Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  He had just filled Mac in on the events of the night before, from interviewing James Asprey at the Montcler Club, to finding Isabel Saxmore-Blaine downstairs in Jezebel’s nightclub, to taking her back to Beresford’s house, and conducting his little experiment. He’d left out some details, like the diversion to Notting Hill to score two joints off Vivian Chalcott, and Isabel gyrating on the table as if she was a dancer on Ready Steady Go! As for the experiment itself, after Isabel crashed out on the bed, Vince had rolled her over into the recovery position, and swaddled her in silk sheets. She then slept like a baby – albeit a baby prodigiously embalmed in booze. Vince meanwhile sat on the chaise longue in the bedroom, drinking strong coffee. He needed to stay awake and watch over her, knowing that if anything happened to her whilst on his watch, it would put his pension in serious peril. Ha! They’d have buried him alive! He didn’t want her sleepwalking and taking a dive down the stairs, or worse. Feeling the lump on his head from the champagne bottle, he was warily reminded that there had been cases, though as rare as rocking-horse shit, of people murdered in their sleep by people who tend to murder in their sleep . . .

  ‘Grossly irresponsible, Vincent. You opened yourself up to all sorts of accusations and charges, and you put Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s life in danger too. She’s borderline nuthouse and has an obvious booze and pill problem.’

  ‘All of it played up by her doctors and lawyers to get her a softer sentence, because they’re convinced she’s guilty. But I think she’s innocent, and I can prove it. I think I can find those missing hours, Mac. Those hours that she doesn’t know about, during which Beresford was killed.’

  Vince waited under Mac’s scrutinizing gaze. The older detective stood up and moseyed around his desk, which was habitually heaped and humped with papers and files, then sat down again. He opened a bloated desk drawer as far as it would go, knowing it would be an effort to close again, and stuck in his hand, groping around among the unyielding layers. Eventually he pulled out a single pink-topped match, and scraped it against the back wall, where Vince saw the pink skid marks of previously lit pipes, and fired her up. Twenty minutes later – or what sure as hell seemed like twenty minutes – through a cloud of bonfire smoke, like big chief Sitting Bull Mac asked: ‘How?’

  ‘When we first went to Beresford’s house, you remember the bed in the main bedroom?’

  ‘The shell-shaped thing? How could I forget?’

  Vince nodded. ‘The bed was left unmade, with a pile of sheets on the floor. From what we hear, Beresford was a bit prissy, and if the maids hadn’t made up the bed he would have done it himself. He wouldn’t have left it messy like that. The way I see it, Isabel hit Beresford with the champagne bottle then went upstairs. She was out of her skull, drunk and stoned and scared. I saw her eyes, Mac, and she was terrified. Beresford was—’

  ‘Hold your horses, Vincent, you didn’t see anything! Your little experiment, no matter what you think, means sweet fuck all!’ Vince was visibly taken aback by this, for Mac wasn’t in the habit of punctuating his points with profanities. ‘And if you go around quoting it, you’ll be laughed out the force!’

  Vince raised both palms in a conceding gesture. ‘I admit it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law—’

  ‘Ha! It wouldn’t stand up in the canteen!’

  ‘When you’re right, Mac, you’re right, and you are right. Isabel went up—’

  ‘Isabel?’ Mac took the pipe out of his mouth, his dense eyebrows circumflexed in an involuntary spasm of alarm.

  ‘Miss Saxmore-Blaine went upstairs and crawled across the bed to get to the bedside table, because that’s where the phone was. We didn’t see it ourselves because it was hidden under the sheets. I’m getting a trace on the calls made that night, to find out who she was talking to. Her fingerprints are all over the phone, Mac, and so is her lipstick. I don’t know how long it will put her in that room for, but it will put her up there at some time. This all goes along with Beresford’s body being moved into the armchair after he was dead. Someone moved him there, and it wasn’t her.’

  Mac issued a long meditative ‘Mmmmmm . . .’ then said, ‘There’s no denying, she is a willowy thing, and he is a big old oak.’

  Vince cracked a smile. In the all too real world of murder, Mac’s metaphoric proclivities shone out every now and again, and he still had enough of the Irish in him to give things a nice lyrical twist.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’

  ‘I like your turn of phrase.’

  ‘Don’t brown-nose me, it doesn’t suit you. You got any suspects?’

  Vince reached into his inside jacket pocket and, with the rehearsed smoothness of a tired party trick, pulled out the photo of the Montcler set and placed it before his boss. ‘We can start here, with Beresford’s best friends. They’re all in each other’s pockets: work together, play together, gamble together. They know more about each other than anyone else. I’ve already mentioned I spoke to James Asprey, who owns the Montcler club, and took a pinch in ’58 for running chemmy parties.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ came the rat-tat-tat of recollection. ‘I remember the case. Teddy Maybury at West End Central?’

  ‘That’s the feller. Asprey’s chemmy parties put Teddy’s kid through private school, according to Asprey.’

  ‘Sounds about right. Who else have you spoken to?’

  ‘There were two of the others in the club, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them. One was a businessman named Simon Goldsachs—’

  ‘I’ve heard of him. I have some shares and read the FT every now and then.’

  ‘Got any tips?’

  Mac raised a be-with-you-in-a-minute hand, picked up his phone, dialled an internal number and, after three rings: ‘Doc, could you get up here right away? . . . Thanks.’ Mac put the phone down and said to Vince, ‘You want a tip? Don’t invest in Goldsachs’ companies for long-term security, or because you like their product. He’s an asset stripper. He buys companies and takes them apart, selling off the best parts and dumping the rest, all for a quick and usually very big profit. He’s got quite a reputation, big money. Who was the other one in the club?’

  ‘Lord Lucan. Heard of him?’ Mac shrugged in the negative. ‘But I didn’t get to talk to either of them. As soon as they found out I was in the place, they bolted.’

  Mac gave a considered nod to this. There was a knock on the door, and Doc Clayton swung in, all bug-eyed enthusiasm.

  ‘Doc, tell Vince what you told me earlier.’

  ‘About the two-thirty at Kempton Park?’

  ‘No, Doc! About the . . .’

  ‘Oh oh oh. I’m just preparing a full pathology report on that now.’

  Mac impatiently waved his pipe in a circular flourish, like a conductor’s baton, and said, ‘Just give Vince the bare bones, as it were.’

  ‘The wound is contact, with a good deal of distension from gas pressure. The eyes are exophthalmic from the same cause. The fresh carbon prints we found on the victim’s right hand were dense on his forefinger – the shooting finger – and they matched up with the calibration of the gun. His prints are all over the gun and, from the physical evidence of the body alone, one bullet was fired to the head, and judging from the accessibility of the wound through his right hand, pathology-wise, we’re happy to say that it all adds up to suicide.’

  Doc Clayton smiled, and looked from Vince to Mac to Vince to Mac to Vince, until Mac ended the volley by saying, ‘Thanks, Doc.’

  ‘The three-thirty at Catterick?’

  ‘No, Vince, the two-thirty at Kempton. Blue Lagoon, seven to two. And narrowing as we speak. It’s a shoo-in.’ Doc Clayton exited.

  ‘Beresford shot himself,’ said Mac, knocking out the knotted dead embers of his pipe in the ashtray. ‘Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, who was upstairs as you said, woke up and found him, then panicked, took the gun and drove off . . . The rest we know.’

  There was a dryness in Vince’s voice as he said, ‘Because it’s the best possible res
ult for everyone.’

  ‘Because it’s probably the truth and, yes, that is the best result.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘Don’t get me into a debate on probability, Vincent. This looks an even better bet than Doc’s shoo-in at Kempton Park. Almost a victimless crime. The next alternative, of course, is that she did it.’

  Vince pointed at the photo. ‘Or one of them did it.’

  Mac frowned, perplexed. ‘At first I thought you just wanted to get a pretty girl off the hook. That’s a normal reaction for a young feller. Now she’s off it, you want her back on it!’

  ‘I just don’t buy it, not yet.’

  ‘You want motive for Beresford’s suicide?’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me, Mac. It’s all there. Ex-soldiers turn the gun on themselves almost as much as people in Sweden do, more rich people top themselves than poor. It’s the modern condition, the ennui of existence . . .’

  ‘You missed the most important point,’ said Mac. ‘Isabel Saxmore-Blaine was leaving him, and she’s a very beautiful woman.’

  ‘Yeah, Mac, I get it.’

  ‘Yeah, you get it. Just won’t accept it, eh?’

  ‘I think someone might be getting away with murder, if we simply take the path of least resistance.’

  Mac stuck both hands into the pile of papers on his desk, pulled out a fatigued copy of the London Evening Standard and handed it to Vince.

  ‘Take a look. Marcy Jones, front page news. Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, page three. For all the money, influence and connections Isabel Saxmore-Blaine has, the funny thing is, the public are more interested in the killing of an anonymous black girl from a poor part of town. Who just happened to be a nurse, making the best of her lot, trying to raise her young child and contributing to society. And she’s been brutally hammered to death in her own home. As opposed to Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, a beautiful, poor little rich girl with a booze and pill problem. Her plight has been relegated to the gossip column, because no one really gives a monkey’s. A few years ago, a deb up on a murder charge would have wiped World War Three off the front page. Especially with her looks. Take Profumo, no one gave a damn about him; it was the two slips everyone was writing about and taking pictures of. But tastes change, and fast. We’re used to scandal: disgraced toffs topping themselves, debs debauching themselves, politicians caught with their pants down.’ And, with a warning edge to his voice, Mac added, ‘And if you’ve taken a liking to Miss Saxmore-Blaine, take some advice. She’s way out of your league.’

  ‘I haven’t taken a liking to her.’Vince picked up the photo of the Montcler Set, ‘but I have taken a disliking to this little mob.’

  ‘Because you’re not in their league?

  ‘Like you said, Mac, times have changed. We don’t have a class system now, haven’t you heard?’

  The older detective’s head jolted back, with a gruff dismissive laugh.

  Vince continued, ‘You know there’s more to this case. And we don’t work for Beaverbrook, so why do you give a shit about what goes on the front pages or what’s in the gossip columns?’

  Seemingly ground down by the young detective’s enthusiasm as much as his argument, Mac gave a weary shake of his head and conceded, ‘Okay, look into it. Talk to your rich boys, see what’s under their fingernails. But just until the paperwork is done and dusted on Isabel Saxmore-Blaine. Then we’re going with the evidence, and with death by misadventure, as no doubt they’ll wish to call it.’

  Vince smiled.

  Mac tried to wipe it off his face with this: ‘You’ve just doubled your workload, because Marcy Jones remains the priority case, and I still want you to attend all briefings on it, and put your shift in.’

  He didn’t succeed. Vince kept on smiling. And that’s what Mac liked about him.

  CHAPTER 17

  The first person on Vince’s list was Simon Goldsachs, to be followed by Lord Lucan. Vince reckoned, after their haste to leave the Montcler the night before, they’d have had plenty of time to work out their alibis by now, and would be expecting him. Shame to disappoint them, but disappoint he did. Vince was about to leave the Yard when a desk sergeant told him he’d received a call from a Mr Guy Ruley. Ruley had just flown back into the country from Hong Kong that morning, and wanted to speak to the investigating officer to find out exactly what happened, and if he could be of any assistance. Vince rang him back, but Ruley wasn’t in his office – his secretary explained that he was currently at his club in Mayfair.

  What set the Racquet & Ball club apart from other sedentary gentlemen’s clubs in London, like White’s, the Garrick, or Boodles, was the fact that you could lift weights in the fully outfitted gymnasium, have a game of squash in one of the five courts, and finish off with a Turkish bath and a sauna in the basement. That’s before you sank into one of the battered and buttoned leather armchairs, where genuflecting waiters ferried endless tumblers of booze to your Hepplewhite side table, and you drank yourself into a stupor in perfect peace, whilst admiring the Gainsboroughs and the anatomically precise Stubbses over the Adam fireplace.

  At the reception Vince introduced himself, and was told that Mr Ruley was expecting him. He was promptly signed in and was led down the sparkly white granite stairs to the arched inner sanctuary of the building. On arrival there, he was given a white towelling robe and three warm towels of such a luxurious softness and heft that they immediately had Vince contemplating ways of trying to steal them. Once changed, and his own clothes deposited in a locker, he was led through to the Turkish baths, where men of all shapes and sizes lounged on slabs, or simmered and broiled in bubbling hot tubs, or got oiled and lathered up then rigorously rubbed down by muscular men with large nimble hands who could rid you of a rick, a twinge or a knot just by looking at it. There was a green oxidized copper fountain shaped like an heraldic jumping dolphin, which gushed some frothy-looking sewage liquid from its gaping mouth into a pool that was as murky as a garden pond, in which men floated and wallowed in the green slime. The towel boy informed Vince that it was a special algae developed in the baths of Budapest, and said to possess special restorative qualities. The pond life seemed to be enjoying it, looking as fat and happy as frogs, so there must have been something in it.

  At the very end of the long room rose a series of spacious marble terraces on which men sat around draped in toga-like towels, like Roman senators. The higher up you sat, the hotter it got. Vince sat down on the bottom tier (which still felt like a griddle) and was informed that Mr Ruley was just having a massage and would be joining him shortly. He sat back and breathed in deeply, letting the steam work its magic.

  Five minutes later, Guy Ruley emerged from the fog. At around six foot two, he looked as if he used the gym a lot more frequently than the soft leather armchairs in the lounge bar above. Packed with finely sculptured muscle, he was wearing the skimpiest of swimming trunks to show it all off to best effect. Vince noticed there was something of a resemblance to Beresford. He had the same thick flaxen hair, worn full and scraped back from a broad handsome face, but Ruley looked younger and a lot fitter. There was a refinement in his features that kept everything neat and tidy, short and sweet, and indistinctive. There was no bulbous nose, fat lips, buck teeth or bulging eyes to draw attention to him. In fact, he had the kind of face that could get away with things just because it defied description. Generically handsome? Ears a little too small; features a little too English-looking. The sketch boys back at the Yard would not have a field day with Guy Ruley; he’d end up looking as if he belonged in a passionate clinch on the front cover of a cheap romance novel.

  After the introductions, and a firmer than usual handshake that implied nothing, no matter how hard it tried, Guy Ruley sat down right next to Vince. He sat uncomfortably close, decided the detective, who lacked the locker-room mentality enjoyed by men on the rowing team or in the first XV. In a bullish baritone, Guy Ruley declared that it was all ‘a bloody bad show and shocking’, then promptly told Vince that he’d bee
n away on business for the last ten days, which effectively put him out of the frame. Guy Ruley explained how on the actual day of the murder he was in Dublin, a business venture having taken him to Tipperary in Ireland, to invest in a stable of horse-racing thoroughbreds. Then on to Germany, then Hong Kong.

  ‘I hope I’m not wasting your time in getting you down here, Detective, but I just thought I should call and get the facts. Of course, I’ve already spoken to my friends about it, and read the papers, but better to get it from the horse’s mouth, as it were.’

  ‘You’re not wasting my time, Mr Ruley. In fact, I was going to talk to you anyway.’

  ‘If I can help in any way, Detective. But, from what I’ve already read and heard, it all seems rather fait accompli, no?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Isabel.’ He shook his head, as if implying both sadness and disgust, but it was the disgust that really shone through. ‘It’s the sort of thing one hears about, reads about. It happens to other people, never to yourself. But at the same time, it comes as no great surprise, as they were such a volatile couple. Blowing his brains out though, Jesus. That said, Isabel’s a crack shot. She used to go shooting with Johnny and could more than hold her own.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Her father taught her. Not the usual thing you teach girls, but what with her younger brother being, well . . .’

  ‘Well what, Mr Ruley?’