Last Nocturne

by Marjorie Eccles

  She came back with a tray holding two glasses filled with steaming tea, and sugar cubes on the saucers. He had a vague idea you were supposed to suck the tea through the cubes but thought he might give that a miss and put two into the glass she offered him instead.

  He was glad he’d allowed her the few minutes in her kitchenette to regain her composure and collect her thoughts. The colour had come back into her cheeks. ‘I can’t imagine any other reason why you’re asking me, of all people,’ she said, sitting opposite him as Cogan returned to his perch, ‘about Mr Martagon’s death, except that I was living in the house at the time. But fire away.’

  ‘I understand you left Mrs Martagon’s employment shortly after he died. Let’s start with that, shall we? You – er – left in some haste.’

  ‘I see my notoriety has gone before me. I’ve inherited my mother’s Russian temper and I’m afraid sometimes it gets the better of me.’

  ‘Russian, hmm? You work as a translator, don’t you?’

  ‘When I can get hold of anything to translate. It’s chancy, which was why I went to the Martagons in the first place, to earn a bit more money. I still kept up with any work I could get hold of – I could get a fair amount done at night, in my room, after I’d gone up to bed, so it suited me very well. I was there about six months. And then I ruined everything. I lost my temper and stormed out of the house.’

  His lips twitched, recalling what he’d been told of the circumstances.

  ‘It wasn’t very dignified, I see that now, but Mrs M had accused me of breaking one of some quite horrid majolica dishes she kept in the morning room. I wasn’t to blame, it must have been one of the servants, or been knocked off by the cat or something, but she’d once overheard an uncomplimentary remark I’d made about the ghastly stuff and automatically assumed I’d done it deliberately. Well, it rankled that she wouldn’t believe me, and the next morning I packed my bags and left, but not before I’d smashed all the other wretched plates and things.’

  She met Lamb’s amused glance and sighed. ‘I know, it was childish and unforgivable, and it did more harm to me than Edwina – it would take more than that to dent her armour plate.’

  ‘But you’ve continued to see Dulcie Martagon?’

  ‘With the sheltered life she leads? No, but I write to her – not often, because I don’t want her mother to see the letters. I was – am – very fond of Dulcie, and besides, I’d made a promise to her father.’

  ‘What sort of promise?’ She looked steadily at him but didn’t answer. ‘It’s important, Miss Dart. I think I can rely on you to tell me the truth,’ he said, holding her glance.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied at last, with a sigh. ‘Yes, I suppose you can.’

  There was an odd little silence. ‘What were the relations between you and the late Mr Martagon?’

  ‘Not the sort that question implies,’ she answered calmly. ‘We were friends. He adored Dulcie, and he knew she was unhappy, and rather lonely. He used to come into the schoolroom sometimes and sit talking to us both while she painted. It was part of my job to act as a sort of companion to Dulcie, so I used to take my own work along while she was drawing and painting. Mr Martagon picked up a book of poetry I was working on once, and said he’d met the poet – Bruno Franck. I was finding it a bit difficult because it was written in German, and I didn’t honestly think it was very good work, either. He laughed and said he agreed, that subversion didn’t make a very good subject for poetry and after that we always chatted. I think we were both right. I’ve never come across any more of Franck’s work.’

  ‘Bruno Franck is dead.’

  ‘What? Not because of the sort of thing he wrote?’

  ‘No,’ said Lamb.

  She gave him a long stare. ‘What has he to do with Mr Martagon?’

  ‘Maybe nothing.’ He changed the subject. ‘What about that promise you made to him, Miss Dart?’

  ‘I’ve thought a lot about that. He asked me to give my word I’d never lose touch altogether with Dulcie, saying she might stand in need of a good friend very shortly. I’d no idea what he meant, but of course I agreed. Nothing happened, until—’ She didn’t go on.

  ‘The name of a Mrs Isobel Amberley has cropped up in our investigations. Miss Martagon believes you may know where we can find her.’

  ‘Does she?’ Miss Dart’s ink-stained fingers twisted themselves in the long string of carved wooden beads that hung nearly to her waist. ‘Well, Dulcie’s no fool.’

  ‘Does that mean you do know?’

  ‘Weeks after her father had extracted that first promise from me he gave me Mrs Amberley’s name and address. He reminded me that I’d said I would always be a friend to Dulcie. He said if ever she needed to get hold of him urgently and he wasn’t here then that was the lady I should contact. He often went abroad on business, you know, so I supposed that was what he meant. Naturally, I wondered, after he died, if I should try to see Mrs Amberley, and in the end I did. I’ve come to know her a little. She’s half French but speaks perfect English. We actually get on very well.’

  ‘What was the relationship between her and Eliot Martagon?’

  ‘They were in love,’ she said simply. ‘They met in Vienna but she came to England before he died. I don’t know why she left – something tragic happened, I think, but she doesn’t talk about it, because of Sophie, I suppose… You know Sophie?’

  The two men exchanged a look. ‘I think we may have seen her portrait, miss,’ Cogan said.

  ‘Her portrait? Just a moment – Theo, you said? That was the name of the young man who died, wasn’t it? It’s coming back to me – a young man leaving the house, coming down the garden path as I arrived at Mrs Amberley’s one time. We passed and he smiled, but we didn’t speak. She said it was someone she’d known in Vienna, and that he was an artist. His name may have been Theo now I think of it.’

  She had caught on quickly. ‘Is Sophie her daughter?’

  ‘No, she lives with her, but Mrs Amberley’s not her mother. And Mr Martagon,’ she added, anticipating his next question, ‘wasn’t her father, either.’ She hesitated. ‘Sophie’s mother is dead.’

  ‘Was her name Miriam Koppel?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘Will you tell me where we can find Mrs Amberley? It’s quite important that we see her.’

  ‘She has a little house near Richmond.’ Cogan moved aside to enable Miss Dart to open one of her desk drawers and rummage for paper to write down the address. She hesitated before handing it over, looking worried. ‘She isn’t in any danger, is she? She – well, she always seems to be looking over her shoulder, as it were.’

  ‘No danger that I know of. It’s information about Mr Martagon we need.’

  She threw them one of her quick looks. ‘You mean it’s possible he didn’t kill himself – you think he’s been murdered, as well as that young artist, don’t you?’ She looked down into what remained of her tea. ‘Yes, well, I never did think he was the sort to leave that kind of sorrow behind him.’

  He regarded her with approval as he pocketed the paper and rose to go, her opinion echoing his. A fine, well-balanced man such as Eliot Martagon had appeared to be did not suddenly blow out his brains, for no obvious reason. ‘Thank you, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Dart. I’ll let you know how we get on.’

  He might make a special point of it, he thought, avoiding Cogan’s broad smile as they left.

  Edwina Martagon had remained in the sanctuary of her room all that afternoon, on plea of a headache, having issued orders to Manners that she was on no account to be disturbed until she rang. At a quarter to five, a time when most of the servants were likely to be busy elsewhere, she descended the staircase and commanded the footman on duty to call her a hansom cab, defying him with a look to show surprise that she should appear at this hour, known to all the household as being sacrosanct to her rest, which even Manners dared not interrupt. Quelling him with her eye to question why she should need a cab
. Threatening him silently with retribution should he ever speak of it.

  ‘The Midland Grand Hotel on the Euston Road,’ she said to the driver through the trap, ‘and a sovereign if you get me there within twenty minutes.’

  Needing no more inducement, the cabbie careered across London, cracking his whip and terrifying pedestrians, small dogs and motorised traffic, ignoring fist-waving policemen. Edwina was thrown about inside the hansom like a pea in a baby’s rattle, but managed to adjust her hat and emerge at the hotel entrance seventeen minutes later, now heavily veiled, clutching a small leather attaché case. It wanted ten minutes to the designated time by the clock tower on the magnificently ornate hotel serving the railway station.

  It was true she had never been to St Pancras before, either to the station, or its hotel, but she approached it with her usual confidence and was immediately disconcerted, on stepping inside the entrance hall, to find herself taken aback, not a little overawed by the Gothic splendours and lavishness of decoration. She vaguely remembered reading the boast, at its opening, that it was the greatest railway hotel in the world. She was overtaken by a feeling, not familiar to her, of being put in her place, dwarfed by its height, its cathedral-like vaulting and marble pillars. Refusing to be intimidated by mere architecture, however, much less by the august personage who occupied the desk in the vast entrance hall, she briskly enquired as to the whereabouts of the Ladies’ Smoking Room, where she might wait. She was dressed in the sombre black which constituted what she had called her widows’ weeds and which, through some oversight, had not been given to charity after being thankfully relinquished. Being exceedingly fashionable weeds, instead of giving her the anonymity she had hoped for, they simply served, together with the heavy veil, to underline the fact that here was a lady of some means, and one who wished not to be recognised. She saw this from the respectful but speculative way she was addressed. Well, it couldn’t be helped now. Pulling her veil closer, she followed the directions, and walked along curving corridors to the grand and immensely ornate, crimson-papered main staircase which swept upwards and threw wide arms to right and left. Hurrying up, she was brought to a momentary halt on the first floor landing by the amazing sight, through a huge window, of the glassed-in railway station itself spread below, bursting with travellers and with hissing and smoking monsters waiting to carry them to the north, to destinations such as Sheffield and Leeds, places Edwina had scarcely heard of and had no desire to visit.

  The waiting room was high and huge, not at present over-populated, and very quiet, each woman there apparently absorbed in her own concerns, reading or taking the chance of a nap while waiting for her train. She chose a secluded corner away from the high windows leading to the great balcony outside, around which most of the other ladies were sitting, none of whom, she was glad to see, were engaged in the occupation for which the room had originally been daringly designated. She rang for tea to be sent but when it came, found she was too nervous to want to drink – or even to eat the buttered teacake which came with it. Had there not been so many ladies who must have noticed her entrance, despite being apparently absorbed in their own concerns, she would have left the small attaché case by her chair and departed immediately, but she had no doubt someone would notice her abrupt departure and remind her that she’d left the case. As it was, the others soon left off noticing her, she settled down and made a pretence of pouring her tea, and found she was thirsty. The teacake was, after all, delicious. And perhaps…just one of those tempting little pastries?

  Taking the chance to look covertly around the room after a while, she could see no one who might be Eugenia Dart, except perhaps that woman with The Times held up in front of her face, her chair angled to the window. But she was so much better dressed than ever Eugenia had been in Edwina’s experience – even the enveloping dark grey coat the woman was wearing was well cut – that she dismissed the possibility of it being her.

  Her tea finished, she felt she could leave now without exciting comment. The case had been discreetly stowed between her chair and the wall and no one apparently noticed when she left without it.

  She walked rapidly away and stationed herself in a corridor just around the corner, positioning herself so that she could observe who came and went from the waiting room. Several chambermaids, a waiter or two and a porter hurried past, burdened with suitcases, trays of food, fresh laundry and cans of hot water, giving her curious looks, but no one spoke to her or questioned her. She grew restive (Edwina was not used to waiting, either on her own account or anyone else’s) but her patience was rewarded when, after about ten minutes, the woman she’d had her eye on emerged nervously from the door she was watching, clutching the case.

  Edwina laid a heavy hand on the woman’s shoulder. A terrified face was turned towards her. She cried, ‘You!’

  A moment later, she had wrested the case back into her own possession. ‘So,’ she said, ‘may I now have my letters back?’

  ‘I d-don’t have them here. They’re at home,’ said Cynthia Cadell.

  ‘Then I will go home with you and retrieve my property.’

  Cynthia stammered, ‘I said I would return them, and I would have done so.’

  ‘Will, don’t you mean?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll return them immediately, Edwina.’

  ‘No, you’ll deliver them into my own hands. When I go home with you, as I said.’ Edwina sounded firm, but in truth she was almost as shaken as Cynthia, who looked as though she were about to faint. ‘But first, we need to talk,’ she said. ‘Not back there in the waiting room. It’s so quiet everyone will be all ears. But I noticed a coffee room downstairs.’

  ‘Well, Cynthia?’ Edwina demanded when they were seated in the coffee room. ‘The whole story, if you please.’

  Cynthia had regained a little colour and along with it a touch of bravado. ‘Very well, it was at Fanny Cornleigh’s. You were so protective of that bag you were carrying around it was obvious there was something important in it and when you left it on a sofa – yes, my dear, you did, you know how often you’ve admitted how frightfully forgetful you are! – I couldn’t resist taking a peep inside, and that pretty little pochette looked so interesting I just opened it and there were the letters. I swear I didn’t read them, I just borrowed them, intending to give you a fright.’

  ‘And not having read them, what were you intending to do?’

  Cynthia’s green eyes flickered. She answered obliquely, ‘I couldn’t understand why you didn’t miss them immediately.’

  ‘You forget – I’ve had a great deal on my mind lately,’ Edwina reminded her, somewhat bitterly.

  ‘I know.’ Cynthia stretched out a sympathetic hand to lay on her friend’s knee, then thought better of it. ‘The last time I saw you – the afternoon I took tea with you, I could see you weren’t yourself. I thought you might have found out about the letters and decided…well, you looked so – oh, I don’t know – but I thought perhaps I ought to return them. I really meant to, but I just took a little look first, you know, and then… Oh, Edwina, you’ve always been blessed with this world’s goods. You don’t realise how difficult life can be with a daughter to marry and a tight-fisted husband!’ She looked up helplessly, hopes for her Virginia and Guy Martagon fading before her eyes.

  ‘Perhaps, my dear Cynthia, if you didn’t spend quite so much money at Lucile’s establishment, and a little less at the card table…’ retorted Edwina, eyeing the sophisticated ensemble in shades of violet, exactly matching the amethysts in Cynthia’s ears, revealed beneath the long coat Mrs Cadell had thrown open in the warm room.

  ‘I simply must have a hundred and fifty pounds by next week!’

  Edwina saw her eyes drawn to the attaché case like a magnet and laughed. ‘Oh, Cynthia, you don’t believe I would have brought the money with me? There’s nothing in the case but old newspaper. You’ve done little to show me I can trust you, after all.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I just don’t know where to
turn!’ Cynthia began to sob into an inadequate little lace handkerchief. ‘I’m not clever, like you—’

  ‘No, or you would never have concocted such a hare-brained scheme. You’ve been very foolish and now you’ll have to put up with the consequences, Cynthia dear.’

  ‘You mean—’ The little cat face emerging from the folds of the handkerchief was ashen beneath its discreet rouging. ‘You’re going to tell the police?’

  ‘No. I am going to forgive you,’ said Edwina magnificently. ‘And that will be worse, I hope. For then you can’t go around telling people what you know – or think you know – from those letters, can you?’

  Her eyes fixed poor Cynthia like a pin through a butterfly.

  Afterwards, she sat in her boudoir with the curtains drawn and the lamps lit, with the letters she had extracted from the little silk bag on her knee, her hands resting on them with uncharacteristic quietness.

  She had made herself re-read them with particular care, not skimming them and shutting disagreeable words and phrases from her mind afterwards as she had done previously. It was all there – Eliot’s love affair with this woman. Full of oblique references to things she couldn’t understand, and others she understood only too well. Frequent mention of a child, Sophie. Eliot’s child. His child, and this woman’s who had written the letters! What had they said her name was? Amberley. Isobel Amberley. Other names were there also which meant nothing to her: Viktor…Bruno…Miriam…Theo. One name did register, however: Julian. So Julian Carrington, too, had known of this, had perhaps been laughing at her behind her back, like all the others. That hurt. Eliot’s friend and, she had thought, hers too.