Something else, then. Something defined by the answer to the question: Where is H.L.? Even as I dropped my wallet back into my pocket, with the ticket secreted inside, I knew I would have to find out. At all events, I would have to try. This loose end could not be left to dangle in my thoughts. Before I saw Diana again, I would have to trace it to its beginning. Or fail in the attempt. Either way, the attempt would have to be made.
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Maggie, when I greeted her at the Letchworth Hall Hotel with a glass of ginger-beer and a lame apology for being unable to lunch with her. ‘You said you were looking forward to it.’
‘So I was. But … something’s cropped up. I have to leave, I’m afraid. Straightaway.’ I shrugged my shoulders and grinned sheepishly. ‘I’ll pay for your meal.’
She sighed. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘No. I know. I’m sorry. But there it is. I must go.’ I pecked her cheek and headed for the exit, only to be halted by her parting enquiry.
‘How was Felix?’
‘Not good. In fact … Not well at all.’
She glared at me suspiciously. ‘Did you upset him?’
‘No. Of course not. But – ’ What was the use of trying to explain? My father would blame Felix’s deterioration on me whatever I said. And in her present exasperated mood so would my sister. ‘I have to go, Maggie. Sorry.’
Bournemouth Promenade five hours later extended a chill and mocking welcome. A steely rain was falling, a ghostly surf sighing on the dark deserted beach. All the worst features of an English seaside resort out of season were distilled in the bleak November night. And the pier was closed, its gates locked, its theatre absorbed within the black outline of buildings clustered at its end. Stooping in the relative shelter of a coin-in-the-slot telescope to light a cigarette, I wondered why I had been so stupid as to come to this God-forsaken spot, where the prospects of learning anything valuable were infinitesimal. I was wasting my time and energy on a fool’s errand.
So it still seemed next morning when I stepped out of the Solent Cliffs Hotel and descended to the Promenade beneath a weeping sky. But there was no sense in turning back now. A hunched figure could be discerned in the booth next to the turnstile at the entrance to the pier. I tapped on the window and he slowly detached his gaze from the racing page of his newspaper.
‘Is the theatre open?’ I nodded towards it.
‘Not till Easter, sir.’
‘Would there be anybody there who could give me some information?’
‘What about, sir?’
‘A performance last August.’
‘A performance of what, sir?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the information I want.’
He treated me to a prolonged I Spy Madmen look, then said: ‘Try the Entertainments Officer up at the Town Hall, sir. Mr Oates. He’s your man.’ And with that his eyes swivelled back to the racing page.
Mr Oates’ desk stood in the dusty corner of a large office on the top floor of the Town Hall. At all events, I assumed a desk was to be found somewhere beneath the pile of disordered letters, files, notes and memoranda. But of Mr Oates there was no sign.
‘He’s just popped out,’ announced the woman sitting behind the only occupied desk in the room. She was a pencil-thin creature of indeterminate age, with peroxide blond hair and a large gash of cherry-red lip-stick. ‘He said he might be some time.’
‘A pity,’ I remarked, moving towards her, only to recoil as the sickly fumes emanating from a paraffin stove behind her chair rose to envelop me. ‘Perhaps you … might be able to help.’
‘It’s possible, dear.’ She smiled coquettishly. ‘It’s possible.’
‘It may seem an odd question, but—’
‘Oh, odd questions crop up all the time here. It’s not surprising. Some of the staff are very odd. Especially Mr Oates.’ She ostentatiously crossed her legs and waggled a spindly ankle for my inspection. ‘You should be grateful you’ve got me instead.’
‘I’m sure I should be. You, er, know about his work, do you?’
‘The little there is to know, yes.’
‘Well, I’m trying to find out what was performed at the Pier Theatre last August. Would you happen to—’
‘Murder.’
‘What?’
‘Well, most of the shows Mr Oates books are murder, believe me. I’ve sat through a few.’ Then, seeing me reach into my pocket, she added: ‘Oh, I don’t mind if I do.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You were about to offer me a cigarette, weren’t you?’
‘Er yes. Yes, of course I was.’ I had actually been about to show her the ticket. Switching to the other pocket with a sigh, I took out my cigarette case and opened it for her.
‘Thanks.’ She leant forward for a light and fluttered her eyelashes in what she clearly thought was a perfect imitation of Marlene Dietrich. By the time she had fully opened them again, I was holding the ticket in front of her.
‘One of yours?’
She nodded. ‘Looks like it.’
‘Does this mean anything to you?’ I turned it over.
‘The twenty-sixth of August.’ She frowned. ‘“Where is H.L.?”’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, dear. Not a thing. Why should it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just—’
‘Hold on. H.L.’ Her frown became a smile. ‘In the last week of August. Of course. It must be him.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Oates booked him for the matinées that week. But he didn’t turn up. Which meant Maurice String-fellow and his dancing spoons had to stand in for him. Well, he was no substitute, believe me. To be honest, he’d be no substitute for watching nail varnish dry. I mean, dancing spoons. Give me a good conjurer any day.’
‘Is that what H.L. is? A conjurer?’
‘Well, he calls himself a presti—, prestidigi—’ ‘Prestidigitateur?’
‘Yes. That’s it. But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’ She chuckled. ‘Silly man. But nice, all the same. You can’t help liking Hildebrand Lightfoot. When he can be bothered to—’
‘Did you say Hildebrand!’
‘Yes. Have you heard of him?’
A phrase was echoing in my mind, growing louder by the second. A fragment of a poem by Keats, quoted by Max on the night of Charnwood’s murder. ‘Remember the “dwarfish Hildebrand”, Guy?’ My thoughts scrambled back in pursuit of the memory to the pub near Dorking where we had waited for the hour of our rendezvous with Diana, to the customer who had played a conjuring trick on the barmaid and whose improbable name Max had taken for an omen of success. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I have.’
‘Well, he let Mr Oates down badly. No apology. No explanation. He’ll be lucky to get a booking next summer.’
‘He was supposed to be doing matinées at the Pier Theatre during the last week of August, but failed to put in an appearance. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes, dear. Mr Oates was livid.’
‘When was he due to start?’
‘On the Monday.’
‘And you’ve not heard from him since?’
‘Not a word. Mr Oates has given his agent a piece of his mind, but he claims he hasn’t heard from him either. Well, you know these artistes. Very highly strung. Not that Hildebrand Lightfoot ever struck me as—’
‘Who is his agent?’
‘Charlie Pragnell.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘London. If you really want to.’
‘I really do.’
‘Well, let me look up his address for you.’ She rose and brushed breathlessly past me to reach a filing cabinet. After a search of several seconds, she pulled out a letter. ‘Here we are. Mr Charles V. Pragnell, Pragnell-Pierce Theatrical Celebrity Agency, Bridle Street, Soho, London West One. He can tell you all you want to know about Hildebrand Lightfoot. And more, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ I began to move towards the door, eager to follow the trail
, to test the vague hypotheses forming in my mind. Why should Lightfoot have been in Dorking on Friday the twenty-first of August and not in Bournemouth on Monday the twenty-fourth? What had intervened? What had prevented him honouring the booking? And where—
‘Are you off there now, dear?’
‘Er … Yes.’
‘Well, if you see Mr Pragnell, could you ask him to pass a message on to his good-for-nothing client?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Ask Mr Pragnell to tell Hildebrand that Gladys misses him. Even though he doesn’t deserve it.’ She blushed. ‘When all’s said and done, he is a sweetie.’
Dusk was settling over Soho when I arrived at the insalubrious premises of the Pragnell-Pierce Theatrical Celebrity Agency – a basement beneath a garishly decorated tattoo parlour. A telephone was ringing in the unattended outer office and I could hear somebody talking on another telephone in the next room.
‘Tell him he has Charlie Pragnell’s word on it,’ a voice boomed. ‘What more does he want?’
I pushed the door open and spotted my quarry: a rotund and evidently harassed figure in a tight chalk-stripe suit, spinning a teetotum abstractedly round his desk with one hand while clamping the receiver to his ear with the other. He winked at me to no obvious purpose.
‘She doesn’t touch the stuff any more. Not a drop. No. Of course it won’t be Wolverhampton all over again. What do you take me for?’
I glanced round the room, blinking through the haze of cigar-smoke. The walls were lined with glossy photographs of the grinning men and heavy-lidded women I took to be Pragnell’s clients. Was one of them Lightfoot? I wondered. There was no chance I would recognize him, for I had paid him scant attention the one night our paths had crossed. Max might have had a closer look, but—
‘Well, just do your best. That’s all I ask. Yes. Of course. Goodbye.’
Had Max been here before me? Had he asked this man the same question I was about to? Why had the answer mattered so much to him? I was on the brink either of discovery or disappointment. Close, at all events, to the end of my search.
‘And good riddance,’ Pragnell growled at the telephone before looking up at me. ‘Now, then, what can I do for you? As long as you don’t want a comedian who actually makes people laugh, I might be able to help.’
‘I’m trying to find one of your clients.’
‘Are you from the Inland Revenue?’
‘No.’
‘Pity. If you were, at least I could believe they were earning some money. Which of my glittering celebrities are you interested in?’
‘Hildebrand Lightfoot.’
‘Alfie Lightfoot? Well, well, he is popular, isn’t he? More than he ever was before he performed his ultimate conjuring trick, worse luck.’ Seeing my puzzled look, he added: ‘Hildebrand’s his middle name. He uses it on stage. Off stage, he’s plain Alfred. Or was.’
‘Was?’
‘I haven’t clapped eyes on him for three months or more. He’s vanished like one of his white rabbits. Dropped through the bottom of his own top-hat.’
‘He was due to appear in Bournemouth for the week commencing the twenty-fourth of August, I believe.’
Pragnell’s brow furrowed. ‘So he was. You’re well-informed, I must say. Why exactly do you want to find him?’
‘A personal matter.’
‘That’s what the other fellow said.’
‘What other fellow?’
‘You remind me of him, as a matter of fact. Out of the same drawer in life, I’d say. Not the bottom one. But not quite the top one either. He came sniffing after Alfie when the trail was a good bit fresher. End of August. Beginning of September. Some time like that. When I still thought the blighter might show up again soon. I had him booked till Michaelmas, you know. Bognor. Swanage. Ilfracombe. Weston-super Mare. He left me with enough egg on my face to make an omelette.’
‘This other fellow. Did you catch his name?’
‘He didn’t give it. But, then, you haven’t given yours, have you?’
‘Horton. Guy Horton.’
‘Well, Mr Horton, I’ll tell you what I told him. Alfred Hildebrand Lightfoot, conjurer, ventriloquist and mind-reader extraordinaire, gave a one-night show in Margate on the nineteenth of August and I haven’t seen or heard of him since. Neither has anyone else in the business.’
‘Where is he, then?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. He never was the last word in reliability. The odd missed booking, thanks to drink or women or both … well, it was to be expected. But weeks on end? I don’t know what to make of it.’
‘Is he pictured here?’ I cast round at the photographs.
‘All my celebrities are pictured here, Mr Horton.’ He detached himself from his chair and waddled round to the wall beneath the frosted pavement window, signalling for me to follow. ‘Even Hildebrand Lightfoot.’ He pointed to one of the photographs.
It was a studio portrait of a good-looking man in evening dress, with a fine head of sleek hair and a bristling sergeant-majorish moustache. He was smiling amiably in a slightly raffish devil-may-care manner and looked as if he fancied himself as a lady-killer, possibly with good reason. But something else – some faintly disturbing glimmer in his dark eyes – also communicated itself to me. And it was at this curiously insistent quality of his features that I found myself staring most fixedly.
‘Taken a few years ago, of course,’ said Pragnell. ‘He’s a good bit greyer now.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Mid-fifties. He’s never been precise on the point. Nor on any other, come to that.’
‘Height?’
‘About the same as you.’
I could almost see it now, almost grasp the physical reality of what I was seeking: a hint; a suggestion; a glimpse of what Max had realized before me.
‘Of course, he may not have the ’tache now.’
‘What?’
‘Well, the theatre manager in Margate told me he turned up there clean-shaven. And almost white-haired, rather than grey. Scarcely recognizable, he said. But he was probably exaggerating. Maybe Alfie had just forgotten to apply the boot-polish. As for the ’tache …’
That was it. For an instant, in my mind’s eye, Lightfoot’s face aged ten years, shed its moustache and smiled at me in a different but familiar guise. I had him now. I could see him, as Max had seen him. Not as Alfred Hildebrand Lightfoot, conjurer, ventriloquist and mind-reader. But as Fabian Melville Charnwood, company chairman, international financier and engineer of world wars. As I stared at him, his smile seemed to broaden, his eyes to twinkle. ‘A circle and a straight line may be the same thing, depending on your point of view.’
‘What’s the matter, Mr Horton? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Pragnell was right. I had seen a ghost. And I could still see him, hovering at Lightfoot’s shoulder. Between Margate on the nineteenth of August and Bournemouth on the twenty-fourth, Hildebrand had had one other booking: in Dorking. He had been there to play a part – the part of a dead man. How Charnwood had tricked him I did not know. How he had lured him to his death I could not guess. But that Lightfoot’s had been the body in the woods that night I did not doubt. The same height and build. Similar age and appearance. With all obvious differences battered away. It was enough to deceive the likes of me – when Charnwood’s clothes covered the limbs of a corpse, when the dead man’s face was a mask of gore, when his sister and daughter crouched beside him in tearful mourning. And it was more than enough to persuade the police, the pathologist and the undertaker, none of whom had ever met Charnwood or Lightfoot. What had it taken but blood and darkness and well-told lies? And murder, of course. That small but vital component in the plot.
‘Are you sure you don’t know Alfie?’ asked Pragnell. ‘Stare at him much longer and you’ll bore a hole in the photograph.’
‘Where do you think he is?’
‘No idea. Abroad, I shouldn’t wonder. With some floozy or other. But he must
be running low on spondulicks. Conjuring’s all he knows.’
‘He might be dead, of course.’
‘Alfie? No. Fit as a fiddle.’
‘Killed in an accident, perhaps.’
‘I’d have heard.’
‘Or murdered?’
‘Murdered?’ Pragnell frowned at me. ‘Don’t be so parboiled. Why would anyone do in Alfie Lightfoot?’
‘I don’t know.’ But I did. The motive and the method had formed as cold hard certainties in my mind. Lightfoot had been paid to impersonate Charnwood. He had strengthened their resemblance by shaving off his moustache and letting the natural colour of his hair grow through. He had gone to Dorking and awaited his cue in the same wayside pub as Max and me. And later he had gone on stage – for the last time – dressed in his employer’s clothes. Charnwood had killed him. And Vita and Diana had identified him. The guilt of all three was plain. As was the secret they were hiding. Not the whereabouts of Charnwood’s money. But the whereabouts of Charnwood himself. ‘Perhaps,’ I said hesitantly, ‘he was mistaken for somebody else.’
12
‘BOOKHAM TWO FIVE eight.’
‘Good morning. Could I speak to Miss Diana Charnwood, please?’
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Guy Horton.’
‘Hold on, please, Mr Horton.’
There was a pause, then a click as Diana picked up the receiver in another room.
‘Hello, Guy. I was beginning to—’
‘I’m sorry not to have been in touch sooner, Diana. I’ve had one or two problems.’
‘Is everything all right now?’
‘Oh yes. Quite all right.’
‘Where are you?’
‘London.’
‘Then why don’t you come down here and tell me all about it?’
‘Because I still have some – Well, I can’t get away until tomorrow. Family difficulties. I’ll explain everything when I arrive. Tomorrow night, some time after eight.’
Closed Circle Page 25
