by Lynda Wilcox
“Not as much as you’d hoped for, but that report tells us when Mr Cropper was killed.”
“Does it? All I saw was that his body had been found on the Wednesday, and that he’d been stabbed with a six-inch blade, such as a kitchen knife.”
“Yes, I saw that, but in between all the jargon, and the Latin and the doctor hedging his bets, I reckon he thought that Mr Cropper had been in the water for four days, which takes us right back to the Saturday that he disappeared.” Tilly grinned. “Which makes it look as if your man in the rowing club blazer could well be the murderer after all.”
Eleanor was so pleased to hear what amounted to confirmation of her findings, that when she had a phone call from Squidgy Rockfort later that evening and asked if they could meet, she never thought to demur at his choice of venue. On the contrary, she looked forward to it.
Chapter 18
Squidgy Rockfort’s strong arm nearly lifted Eleanor off her feet as he helped her out of the taxi the following evening. He stood on the pavement outside Jesters Jazz Club, his massive shoulders looming over her, so close she could almost feel the muscles rippling beneath his well-cut jacket.
There was only one word to describe him, and that was long — long limbed, long bodied, long faced. He gave her an approving stare, his lips curving into a smile of greeting.
“Good evening, my lady. Gee, you look swell.”
“Thank you, Sebastian, and thanks for meeting me.”
He opened the door and ushered her into the lobby where they left their coats.
The nightclub was crowded and very noisy. Its interior designer had possessed a sense of the macabre, for the walls and ceiling were black. In the dim and smoky main room only those with excellent eyesight would have made out the jesters — which gave the club its name — painted in their red and green motley upon the walls. Eleanor suppressed a shiver at their laughing mouths and rictus grins, their widened eyes that seemed to follow her as she passed.
Above the sounds of chatter and chink of glassware, the silken notes of a clarinet mingled with cigarette smoke, swirling and climbing upwards, as though it sought a way out for them both.
Eleanor and her escort skirted the dance floor with its cavorting occupants and found a table close to the back wall.
“This should do nicely,” Squidgy muttered, taking his seat after holding her chair for her.
At least that’s what Eleanor thought he’d said. She was forced to lip read his words due to the cacophony of sound. It did not appear to faze or thwart Squidgy who merely edged his chair as close to hers as he could get.
“This is cosy.” He grinned wolfishly at her.
Eleanor’s heart sank, though she responded with a dazzling smile, then signalled to a waiter. If she had to put up with an amorous Sebastian she was going to make sure she had at least one drink inside her. At least no one was likely to overhear them if they were whispering in each other’s ears. Just as long as he didn’t start yelling.
Conversation wasn’t easy and she observed the other revellers for a while. Squidgy was more interested in his companion, however, and rubbed his upper arm against hers.
“So, I have to say I was surprised to hear from you, Ellie, old girl. What’s all this about then?”
“It’s for a case I’m working on. I would like to ask you some questions about the Rother Rowing Club.”
“What?” He lowered his head, tilting his ear towards her.
“Rother Rowing Club.”
“Eh? What about it?”
It was pointless trying to talk while the jazz combo was playing. Eleanor got to her feet and pulled at his arm. “Let’s dance.”
The young man was quite happy to show off his moves on the dance floor and made no complaint as she dragged him from the table. They did the Jitterbug, the Strut and the Charleston, but when the band played a slower, more romantic tune, Eleanor resisted Squidgy’s attempts to draw her into his arms and led him from the floor.
“It’s quieter now. We can talk.”
“We can sit in the bar area if you’d rather. It’s a tad less frantic in there.”
Eleanor shook her head. She’d already spotted several of their more garrulous friends imbibing at the counter and couldn’t face the thought of further distraction and delay. Besides, fearful of who to trust, she’d prefer not to be overheard. Even confiding in Squidgy was not without risk.
“So, what do you want to know about the rowing club, Eleanor? Are you thinking of joining?”
Her eyes widened at the thought. “No, darling, I’m not the athletic type. Walking and horse riding are enough for me. The thing is, I’m looking for a man who may be a member, but unfortunately I don’t know his name. I suspect, though, that he may only have joined very recently. How many of the members do you know?”
“Well, a fair few, but if you don’t have the chap’s name, how will you know which is the right one? Have you got a description?”
Really, it was too embarrassing to be borne. Admitting to Squidgy that she had no description because the old man at the Crown and Anchor hadn’t got one, only proved what a lousy investigator she was. She should have pressed him harder, for all that he’d claimed his eyes had been fast on the blazer, not on the man wearing it.
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Nothing specific, anyway, but he may be someone I know and if I had the names of anyone who became a member of the club recently, I could compare them. See?”
Squidgy frowned in an effort to make sense of this. Eleanor didn’t let on that she and Ann had already paid a visit to the club; she wasn’t proud of the subterfuge she’d used, or the lack of results it had produced.
While her companion mulled over her request, a familiar tingle ran up her spine.
She was being watched.
Picking up her drink, she sat back and cast a casual glance around the dim space. She turned her head when someone to her left let out a loud shout.
Four people gathered around a circular table were throwing up peanuts for one another to catch, but it was the dark shape behind them that caught her attention. Above a neatly trimmed black beard, a pair of dark and compelling eyes held hers. She frowned and glanced away, thinking the face familiar and trying to place it. When she looked back, the face was gone, swallowed up in the ebb and flow of the club’s clientele.
She grabbed her companion’s arm. “Did you see that man?”
“Hmm? What man?”
“The one with the beard. He was staring at us.”
Squidgy laughed. “Staring at you, more likely. You’re a feast for most men’s eyes. You turn heads wherever you go. No one stares at me.”
Eleanor turned to her companion. “Oh, I’m sure they do, Sebastian. You’re a good looking man.”
“You’re very kind.” He put a hand over hers. “Why don’t you call me Squidgy? Everyone does.”
Far too polite to tell him she thought it a ridiculous nickname, Eleanor asked instead how he’d come by it.
“Well, I was always a chubby little chap. It started at prep school where they called me Pudgy. At Eton it became Squidgy and, as these things do, it stuck.” He lifted his hands and spread them apart. Eleanor took the opportunity to put both of hers in her lap in case she should feel the need to claim one again. “It’s one of the reasons,” he went on, “that I took up sport, to get rid of the puppy fat. The other was because I was useless at maths or Classics, or anything academic, really.”
“Were you a rowing blue at university?”
“Yes, at Cambridge.” He grinned. “Of course, by then I’d put on a growth spurt and no longer lived up to my moniker.”
“And the war put paid to the Boat Race.”
Her observation brought a scowl to his face. “Yes, though I was in the winning team in 1921, the year after it restarted, so I was awarded a full blue for that.”
The tradition of Oxford and Cambridge universities awarding blues to its rowing teams was a long one, though Eleanor knew little about i
t.
“What do you get?” she asked. “A ribbon or a rosette?”
“Nothing of the sort. You are given a blue blazer.”
Eleanor sat back as if thunderstruck. This could knock all her theories into a cocked hat. “Navy blue?”
He looked disgusted. “No, Cambridge blue. It’s a light blue. Oxford blue is darker, but neither of them are navy.” His face cleared and he laughed. “You’re thinking of the Rother blazer, and that’s not the same thing at all. Members have to buy those, and they aren’t particularly cheap.”
Eleanor waved a hand - the price of the blazers was of no interest, though it led to an interesting thought.
“Is it a prerequisite of membership that one has to buy a blazer?”
“No, most members have one, I would think, but not all.”
So Martin Cropper might have been a member sans blazer, then. Eleanor doubted that he would have paid out for one. A painter’s wage was unlikely to stretch that far.
“Would you do me a favour, Sebastian?”
“Of course.”
Eleanor moved her chair a fraction closer, though she needn’t have bothered. The band struck up again drowning out her words. She took a sip of her drink and waited.
“Can you find out how many new members the rowing club has added to its books in the last few months? I need names and addresses.”
“I’ll try.” His mouth was again close to her ear. “It may take a while, but I’ll ask the club secretary for you.”
“Not for me,” she hissed back at him. “You’ll have to come up with an excuse, a plausible reason for wanting them without mentioning my name.”
He shrank back, looking dubious. “I’ll try,” he said again.
“Be careful, though, Sebastian. This is a murder case I’m working on.”
“Lumme!” His hand shook and spilled his drink. “You don’t half live an exciting life.”
His words echoed those of Lady Serena and Eleanor scowled in the darkness as Squidgy mopped his glass with a handkerchief. Did he also think it seedy? It was to be hoped that Tommy Totteridge and Sophie Westlake didn’t share that opinion, or any of her other, closer, friends.
It was perhaps a good thing that none of them knew about her recent brush with death. There had been nothing exciting about that.
On that thought she excused herself and went to the restroom. The shooting of Major Armitage was still too fresh in her mind to enjoy an evening of jollity with the rest of the bright young things around her. She dodged and weaved her way among and around them, her eyes never still, searching for that familiar bearded face with the piercing stare.
Later, as she tossed and turned in her satin sheets, wondering if she had done the right thing in involving Squidgy, she tried to make sense of all she’d managed to learn so far. It didn’t amount to much when she laid it all out in her mind.
Martin Cropper’s murder seemed so pointless, as did the major’s. Tomorrow she would have to find a new angle on the case, or give it up and admit she was beaten.
Chapter 19
Fortunately for Eleanor, who admitted she was notoriously impatient, when Sebastian Rockfort was given a task to do, he went at it with all speed. She was, therefore, delighted when Tilly announced the young man’s arrival only the following afternoon. She was less pleased when he rushed past the maid and took up a stance in front of Eleanor’s chair.
She barely had time to rise and greet him before he gasped, “I say, Eleanor old girl, will you marry me?”
Tilly coughed to smother a laugh and scuttled out of the room. She did not see her mistress’s raised eyebrows as Squidgy went down on one knee and clasped his hands together, beseechingly.
“Erm...” Eleanor began.
“Please say you will. I’d be frightfully happy if you did me the honour of becoming my wife.”
“Squidgy dear, do get up.” Eleanor, too, stifled a laugh at the plaintive young man on her carpet. “What’s all this about?”
“Is it because I’m not worthy of you?” He pushed himself to his feet and fell into the armchair opposite her own. “I’m only the second son of a viscount and you’re a duke’s daughter, but I’d do my best to provide for you.”
Eleanor scowled. The men in her life seemed obsessed with her status. It was beginning to grate.
“Nonsense, Squidgy, that has nothing to do with it. If you were a chimney sweep and I loved you, I’d marry you with nothing.” She took down the cigarette box from the mantelpiece and offered him one. He waved it away, and she helped herself and resumed her seat. “Anyway, didn’t I hear that you’d proposed to Delia Arkwright only last week?”
He looked away and into the fire. “Well, I...”
“Dashed bad form that, you know, offering marriage to two different girls within a week.” She grinned to herself, seeing him squirm at her teasing. “You might at least have asked me first. No girl likes to think she’s come second in the marriage stakes.”
“Oh, lumme. I say, you haven’t taken offence, have you, Eleanor? I’d hate to think I’d offended you, or that I’ll be blackballed for proposing to you.”
Eleanor flicked cigarette ash into the fire and smiled at the discomfited young man. “Not at all, you goof. I’m actually rather flattered. We are, after all, good friends. The trouble is that neither of us loves the other, and I do consider love to be rather a prerequisite for getting married. It’s a modern idea, I know, but I quite like it. So, what’s all this about? Did Delia turn you down?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Yes. In fact she said pretty much the same thing that you did — about love I mean.”
“So, why did you ask her?”
He placed his hands between his knees, rubbing his palms together, and looking sheepish. Eleanor waited. It was clear he needed to unburden himself.
“Because, in order to inherit a not inconsiderable fortune from a great-aunt, I need to be firstly under twenty-five, and secondly, married.”
“And your birthday is...?”
“Next month.” Looking thoroughly miserable, he rested his elbow on the chair arm and put his chin in his hand.
Eleanor found it hard to believe that it was still possible to have conversations like this in the twentieth century. Poor Squidgy’s predicament was like something out a Regency novel. Still, even in the 1920s, wills were sacrosanct, so her friend would need to get a move on if he wanted his inheritance.
“I see your problem.” Despite her own sadness, she smiled fondly at him. “Fortunately, I also see the solution.”
“You do?” He perked up. “So, you will marry me?”
“No, you fathead. If you could marry anyone at all, who would it be? Answer me honestly. Don’t try and think of just anyone single.”
“Well, I...” His face took on a dreamy expression for a moment before it fell and he shrugged. “Impossible.”
“Come, come, Sebastian. Faint heart never won fair lady. What would you say if I told you that the Honourable Phillipa Blenkinsop is wildly in love with you?”
“She is? Are you sure.”
“Positive. She’s been pining after you for a while, afraid to speak in case you didn’t feel the same way.”
His eyes shone. “Really? Pippy? Oh, but I do. Isn’t she just the most marvellous thing, Eleanor?”
Eleanor, who thought her almost as empty-headed as Squidgy, murmured, “You’re ideally suited, I think.”
“I never dreamed that she would feel the same way about me. If Pippy would consent to marry me, that would solve everything.” He sprang to his feet. “I’ll go around to the house now. See if she will see me.”
His hostess smiled at his eagerness, but put out a restraining hand. “There is one thing before you go, Squidgy.”
“Eh? What’s that?” His brow furrowed in consternation.
“Was a marriage proposal the only reason you called?”
“What? Oh, yes...um...no. I’d forgotten about that.” He resumed his seat. “Last night at the Jester
s club, you asked me to check up on addresses for a couple of the of Rowing Club members. Do you remember?”
Her body jerked towards him. Of course she remembered. She hadn’t had that much to drink and a night’s sleep hadn’t wiped it from her mind. Praying this was the breakthrough she had hoped for, she smiled at him. “Yes, that’s right, I did.”
He put a hand into his jacket pocket and brought out a wallet from which he retrieved a scrap of paper. “Well, I’ve got them. I thought old Grenville might quibble when I asked for them, but I said I wanted to contact them about making up an eight for the June regatta. We always take part and have a couple of boats, but the foursomes are already sorted, and there are a couple of single sculls who won’t want to be in a bigger boat.”
Eleanor wasn’t bothered how he’d obtained the names, only that he had. She put out a hand for the paper. “Thank you.”
“Oh, you’re very welcome.”
He handed her the paper and she scanned the half-dozen names eagerly, grateful for his neat handwriting. It was so much easier to read than the secretary’s spider tracks. “Do you know all these people?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say as I do. Wallace Barnes and I have rowed together before, and I was at school with Willy Woodrow, though he was several years my senior.”
“But Cameron McIntyre and Stephen Leather?”
Squidgy moved his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t think that I’ve met either of them. We aren’t all at the club at the same time, you know, and some of the members are barely there at all, except in the summer, and then only if the weather is fine. Some just like to dabble about in boats or on the river. They aren’t serious rowers, but that’s all right. The club caters for all tastes, what?”
Was it also a cover for some of the members? Did it give them a pretext to be on the river, or in Rotherhithe?
“The painter —” she began, her finger on McIntyre’s name.
“Is the rope at the front of a boat or dinghy. It’s used for pulling or mooring.”
“Hmm?” Eleanor hardly heard him. Apart from that initial interview, she’d barely given Martin Cropper’s fellow painters a second thought. None of them had shown any animosity towards the dead man, all had appeared to like them, and she had uncovered no motive amongst them for his murder.
