, digging in his pocket for change. ‘If I give you five bob you can give me sixpence back.’
‘Don’t I get to keep the change for going?’
‘You’re going anyway.’
‘Cheapskate,’ said Forthright. ‘There are men out there who know the value of a lady.’
‘“The value of a lady.”’ Bryant rolled the phrase around his mouth. ‘Gladys is right, of course. To some men, young ladies have a very special value.’ He turned to look at his partner. ‘You know, something that Simon Montfleury said still sticks in my brain. It was when he called Stuart-Holmesby. The secretary thought it was a warning. What if it wasn’t?’
May stopped staring at the telephone. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What if it was an instruction? It’s time to ring the Belles of Westminster.’
‘You mean—’
‘They had their own club. They were a call-girl ring, John. And if Montfleury wanted them rung, it meant that both he and Stuart-Holmesby had access to them. What if the girls no longer wanted to be controlled by a pair of sleazy old politicians – wouldn’t they do something about it?’
The phone rang, making them both jump.
‘John, is that you?’ said Algie Forshaw. ‘I’ve got a bit of bad news for you. The gun that young lady dropped on the floor of the Howard Hotel, it has her fingerprints on it.’
‘Well, that’s good, surely,’ said May.
‘It would be, except that the bullet we dug out of the wall behind Stuart-Holmesby didn’t come from it. It’s a completely different gauge. She fired a blank.’
May put his hand over the receiver. ‘You’re not going to like this,’ he told Arthur.
They arrived at the Howard Hotel to find that a sleepy concierge had finally been posted at the reception desk. Bryant paced across the green marble floor. The armchair in which Stuart-Holmesby had been sitting when he was shot had been replaced, but it sat at the exact same angle as before. Bryant paced backwards from it, stopping at the approximate point where Mia Waleska had stood.
He nimbly turned on one foot and stared out of the door. ‘The bullet had lost more power than Algie expected it to,’ he told May. ‘I think I know why. Somebody else fired from the street. The Belles of Westminster. They’d have looked out for one another, wouldn’t they?’
‘If they’d formed a club, as you suggested,’ said May, ‘I imagine they would.’
‘One of the other girls,’ said Bryant, pointing. ‘She stood there and fired at exactly the same time. That’s why Mia looked at
her watch. They’d synchronized watches. They were all in it together.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said May. ‘It’s far too elaborate.’
‘Is it any more absurd and elaborate than using a chandelier pendant to stab a man?’ asked Bryant. ‘Unless we find the other gun and girl, we’ll have nothing again.’
The detectives didn’t find either. All four girls had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. All John May had left was the memory of Mia’s emerald-green eyes, lingering for one all-too-brief moment on his.
Five years later, Bryant and May’s paths once more crossed with the Belles of Westminster – but that’s another story with a very different outcome.
This was the first short case history I wrote up, and it must have showed that I had a lot of fun with it, because my publishers asked if they could release it as a single e-mystery. So to anyone who finds they already have this story, may I just say that I added it to the finished book as an extra for those who hadn’t read it, therefore you’re still getting your money’s worth! It’s another ‘precinct’ tale – this time set on that most iconic of London landmarks: a double-decker bus.
BRYANT & MAY’S MYSTERY TOUR
Early on Christmas Eve the Home Office called Arthur Bryant of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit with an urgent request to attend the scene of a crime in King’s Cross. Bryant did so, then called his partner John May with instructions to meet him at 10.15 a.m. beside a bus stop in Marble Arch, but with no explanation as to why. It was muggy, grey and wet, not at all appropriate to the festive season, and May resented being dragged away from the PCU’s offices.
‘Ah, you got my message, good.’ The elderly detective hailed his partner with a wild whip of his walking stick, and nearly pruned a passing tourist. Bryant resembled a beady-eyed tramp more than an officer of the law. He had misbuttoned his shapeless brown cardigan and dragged a moth-eaten Harris tweed coat over the top of it. A sprig of holly protruded from his battered trilby, looking less like seasonal decoration than a sign that he had lately been trapped in a bush. ‘I got here ahead of time and had a potter through the German Christmas market in Hyde Park. Four pounds fifty for a knockwurst. They’re getting their own back for the war.’
Bryant & May - London's Glory: (Short Stories) (Bryant & May Collection) Page 20
