by Lynda Wilcox
AS 252.
The same car from which the fatal shots had been fired at Peter Armitage.
She edged her own car forward, wanting to slot into the traffic right behind the Alvis, but no one would give way. Cursing, she waited as two more cars followed her quarry before she could join the stream of traffic. She turned the wheel, staying close to the car in front, straining to keep the blue car in sight.
The line of vehicles carried on, occasionally slowing as people turned off, or stopping when another junction was reached, but the Alvis was still there in front of her. Then it veered off and went down a side street.
Eleanor followed it in time to see it turn in between a set of high wooden gates. With a quick glance at the premises beyond, she drove on past and parked around the corner. She would go back on foot and scout the place out before she put her head into what might be the lion’s den.
Hoping that this was a much needed breakthrough at last, she took her pistol out of the Lagonda’s glove compartment and dropped it into her pocket. No point in taking chances.
Eleanor’s quick darting glance took in her surroundings. The row of terraced housing on her right looked back at her through their single downstairs windows as she passed. She had become totally lost when she followed the Alvis. A sign high up on a wall told her she was on Swan Street, but that made her location no clearer. Was she still in Southwark, even?
The street lay empty. At this time of day the menfolk were still at work, the women indoors preparing the evening meal. There would be no witnesses if any harm were to come to her.
Treading carefully, lest any skittering stone betrayed her presence, she made her way along the street towards the wooden gates. With a lightning glance around to make sure she wasn’t observed, she peered around them. The Alvis was not to be seen, but a lot of drums and crates, together with a porter’s trolley, were visible, stacked against the left-hand wall of the compound. Facing her were two roller doors, the one on the right partly open.
Intrigued about the content of the drums, one of which held a yellow smear near the rim, and with neither sight nor sound of anyone within, Eleanor stepped inside the gates. She waited for a second, then hurried across to the side wall.
The drums bore printed labels with the words Custard Powder on their lids, though nothing marked the crates, which were approximately six feet on each side. These were nailed down securely with no gaps between the slats.
Taking off her glove, Eleanor put out a finger to touch the yellow stain, when she heard voices for the first time. They came from behind the roller door and were getting closer.
“All right, I’ll have them ready for you Friday. How will you carry them?”
A laugh, hard and guttural. “Make them small enough to fit inside a couple of gallon paint tins. I shall not have any trouble then. Do not forget what I have said about the string. I do not want to be hoist, eh?”
Eleanor was all set to dip down and hide behind a crate when something crunched beneath her foot. She looked down at the gritty black residue as a man slid out of the gap between door and jamb. He gave her an angry stare and waved to someone behind him, as if wanting him to keep out of sight.
“What do you want?”
Eleanor ignored his rudeness.
“I say, frightfully sorry to intrude. It is Mr Jenkinson, isn’t it? Jenkinson’s Garage? My friend Felicity Bowers said you straightened out her front end and repainted her bonnet when she had that dashed silly prang. Could you do the same for my Bugatti, do you suppose? It’s not in a frightfully bad way, really, I only grazed it. I don’t know what Daddy is so cut up about, but I can’t keep driving it in the state that it’s in. People are starting to remark on it, and I feel so frightfully silly.”
All the while she was talking, Eleanor kept a vacuous look plastered to her features and edged ever nearer to the exit.
The man, thickset and swarthy with bare arms as thick as tree trunks, narrowed his eyes as she waffled on. He appeared not to know what to make of the smartly dressed young woman in front of him. That was exactly what Eleanor was playing for. She didn’t care what he thought of her just as long as he took the charade at face value.
Eventually he appeared to do so, for she saw him relax. “Bloody nincompoop.”
“I could go to Alsop’s if you can’t fit me in, but I’ve heard he overcharges, and Felicity says —”
“Does this look like a garage to you, Miss?” He spread his arms wide, then brought his hand together and cracked his knuckles before sticking his thumbs in his waistband. With a menacing look he took a step closer. “Cos it ain’t, so go back to your flaming Bugatti and bugger off.”
Needing no second telling, Eleanor affected a squeak of disapproval and hurried out.
Risking one glance over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t followed, she almost ran back to where she had parked the Lagonda. Her breath came in short gasps and her heart pounded as she started the engine and drove off, only then allowing herself a sigh of relief.
It took a while to navigate her way back to Tower Bridge and she took her time driving to Bellevue Mansions. Her agile mind, stumped for so long, had at last got a glimmer of the truth.
“Has Joe called yet?” she asked when she arrived in the apartment.
“Not yet, my lady.”
Hoping that wasn’t an ominous sign, Eleanor nodded. “He should be here soon. We’d better have a large slice of cake ready. Then, be an angel and fix me a drink, will you? Help yourself to one while you’re at it, as I’ve got so much to talk over with you.”
Tilly did as she was told and handed her mistress a vodka Martini. She herself clutched a small medium sherry, about the only strong drink she indulged in, as she perched on the edge of the sofa and listened to Eleanor’s account of her day.
“Are you sure it was the same car, my lady?”
“The Alvis? Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt about it. I shall ring the Chief Inspector in a while and let him know where he can find it.”
Tilly looked dubious. “If it’s still there.”
“Well, they can arrest the rude man I spoke to at any rate.”
“For killing the major?”
“No, I don’t think he’s my murderer. I think he owns the yard and whatever lies behind that roller door. The murderer is whoever he was talking to, whoever had driven the car in there.” Eleanor took a sip of her Martini. “It’s what they are doing in that place that will get them arrested. That was no custard powder in those drums, it was sulphur, and the ground was littered with charcoal.”
“They’re making gunpowder?” Tilly’s eyebrows rose. “In London?”
“Why not? If you’ve got the right ingredients you can make it anywhere. Don’t forget Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot.”
“But wouldn’t sulphur smell?”
Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t think it does, not in its pure state.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, the police can check on all that.”
Tilly sniffed. “They can once they know about it.”
Eleanor, comfortable in her chair by the fire, scowled at her maid, who was clearly agog with questions, but just as clearly would not be satisfied until her mistress had phoned Scotland Yard. She got to her feet with reluctance and dragged herself across to the telephone.
She was some time speaking to Chief Inspector Blount, during which time Tilly drank her sherry, then refreshed both glasses and fretted.
When Eleanor returned from the telephone she smiled fondly at her companion. She knew Tilly would be worrying — not about bombs, or spies along the river, but for Eleanor, her friend as well as her employer. Yet her ladyship was able to take care of herself, she was quick thinking, a crack shot, and she didn’t go looking for trouble.
All of which made not an iota of difference to Tilly’s fearful state of mind.
“I’ve done that.” Eleanor helped herself to a cigarette from the box on the mantelshelf. “Chief Inspector Blount will call here in an hour or so. He sou
nded quite pleased with me —”
“And so he should be. You’ve done his job for him.”
“Hardly, Tilly, old thing. I’ll admit that the police might not have found that place on Swan Street — it really was very nondescript. There were no signs up as there would be for a normal business. It was just a stone-walled compound with a pair of high wooden gates — but I was led straight there, don’t forget, and seeing the car was an amazing stroke of luck.”
“Did the driver see you?”
“I don’t think so.” Eleanor drew on her cigarette. “Besides, he wouldn’t know me, even if he had. At least, I don’t think so.”
Tilly tapped the fingers of one hand on the armrest of her chair, still not one hundred per cent convinced that her mistress had not been the gunman’s target all along.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Do you think it’s coincidence that this happened after you left Mrs Cropper’s?”
Eleanor regarded her blankly. “That hadn’t even occurred to me. What are you driving at?”
“Alan Green. Could he have murdered Martin Cropper, then when you started asking about the Rother Rowing Club he panics, thinks you know more than you do, or should, and comes after you.”
“No, that won’t work. He’d no idea where I was going when I left the Croppers’ house, besides, he’d have to have said goodbye pretty quickly, and fetched the car. And I can’t for the life of me fathom what his connection to the major might be.”
“Maybe there wasn’t one and the major was killed by accident. The shots were fired from a moving car. It’s easy to hit the wrong person like that.”
Eleanor’s face paled. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that.” She couldn’t bear the thought that Major Armitage had given his life to save hers. If only she had insisted they take a taxi, or pulled him with her into the relative safety of that doorway. If only it had been her that had died. In some ways perhaps she had.
Tilly remained quiet while her mistress stared into the fire.
“No, that won’t work.” Eleanor roused herself. “Alan Green would not have known that either I, or the major, were to be at Watermen’s Hall that evening.”
“So, it was Cameron McIntyre, and that’s why he’s disappeared.”
Tilly’s mention of the foreman reminded Eleanor of the note she’d found in his bedroom. She fished it out of her bag and handed it across.
“I found this in McIntyre’s waste basket. Does it mean anything to you? Is it a telephone number, do you suppose?”
Tilly scrutinised the scrap of paper, shaking her head at the suggestion. “It doesn’t look like it to me. Could the 0900 be a time, perhaps. Somewhere he had to be at nine o’clock in the morning? Except I don’t recognise the word, either as a place or anything else.” She passed the note back.
“You know, I’m rather worried about McIntyre,” Eleanor remarked. “Oh, I don’t mean that he murdered Martin Cropper, or the major for that matter. No, I’m worried he might have been murdered, too, and the same thing goes for him as for Green. He could not have known our whereabouts. In fact, apart from the discovery of a bomb- making place in Southwark, my day has been a waste of time, and I’m totally and utterly stumped!”
Chapter 23
Tilly looked at her mistress’s crestfallen face and hurried to offer her usual brand of support, comfort, and encouragement.
“Poppycock! Stop taking such a dim view of things, and of yourself.” She knelt in front of Eleanor, whose eyebrows had risen but was still glum-faced, and put a little more coal on the fire. Then she swivelled around to sit on her bottom and clasped her knees. “You’ll solve this.”
“Huh.”
“Yes you will. Now, what has the Rother Rowing Club to do with all this? Is it connected to Mr Cropper’s death as you thought?”
“Good question. Perhaps McIntyre had also been nosing around into his mate’s murder and found the same information, or lack of it, as I did. Maybe that’s why he joined the club, because he had spoken to Harry at the Crown and Anchor, and had formed his own suspicions about the RRC. But this is all perhaps and maybe, Tilly. It doesn’t get me any further forward.”
“Then instead of going forward, go back. Why was Martin Cropper murdered? What was the motive?”
Eleanor shrugged and yawned and was saved from answering by the shrill ring of the telephone.
“It’s Lady Ann for you, my lady.”
The purpose of Ann’s call was to pass on the exciting news that Squidgy Rockfort and Phillipa Blenkinsop had announced their forthcoming marriage and were holding an impromptu party the following evening.
“You’ll come, of course,” Ann said.
“Sorry, darling.” Eleanor suppressed another yawn. “I’m delighted to hear the news, but I’m too tired and not in the party spirit.”
“My, you’re becoming a right dry-bread in your old age. Job getting you down, huh?”
“It is, rather, but thanks for asking me to the party.”
“So, how are you getting on with your initials?”
“Oh, we solved that. Rother Rowing Club, remember?”
“Not those, silly. You were asking about people whose names started with the same letters, or something.”
“Oh, that. Yes, I — oh!” Hit by a sudden insight, Eleanor nearly dropped the receiver.
“Are you all right over there?” Ann’s voice was plaintive. “You’ve gone awfully quiet.”
“I’m fine and you are wonderful.”
“Ha ha! Oh, I have my moments. Have I helped?”
“Yes, darling, I do believe you have. Look, I must dash.”
“All right. Let me know how you get on.”
“Will do. Enjoy your party.”
Eleanor replaced the receiver and retook her seat. “Tilly, old thing, I have been preternaturally stupid.”
Tilly sniffed. “More so than usual, my lady?”
Eleanor threw her a sharp glance and then roared with laughter at the innocent look on her maid’s face. “Thank you, dear. I can always rely on you to keep me sane and with my feet firmly on the floor.” She combed her blonde fringe with her fingers.
“I do my best. Besides, someone’s got to look after you.”
“Bless you.”
“What did Lady Ann have to say? Have you solved the case?”
“Almost, Tilly, old thing. Almost.”
From the outside everything appeared convoluted, a bunch of disparate facts that did not go together, or connect in any way. Once Eleanor had put those same facts in the right order, however, a very clever — and exceedingly nasty — plot began to emerge. All she was waiting for now was confirmation.
It came in the shape of a very tired and slightly grubby boy. Desperate as she was to find out what he had been up to, Eleanor let Tilly lead Joe off to the kitchen to revive him with cake and hot sweet tea.
“How did you get on?” she asked when he returned to the drawing room. He sat cross-legged at her feet in front of the fire. His hands and face were cleaner, but he still had grass stains on his trousers and mud ingrained in his knees.
“Blimey, my lady, I ain’t half seen some sights. You never told me there would be wimmin in them boats.”
The two ‘wimmin’ in the room kept straight faces.
“It’s an activity both men and women can enjoy,” said Eleanor. “Were there a lot of ladies there?”
“Four of ‘em, in one boat, and they was wearing really skimpy clothes and showing all their legs!”
He sounded scandalised. Eleanor hoped she wouldn’t be accused of perverting his young mind.
“I’m sorry about that, Joe. Did you see anything of the two people I mentioned?”
“No, sorry, my lady, I didn’t. I asked some chap about the rowing, and asked which way they went on the river. It seems most go downstream, but a few go towards Tower Bridge. I said I thought my uncle, Mr Leather, usually went that way, and this chap agreed. He said he’d been out rowing with him at the weekend and that was t
he way they’d gone. He said it often depended on the tide, and only the strongest rowers tried to go upstream when it was ebbing.”
Eleanor nodded, though she thought the most important part of Joe’s speech was what he’d said earlier.
“You said Stephen Leather was your uncle? That was clever.”
“And a little risky,” Tilly chimed in.
Joe turned his head to address the maid who was standing by the door into the kitchen. “The bloke said he wasn’t there.” He shrugged. “I know it was a fib, but I needed an excuse, otherwise the bloke would have wanted to know why I was asking. You’d said one of them was a painter, so I reckoned I’d get away with calling him my uncle. I’d not have risked it if he was a toff.”
“Very true,” Eleanor agreed, “and quick thinking on your part. Now, what about McIntyre?”
“I assumed they were mates, so I said I supposed he wasn’t there either, and the bloke said, no, they’d be at work. He spoke very la-di-da, like, which must have been the reason he didn’t have a job to go to. Most toffs don’t, so far as I’ve seen.”
Eleanor laughed. “Well done, Joe. You managed to get a lot of useful information there, information that I shall pass on to Chief Inspector Blount of Scotland Yard when he calls.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rang again, and Tilly went to answer it.
Joe’s eyes grew wide as saucers. “Really? Blount of the Yard is coming here? I seen his name in the papers I used to deliver. He’s famous, he is.”
“Who’s famous, young man?”
Blount loomed into view and stared down at the boy on the carpet, who hastily scrambled to his feet. He touched his forelock, much to Eleanor’s amusement.
“You are, guv’nor, er, sir. I’ve read about you.”
“Chief Inspector Blount, may I present Joe Minshull, my associate.”
Joe pushed out his chest and grinned.
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Joe.”
“Likewise, sir. My mates are going to be right envious when I tells them I’ve met Blount of the Yard.” He turned to Eleanor. “Thank you, my lady. Is it all right if I go now? I ought to get home to my mum.”
