McQueen's Agency

by Reynolds, Maureen

  ‘Miss McQueen had no ulterior motive. She was hired by your so called wife to come and work here. And another thing Mr Lamont, why didn’t you tell Kenneth about Lena’s deception?’

  ‘I wish I had now but Lena begged me not to tell him and I stupidly listened to her. Quite honestly I had had enough of Lena and all her dramas.’

  Charlie looked over to PC Williams who was writing everything down in his notebook, his eyes like saucers at all the revelations.

  Joe crossed his arms and it looked like the interview was over. Charlie could almost hear his sigh of relief. Although he had no evidence he decided to make one last stab at getting the whole truth. Nelly had said that something had gone seriously wrong on that journey thirteen years ago. But what?

  ‘Mr Lamont, what went wrong when you went to rescue the Rosenbergs? Nelly said you were all in a panic according to the captain of the ship but he had no idea why.’

  Joe glared at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Charlie leaned forward. ‘Oh I think you do. Don’t you think this all has to end here? Something happened and I think you should get it off your chest. Then you can make a new life for yourself and start again.’

  Joe hesitated. Then it all came out.

  ‘We made our way to the town to pick up the Rosenbergs and found an abandoned house just outside the town. Kenneth told Lena to stay there while we went to fetch them. Of course, when they weren’t there, we were confused and as we didn’t have a lot of time, became a bit panic-stricken. Then, some neighbours of the Rosenbergs told us that SS officers had picked them up. They had been taken away and hadn’t come back.

  ‘So we hurried back to the house but when we got there we found a young soldier, a sergeant who had left some injured men in the forest and was looking for medical attention for them. Stupidly, Lena had locked him in a bedroom. She said he had tried to question her and she didn’t know what to do.

  ‘We gave him a meal and some tea from our stores and Kenneth and I decided to slip the key under the door as we left, so he could let himself out. We were on the verge of leaving when Lena said she would take the man some tea. Then we heard a shot.

  ‘She had brought a little pistol that she owned but we didn’t know she had it. She said he had tried to escape but that was a lie. He was still on the bed and still alive. Kenneth said we could carry him to the doctor in the town and say we found him on the road but we hadn’t reckoned with the retreat at Dunkirk. There were soldiers everywhere but we managed to get the poor man to the doctor and we left him there. I don’t know if he survived or not.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  They all turned in astonishment to see Christie standing in the doorway. He walked over and handed a sheet of paper to Charlie. It was creased and written in pencil. On the reverse side was a drawing of a clown, obviously done by a small child.

  Dear Mum,

  I’ve been taken prisoner by a woman and two men. From the snatches of conversation I’ve overheard it seems they are on a mission to rescue some people called Rosenberg but they failed. They are leaving on a boat tonight. I trust the two men but the woman scares the life out of me. The men say they will release me when they leave. I’m hoping to make my way into the small town and get medical aid for my four wounded comrades. If I survive this then I’ll destroy this note.

  Your loving son, Colin.

  Charlie said. ‘Who is this Colin?’

  ‘He was my brother.’

  Joe stood up, astonishment written all over his face. ‘But the soldier was Scottish.’

  ‘My father and mother separated when we were small. I went to Canada with him and Colin stayed with Mum.’

  ‘Where did you get this note?’ asked Charlie

  ‘The doctor who treated him found it in his boot. It was addressed to my mother and, after the war, he posted it on to her. He was buried in a small cemetery in the town.’

  ‘How did you end up here?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘It was the name Rosenberg. My father is an antique dealer and when the jewellery first came on sale it was marketed as theirs. I came over to Scotland when my mother was ill and she begged me to find these people and get closure for Colin. When she died last year I decided to stay on and try and trace the people and my enquiries led here.’

  He turned to Joe. ‘I’ve been investigating you all for ages and I was almost ready to confront Lena with the death of my brother. I found the strongbox with the jewellery in it and Nelly’s letter.’ Although the letter was written to Kenneth, he gave it to Lena. It was in the same drawer as the strongbox.

  Joe said, ‘So you’ve been spying on us?’

  Christie admitted that he had.

  ‘Where’s this strongbox now?’ asked Charlie.

  Joe said, ‘It’s upstairs in Lena’s room but she lost the key. Lena was frantic, she said the key had been stolen.’

  Charlie suddenly remembered Molly’s statement. ‘Miss McQueen said your wife accused her of stealing a key but she had no idea what she meant.’

  ‘She searched Molly’s house but she didn’t find anything. She even got a copy of Molly’s office key made so she could search her office,’ said Joe.

  Christie went upstairs and reappeared with an oblong box about twelve inches by fourteen. There were a lot of scratches around the lock where someone had tried to open it.

  ‘That was Lena,’ said Joe. ‘She was frantic trying to open it without the key, but now it’s lost’

  ‘I know where the key is,’ said Christie. They looked at him with astonishment.

  Molly was surprised when the men turned up at her door. Christie said, ‘Have you got that five-year diary, Molly, that was delivered to you a few weeks ago?’

  Molly was confused. ‘The one I got from my sister in Australia?’

  ‘No, I sent it. Could you go and get it please?’

  Molly went to the bookcase and brought it out. The key was hanging from a cord tied to the cover.

  Christie held it up. ‘One key for one strongbox.’

  Charlie opened it up to reveal a parcel of diamonds and other assorted necklaces and brooches within.

  Nelly had said she had taken out the most valuable items but judging from the contents of the box, there was a fortune still lying inside it.

  PC Williams had never seen anything like this. He was used to road traffic accidents or driving around to burglaries and drunken rabbles in the pubs at closing time. Now he was involved with all this drama.

  Charlie locked the box and they left for the police station with Christie and Joe. They had to make statements, said Charlie.

  Marigold came in and Molly, who was still confused, told her the story of the diary and the key.

  ‘To think I had the key to all those diamonds,’ she said.

  Marigold shook her head. ‘They haven’t brought very much joy or luck for the owner, have they?

  Molly had to agree.

  34

  Charlie was sitting in Tam’s kitchen. Rover was curled up by the fire.

  ‘I can’t believe all that evil could come from a woman,’ said Tam.

  Charlie had to agree. ‘Still, if you hadn’t insisted that Harry had been pushed into the river maybe all this wouldn’t have come out. The deaths of Lena and Kenneth may have been treated as an accident and Miss McQueen’s statement regarded as over-dramatic. Still it’s queer that the Canadian fellow managed to investigate his brother’s death. He must have put a lot of work and time into it.’

  ‘I’ll go to Balgay cemetery tomorrow and put some more flowers on Harry’s grave,’ said Tam. ‘Poor man, he just met with the wrong person at the wrong time.’

  Molly was back at work. Things were looking up and work was coming in on a regular basis. Edna, Mary, Jean and Betty were all out on various jobs. Molly was hoping to interview another school leaver for the job as receptionist, as Mary had done a great job at Rough and Fraser’s bakery.

  She was sitting in Edna’s house and the t
wo women were discussing the business. ‘Is everything going well for you now, Edna?’ asked Molly. ‘I mean that bother with Reg?’

  ‘I haven’t had any more word, thank goodness. I assume he’s gone abroad and hope that he stays there. I’m hoping to keep seeing John and he feels the same way about me. I’ll always be grateful to Eddie for saving me when Reg threatened me but I’ve told him about my feelings for John and he wished me good luck with whatever I do. I’m going out to dinner with John tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, good for you, Edna,’ said Molly. Although not envious of her, she did feel a little sad. There was no man in her background and she was missing Kenneth. Or Kurt, as he was called, but Molly would always remember him as Kenneth.

  35

  The sun was beating down and the small town looked deserted. Reg sat in his car, waiting for Anya to finish work. He had met her in the local hotel and was quite smitten with her dark Arabic looks. He had a week off work as his boss was on holiday.

  He was due back in a week’s time, so that would give Reg lots of time to see Anya. Mind you, he thought, she was a bit of a firebrand but he would soon knock that out of her. He would show her who was boss. Like last night when she tried to leave him behind. Well, he let her know he wasn’t going to let a woman treat him like that so he had given her a slap.

  He was going to see Edna when this job was over. He had some unfinished business with her … and with that skinny lad who had managed to humiliate him. The thought of revenge was sweet and he settled back in the car seat.

  This was the life he loved. The heat and the danger. He missed his army days but this was the next best thing. People had to pay him respect out here and he didn’t take any nonsense from the natives.

  He noticed the dark-haired man walking along the street but he was just a kid. However, his training kicked in and he kept his eyes on him, which was a pity because he never noticed the other man coming up behind the car. He heard the explosion before it registered in his brain.

  From the hotel doorway, Anya glanced at the dead body in the car, then walked away in the opposite direction with the two men.

  36

  Marigold had baked a Victoria sponge cake filled with home made raspberry jam. She had set the table very carefully as it wasn’t every day Molly had a visitor.

  Christie sat in the chair by the window and looked at the two women. He thought Molly looked tired and there were still dark shadows under her eyes as if she wasn’t sleeping very well. He was glad that Marigold was near at hand to keep an eye on her. Not that there was any danger now but she had suffered an emotional shock which would take a long time to recover from.

  The two women were eager to hear his story.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ said Molly, ‘is how you managed to trace them to this part of the world.’

  Marigold said she was wondering the same thing. ‘It’s just like a detective novel.’

  ‘When I came over to see my mother during her illness, she showed me the letter. She had spent years agonising over Colin’s death and begged me to try and find out what had happened to him. I started to investigate but she died before I really got started. My father came over for the funeral and I showed him the letter and told him I was going to stay on and search for the truth.’

  ‘But where did you start?’ asked Marigold.

  ‘I had a rough idea of where he was when the retreat of Dunkirk happened. The letter mentioned a town but no name so I went over to France and did a bit of digging around. In a small seaside town near Dunkirk I struck lucky and found the doctor who had treated Colin. He remembered him very well and he had even managed to treat the other four injured soldiers, because Colin had told him roughly where they were.

  ‘They all survived and were sent to a hospital when the German soldiers entered the town three days later but sadly Colin had already died. The doctor was puzzled by his bullet wound. He said he didn’t think it had been caused by a soldier’s weapon. Colin was buried in a small cemetery on the outskirts of the town.

  ‘The doctor mentioned the two men who had brought him in that night. The entire area was in the midst of the fighting between British Forces and the German Army. He said it had been a terrible night of wind and rain and they had both been soaked and covered in mud but he recognised them as the same men who had been making enquiries about the Rosenberg family who owned a house in the town and were well-known in the area as they used to spend summer holidays there in the days before the war.

  ‘He also said there was a rumour that the men had arrived by boat along with a woman and planned to leave the same way.’

  Christie stopped and gazed out of the window.

  ‘I just get a bit emotional about the way Colin died. He managed to save his four comrades but not himself,’ Christie said.

  ‘I came to a halt with my enquiries then. The four British soldiers were all sent to prisoner of war camps after being discharged from the hospital and I couldn’t trace them. The doctor who told me that, said he had no idea where they had been held and, after the war, when all the prisoners were repatriated, it was a dead end.’

  Molly said, ‘How did you manage to find out more?’

  ‘It was my father who came up with the idea of getting someone to investigate it for me. He said he knew someone who was a retired policeman who had opened up a small detective agency. I hired him and he was great. He managed to trace the ship’s captain who had brought Joe, Kenneth and Lena over to Britain. He told him that their destination had been Scotland, possibly somewhere near the coast, although he had dropped them off near Hull.

  ‘He also gave me the names of the three of them, Joe Lamont who was the stepson of Wilhelm Marten, Kurt Deitrich and Lena Marten and that they were in the antique trade. So, armed with this knowledge, I scoured the antique shops and looked up the names in the telephone directory. I came across Lamont Antiques in Dundee and arrived one morning, a year ago.

  ‘I went into the shop in the Nethergate and met Kenneth. We got chatting and I told him I was also in the antique trade, but wanted to spend a working holiday in Scotland … and the rest is history. I knew right away when I arrived here that I had the right people but I couldn’t prove anything.’

  He looked at Molly. ‘That was when you almost caught me in the house. I was looking for evidence to see what had happened at that farmhouse in 1940. I had found the strongbox with jewels and I also found the key. The key, which I sent to you, Molly. I’m sorry I implicated you in this, but I didn’t know where else to hide it.

  ‘There was a hue and cry on the day it went missing. I thought Lena would explode with anger and she demanded that a search be made of all the rooms. Fortunately, I had to go to Dundee with you that day so I took the key with me, bought the diary and left it at your door.’

  Marigold was puzzled. ‘But it had an Australian stamp on it.’

  Christie laughed. ‘It was a Canadian stamp but I smudged it with some ink to make it look foreign and hoped you wouldn’t notice it. A week ago I was on the verge of confronting Lena with my information when everything blew up and that’s the whole sad story.’

  Molly said, ‘I remember the day Lena came to the agency. She looked so elegant and lovely and I really liked her.’

  ‘Well that’s the face she put on but underneath she was wicked through and through. Joe and Kenneth have turned out to be the two good guys in this whole tragic mess, and even Nelly has turned out to be a decent woman. Nelly has said that Joe and Kenneth have been watching out for Lena all these years as they both knew she was mentally unbalanced but Kenneth had no intention of marrying Lena after Colin’s death.’

  Marigold wanted to know, ‘What will happen to the business now?’

  ‘It all belongs to Nelly. She inherited it from her husband Hans and he bought out the Rosenbergs in good faith, so everything they owned is also Nelly’s. That was why she was always invited to the parties because it looked good if this rich woman was buying expensive pictures. Of c
ourse she never really bought them, it was just a front.’

  Molly wanted to know what his plans were. ‘Will you stay on here or will you go home?’

  ‘I’ve booked my passage to Canada next week. Will you come and see me off from the station, Molly?’

  ‘All right Christie … I don’t know your surname.’

  ‘McCulloch, Christie McCulloch.’

  37

  Nelly was leaving. She had put her flat up for sale and was going back to Rotterdam. She had spoken to Joe and he said that Mike was still willing to work with him, so that is what she would do. Joe would look after the sale of the flat and that would be the end for her in this country.

  They would also look after this end of the business as before while she remained in Holland. She had plans to hand the business over to Joe as she had lost all enthusiasm for it now.

  She recalled Lena as a child, a beautiful, blonde vindictive child. Her father had doted on his lovely daughter and he gave her everything she asked for. Then, when she couldn’t have Ben, the one person she really wanted and loved, she became hell bent on revenge. Now all this destruction, unhappiness and death had all come about.

  She was honest enough to admit her part in this because of her impulsive proposal to Kenneth. How could she have got it all so wrong? To misread the signs. She had honestly thought Kenneth cared deeply for her and that love would have grown over time.

  He had always been so charming to her and, foolish woman that she was, she thought she stood a chance with him.

  All the plans had gone horribly wrong. Joe, Kenneth and Lena were meant to stay quietly until the war ended and then, when they had all made their fortune with the Rosenberg’s jewellery and furnishings, plus all her inheritance from Hans and afterwards they could all go back to the Netherlands and live happily ever after.