by Lynda Wilcox
“Of course, Joe. Please give her my regards, and thanks again for the sterling work you’ve done today.”
He grinned and Tilly — with a suspiciously large parcel in her hand that Eleanor suspected contained the rest of the cake — showed him out.
“Take a seat, Chief Inspector. Would you like tea?”
“Thank you, my lady. That would be most welcome.”
Eleanor gave Tilly the order when she returned and waited until Blount had got himself comfortable. He had been very polite to young Joe, but the Chief Inspector did not look a happy man as he lowered his bulk into the armchair. Her heart sank.
“No luck, Chief Inspector?”
He shook his dark head. “You must have spooked them, my lady. There was no one in Swan Street by the time we got there. The place had been cleared out. A few neighbours reckoned they’d seen and heard shouts and lorries about the place not long before we arrived and started asking our questions, but...” He raised his huge shoulders and, despondent, let them fall.
“No sign of the Alvis, either?”
“No, that had gone, too.”
Eleanor sighed, wondering if she’d had a lucky escape, or missed an opportunity. “What will you do now?” she asked.
“Oh, we’ll keep looking, never fear. I’ve got men on house to house enquiries and the chances are whoever owned that place has another one just like it somewhere. We’ll find out who it belonged to and track him, or them, down. It won’t be as exciting as this afternoon’s affair, just dogged police work, but that’s how most criminals are caught, so I dare say this won’t be much different.”
“One percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, eh?”
Blount gave a rueful smile. “That’s about right, your ladyship.”
Tilly brought in the tea, placing the tray on the occasional table by the side of Eleanor’s chair. She bobbed a curtsey at their thanks and retreated to her own domain.
Eleanor poured out tea into delicate china cups and passed one to the Chief Inspector.
“Thank you.” He took the cup and saucer in his giant hand and rested them on his knee. “May I ask how you’re feeling now? You’d had a considerable shock the last time we met. I wondered if you might give up investigating.”
“Give up, Chief Inspector?” Eleanor’s voice was glacial. She’d said as much to herself many a time in this case, but dukes’ daughters did not give up.
“Yes, I know, silly of me, wasn’t it?” He gave her an avuncular smile and sipped at his tea. Much to his surprise, she laughed.
“Very silly.”
“All right, why don’t you tell me what put you onto that place in Southwark?”
“Hmm.” Eleanor stared into the fire and wondered how much to tell him. It had been a productive day from her point of view, and she was pretty sure in her own mind who had murdered both Major Armitage and Martin Cropper. She had no doubt that they were one and the same, but remained convinced that he still had a mission to perform. A mission that they had to prevent at all costs, yet if they jumped too soon it could all, quite literally, blow up in their faces. Softly, softly, catchee monkey, as the major had once said to her. More importantly, she did not want to leave the apprehension of Peter Armitage’s killer to the police.
“My lady?” The Chief Inspector’s softly spoken prompt interrupted her brown study.
“Yes, sorry. Serendipity, to answer your question. I’d pulled up at a road junction after coming away from Mary Cropper’s and the Alvis went past along the main road. I merely followed it.”
“Any idea who was driving?”
“I think so.” She pulled at her lower lip with thumb and forefinger and looked directly into his eyes. “Look, Chief Inspector, if I tell you all I know, and all that I’ve learned, I wonder whether we could come to some sort of a deal.”
Blount’s cup rattled in its saucer. “If you know who is responsible, then it is your duty —”
“I think I know my duty, thank you, Chief Inspector. Now, please listen. I have a plan.”
To give him due credit, she later told Tilly, he did just that. His eyebrows rose a time or two, but he did not interrupt, and her account was clear enough that he needed nothing repeating.
At the end he drained his teacup, put it on the tray and sat back, hands clasped over his stomach. “Right, my lady, tell me more about this deal. What is it you’d like me to do?”
Chapter 24
After the Chief Inspector had left, Eleanor continued to sit for some time by the fire, working through the plan she had presented him with and to which he had, reluctantly, agreed. Then she rang for her maid and informed her what she and Blount had arranged.
“You should leave it to the police,” was Tilly’s comment.
“I can’t. The police don’t know this man, and if he gets away how will I ever forgive myself? I have to be there.”
Then, still needing time to herself to think things through, Eleanor said goodnight and took herself off to bed.
She lay in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, wishing once again that she still had Peter to talk things over with, and missing him to the centre of her being. His untimely death had left her heart-broken and grieving, though to an outsider she had appeared almost unconcerned, going about her job, living her usual party-going lifestyle, barely touched by the events that had, in reality, shattered her existence.
Sometimes it didn’t seem possible that he was gone. Was that why she kept thinking that she saw him, on the street and in shop doorways, nightclubs, and cafes?
She turned over, pulled the covers tight around her, and prayed for the night to be over.
When Eleanor arose next morning, she found that Tilly had already lit a fire in the drawing room and the coffee was brewing.
“That smells good, old thing.”
“I’ve made a full pot. It should be enough for both of us. Do you want a cooked breakfast? I wasn’t sure what time we’d have to leave.”
Eleanor made a quick calculation. “Sometime before midday, I think. It’s Saturday, so the painters at Tower Bridge will finish at half-past twelve.”
Tilly twisted her mouth. “It may be market day, don’t forget. Streets will be busy and the traffic will be heavy.”
“Good thinking. Perhaps we should set off a little earlier, then. Either way, I’ll make do with toast, thanks.”
Eleanor ate her breakfast and went over the plan again.
A simple pincer movement should be enough to catch their killer. At least, that was the hope. She had arranged with Chief Inspector Blount that there would be police at both the north and south approaches to Tower Bridge, with Eleanor and Tilly joining them at the southern end. The fact that she expected bombs to be involved did not deter her. It was another reason for apprehending the man, locking him up and, if she had a say in the matter, throwing the key away.
Once the man was in police custody, she would call on Mary Cropper and pass on the news. She hoped it would bring the widow some peace at last.
Eleanor and Tilly left in good time, clattering down the steps in front of Bellevue Mansions and sliding into the Lagonda. Eleanor nodded her thanks to Sam the garage man for bringing the car around.
When agreeing to sanction her little jaunt, as he put it, Chief Inspector Blount had expressly forbidden Eleanor to go armed, lest she be tempted into private vengeance.
“I can control myself,” she had told him. “It comes with the heritage.”
“That’s as maybe, my lady, but if I see you with a firearm in your hand, I’ll arrest you at the same time as the man we’re after. Got that?”
Eleanor had understood right enough. However, he’d forgotten to lay the same strictures against Tilly.
“Have you got your revolver?” she asked her maid.
“Yes, my lady, it’s in my pocket.”
“Good, keep it there. Hold onto your hat, Tilly, old girl, and pray we don’t get stopped by either traffic or police.”
The maid slid down in the passenger seat, and pulled her old felt cloche that was rather to big for her small head, over her ears. She sent up a silent prayer for their safety.
Eleanor put the car into gear and raced off along Piccadilly, then turned down towards The Mall. This time she took a route north of the Embankment, then drove along Fleet Street and Cannon Street, turning right at the monument to the Great Fire of London.
She crossed the Thames at London Bridge, then turned east and drove along Tooley Street to the southern approach to Tower Bridge.
Eleanor had intended to wait. She could see a black police van disgorging men onto the pavement, but when she looked at the bridge, a long figure striding northbound across it caught her eye.
“Drat! There he is. They must have finished early.” She pulled onto the bridge and stopped. “Hop out and tell the man in the control booth to close the bridge and clear the area, then run for your life, Tilly. Tell them there’s a bomb in that hut the painters use. The police will back you up when they get here.”
“Right you are, my lady. Be careful and make sure you get your man.”
With a show of alacrity Tilly jumped out of the Lagonda. Eleanor put her foot down and went after Russian spy, Sergei Leonov, murderer of both Martin Cropper and Major Armitage.
He wasn’t exactly dawdling, but then neither was he running. Eleanor took that to mean the bomb wasn’t set to go off immediately, and took comfort from the fact. There were still plenty of pedestrians on the bridge and cars coming towards her on the opposite carriageway. She must keep sight of her quarry — and pick the right moment to stop him, just as Serena Beaumont’s father had caught the thief outside their local church.
There it was! Her opportunity.
Leonov was nearing the centre of the bridge with no one else around him. The Lagonda raced forward and, as it drew level, Eleanor wrenched the wheel over to the left. The car mounted the kerb, she stamped on the brake, and pinioned Leonov against the railings.
He yelped, more in surprise than pain, then let out a curse. “You? You interfering crone.”
Eleanor bit back an unladylike retort.
“If you move I will crush you!” she yelled.
He had spoken in Russian and, unaware of her parentage, got the shock of his life when she answered in the same language. His sneer turned to abject terror as she throttled the accelerator and the car inched forward.
She might have kept going and finished the job, except she was not a killer. Even if she’d had enough speed she would have needed a longer run at it to force Leonov, the Lagonda, and herself through the stout steel railings and into the river.
The two of them were still trying to face the other down when a small figure jumped onto the running board and waved a gun at Leonov.
“Don’t move.” It was an unnecessary order. “I’ll shoot if you do and I’m a crack shot.”
“Well done, Tilly.” Eleanor did not take her eyes from the spy on her front bonnet. “I thought I told you to run for your life.”
“Sorry, my lady, I didn’t hear that bit.” Tilly sniffed, breathless after running to catch up.
Eleanor gave a grim smile, but said nothing. Tilly would stick by her through thick and thin, and was quite prepared to flout contrary instructions in order to do so.
Screams and whistles had erupted around her almost as soon as she’d driven onto the pavement, but only now did she hear them. Police ran towards them from both directions, gesturing for her to pull back a little so they could reach the groaning Leonov. Eleanor complied, inching the car back by the merest amount as a dark figure appeared out of nowhere at Tilly’s elbow.
“A nice bit of driving, my lady. Well held, as we say in cricket.”
“I thought your sport was rowing, Mr McIntyre.” Eleanor smiled, delighted to see him alive and well. “Where have you been?”
“Just doing what the boss told me to, my lady.”
Eleanor frowned. Bairstow? What did he have to do with this affair?
McIntyre gave her an odd little smile. “He’ll call on you sometime soon.”
“Lady Eleanor! Good work! You’ve got our man, I take it.”
Eleanor looked to her right. Chief Inspector Blount stood at the driver’s side door and smiled down at her. “I hope you’re not hurt.”
“Yes, he’s the man you want, and no I’m not hurt, though I may have damaged my front fender.”
His lips twitched for a moment, then he walked to the railing and inspected the Lagonda’s front. “It looks fine to me, but it might be worth getting your garage to give it the once over.” He turned to his officers. “All right, men, take him away. I’ll be along shortly to charge him.”
Eleanor turned to ask McIntyre what he had meant about his boss, but he was gone, swallowed up into the crowd heading for the south abutment tower. With a shrug she looked at Blount.
“What about that hut, Chief Inspector? I suspect the bomb is in there. Did you check the timings of the royal barge as I suggested?”
“Of course, my lady. It’s due in an hour, but their majesties should be safe enough.” He pointed to the hut. “The military are dealing with it now. Don’t worry, you can leave it with us.”
As he was talking, Tilly slipped her gun unseen into her pocket and got back into the passenger seat.
Eleanor exchanged a few more words with the Chief Inspector, then drove herself and Tilly to the Croppers’ house.
Mary took the news surprisingly well. Perhaps, with Alan Green paying her close attention, the future for Mary wasn’t quite as bleak as it might have been.
“Thank you, my lady.” Mary hunted for her purse. “I’m glad you found out who it was and they’ve got the man what did it.”
Eleanor brushed aside all but a few coppers that the woman tried to press on her. To have refused them all would have been an insult, but Eleanor had hunted down Martin Cropper’s murderer as much for her own sake as for Mary’s.
Now she, too, had to face an empty future.
Chapter 25
After their foray to Tower Bridge and Southwark, Eleanor spent the rest of the afternoon at Bellevue Mansions, moving around the apartment in a desultory fashion, unable to settle to anything.
Chief Inspector Blount called to say that Leonov wasn’t talking, but the bomb had been found and defused. He thanked her again for her part in his arrest.
Tilly was in the kitchen peeling potatoes when she heard the doorbell ring and her mistress call that she’d answer it. At Eleanor’s scream, she dashed out through the drawing room and into the hall.
A bunch of red roses lay on the floor and a man knelt beside the prostrate figure of her mistress. He glanced up as Tilly threatened him with a potato peeler. “What?” she gasped. “I might have known. You’re like a bad penny.”
Major Peter Armitage gave a sardonic smile and with a grunt of effort caused by his injured arm, picked Eleanor up and carried her into the drawing room. He placed her gently onto the sofa.
“Do you have any smelling salts?” he asked.
Tilly shook her head. “She’ll come round, and she hates them things.” She picked up Eleanor’s hand and began to rub it, almost crooning to her mistress.
Eleanor’s return to consciousness was a slow affair to start with. She thought she must have fallen asleep and was dreaming about Major Armitage. His voice came to her from a distance, calling her name. If only she could open her eyes, she might see him.
“Lady Eleanor, Ella, are you all right?”
She came to with a jump. Rescuing her hand from Tilly, she sat up, staring wide-eyed into the major’s face and at the bouquet in his hand.
“I’m so sorry that I startled you.” He smiled.
She struggled to her feet, anger shaking her slim frame.
“Excuse me a moment.”
Digging her finger nails into her palms, she turned her back on him and walked out of the room. In the peace and privacy of her bedroom she took some steadying breaths and attempte
d to calm herself. A sudden gurgle rose in her throat. She wanted to laugh and cry, to dance, to sing and to get her hands around Peter Armitage’s neck. The latter was an appealing thought, but with a laugh and a shake of her head she dismissed it.
He was alive.
Feeling steadier, she returned to the drawing room in time to hear Tilly’s sniff as the maid disappeared into the kitchen to put the flowers into water.
“You had better have a good explanation for this, Major. Is your middle name Lazarus, by any chance?” She took her seat by the fireside and motioned him to sit opposite.
He gave a wry smile. “Far from it. I’m sorry to have shocked and upset you, but my... disappearance, if you will, was necessary.”
“Why?”
“For your protection.”
“My protection?” Eleanor glared at the major, her body rigid with the anger that bubbled inside her. If she need shielding at all it was from him not by him, but there he went again, rubbing her up the wrong way, making her want to hit him. If he carried on in this manner he might soon need protection from her.
“Yes, that shot was aimed at you. Leonov recognised you as the woman who’d been asking questions at Tower Bridge regarding Martin Cropper. He thought you were already onto him.”
“Hmm. Was it him I saw at Watermen’s Hall? I felt then I was being watched.”
“Yes. He was convinced you were a danger to him. He’d never seen me before and had no idea who I was. You were his target.”
“But how did he know I’d be there?”
The major shrugged. “I doubt that he did, that was just our misfortune, but if he wanted to know what was going off along that stretch of the Thames, then any gathering at Watermen’s Hall was a good place to start and relatively easy for him to infiltrate.”
And the waiters were all casual staff, easy to slip amongst them, Eleanor thought, as things started to click into place.
