Diana's Altar

by Barbara Cleverly

  She reached under her bed and pulled out a brown envelope. “Not so much up my sleeve as down my front! I smuggled this out of the death room under my jumper.” She tipped the envelope on its side and a blood-red piece of silk slithered out onto the floor. “I cut the label and a surrounding inch or two of fabric out of the soiled dress. The store’s details are there and the name of the model. This dress was ‘L’impératrice,’ apparently. You can see why. It’s just the sort of decadent, figure-hugging style that Empress Josephine would have worn while reclining on one of her gilt sofas. It’s a long shot, but Fenwicks may be able to help. It looked very recent to me in style and wear. She may well have bought it just last week for her trip down to the country.”

  “Expensive enough to have been paid for with a cheque. And that, complete with name and banking details, might well be moving slowly through the system. A system we can tap into somewhere along the line.” His smile even broader, Hunnyton poked the fabric back into the envelope and pocketed it.

  “There are other questions you could ask but haven’t concerning that dress,” Adelaide pointed out.

  “Well, go on, then,” Hunnyton encouraged. “What have we missed?”

  “That the woman, Mrs. Denton, was not of the working classes. The clothes are smart and quite expensive. A housekeeper’s wages wouldn’t pay for such a dress even if she could get up to London’s West End to spend her money. But this type of dress isn’t bought by the very rich either—those ladies would have designers’ names on their labels: Worth, Dior, Chanel . . . So I don’t imagine the lady was one of the guests that evening. Then there’s a middling-upper class of woman who wants smart things but can’t afford the top names. She might choose just such an off-the-peg dress at a West End store, then cut the label out and pretend it was haute couture.”

  “Blimey! And here was I, thinking I was an expert on the British class system!” Hunnyton exclaimed, mystified and exasperated. “I don’t know the half of it! The twaddle that must get talked in women’s cloakrooms! You show me your label and I’ll show you mine . . . Joe and I don’t have these problems. Now, explain: does this leave anyone—and if so, precisely who—to buy just such a dress in this shop and leave the label intact?”

  “Middling well off, good fashion sense but not a slave to fashion. Independent minded. Someone like me. I can imagine myself choosing that model—if not that colour. Though I would never be invited to quite the right occasion to wear it. Ladies’ Night at the Conservative Club? I’d cause a scandal and ruin my escort’s reputation! It’s lovely but . . . a bit flamboyant. It says: look at me! It’s a show-off dress.”

  “Hang on a minute! How old did you guess Mrs. Denton to be?” Joe asked. “Housekeepers in my experience are formidable women of mature years.”

  “Thirties? Too young to have risen to the top of a household hierarchy. But too old to be wearing low-cut magenta silk. Too Hollywood starlet by half! Though perhaps, in health, she was a good-looking woman and could carry it off. Who can say? Marlene Dietrich gets away with it . . . And this lady took care of her appearance—her hair had been freshly marcelled, I’d guess by a skilled coiffeur in London. She had one or two pretty but flashy rings on her fingers—costume jewellery. No wedding ring. Her feet and hands were manicured and polished. Her armpits were shaved and . . .”

  “Got it!” Joe exclaimed.

  “Lord!” Adelaide sighed. “I thought you’d never get there! You made me work for that. I was wondering just how far and how deep I would have to go. And to think it was the armpits that did it! Should I be concerned that you know your way around the armpits of London, Joe?”

  Joe grinned. “I don’t, but I know an inspector who’s not a complete innocent. He worked the Victoria Vice desk for years. I’ll ring him at the Yard. You, Superintendent, can go off and have a cosy chat with the buyers at Fenwicks.” Joe got to his feet, signalling that the session was over. “Oh—don’t forget to take your blood and vomit away with you. The Met spends an afternoon investigating the death by suicide of a gentleman known to the Intelligence Services while the Local CID delves into a suspected murder—the two cases could well be connected. There, at last I’ve stated the obvious! Let’s go our separate ways, as far as they are separate, but remain alert to the possibility that we may have to work closely together to solve our problems.”

  “As you say. I don’t believe in coincidences either.” Hunnyton turned to Adelaide, pocketing the bottles she was handing him. “Thank you, Adelaide, for all this. My chief inspector couldn’t have done better! My mother couldn’t have done better and she was a resourceful lady!” He hesitated for a moment, then, flashing a conciliatory glance back at Joe, “Look, I’m going to take it upon myself to issue a friendly warning. I say again: Sandilands and I mistrust coincidences. Two mishaps, seemingly related, merit our attention but no action. A third oddity has us checking that our guns are loaded. In this case we have Aidan Mountfitchet and Mrs. Denton dying in one night. Both victims known to Sir Gregory Pertinax. Intriguing enough. But linking them at the crime scenes? The doctor present at their deaths. Why you, Adelaide? I don’t know. But I know I don’t like it. I don’t like Easterby. I don’t like the tasks he piles on your shoulders, the hours he makes you work. I bet you haven’t told Joe the half of it or he’d be carting you off back to London, kicking and screaming. Can you take some leave and go and stay with your father in Suffolk until Joe and I have sorted this out?”

  “Leave? What leave? I’ve only just got started!”

  Hunnyton failed to see the warning signals and plunged on, making plain his intention to beard Doctor Easterby in his consulting room before he left and tell him to organise a replacement for Adelaide on the coming night-time shift for the rest of the week. She was a material witness and would be expected to remain available at all times of day or night to respond to the needs of the CID officers enquiring into the case.

  “Oh, Adam! Let me suggest a rephrasing of that last bit in the interest of preventing Easterby from instantly tipping me out onto the street. You’re as fussy as my pa! Let me get your hat.”

  As Adelaide went to the door with the superintendent, Joe wondered, whilst keeping an eye on the consoling and reassuring pats that accompanied the farewell, if he could ever tell her the truth about Hunnyton. At least, for now, any animosity between the two men was easily—and by common consent—disguised as gallant rivalry of a lightly sexual nature in so far as Adelaide was concerned. She seemed to enjoy a warm relationship with both of them and, sensing without understanding the rivalry between them, she happily ascribed it to competition for her affection and was quite capable of mischievously playing one off against the other. He knew that. Could he—should he?—tell her that Hunnyton was probably anything but his friend and that in Joe’s book—indeed, in Joe’s recent experience—the friendly Cambridge copper figured as schemer, blackmailer and calculating killer?

  Chapter 7

  He’d remain silent, of course. Joe’s role in Military Intelligence during the war and his present-day duty as nominal head of the Special Branch—with all the cooperation that involved with the various offices of the Secret Services—ensured that he spoke with care. He confided in no one, not even the woman he’d asked to marry him.

  His association with Hunnyton had arisen through policing, which had thrown up a regrettable personal element. No, in honesty, it was the personal element that had led to his involvement in a double murder case. He’d been drawn in by both Hunnyton and the man he was stalking, each one attempting to use him. Joe had emerged battered and angry, feeling as though he’d gone ten rounds in a boxing ring where he’d been set to referee a bout between two heavyweights, only to discover that both fighters were prepared to knock him to the canvas as readily as their opponent. His fleet footwork had saved him but only by inches. He’d emerged with an uneasy mix of mistrust and admiration for the Cambridge man but any remaining interest in his affairs cou
ld, in no way, justify professional surveillance.

  Assistance perhaps? The Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard with their superior laboratory facilities and their high-grade, hand-picked detective force were frequently called on for assistance by their CID counterparts in the county forces around the land. No shame intended, none suffered in the exchange, in spite of the flames of competition which the local newspapers chose occasionally to ignite and feed. Joe thought he could leave the handling of the press to Hunnyton. Cambridge was his town. The case, whatever would prove to be the reality, would and should reflect his talent and the sooner Joe could extricate himself, the better. The man was working his way with faultless footwork to the top of his particular ladder. He’d end his days as chief constable for the county if he avoided blotting his copybook and ingratiated himself with the right people. With his advantages of character, there was every chance that he’d manage that; Joe had watched him charm, win over, reassure and facilitate, and had admired the skill. He was perfectly disarming. Who on this earth would ever aim a kick at a Labrador, after all?

  And yet . . . and yet . . . Some sixth sense, buried so deep Joe would scarcely bring himself to acknowledge it, whispered coldly in his ear whenever he had dealings with Hunnyton that here was a man who had every right to rail against fate and hold a grudge against the gods. Joe was familiar with Freud and his theories and critical enough to dismiss half of them as bunkum. He knew that the deepest truths of men and their motives had been laid bare by much more ancient and wiser men. Homer had plumbed the depths in the Odyssey, Aeschylus had turned over stones in the Oresteia. The horrifying revelations of this three-part tragedy of family-destroying curses, murder and revenge, once understood and accepted, lurked forever in the darkest corner of the mind. But whenever the monster stirred and growled and threatened to break out, it could be called to heel by the ancient playwright’s hint that destiny might still be overcome by human free will.

  Adam Hunnyton was the living evidence of this eternal ambiguity, Joe thought. A man anyone might have considered Destiny’s Experiment, Fate’s Plaything. He’d told Joe his own story with disarming candour, slapping it down in front of him for consumption along with steak pie and ale in his London club. The illegitimate son of an aristocrat with lands in Suffolk, he had had an unusual amount of good luck for one born with his disadvantages. His maidservant mother had been married off in double-quick time to the head horseman on the estate and the boy had taken his name. Taken his freely-given affection also and his centuries-old knowledge of horses and farming tradition. All would have been well and life would have bumped along in its familiar ruts in the accepting country way, had not Adam grown up the spitting image of his true father. The boy was also intelligent and interested in the running of the estate that would never be his. A characteristic largely lacking in the brace of younger legitimate male offspring. The old man had favoured, though never acknowledged, this by-blow, and had educated him and sent him off to Trinity College in Cambridge on a poor boy’s scholarship to take a degree in economics. All in preparation for his becoming steward to the estate. The war intervened and, like many ambitious young men returning from the battlefields, Adam had craved more excitement in his life than was offered by crops, herds and account books. With a degree and an officer’s swagger stick in his pack, he’d joined a police force depleted by the war and desperate to employ and promote men of calibre. A happy and successful man, you’d say. A man confident enough to raise a two-fingered salute to the power that was alleged to predetermine future events.

  No, Joe would not share his doubts or his information about Hunnyton with Adelaide. His job was filthy enough at times and getting filthier. He had no intention of passing any of the suspicion and the fear on to her.

  “Now kindly put Adam back in his box and come over here and give me your attention, Adelaide.” The door closed behind the superintendent and Joe continued briskly, “You know very well what we’re going to find in the murky annals of the Victoria Vice, I think. You’ve been exposed to some pretty grimy aspects of London life in your career, I know that. Yet I still have a strange compulsion to edit out some aspects of my job when I talk to you. ‘Not a suitable subject to air in front of ladies . . .’ and all that, I was taught. It’s an ingrained reaction, I’m afraid, like leaping to my feet when a lady comes into or goes out of a room. You can only try to re-school me.”

  This was invitation enough for Adelaide. “The woman had been—possibly still was—a prostitute. That was clear enough. There were signs that a doctor would note, but they might well not be obvious to an uninitiated policeman. But we must wait for the results of the official enquiries to be certain. The puzzle is, Joe: Why was she dressed for dinner? Who else was at that dinner table, making merry while one of their number was writhing in her death agony, secreted away in a room at the back of the house?”

  “Funny sort of dinner party, I’d agree. If that’s what Pertinax was throwing. I don’t believe it was. Not what we’d call a dinner party—all RSVPs, place cards and polite conversation. Oh, I don’t doubt that a fine meal was eaten and fine wines consumed by guests who would appreciate them, guests with names known to the editor of Tatler, perhaps . . . or Debrett or the Almanach de Gotha.”

  “Probably sent up from Fortnum’s in hampers,” Adelaide said knowingly.

  “Though the guests arrived by limousine, I understand.” Joe grinned. “And there might lie a few clues for Hunnyton to get his teeth into. If he can find a talkative footman who knows his motorcars, he could establish some identities. I don’t see Pertinax volunteering to hand us a guest list.”

  “And who delivered the tarts?”

  “Ah! There we have it! Plural, Adelaide? We only have evidence of one woman of suspect provenance. You were allowed no sighting of the dinner guests.”

  “No. But I heard them. I told you: piano playing and laughter. But it struck me even then that there was something a bit off about it. The gaiety was . . . oh . . . open, raucous even. Public bar at the King’s Head on a Saturday night rather than the Palm Court at the Dorchester. You know the way upper class women laugh, Joe? Hardly ever. If a laugh should escape them they smother it in a lace hanky. A musical trill is the loudest expression of amusement they permit. Now can you imagine me standing up in court and delivering a statement as snobbish as that? I’d sound like a complete idiot and alienate everyone on the jury.”

  “It would be interesting to discover what other women were involved, how many, how they got there and how far they travelled.”

  “A professional service?” Adelaide suggested bluntly. “By van? With lettering on the side? ‘Bonnes Bouches, Purveyors to the aristocracy of after-dinner entertainment. Est. 1892.’ It doesn’t sound very like Cambridge to me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . University town . . . The young male population vastly exceeds the female and lives in monastic conditions, confined to their college fortresses by iron railings, bulldogs and dinner gongs. The only females they see are the master’s elderly wife—from across a crowded refectory—and their bedders—women chosen for their maturity of years, their marital status and lack of allure. Some colleges go so far as to specify that applicants for the position of bed-maker to the young gentlemen must be ‘of hideous appearance.’ There’s bound to be a yearning, if not a demand, for pretty girls.”

  “But no local supply of goods, Joe. And you’d need a supply as well as a demand to make a market. Girls desperate enough to think that’s a way out would catch a train to London. They wouldn’t risk their reputations in a local involvement, would they?”

  “Another question for Victoria Vice. Are they aware of a travelling branch? Who is the Thomas Cook of extramural entertainment for the gentry in the shires? Sounds unlikely as I speak, but I shall ask. Carry on speculating, Adelaide.”

  “I’m thinking that perhaps after the brandy, the dinner descended into an . . . orgy,” Adelaide offered, round-
eyed. “Am I allowed to say ‘orgy’ or is that too rude?”

  “Banquet degenerating into carousing of a drunken, debauched and sexual nature?” Joe suggested in the shocked tones of Lord Chief Justice Sir Archibald Bodkin. “Let’s just stick with ‘orgy.’ Makes me smile but it will have to do. I can’t think of any other word to express the depths of depravity I’m guessing at. Though, for me, it will always have rather jolly schoolboy connotations derived from translations of no-doubt-expurgated Latin texts. A suggestion of Trimalchio’s Feast about it. You know, the lavish binge put on by the nouveau-riche Roman freedman with more money than taste—goblets of Falernian wine served by beautiful boys, dishes of honeyed dormice and suckling pigs, obliging girl acrobats, guests eager for any sensuous experience their host can afford to offer them.”

  Adelaide shuddered. “Though one of the guests—did you know this, Joe?—who traditionally appeared at Roman orgies was a skeleton. A real skeleton at the dining table!”

  “Imagine being put to recline on a couch opposite him!”

  “When I was a student, I remember the tame lab skeleton they kept gathering dust in a corner disappeared. It reappeared two days later with a laurel wreath drooping on its brow and the fag-end of a Turkish cigarette clamped in its jaw. Someone had borrowed it for a dinner party.”

  “It’s a rather grim reminder that Death is with us even in the midst of throbbing life. Our show-off friend Trimalchio followed the bony finger-wagging tradition but had the bad taste to acquire his skeleton, not from a bone merchant operating in a back street behind the Colosseum like any other Roman host, but from a silversmith—a piece specially cast for him. I wonder which style Pertinax favours? Off the peg or bespoke?”