Only one person would ring him at one o’clock in the morning.
Generations of past good living had imparted to his boss, Sir Nevil Macready, a fruity resonance that was unmistakable. ‘There you are, Sandilands!’ he boomed.
Joe could not deny it. His boss knew he kept no butler. But the important thing with Sir Nevil was ever to retain the initiative. ‘Good morning, Sir Nevil,’ he said cheerily. ‘You’re up early! Is there anything I can do?’ This was not such a silly question as might appear because Sir Nevil was quite capable of ringing up at any moment of the night or day just for a chat. But this was not one of those occasions.
‘Got a little problem,’ he said.
An invariable opening. It signified nothing. If the entire royal family had been gunned down at a world premiere this would have been ‘a little problem’. If he’d lost the address of ‘that restaurant where we had lunch the other day’ this would, likewise, have been ‘a little problem’ and one which he would not have hesitated to air with Joe at midnight or even one o’clock. This time however it seemed his little problem was quite a big problem.
‘Just up your street. Incident requiring the most careful handling. Possible military — or I should say naval — implications. You’re the obvious chap for the job so just drop anything else you may be involved with and handle it. Woman got herself bludgeoned to death at the Ritz. Are you familiar with the Ritz?’
‘Reasonably familiar, yes. Are you going to tell me some more about this?’
‘Yes. Ever heard of Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe? Ridiculous name! Ever heard of her?’
‘Er. . yes, but I can’t think for the moment in what connection.’
‘That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to know!’ said Sir Nevil reprovingly. ‘I’ll have to help you. One of the founding fathers or perhaps I should say founding mothers of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The Wrens. Alarmingly distinguished but formidable nuisance if you ask me. And evidently somebody must have thought likewise because she’s just been murdered. In the Ritz! Can’t tell you what a hoo-ha there’ll be when the news gets out. Many thought the damn woman was God. Or Florence Nightingale. Or Boadicea or some other heroine of our Rough Island Story, with a wide following — mostly of silly girls — silly old fools too (many of them in the Admiralty), stretching from here to Portsmouth. I spoke to the manager just now and, I can tell you, they’re not giving a damn for Dame Beatrice — all they want is no publicity. I told them I was sending my best chap. Discretion guaranteed. Right, Joe? I’m handing this over to you and we’ll talk about it in the morning. As luck — or good management — would have it, we’ve got a chap in place already. A detective sergeant. You can liaise with him. Um. .’
There was a pause while Sir Nevil, Joe guessed, rustled through his notes. ‘You’re not obliged, of course, to make any further use of this chap once you’ve taken his statement. I mean — feel free to pick your own team, what!’ A further pause. ‘In fact, there seems to be, perhaps I ought to tell you, something of a question mark against his name. May be nothing. . Anyway, I’ve arranged for an inspector and some uniformed support for you and I suppose you’d better have a police surgeon. . oh, and one of those photography fellows you’re so keen on. . Won’t be long before the place is swarming with reporters so I suggest you get dressed and go on down there.’
‘I am dressed. I’d only just got home.’
‘Only just got home! Some people live for pleasure alone! If you were any good at your job you’d get an early night occasionally. Oh, and Joe, what was the name of that young woman. . Millicent something or other. . Millicent Westwood?’
By a mighty effort Joe deduced that he was referring to Mathilda. Mathilda Westhorpe was a woman police constable. She’d worked with him on a recent job and had obviously impressed Sir Nevil. She’d impressed Joe too. Sir Nevil was not easily impressed but, almost alone of the higher echelons of Scotland Yard, he was at this time tremendously in favour of the women police and during his recent spell as Commissioner had, whilst trimming their numbers, managed to establish them as a regular arm of the force.
‘I mean,’ he continued, ‘if you’re going to find yourself searching through this lady’s drawers you ought to have a little female back-up.’
‘Searching through her drawers? It may conceivably come to that but I wouldn’t think of starting there — ’
Impatiently: ‘Searching through her things, I mean, and to spell it all out for you since you seem somewhat obtuse at this time of the morning, searching through her effects — jewellery, furs and the like. Female things. This is a scene of crime. It would be the usual thing to do. I’m suggesting you’ll need a little female assistance — that’s what they’re there for after all — to save your blushes. Might as well make proper use of these gels as we seem to have got them. Are you beginning to understand me?’
Tilly Westhorpe had been seconded to Joe’s unit and, the more he thought about it, the more he thought her caustic and irreverent common sense would be valuable, to say nothing of her drawer-searching skills. Joe rang her at home, a number in Mayfair. A fashionable area but that was no surprise. Sir Nevil’s recruiting methods were aimed, as he put it, at girls ‘of a certain position’. At this time of night she wouldn’t be able to get to the Ritz in a hurry. . it probably took her an hour to struggle into the uniform. And there was always the possibility that her parents wouldn’t let her out at night by herself.
A carefully enunciating voice answered, a male voice which managed, though remaining impeccably correct, to convey suspicion, disapproval and surprise that a gentleman should be calling at that hour. Miss Mathilda was not at home and, no, he was not at liberty to tell Joe when she was expected to return. Joe left a message that she was to contact him at the Ritz as soon as she was able. The voice took on several more degrees of frost and assured him that the message would be passed at the earliest convenient moment. Joe was left in no possible doubt that this moment might arise round about teatime the next day.
Hastily doing up his tie, grabbing his Gladstone bag and picking up an old police cloak he kept behind the door, he ran down the stairs to the taxi stand on the Embankment.
The Ritz was wearing its usual air of dignified calm. The street lamps under the arcade swung gently to and fro and were reflected from the wet pavement. The foyer lighting was discreet and taxis were standing by; various parties were just breaking up amidst bibulous faces, female laughter and male guffaws, flirtatious farewells. Evidently the news had yet to break but somewhere in that refined interior lay the body of a distinguished public figure, ‘bludgeoned to death’ as Sir Nevil had put it.
Such was the efficiency with which the Ritz closed ranks, the atmosphere was entirely normal. Staff were at their posts or moving at an unruffled pace. The night receptionist, outwardly calm, was, however, Joe judged, secretly a-quiver, both awed and delighted by his responsibility. Joe advanced on the desk. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘I could claim to have an appointment with Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe. Here’s my card.’
The Ritz smelled strongly of fitted carpet with a faint overlay of scent and cigars and somewhere in the background — but discreetly a long way in the background — expensive food. The receptionist crooked a finger and summoned a page boy and he led Joe to the gilded cage of a lift. They got out at the fourth floor and stepped into a silent corridor. A figure posted by the fourth door along acknowledged them with a nod and Joe dismissed the page boy, to his grave disappointment. As Joe approached he noticed that the door of Room 4 stood a fraction open and lights were on inside.
Joe guessed that the guard was part of the hotel security staff. The tall, slim figure, the smart black coat and striped trousers were at odds with the severe police face. Joe looked at him and looked again, encountering a jaw dropped in disbelief, disbelief which rapidly turned to happy recognition. It was a face last seen leaving the mud and misery of a French battlefield on a stretcher.
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br /> ‘Just a moment,’ Joe said. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘Yessir. Detective Sergeant Armitage, sir. With the Met. Was Sergeant Armitage, C Company when we last met.’
‘That’s right! Cambrai, Bill?’
‘Cambrai it was, sir. And if I may say so, sir, you look a good deal smarter now than you did when I last saw you,’ he added, eyeing Joe’s dinner-jacketed elegance.
‘I could say the same, Bill,’ said Joe. ‘We were none of us looking too sharp then. But I’m really glad you got out of that all right. We must have a talk and a pint. But in the meantime perhaps you can tell me what’s been going on here?’
‘Murder, sir, is what’s been going on here.’
‘Perhaps we should view the body? Take a look at the crime scene?’
Armitage led Joe through into a small lobby. Three closed doors faced them. Joe opened the door on the right and stepped into an opulent Ritz bedroom. The furnishings reflected the taste of the court of Louis XVI as perceived by Waring and Gillow of Tottenham Court Road. The main illumination was supplied by a chandelier; bedside lights were in the manner of Pompeii. The carpet was the best that Wilton had to offer and each of the two bedside tables carried a cargo of carafe, biscuit barrel and ashtray. A voice tube was clipped to the wall. There seemed to be something missing.
‘I see no body,’ said Joe.
‘Next door, sir. Next door,’ said Armitage. ‘This is the Marie Antoinette suite and it has a separate sitting room. That’s the door on the left — there’s a private bathroom between the two.’
He stood back as Joe stepped into the sitting room.
The first impression that hit Joe was the unmistakable metallic smell of freshly spilled blood. He realized he must have made an involuntary movement of revulsion as Armitage stepped forward and put an arm under his elbow murmuring, ‘Steady, sir. I should have warned you. .’
‘That’s all right, Bill. We’ve seen worse.’
And on the battlefield they had, but this small room with its pastel walls, its gilt, its brocades, seemed to Joe to be frozen in horror and reverberating still with echoes of the murderous violence which had so recently erupted in its calm interior. The eighteenth-century elegance threw into shocking relief the chaotic scene before him. The walls were spattered with a rich tapestry of blood and at the centre of the spray, in front of the marble fireplace, lay a sprawled corpse, its head battered and resting in a pool of thickening blood.
‘Definitely dead by the time I got here, sir. First thing I did was check her wrist for a pulse. A gonner. But not long gone. I touched nothing else, of course.’
Joe stood in the doorway looking, absorbing, noting. A Louis XVI sofa remained upright but its companion chair had been overturned. An arrangement of white lilies on a spindle-legged table in a corner, incongruously still upright and intact, was dappled with a surreal maculation. The room’s only window, a casement, stood broken and half open, hanging into the room. Shards of glass littered the carpet.
A cough to Joe’s right attracted his attention. A boy dressed in the Ritz uniform was standing in the corner as far away from the corpse as possible. Tense and embarrassed, he had been set there by Armitage to guard or perhaps even to restrain a girl who was sitting resentfully in a chair. A pretty girl angrily smoking a cigarette in an ebony holder.
‘Ah, yes! Here’s someone you ought to meet, sir,’ said Armitage with a trace of satisfaction in his voice, waving a hand towards the girl. ‘Our prime exhibit and, for want of a better, our prime suspect, as it happens!’
The girl flashed him a scornful look and took a drag through narrowed eyes at her cigarette. She puffed out smoke in the general direction of her guard who coughed again and, obviously uneasy with his role, looked for support or release to Armitage.
‘All right, Robert, lad, you can stand down now,’ said Armitage, dismissing him.
The girl shrugged her slim shoulders and jumped to her feet. She was wearing an evening dress of some pale grey silky fabric done up fashionably low on the hips with a silver belt. Silently Joe noted the bloodstains on the hem of her skirt just below her left knee.
She glared at Joe. ‘Can it possibly take thirty-five minutes to get here from Chelsea?’ she asked.
‘Good evening, Westhorpe,’ said Joe. ‘Perhaps you could explain what the devil you’re doing here? Not only what you’re doing here but how you come to be covered in gore and, as I believe, standing over a recently murdered Dame of the British Empire? I’m sure there’s some perfectly logical explanation but I would be glad to hear what it is.’
‘Do you know this young person?’ said Armitage, disappointed and mistrustful.
‘Yes, I do. This is Constable Westhorpe. She’s one of us. WPC number 142 — in, er, plain clothes — but I still want to know what she’s doing here.’
‘Are you taking a statement, sir? Because, if so, I would welcome the opportunity to correct the over-coloured assertions you have just made. I am neither covered in gore, nor am I standing over the body. The stains you have noted were acquired when, on discovering the body of Dame Beatrice, I knelt by her side to check for signs of life. I didn’t touch her — she was quite obviously dead.’
Armitage drew in a hissing breath at the girl’s challenging tone. ‘You should stand to attention, Constable, when you report to the Commander,’ he said repressively.
The girl collected herself and, handing her cigarette to Armitage, assumed the rigid policewoman’s stance, feet eighteen inches apart, hands behind her back and with what Joe guessed she thought was a demure expression. ‘I was having dinner here, sir,’ she said. Her affectation of subservience was so overplayed and so unconvincing that even Armitage was prepared to smile.
‘In the dining room?’
‘Yes, in the dining room. I wouldn’t be likely to be having dinner in the lift, would I?’
‘That’ll do!’ said Armitage, scandalized. ‘Remember you’re under arrest. You’re not in cuffs yet but you very soon could be! Just answer the Captain’s questions, miss,’ he added more gently. He had noticed, as had Joe, that the hem of her dress was quivering, betraying a pair of legs that were nicely shaped but shaking with tension.
‘He’s not a captain and when he asks me a sensible question I’ll answer it. As I say, I was having dinner here in the dining room. I’m the guest of Rupert Joliffe at his uncle Alfred’s birthday party. At about midnight I saw Dame Beatrice, who was also of the party, leaving. I wanted to see her. Rupert was so tight by then I don’t suppose he’s noticed yet that I’m not there.’
‘You wanted to see Dame Beatrice? Why?’
‘A personal matter,’ she said defensively.
‘You can’t leave it there,’ Joe said, ‘but that’ll do for the present. I shall need to know the nature of the personal matter. But, in the meantime — you saw her leave the dining room?’
‘Yes, there was something I wanted to ask her. It was important. I extracted myself from my dinner party. The dancing was under way so it wasn’t difficult. I helped old Lady Carstairs to find her way to the ladies’ room and then I went to the desk and asked for Dame Beatrice’s room number. I had to wait quite a while because the after-theatre crowd had just come rushing in. Then I followed her up the stairs.’
‘The stairs? You didn’t go in the lift?’
‘No. A mass of people had flooded out of the bar and were waiting to take the lift so I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. This floor. To this room. As I arrived on the landing the lift went down.’
‘Did you see who was in the lift?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Right. Then what happened?’
‘The outer door was ajar. I pushed it open and stepped in. I was glad to think I’d caught up with Dame Beatrice.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I had caught up with her. At least somebody else had caught up with her before me. Blood all over the place — as you see. But I was careful, sir! I disturbed nothing. Head bashed in.
Fire irons scattered. The window had been broken open and I thought a burglar must have got in. From a fire escape or something because we’re sixty feet above ground here.’ She pointed to the casement swinging desultorily in the night air. ‘I didn’t go over and look out. Didn’t want to risk obscuring the footprints.’ She nodded at the carpet between the window and the body, presumably seeing traces which were so far invisible to Joe.
‘Well done, Westhorpe,’ Joe said, wishing he had managed to sound less like a schoolmaster. But, then, the girl was evoking this response in him by behaving rather in the manner of a schoolbook heroine. Dimsie Does Her Best perhaps?
‘Go on, will you?’
‘She’d obviously put up quite a struggle. Her hands and arms are injured too. She’d defended herself.’
‘She would have defended herself,’ said Armitage. ‘Very forthright lady, Dame Beatrice, I hear. Not one to stand any nonsense.’
Joe observed an affinity between Sir Nevil and Sergeant Armitage. To one, murder was ‘a little problem’; to the other a murderous assault was ‘a bit of nonsense’.
Tilly Westhorpe resumed her story. ‘Having established that she was indeed beyond any help I could immediately offer, I needed to notify the police and the hotel management. There was no one in sight and it seemed to me the quickest, most sensible thing to do would be to go down to reception.’
Sally Sees It Through? With a burst of irritation Joe wondered why the bloody girl couldn’t just have stood in the doorway and screamed her head off like any normal female. Or used the voice tube?
She caught his thought. Or his swift glance towards the bedroom perhaps. ‘I didn’t use the voice tube. You never can be quite sure who’s picking up at the other end. Even at the Ritz. Discretion, sir, I thought the situation called for discretion.’
‘Yes. A good thought. So you opened the door. .’ He looked up sharply. ‘Prints, Westhorpe? Prints?’ he reminded her testily.
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