Herring in the Smoke

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘OK,’ said Elsie. ‘That leaves just one other thing.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Elsie

  ‘Rock and roll?’

  I looked up from the bottom of Roger Vane’s wardrobe.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  ‘You’re sure of that?’ asked Roger Vane.

  Well no, not totally. I tried another tack.

  ‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ I said.

  ‘It looks like you’re hiding at the bottom of my wardrobe,’ he said.

  ‘OK, then it is what it looks like, but I can explain,’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Explain how you got there. Because I haven’t got a clue what’s going on here. Not a clue.’

  I was, frankly, still trying to work it all out myself. And it had all started so promisingly. That morning I had borrowed Tim’s keys and set off for Canonbury – just a few stops on the North London Line from my own dear Hampstead. I’d waited in the square’s gardens, sitting on a bench, plausibly immersed in The Guardian and watching for the soi-disant Roger Norton Vane to depart for whatever appointment was going to keep him out all day. Finally, round about nine-thirty, when I had only the sports and business sections left to read, I saw him leave and head in a fairly leisurely manner towards Highbury and Islington Station. I waited for five minutes, then binned my paper and sauntered in an equally casual way up to his front door. I selected the right key and found myself in the hallway and then, with the aid of two other keys (Yale and Chubb), inside the flat itself. It had taken about forty-five seconds, from bench to sitting room – all completely unobserved.

  The flat was the ground floor and basement of a once stately residence – high ceilings and tall narrow Georgian windows on the ground floor and, though I hadn’t seen it yet, probably slightly more cosy accommodation below. The layout of the sitting room was much as you would have expected: sofa, two armchairs, desk, television, books. Over in one corner was an untidy stack of what looked like the tools of Tim Macdonald’s trade as an illustrator – now awaiting collection. I quickly scanned what I assumed must be their joint collection of CDs. Quite a few of those but no clues there. It was the desk to which I gave most of my attention. One drawer was full of pens and pencils, staplers, glue and the rest of it. One contained files – a couple of decades of utility bills addressed to Roger Norton Vane as the owner (albeit absent) of the flat. There were also folders with Tim’s bank statements, plus bits of miscellaneous correspondence, including several letters on a disputed parking ticket. So, paint, CDs, bank statements … Plenty of stuff, then, that I could claim Tim had asked me to pop in and collect if I was interrupted. But nothing constituting evidence of the sort I was seeking.

  At that point a phone rang in one of the other drawers. I jumped, as you do when you’re breaking and entering and hear a sudden noise. I opened the drawer to find a newish mobile – Vane’s presumably. So, that was OK.

  Up to a point. Of course, the question was: if you leave your phone behind when you go off to an appointment, what do you do? Say, never mind, I don’t need a phone today? Or do you run back and get it once you realise what you’ve done?

  It was just then that I heard a key turn in a lock. It was the work of a moment to shove the phone back in the drawer and tiptoe into the next room, which proved to be Vane’s bedroom. I figured he would collect the phone and be on his way fairly quickly. He would not go and take a quick nap first. Just to make absolutely sure, however, I opened the wardrobe door to see whether there was room for a small literary agent amongst his shirts and suits. There was. I hunkered down for a few minutes, regretting only that I had failed to bring any chocolate with me.

  It took Vane a while to get into his flat from the hallway. I heard a key rattle repeatedly in the lock. Then I realised my first mistake. I had unlocked the Chubb lock but not locked it again. Vane, knowing he had locked it, was now trying to unlock it all over again and he couldn’t work out why the key wouldn’t turn. There was a pause as he put two and two together, then I heard the door open very, very slowly.

  Vane’s footsteps were quite loud on the old wooden boards, so I could track his movements well. He paused momentarily at the entrance, doubtless checking for intruders. Then he walked intrepidly and at a steady pace across the sitting room. Now I realised my second mistake. I should have left the phone on the desk where he would see it straight away and pick it up. Instead, clearly having forgotten where he put it, he recrossed the room several times, hunting for it, then swore loudly.

  At that point he apparently decided he must have left it elsewhere, because his footsteps approached the bedroom, then I heard him descending the stairs towards the kitchen to check whether he’d left it on the table or by the cooker. I wondered for a moment whether to make a break for it, but I felt that if I could hear his footsteps so clearly then he would hear mine. Though I’m smaller and lighter than he is, of course. I quickly rehearsed the reasons why what I was doing was legal, but they didn’t seem as good as they had been. I then quickly rehearsed the reasons why, though I knew nothing about the man impersonating Vane, he definitely wouldn’t beat me to a pulp when he found me in his wardrobe. I could no longer remember them at all.

  I’m losing track of the exact numbering, but at this point I made my fourth or possibly fifth mistake. I don’t know if you watched The Night Manager when it was on television, but there’s a scene in which Olivia Colman, having broken into a hotel room to obtain a vital clue, hears the bad guy returning. She hides in the bathroom (better, now I thought about it, than a wardrobe) and texts her colleague to ask him to phone the bad guy and get him to go down to the hotel lobby, allowing her to escape. I didn’t have time to text the entire plot of The Night Manager to Ethelred but settled for: ‘Stuck in wardrobe. Like Olivia Colman. Phone Vane and tell him something to get him out of flat.’ That seemed clear enough to me. The problem was, of course, that it might be next week before Ethelred checked his messages.

  Then a series of things happened. The first thing was this: I heard Vane start to climb the stairs again towards me. The third thing was that Ethelred texted back: ‘Why are you in a wardrobe with Olivia Colman?’ That was fine. It was the second thing that was the real problem. As the text came through it had made a sort of der-der-di-di-der noise at about the same volume as a pneumatic drill. Vane’s footsteps paused. The bedroom door opened. Even from where I was, at the bottom of his wardrobe, I could sense his puzzlement. He was looking for a phone. He had heard a phone go off. But he couldn’t remember leaving it in the bedroom. Or changing the ringtone. I heard him hunting on the bedside table. Then he came towards my hiding place. Of course, he was thinking, he must have left the phone in a jacket pocket …

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Elsie Thirkettle. Tim’s agent? I don’t think we’ve met before.’

  He didn’t take my proffered hand. He looked at me with a sort of polite distaste, as if I’d pitched up on his doorstep and he didn’t want to buy whatever it was I was planning to sell. Just for a split second I had an insight into what it is like to be a Jehovah’s Witness with a bundle of Watchtowers in your bag.

  ‘And you are in my wardrobe because …’

  I quickly reviewed all of the stories I had prepared and chose this one: ‘Tim asked me to pick up a few of his CDs if I was passing. I rang the bell and you weren’t around so I used his keys …’

  ‘Which CDs?’ he asked.

  ‘Buddy Holly?’ I suggested. Everyone likes Buddy Holly, don’t they?

  ‘Rock and roll?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  Which is where I offered to explain – possibly my sixth mistake, but I no longer cared about keeping a precise tally.

  ‘It was like this,’ I said, stepping primly out of the wardrobe and brushing my skirt down. ‘Tim asked me to pick up the CDs for him.’

  ‘From the wardrobe?’

  ‘Clearly not. Because that’s
not where you keep CDs. I was looking through the collection in the sitting room when I heard a key in the front door. I immediately thought that it must be an intruder …’

  ‘Why?’

  Good point.

  ‘That just happened to be the first thing that occurred to me.’

  ‘Wasn’t it more logical to suppose that it was me returning? It’s my flat.’

  It was the word logical that gave me the key to it. Of course, he was a logical man and I was merely a scatty woman. On hearing a noise I would assume it was: 1) an intruder 2) a unicorn 3) George Clooney. Obviously.

  ‘Gosh,’ I said, really admiringly. ‘I should have thought of that, shouldn’t I? Silly me. I’ll bear that in mind if it happens again.’

  He said nothing. He had no wish for it to happen again. I noticed he was tapping his foot, but not in time to any tune that I could hear.

  ‘Anyway,’ I continued, picking a bit of wardrobe-fluff off my sleeve, ‘thinking that an intruder wouldn’t look for me in the bedroom, I hid there. In your wardrobe. With your suits. That blue one looks very smart. Wool blend? With just a touch of cashmere?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘So, great chatting to you like this – getting to know you – hanging out – having a laugh together – but probably I’ll just pick up the CDs and go, if that’s OK?’

  If this had been a John le Carré novel, he’d have drawn a gun at this point and told me to sit down and shut up. Actually what he said was: ‘OK. Why don’t you go and pick up all the Buddy Holly CDs, then. I can see why Tim wanted them.’

  There was slightly more irony in his voice than was really called for, but so far no guns. I could almost hear Olivia Colman telling me to hang in there. We walked through to the sitting room together and he motioned me towards the CDs.

  ‘All yours,’ he said.

  I checked the top row. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I checked the second row. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I checked the third row. Leopold Mozart and a few of Hayden’s symphonies. Fourth row, the rest of Haydn’s symphonies. Fifth row Boccherini and Vivaldi. Sixth row …

  ‘Got to the Buddy Hollys yet?’ he asked. (See previous note on irony.)

  ‘I’m only guessing, so stop me if I’m way off target, but maybe there aren’t any Buddy Holly CDs here at all?’ I said.

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘Maybe Tim said Boccherini …’

  ‘Easily confused. These names with B and H in them.’

  I looked to see if there was a smile on his face. There wasn’t.

  Well, two can play at that game. Without saying another word, I scooped up Boccherini, Beethoven and, to be safe, both JC and CPE Bach. I dropped them in my bag.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to take the rest of his junk, I suppose?’

  We looked at the drawing table and boxes of pencils and the desk lights all piled up in the corner. It would need a small van.

  ‘Next time,’ I said.

  I made to depart, but Vane placed his hand against my shoulder. In an interesting turn of events, it seemed that he was going to gift me the CPE Bach CDs and then beat me to a pulp.

  ‘So, Elsie,’ said Vane, ‘first time round, Cynthia sends Ethelred to check me out, then she sends you.’

  There was an implication that this was going downhill. I resented that.

  ‘It was Tim,’ I said. ‘He wanted his—’

  ‘Buddy Holly CDs,’ Vane interrupted. ‘I can of course see that a number of you would benefit financially from establishing that I am not who I say I am. Your problem is that what you want isn’t going to happen. I am and always have been Roger Norton Vane, man and boy. Never been anyone else. But would you like to search the whole flat? It would be doing me a service, if it would save my discovering you under the sink or in the recycling bin when I next come home.’

  I was tempted to say ‘yes’, because it was the answer he deserved, but if he was offering, then the chances were that nothing was there to find. And he’d enjoy watching me fruitlessly sift through junk in cupboard after cupboard.

  ‘I’m good,’ I said. But I glanced round the room anyway. Now I could take it all in, it contained a lot of Roger Vane’s life. There were a couple of certificates on the wall, an original drawing for one of his book covers and heaps of framed photographs. One appeared to be Vane himself on a film set. He was playing some part – I wasn’t sure what. I might not have recognised him, because it was clearly taken some years before and his hair was done differently and he was wearing make-up. But, now I looked at the person in front of me and at the photo, I noticed one small detail on both that I might not have taken in if I’d been looking at just one or the other – a small scar at the corner of his mouth. There on the photo and there on the man in front of me. The scar. Neat, and not unattractive in a strange way. But distinctive. Better proof, in its own little way, than our carefully compiled questions.

  ‘Nice photo – when was it taken?’ I asked.

  He started and for a moment seemed very confused – almost embarrassed.

  ‘Oh, that thing …’ he said.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Dexter does it all the time. And I can’t quite say why it occurs to me now, but Le Carré did it in The Night Manager. Playing a minor role in one of your own TV episodes, I mean. So, you have a credit as an actor?’

  ‘A credit?’

  ‘That’s you there – acting some part in Gascoyne.’

  He stared almost uncomprehendingly at the photograph. Then the penny appeared to have dropped.

  ‘Yes,’ he said sheepishly. ‘That’s me. But it was uncredited. Just a walk-on part. First series. It just seemed … fun. You won’t find it listed anywhere. I don’t …’

  Yes, he was really embarrassed. Most of the time he didn’t seem to care what people thought and now he was almost blushing to be detected in this very minor vanity, if it qualified even as that. One point to me. Time to quit while I was fractionally ahead.

  ‘Tim will be really pleased with the CDs,’ I said.

  Vane looked at me, still strangely concerned. ‘Oh, yes, the CDs …’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, playfully. ‘Your little secret is safe with me.’

  ‘That photo? It doesn’t bother me one way or the other, Elsie,’ he said.

  But it did. Very much.

  ‘I’m sure you did your best,’ said Tim, fingering a CPE Bach sonata. ‘You know this isn’t mine, I suppose? CPE Bach was such a lightweight. Hardly a Bach at all.’

  ‘Look,’ I said to the assembled team. ‘I realise it could have gone better, in the sense that we might have actually discovered something that would help us prove the man is a fraud, but it could have been worse.’

  ‘Could it?’ asked Tim. ‘You might have brought some of my drawing equipment.’

  ‘You’re writing a book. You don’t have time to draw. I’ll get you some crayons at the supermarket.’

  Tim looked at me with almost as much contempt as Roger Vane.

  ‘So was there nothing at all?’ he asked.

  I thought of the photo with the telltale scar. ‘There was a picture of him from twenty years ago,’ I said. ‘It was on the wall. It really looked like him …’

  I tailed off, aware that my audience was not impressed. This wasn’t the sort of evidence they wanted.

  ‘We know that,’ said Tim. ‘We’re all agreed he looks like the person we knew – only older. And I know what pictures I have on the wall, thank you. Telling us that this person looks like Roger in one of the photos is not helpful.’

  ‘His mouth—’ I began.

  ‘… is just like Roger’s,’ said Tim. ‘Thank you, Elsie. Yes, we get it.’

  He clearly still resented the fact that I had not brought him anything to colour in with.

  ‘How did Ethelred get on?’ asked Cynthia, tactfully changing the subject.

  ‘I was coming to that,’ I said. ‘He reported that Vane answered all the questions correctly. Vane clearly knew rou
ghly what had happened in Thailand – just as Tim told us. He knew about the Christmas argument. He even added a small detail of his own – that you’d made him a little box of chocolates on Boxing Day.’ I smiled, awaiting an indignant refutation.

  ‘With Father Christmas on it?’ asked Cynthia.

  ‘Yes …’ I said.

  ‘Good grief. I never even told my parents I’d done that,’ said Cynthia.

  We looked at each other. The accurate account of the Last Day in the Jungle, the telltale scar that I had spotted, the Father Christmas box – slowly the evidence was shifting in Vane’s favour. You could almost hear the group’s revised opinions clicking into place. I made one final attempt to dismiss them.

  ‘It’s still not conclusive,’ I said. ‘He could have found out somehow. You may not have told anyone about the box but your uncle might have done, and that person then told the man claiming to be Roger Vane …’

  ‘That sounds very far-fetched to me,’ said Tim with a sniff. Whatever I said this morning, he was going to disagree with as a matter of principle.

  ‘No, that must be it,’ said Cynthia, clutching at the straw I had offered. ‘He has a source of information that we don’t know about …’

  ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘There has to be an explanation in each case.’

  I thought again of the scar by Vane’s lip – it matched the photo perfectly. That had been conclusive for me. But he could have done that himself. Couldn’t he? You’d just need a sharp knife and a steady hand – hell, Van Gogh chopped off an entire ear.

  Or then again … Maybe, for reasons I understood only too well we were all simply hoping, as the evidence relentlessly built up, that it nevertheless wasn’t true: he might have found an obscure source of information, he might have made a lucky guess, he might have taken a penknife to his face one morning.

  ‘No, it’s actually him,’ said Tim. He sighed. ‘I really haven’t mentioned the Thailand business to anyone before. Scout’s honour. That one thing on its own is conclusive as far as I’m concerned.’