The Riddle at Gipsy's Mile (An Angela Marchmont Mystery 4)

by Benson, Clara

  The waiter came and hovered politely, and the important matter of the food occupied the next few minutes. Then they returned to the case at hand. Jameson told her about Dr. Ingleby’s findings, and she was surprised.

  ‘That is very interesting and rather odd,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can see why the Littlechurch police called you in. This is not an ordinary, everyday sort of murder, is it?’

  ‘Not when poison is thrown in as an ingredient,’ he agreed.

  ‘But where was she given the arsenic, and how?’ said Angela. ‘I had rather thought that the whole thing happened on the spur of the moment. I assumed she had probably been strangled—perhaps even in a car—and then thrown down the bank. But it’s difficult to poison someone in a car, I imagine. Presumably, in that case, she must have spent some time in a house or a hotel and been given the poison there, perhaps in a meal or a drink.’

  The inspector nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And according to Dr. Ingleby, she didn’t die immediately. She had a gastric attack, as one would expect from arsenical poisoning, but seems to have survived that. It was heart failure that killed her, caused by the after-effects of the poison. After she was dead, someone took care to disfigure her face and then disposed of the body, but it must have taken her quite a while to die before that.’

  Angela looked sober, thinking of the unfortunate woman and her violent end.

  ‘What about the cloak room ticket?’ she said. ‘Have you had any luck with that?’

  He told her about the handbill and the photograph that had been found in the suitcase.

  ‘Then she had a child?’ said Angela.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the picture is of a nephew or other relative.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I wonder, though. It will be very sad if a child has been deprived of his mother because of this. And what about the handbill?’

  ‘I have it here,’ he said, feeling in an inside pocket. ‘Ah, yes.’ He brought out the much-folded scrap of paper and handed it to her, and she read it curiously.

  ‘The Copernicus Club? I believe I’ve heard of it,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it owned by Mrs. Chang? I’ve read about her in the newspapers. She keeps getting arrested for serving alcohol after hours, I seem to remember.’

  ‘That’s her,’ he said. ‘She’s a clever soul. The Copernicus is rather a haunt of the upper classes and the bright young people, you see, and the police raids and the arrests make the clientele feel terribly rakish and daring. I’m sure it’s deliberate on her part—all part of the club’s public image, one might say. She can easily afford the fines, and every time she is arrested the story gets into the papers and increases her notoriety.’

  ‘And you think our mysterious woman may have worked at the Copernicus as a dance hostess?’

  ‘I think it’s entirely possible. She had several well-worn evening-frocks in her suitcase in addition to the handbill. But I’ve spoken to Mrs. Chang and her son, and either they could not or they would not tell me anything. It was impossible to get anything out of her, in particular—she’s an old hand and knows exactly what she’s doing. Her clashes with the licensing authorities have become a bit of a joke, but there are rumours that the girls who work at the Copernicus do more than just dance with the male clients, and if Mrs. Chang were to be found guilty of running a disorderly house—well, that would be a much more serious risk to her business. Johnny Chang, though—he’s younger and less experienced, and perhaps less hardened than his mother. I got the impression that he knew something, although obviously he wouldn’t admit to it, so we had to come away none the wiser. After that we sent in a plain-clothes chap to mingle with the throng for a few nights, but they must have been on the lookout for him and spotted him immediately, since he got nothing out of anyone. Evidently they’d all been warned not to talk, because they simply “clammed up”, as I believe our American friends say, whenever he tried to broach the subject.’

  ‘I see,’ said Angela, gazing at the advertisement thoughtfully. ‘Then you are no further forward in your search for our dead woman.’

  ‘I wouldn’t quite say that,’ said Jameson. ‘We are checking the missing persons lists, and of course the story has been published in most of the newspapers, so something might come of that. The Littlechurch police are making exhaustive inquiries at their end, in case anybody saw her there. And don’t think we’ve given up on the Copernicus Club either—it’s the only real clue we have up to now. We shall get someone to talk by fair means or foul, you’ll see.’

  Just then, their food arrived and they were silent for some minutes. Angela was thinking about what she had just heard. So the dead woman had been deliberately poisoned, had she? That certainly put a different aspect on the matter. No longer did it look like a sordid but unpremeditated tragedy—no, somebody had actually taken the trouble to administer a deadly poison with deliberate intent, and then, once the woman was dead, had struck blow after blow to her face with terrible violence and cast her corpse aside to lie undiscovered forever. Except Angela and William had discovered it not long afterwards. How unlucky for the killer, Angela thought. She wondered whether he was anxiously reading the newspapers every day for fresh developments in the case, listening and starting at every knock on the door. A thought struck her.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Might it have been suicide?’

  Jameson looked sceptical.

  ‘Do you mean she killed herself, but then someone else found her and disfigured her face? Why should anyone do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Angela. ‘I was just looking at possibilities.’

  ‘Well, until we know who she was it’s going to be difficult to make any deductions,’ said the inspector.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Angela.

  They talked of other matters until the end of lunch, then Jameson looked at his watch regretfully.

  ‘No peace to the wicked,’ he said. ‘I must go, I’m afraid. The superintendent is expecting me at three o’clock. I dare say he wants to complain about something.’

  ‘Thank you so much for lunch,’ said Angela, ‘and good luck with your murder hunt. I only wish there were something I might do to help.’

  ‘Unless you can tell me who she was, I don’t suppose there is.’

  ‘Well, if I think of anything useful, I shall telephone you,’ said Angela. ‘No, it’s quite all right—there’s no need to come back with me. I can see you’re in a hurry and I’m only around the corner. You had better go and see your superintendent.’

  He smiled briefly then glanced at his watch again and bade her goodbye. Angela watched him hurry off down the street then turned her steps towards home. She had just reached the corner of Mount Street when she hesitated and appeared to change her mind. She crossed the road and walked on, then turned into a little mews a few hundred yards farther on, where the Bentley and William lived.

  She found the car standing in the street, its bonnet wide open, and William sitting on the pavement, smoking a cigarette and enjoying the early autumn sunshine. He ground out the cigarette and stood up hurriedly when he saw her.

  ‘Any trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘Everything is fine. I just thought I’d give her a once-over. Do you want to go somewhere? I can go and get my jacket if you’ll give me a moment.’

  ‘No, no, it’s quite all right. As a matter of fact, I came to ask you something. What was the name of your band-leader friend back in New York? Albie or Alvie something.’

  If William was surprised he did not show it.

  ‘Do you mean Alvie Berteau?’ he said.

  ‘That’s the one I mean, yes. Is he in London now?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. He got an engagement in some night-club or other—I can’t remember the name.’

  ‘The Copernicus Club,’ said Angela.

  ‘Yes, I believe it is,’ he said. ‘Have you seen him there?’

  ‘No, but I should lik
e to speak to him. Can you introduce me to him?’

  ‘Sure,’ said William. ‘Any time you like. I’ll go look him up for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Marchmont.

  William hesitated.

  ‘Might I ask—’ he began.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Angela. ‘I think it is possible that he knows something about the woman we found in Kent.’

  ‘You mean you think he killed her?’ said William in astonishment.

  ‘No, of course not. But the police seem to think that she worked at the Copernicus Club, and I wondered whether he knew her, that’s all. I should like to find out who she was.’

  ‘Don’t the police know yet?’

  ‘Apparently not, and nobody at the Copernicus will speak to them because they are all worried for their jobs. I thought perhaps I might be able to persuade him.’

  ‘Maybe you can,’ said William. ‘I hope so. I don’t like to think of that poor woman’s not being claimed by anyone.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Angela.

  TWELVE

  Angela left William to carry on tinkering with the Bentley, and decided to take a little walk to a hat shop near Regent Street of which she was rather fond. It was a fine afternoon and warm for September, and the streets were bustling and lively. Angela walked unhurriedly along Grosvenor Street, enjoying the sights and sounds of the city, the motor-cars and the wagons, the delivery-boys and the office-girls going about their business, and thought how pleasant it was to be in London at this time of year. A whinnying and snorting sound suddenly caught her attention, and she looked up to see a rag-and-bone man attempting to calm his horse, which had taken fright at the noise of a motor-cycle as it roared down the street. The horse was a mangy creature, and Angela could not help but compare it in her mind with Castana, Lucy Syms’s well-fed mare. That train of thought led her back to the lunch at Blakeney Park the other week, when the clash of personalities between Lucy and Lady Alice had been plain for all to see. She wondered how the two women would get on after the wedding. Would Lady Alice retreat with a good grace into the background, or would she remain to assert her ascendancy over Blakeney Park? And how would Gil take it all? He did not seem to have the tact required to keep things rubbing along smoothly, but perhaps he had hidden qualities about which she knew nothing.

  Angela was brought back to the present by a peal of church bells and a hubbub of voices before her. She looked up and saw that she had reached St. George’s, and that a small crowd of people had gathered outside the church, including a number of reporters. Evidently somebody important was getting married inside, for a large, shiny limousine was waiting in the street, under the watchful eye of its driver and a policeman in uniform, who now and again shooed away various small groups of children that were hovering about.

  Even as Angela watched, the crowd surged forward and she was just able to distinguish the happy couple as they emerged from the church. She was preparing to pass on, when she was accosted by a somewhat disreputable-looking young man who until a few moments previously had been leaning with bored nonchalance against some railings across the road, notebook and pencil in hand.

  ‘Hallo, Mrs. M,’ said Freddy Pilkington-Soames.

  ‘Freddy!’ exclaimed Angela. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Earning an honest living, of course,’ he replied. ‘Society weddings are singularly dull, but it appears that the public appetite for them cannot be sated, and so here I am.’

  ‘Oh, I see. The Clarion sent you, did it? And how do you like being a reporter?’

  Freddy closed his eyes briefly and gave a little shudder.

  ‘I don’t think I can possibly describe to you in words how frightfully tiresome it is,’ he said. ‘To begin with, they force me to come in at half-past eight. Half-past eight! Have you any idea of the unearthly hour at which I have to get up? Then they send me out to stand in the streets for hours on end like a flower-girl, just because the public clamours to know the details of the wedding between some loathsome aristocrat and his shop-girl paramour. And they make me work in the evenings, too. Imagine that! I spent last Wednesday night attending a trade union meeting in a vile, damp, draughty hall in Bethnal Green, at which Mr. Rowbotham spent a good two hours holding forth—with quite execrable grammar, I might add—on the subject of The Working Man And His Future. Bethnal Green! I do believe I’d never been any further East than the Alhambra before that. I felt I was taking my life in my hands. Fortunately, as it happened, there was a chap there I knew at school, who has rather gone off his head and joined the Labour Party. He expects to stand at the next election, as a matter of fact. I suppose I shall write something flattering about him for the paper. One can’t let down an old friend.’

  Angela could not help laughing at the disgusted expression on his face during the greater part of this speech.

  ‘And what shall you write about this wedding?’ she said. ‘Who are they, by the way?’

  ‘He is Lord Blanchard, and she is a Miss Christabel Plunkett, whom nobody has ever heard of. He’s forty-one years older than she and practically ga-ga. The Lord only knows how they got him to totter down the aisle without one or more of his limbs falling off. She—well, you can imagine what sort of a woman she is. I expect she wears an inventory of his possessions next to her heart at all times. I shan’t say that in my piece, of course. I shall merely write about how the crowd cheered when the bride made her first blushing appearance with dewy cheek and eye, and all that rot. Then I suppose I shall put something about her fashionable bridal gown in rich white broché, cut daringly short at the front with pearl and diamanté embroidery about the décolletage.’

  Angela stared at him in surprise.

  ‘Was she wearing all that?’ she said. ‘How could you tell, from this distance?’

  ‘Oh, I found out the name of her dressmakers, and asked them yesterday,’ he said.

  ‘I wonder you bothered turning up at all.’

  ‘Well, you never know what might happen,’ said Freddy. ‘The bride might jilt the groom in favour of the vicar, or the bride’s mother and the groom’s sister might turn up in the same frock and have an unseemly tussle in the street. I should hate to miss that. However, it looks as though all has gone according to plan. Pity—I was half-hoping the old dodderer would drop dead just before the vows were exchanged. Can’t you just imagine the to-do?’

  ‘You are a very bad boy, Freddy,’ said Angela.

  ‘It’s probably my mother’s fault,’ he said. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here, vaunting your fame with brazen face by strolling through the centre of Mayfair in broad daylight?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to buy a hat.’

  Freddy gave a disapproving click of the tongue.

  ‘The life of the idle rich,’ he said. ‘One day people like you will be put up against a wall and shot, or thrown to the wolves, or something. At least, that’s what Mr. Rowbotham seemed to be saying.’

  ‘But I need a new hat,’ said Angela.

  ‘You already have a hat. You’re wearing it.’

  ‘This old thing?’ said Angela. ‘Why, I should hardly call this a hat in the strict sense of the word. Besides, one can never have too many hats.’

  ‘That is a particularly frivolous attitude. You ought to do something improving such as visiting a museum or helping in a charitable institution.’

  ‘Is this the influence of your Labour Party friend?’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’ said Freddy. ‘The whole thing was frightfully dull and earnest. And trades unionists wear the most utterly ghastly clothes, because nice ones would be awfully wasteful and they’re not supposed to have fun, you see. Why, you ought to have seen the get-up my friend St. John was wearing. His tailoring was wholly beyond redemption. I felt quite sorry for him.’

  ‘And you say I have a frivolous attitude,’ said Angela.

  Freddy grinned complacently. Angela regarded him searchingly.

  ‘I do believe you’re rather enjo
ying your new job,’ she said.

  ‘“Enjoy” is a strong word,’ he said. ‘I don’t enjoy any work. But I will admit it hasn’t been quite as horrid as I was expecting. I am starting to understand what Mother sees in it.’

  ‘Well, I hope you will stick more closely to the facts than she does. I don’t know where she got half the things she put in that story about me.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Freddy. ‘Yes, it was rather a work of fiction, wasn’t it? It was your own fault, you know. If you won’t give up the goods then people will be inclined to invent things about you.’

  ‘But I don’t like talking about myself,’ said Angela.

  ‘Don’t you see, though? That’s why everybody is so wild to know all about you. They think you must be hiding some terribly exciting secrets.’

  ‘I’m not. I just don’t particularly want the whole world to know every thought that goes through my head.’

  ‘Then you will continue to attract attention,’ said Freddy simply. He was gazing at the wedding-party, who looked as though they were about to depart. ‘Now, I suppose I ought to pursue the thing to the bitter end and follow the happy couple to Claridge’s. Perhaps the groom will expire face-down in the wedding-cake and make the day worth while after all.’

  ‘Freddy,’ said Angela, struck with a sudden idea. ‘Do you know the Copernicus Club?’

  ‘The Copernicus Club?’ said Freddy. ‘Why, of course I know it. It was the scene of many of the more regrettable occurrences of my youth.’ He spoke grandly, as one who had reached a great and venerable age.

  ‘What can you tell me about it?’

  ‘Oh, lots of things,’ he said. ‘It’s run by Mrs. Chang, of whom I’m sure you will have heard. I’m rather a favourite of hers, you know. It’s full of rich young types and film-stars looking for the latest thrill. They do say—’ he said, then lowered his voice mysteriously and recounted a scurrilous rumour about a minor member of the royal family.

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Angela.

  ‘It was in a private room, though, and nobody will admit to having been there, so it must remain unproven.’