‘They considered her a pretty stylish lady. Very much ones for nicknames, sailors! They’ve called this embryonic service of busy young girls “the Hive” of which the Dame was — naturally — Queen Bea.’
It occurred to Joe that they had been so taken up with the forensic aspects of the case, he’d not done what he usually did early in an enquiry. He’d not drawn up a detailed portrait of the murder victim. He remembered that the Dame’s diary revealed a dinner date with an admiral. He’d taken time to send out a signal cancelling on her behalf and breaking the news of her death, but perhaps the engagement itself had been significant? With frustration he acknowledged that he would never discover its significance now an embargo had been placed on his interviewing.
Feeling that the time had come to get to know Beatrice more intimately he picked up his briefcase, put away Cottingham’s notes and checked the contents of a small envelope. He took out the door keys Tilly had found in the Dame’s bag.
‘Time to pay you a dawn call, Queen Bea,’ he said.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Not early risers.’
Tilly had dismissed the inhabitants of bohemian Bloomsbury with a disapproving sniff. Joe hoped she’d got it right. He didn’t want to be observed stealing into the Dame’s flat at five in the morning. Too embarrassing if someone noticed him and alerted the beat bobby. He’d taken the precaution of putting on protective colouring in the form of a shabby brown corduroy suit, much scorned by his sister, a shirt, tie-less and open at the neck, and a wide-brimmed black felt hat which he tugged down over one eye. He looked at himself critically in the mirror and grinned. He thought he looked rather dashing. And, with his dark features etched by lack of sleep, he’d probably pass a dozen similar on their way back from a night spent on the tiles or behind some blue door or other.
He left his car in Russell Square Gardens behind the British Museum and made his way unhurriedly past the building sites into Montague Street and turned into Fitzroy Gardens. He was not a tourist, he reminded himself; he was not here to enjoy the greenery in the central garden or the Portland stone Georgian architecture. He made his way straight to a house at one end of the graceful crescent, noting the side access and wondering if he would choose the right one of the two keys to gain entrance through the imposing front door. A passing milk float clanked by, jugs rattling, and the milkman greeted him cheerfully as he ran up the four front steps.
Tilly had mentioned the Dame’s ‘flat’ but Joe noticed there was only one doorbell. The door opened smoothly, answering to the larger of the two keys, and he walked into a wide, uncluttered hallway. He paused uncertainly, his cover story ready against a challenging occupant. No one hurried forward indignantly to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing there. Again, there were no signs of multiple occupancy. No doorways were boarded up, there were no handwritten signs with arrows pointing to the upper floors, no table spilling over with post to be collected by other inhabitants. Joe concluded that the Dame must own the whole of the house. He stood and listened. The house had the dead sound of a completely empty space.
Boldly, he called out, ‘Beatrice! Are you there?’
Receiving no response, he opened the door to the drawing room.
What had he expected? Emerald green walls, disordered divans piled high with purple cushions, post-Impressionist daubs, an attempt to recreate the Bakst decor for Scheherazade? Yes, he silently admitted that he had expected something of the sort. He had thought that the Dame, having chosen to live in Bloomsbury, would be playing up to the artistic, insouciant style its inhabitants were renowned for. The room surprised him. Modern but restrained, it was obviously decorated by an amateur with a strong personal style.
The walls were a pale string-colour, the wood floor covered in Persian rugs in browns and amber, the large sofa was of black leather. He ran his hands covetously over a piece that might once have been called a chaise longue but this was a sleek, steel-framed extended chair of German design. There was a good supply of small tables, set beside matching chairs of a blond wood inlaid with a pleasing pattern. Joe was interested enough to turn one over to see the manufacturer’s name. Austrian, but available from Heal’s in the nearby Tottenham Court Road. Over the fireplace hung a large and lovely seascape, the other walls carried pictures in a medley of styles: a French landscape, a study of horses that might — but surely couldn’t? — have been by Stubbs, two golden watercolours of an Eastern scene by Chinery and a small Augustus John portrait. They had nothing in common except the owner’s taste, he decided, and again wished that he had met Beatrice in the living flesh. Unusually, there were no family portraits or photographs, nothing of a personal nature.
He counted the seating places and reckoned that the Dame could entertain eight or ten people if she wished. And entertain in some style. She could have invited the First Sea Lord, his lady wife and his lady wife’s maiden aunt for cocktails and they would have been charmed. All was correct and elegant, apart from one object he’d spotted on the mantelpiece — a modern bronze of Europa riding half naked and garlanded on the back of her bull. But it was a work of art and only erotic if you had eyes to see, he thought, and were nosy enough to pick it up and view it from an unusual angle. He paused to handle respectfully a chrome and white table lighter and its matching cigarette box. Removing the lid he sniffed the contents. Turkish at one end and Virginian at the other. Nothing more sinister was going to be on offer in this proper setting.
Shrugging off his fascination for the decorative contents of the room, Joe left to survey the rest of the house. He would return to carry out the correct procedure for checking the contents minutely when he’d got his bearings. The rest of the ground floor was less interesting. The dining room was furnished but looked as though it had never been used, the kitchen and pantry were soulless and bare of contents. A refrigerator, he noticed, held bottles of champagne and hock but that was all. Upstairs was a bathroom, simply appointed but with the luxury of a shower, and two furnished bedrooms. The larger of the two, at the front of the house overlooking the public garden, was level with the tops of the plane trees and decorated in green and white. Obviously the Dame’s bedroom: the wardrobes were full of her clothes, the dressing table held cosmetic items and a flacon of her perfume which seemed to be Tabac Blond. He admired the square bottle with its pale gold disc and exuberant gold fringe tied carelessly around the neck and lifted the glass stopper. A dark, challenging scent of forest, fern and leather intrigued him. The woman who would wear this he could imagine taking the wheel of an open-topped sports car, perhaps pausing to pull on, but not fasten, a leather flying helmet before she put her foot to the floor. For a moment he pictured himself in the passenger seat with the Petit Littoral zipping past in the background. He put the genie of imagination back in the bottle with the stopper and made for what he took to be the guest bedroom at the rear of the house.
At last he had found a jarring note. The disordered divan — it was here! Large, low, plump and covered in a silk of a rich exotic colour which he thought might be mulberry, it was all he understood to be bohemian. Cushions, tasselled, striped, silken, spilled over on to the floor. There was no other furniture apart from a black and gold lacquer screen which cut off one corner of the room. Joe automatically checked behind it, finding nothing but an embroidered Chinese robe and a discarded silk stocking. On the wall behind the bed was a striking painting. He recognized the style. Modigliani. A stick-like girl who ought to have been deeply unattractive managed somehow with swooning eyes and horizontal abandoned pose to convey a feeling of eroticism. He found the decor stagey, the theatricality underlined by two oversized fan-shaped wall lights. The atmosphere was oppressive, the room airless and scented with something which, worryingly, he could not identify.
He walked to the single window and pulled apart the heavy gold draperies. The fresh green of the wild garden below accentuated the tawdriness of the scene behind him and he opened the window to let in some spring-scented air. Leaning out, h
e saw that the back garden was bounded by a mews building and a high wall with a door in it. Very adequate rear access, his professional self told him. Comings and goings not effected through the front door could be kept a secret from the neighbours.
He closed up again and looked around him. Was this where she conducted her rendezvous with Donovan when not at the Ritz? The floor appeared to have been recently swept; he could not fault the standard of housekeeping in this or any of the rooms. Without much hope of success, he took out his torch and hunted about on hands and knees on the floor looking for traces of a masculine presence. Something white between the floorboards drew his attention. Using a pair of tweezers borrowed from the Dame’s dressing table, he pulled out, to his disappointment, nothing more than a squashed cigarette end from between two floorboards. No lipstick on the end. It seemed to have started life as a Senior Service. Joe could imagine Donovan’s taunting smile. The Commander on his knees carefully examining one of his discarded fag-ends — this was a moment he would have enjoyed.
Surprisingly the other rooms of the house were empty. A few stored pieces of furniture under sheets were all that rewarded his search. What was going on? Had the Dame bought this house as no more than a property investment? If she had, he could only congratulate her on her foresight. But he had a feeling it was more than a financial manoeuvre. It was a setting, a shell, though a lovely shell. The drawing room made a public statement about her; the rear bedroom was where she really expressed herself.
He shook himself and prepared to search thoroughly. He disliked this part of the job and would, in normal circumstances, have assigned it to a sergeant. He was carried through it by the strict and still automatic procedure acquired in his training.
He was baffled. The place was virtually clean. He thought he’d struck gold when he found a black-stained oak cabinet containing files. A rummage through them revealed handwritten notes on cryptography, some of them on Admiralty paper. No secrets here, he assumed. Documents of value would never have been allowed to leave Room 40. Perhaps she was practising at home? A manual on the Spanish language seemed to have been well thumbed as did an Ancient Greek primer. A bookshelf held copies of popular modern novels, all read, and a selection of classics, not read. There were no romances, there was no poetry. The writing desk was a disappointment; though well stocked with cards and writing paper, there was no incoming post. Not a single letter.
He concluded that wherever she lived her life, it was not here. He wondered briefly what signs of his existence, if he were run over and killed, would be found in Maisie’s neat home. A whisky bottle? He locked the front door behind him with the uncomfortable feeling that the lady had answered none of his questions but had teasingly set a few more of her own.
If Beatrice was not to be found here, then where was she? Cottingham had early in the process checked her car and found nothing. The only remaining location, and he sighed as he contemplated the task, was her own rooms at King’s Hanger. Audrey’s death, he was convinced, flowed from that of her employer and would only be accounted for when he understood why the Dame had died. Whatever the authorities were saying — and he could perfectly well understand their protective stance — his instincts told him that she had been killed in an uncontrollable fit of hatred. And the behaviour and character that could engender such a deadly emotion normally left traces: correspondence, journals, family albums, gossip. Joe was confident that he would pick up something rewarding between the layers of Beatrice’s life if only he were allowed access to it.
His mind flew to King’s Hanger, evaluating his chances of invading the house. How in hell was he to talk his way past the old lady? An encounter with Grendel’s mother would have filled him with less dismay. With a wry smile, he suddenly saw his way through the problem. Could he possibly? It would take a lot of cheek and determination. He thought he had enough of both.
He decided that he’d earned himself a good breakfast. He’d make for the nearest Lyon’s Corner House and have his first proper meal in two days. They’d be frying the bacon by now. He’d have two eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms, fried bread, the lot. Then he’d go back to his flat and put his head down for a few hours. He was supposed to be on leave after all.
‘It’s a crying shame, that’s what it is!’
‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we, Mrs Weston?’
‘But all these dresses? All this underwear? And look at these good coats! There’s folk in the village with nothing to their backs as could do with something like this. I can understand the old girl wanting to get rid of her papers and books and suchlike — I mean, what use are they to anybody? Just a sad reminder, really. But it’s not right that everything should go on the bonfire! I call that real uncaring.’
‘Ours not to reason why. The orders are quite clear.’
‘In my last position, housekeeper to the Bentleys, when Miss Louise died, all her things were divided up amongst the female staff. I got her Kashmir shawl. This is a very peculiar household if you ask me, Mr Reid, and if I had anywhere else I could find a position within five miles of my old ma, I’d be off like a shot!’
‘You have a good position here, Mrs Weston. Be thankful for it.’ Reid turned to two young boys who were standing by. ‘Jacky! Fred! Clear those files off that shelf. . Put them into that box. . Yes, those as well. . Take them straight down to the boiler room. Papers go in the furnace. Clothes go on the bonfire in the vegetable garden. Come on! Step lively, lads!’
A figure in the shadows on the landing stood watching silently as Jacky and Fred thumped downstairs carrying between them the boxed residue of the life of Dame Beatrice.
‘Following her to the flames,’ came the sly thought.
Chapter Nineteen
Joe awoke to the shrilling of the telephone, unsure for a moment why a beam of afternoon sun appeared to be giving him the third degree.
‘Yes?’ he growled.
‘Is that Commander Sandilands?’ asked a male voice he vaguely recognized.
‘No. It isn’t. This is his man. The Commander is away in Surrey for a few days and is incommunicado. He has particularly asked me not to reveal his number to the gentlemen of the press.’
‘Balls, Commander!’ said the voice cheerfully. ‘You put that phone down and you’ll regret it!’
Joe groaned. ‘Cyril! Cyril, the slander-monger. Is the Standard still paying you good money for trotting out that tedious tittle-tattle? Haven’t seen your name on the Society pages for a while.’
‘Ah! You do read them then?’
‘Only the bits I find sticking to my fish and chips. I’d like to help you, old man, but, as I haven’t jilted any duchesses this week or fallen face first into my brown Windsor at the Waldorf, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of any interest to you. Bugger off!’
‘No! Hang on! I’m not on Society any more. They’ve transferred me — promoted me — to current affairs. And I don’t want a favour. I’m offering one. Just for once I think I can do something for you, Commander. Why don’t we meet for a drink?’
‘How many good reasons do you want?’
‘Oh, come on! I thought we could go somewhere quiet and drink a farewell toast to a Wren — ’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! Not still barking up that tree, are you? It’s been cut down, man! Look — where are you? Fleet Street? Make it the Cock Tavern. . upstairs in one of their little booths. That should be quiet enough.’
‘No. Won’t do. Too many nosy journalists about and I’d have thought a stylish lady deserved a more salubrious setting for a send-off. I have in mind the Savoy. The American Bar. You can treat me to one of Harry’s cocktails. Six o’clock it is then!’
He rang off before Joe could argue.
Cyril Tate had been an odd choice for Society columnist. Joe wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d been moved sideways, having privately considered the man too astute, too talented and too middle-aged to be wasting his time trailing around after debutantes. When his copy escaped the editor’s blue pencil,
it was lightly ironic and certainly lacked the deferential tone the readers of such nonsense expected. He was valued, Joe supposed, by his paper for the quality of his writing but also for his talent with a camera. Readers were increasingly demanding photographic illustrations of their news items and papers like the Standard found that their sales increased in direct proportion to the square footage of photographs they printed. Armed with his Ermanox 858 press camera, he could stalk his prey up close and then write the reports to support the photographs. Only one pay-packet. Only one intrusive presence at the scene. Economical and practical.
A confident-looking man in trim middle age and wearing a slightly battered dinner-jacket was standing at the bar when Joe arrived, laughing with the barman. The room was almost empty of drinkers at this early hour and had the air of quiet readiness of an establishment about to launch into something it does well. Everything was in place, shining and smart. Silver shakers stood in a row; the lemons were sliced, the ice was cracked. In a corner, a pianist lifted the lid of a baby grand piano and began to riffle over the keys.
‘Harry’s working on a cocktail for you, Commander,’ Cyril greeted him cheerfully.
‘It’s called The Corpse Reviver,’ said Harry Craddock. ‘Very powerful concoction.’
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