Fall of Angels

by Barbara Cleverly

  He shook off a sudden attack of drowsiness and resigned himself to hearing out what he sensed was a carefully prepared joint alibi. He read nothing sinister into it. Many entirely innocent witnesses did the same, and with the reputation the police force still had for thick heads and heavy boots, he didn’t blame them. But such a performance did on occasion offer him an irresistible opportunity for mischievous questioning. He would let them play out their scene.

  “The Savoy Opera, eh?” he said with enthusiasm. “My favourite! I hope they at least kept up the Russian theme of the evening by giving listeners a snatch of ‘The Volga Boatmen’’?” He calculated that one call to the BBC would establish whether her response was a lie or a confirmation of her overworked alibi.

  “Of course they did! How could they resist? Dreary nonsense! Though they lightened the mood by following with a selection of lollipops from Iolanthe and The Mikado. Supper was cleared by half past nine when the play started. We dismissed Vincent—our butler—and Sidney and I settled in for the rest of the evening to hear it.”

  Redfyre closed his notebook and sat forward in his seat, suddenly companionable and smiling contentedly. “And prepared for an hour and a half of superb entertainment! I too am an ardent admirer of Oscar Wilde. I bustled home to hear it,” he lied cheerfully. “Splendid performance! The station repertory company did awfully well! Sylvia Scott made a particularly good Mrs. Allonby, I thought. Don’t you agree? Such a shame she blotted her copybook by fluffing her lines towards the end of the second act. Disaster! My heart went out to the poor lady. Did you catch it? Lord Illingworth was delivering his wonderful line: ‘All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.’ Awful silence from Mrs. Allonby, who clearly missed her cue, and poor Lord Illingworth—quick thinking, Lord Illingworth!—had to complete his own witticism: ‘No man does. That is his.’ Her best line, and she dropped it! What do you suppose went wrong for her?”

  While smiling agreeably, Redfyre took in the changing expressions of the faces opposite. Sidney Benson was flummoxed, mouth opening and closing, failing to find a response and looking towards his wife for guidance. Redfyre turned his attention to her as well and noted how coolly she received the double-barreled challenge.

  “As a thespian, Mrs. Benson, you must have a professional solution?” he said, sticking in a barely disguised challenge.

  “Naturally,” she said. “Such lapses are more frequent than the average listener realises. You, I am supposing, Inspector, are quite knowledgeable about the theatre. Are you familiar with the texts? On the wireless, the acting techniques are rather different from those one employs on stage. Reading from scripts standing bunched together around a microphone, it is surprisingly easy to miss one’s cue, even to slip a line—or indeed a whole page!—of text. Luckily, this goes unobserved by the general public, and the other actors are so skilled they can always come to the rescue of their erring company member. Sidney—as you see—was quite oblivious of any fault.”

  Sidney mimed bafflement.

  “In fact, Inspector,” she confided, “my husband was half asleep by then. He leads such a tiring life. I’m surprised to hear that you had the energy and concentration to apply to a dramatic performance after the long day I think you must have had yesterday.” She picked up a copy of the morning’s newspaper, which happened to be lying, neatly folded, between them on the table. “I read that you were up to the armpits in that very serious incident in St. Barnabas Chapel. You were quite the hero! Poor man! What a shattering experience. I don’t wonder that your concentration may have wandered and you may have misheard.”

  Redfyre laughed. “I think you have it exactly right, Mrs. Benson!” He gave a sideways nod of his head to indicate his surrender. The questions he most urgently wanted to ask concerning the large amounts of cash the murder victim was extracting from Mr. Benson would have to wait until he was not being fed lines by his formidable wife. This was not the time to pursue them.

  He left with politely friendly farewells from both Bensons, reflecting that the alibi they had established for the time of the murder could either be one hundred percent solid or completely worm-eaten, crumbling into dust as soon as he applied pressure.

  What most intrigued him was that they had so obviously thought it necessary to establish an alibi.

  As he took his hat from the manservant in the hall, he looked into the impassive face and said cheerfully, “Vincent, clear something up for me, will you? Mr. and Mrs. Benson are at odds on the question . . . Last night, while you were on duty, the doorbell rang at nine o’clock, according to Mrs. Benson, and at nine-thirty, according to Mr. Benson. Which one is correct?”

  The response was instant and clearly delivered. “I’m surprised to hear you say so, sir. Can you have misunderstood? No one was expected that evening, and no one called unexpectedly. They dismissed me at nine-thirty, as they usually do when there are no guests. The master and mistress were alone listening to the wireless when I returned from the Champion of the Thames public house in King Street at eleven to lock up and check the windows.”

  He smiled blandly and threw the door open with a wide, dismissive gesture. Redfyre knew the man was savouring the image of a boot up the retreating police rear end and tried not to flinch.

  He had taken three steps towards the edge of the common when a voice called after him and Vincent hurried up to him, his back to the façade of the house, waving a pair of gloves.

  “Inspector! Do accept my apologies,” he said. “You left your gloves inside your hat when you arrived. I took them out to warm them through, they being quite damp, and I clean forgot to hand them to you.”

  It was a moment before Redfyre was able to identify the sinister contortion of the left-hand side of the man’s face as—of all unexpected expressions—a wink.

  Hiding his bemusement, Redfyre took the gloves from him with a good-natured bellow of forgiveness, just managing to stop himself from chirruping that his own gloves were at that moment safely stowed away in the depths of his pockets. Vincent muttered briefly, “I’m usually in the Champ by nine thirty-five, where and when I’m able to speak freely.”

  A polite half bow and he was off.

  Chapter 13

  At last, Sergeant Thoday had struck lucky.

  He had become dispirited by the abrupt closing of doors in his face and the bad-tempered comments. He’d had enough of:

  “No Hawkers! Can’t you read!”

  “Come back when Mum’s in.”

  And even, yelled through a letterbox, “Bloody bailiffs! Bugger off!”

  He had almost reached the end of Trafalgar Street. A few more strides would land him in the river. It surprised him that so much leftover Victorian squalor could exist within yards of swish, heavily ornamented boathouses like Goldie and John’s.

  But here, at Number 27, the door was opened fully by a sweet-faced girl with a kind voice who looked him in the eye and smiled. Thoday gulped. Her eyes were huge, glistening with tears, and they were hazel. She put her handkerchief away hastily in her pocket, sniffed and spoke to him again. “I said, Thank goodness you’ve come! You are the policeman they said was doing the rounds, aren’t you? You took your time!”

  “Er . . . I’m Detective Sergeant Thoday, Miss. Here’s my warrant.”

  “I’m Grace Jewell, officer. I don’t have a warrant—you’ll have to take my word for it.”

  Thoday collected himself and asked, in what he thought a shrewd tone: “You were expecting me?”

  “Of course. It’s about Lois, isn’t it? My friend Ada at number thirty-two and I worked with Lois at Benson’s. We’re typists. Just the two of us, though he calls us ‘the pool.’ We thought you’d want to speak to us about her last movements.”

  Thoday could not suppress a smile. “Certainly do, Miss. May I come in?”

  “No. Sorry, but no. My dad’s on night shift this week and he’s asleep in the up
stairs front. Talking down here in the parlour wakes him up; the ceilings are as thin as paper. Look, if you’re going to speak to Ada as well, why don’t I give her a knock, and we can all go for a walk and have our chat? There are things she and I would like to know.”

  She hurried a few doors down the street and banged on a green front door. A net curtain at the window was raised and dropped and a second later, a large, apron-clad bust appeared, jutting out over the doorstep.

  “Hiya, Mrs. Drake!” Grace said. “Can Ada come out to play?” The two women burst out into peals of nostalgic laughter.

  “So long as you’re back before the corner gas lamp’s lit,” came the expected response. “And who’s this handsome bloke you’ve got in tow? Never seen him before!”

  “He’s a copper, Mrs. Drake. A detective! We’re going to help him with his detecting.”

  “Well, don’t go playing hide-and-seek round the boathouses with him! I’ve warned our Ada about men with moustaches . . . Ada! You’re wanted!”

  “We’ll go across Cutter Ferry Bridge and walk on the Common,” Ada decided as they set off. “The scene of the crime,” she added darkly. Before she pulled her cap on, Thoday noted that Ada had curly red hair and she seemed to be a year or two older than her friend. The two girls, well muffled up in serge coats, woolly scarves and gloves, stationed themselves one on each side of the tall sergeant and set off at a brisk pace. They seemed so small he almost offered them each a fatherly hand. He crooked his arms, and they took one each without comment in an entirely natural manner. “Watch it, ladies!” he advised. “The pathways are still a bit slippery. With two anchors I should be all right, though.”

  With misgivings, Thoday remembered MacFarlane’s rambling comments in the briefing room, comments directed at Redfyre. “Interview the women she worked with. Here’s the list of people at the workplace. Two of ’em are typists. Now our Lois was a cut above that. Manager of some sort, was it? Although she was a year or two younger than them, and fresh out of school, Daddy a friend of the boss. Ooh, and let’s not forget all that cash she had to flash! Bound to be a bundle of resentment there. Nothing like a bit of female jealousy to release the gossip. Stir it up until they give you the lowdown on Miss Snooty Boots Lawrence. See them both together if you can—face-to-face, they’re less likely to tell lies and exaggerate.”

  This interview was meant to be Redfyre’s task; Thoday knew that and was concerned. But the girls had fallen into his lap and, whatever the protocol, he was not going to miss this chance. For the sake of the investigation, he told himself, he’d risk MacFarlane’s wrath. It wasn’t often that two spiffing girls decided to give the police a helping hand. He’d handle them with extreme care and respect.

  “Now then, Mister Plod, come clean!” Ada told him with a street urchin’s cheek when they were out of earshot of any passersby. “Before we tell you anything, we want to know what on earth happened to poor Lois. All we know is we were sent home early by Mr. Benson because she’d been murdered on the riverbank last night on her way home from town. That’s it—take it from there.”

  He looked down at the bright eyes fixed on him and realised that they were dealing with a tragedy by putting on a brave face. They were both upset, near to tears, hiding fright under a brisk insouciance.

  He patiently gave them the facts he thought he was able to reveal, which he admitted was about as much as he knew himself. The rest, he would have to dig out of them and commit to memory. He didn’t want to produce a notebook. He’d realised early on in his short career that the production of a pad and pencil led to a seize up of information flow. No one felt comfortable talking at dictation speed. Quite often, people missed out on important details because they did their own mental editing and rejected the wrong items. Some clever dicks even corrected your spelling.

  “So she was strangled then, and her body thrown into the river? And you need to know who she met on this riverbank sometime between nine and ten,” Grace summarised with a shudder. She looked about her. “Any crimes reported in this area lately? I haven’t heard of any. Policing is much better than it was before the war, at least around here. Back then, my parents could have pinpointed half a dozen scallywags who’d rob a girl on her own and led you to their door. Not any more.”

  “We are inclined to think Miss Lawrence knew her attacker,” he admitted.

  “Family then, or work. Or a friend who wasn’t so friendly.” Ada said. “Can’t think of anyone she knew who’d have it in for her. Can you, Grace?”

  “No, everyone liked her. She was lovely.”

  Surprised by the assertion, Thoday decided to check whether this opinion was honest or merely polite. People could be annoyingly misleading about the newly dead. On breathing their last, the biggest rogues were suddenly up there with the saints and martyrs, and as MacFarlane often pointed out, “Wimmin! Nothing they like so much as a good cry. Mind they don’t blub all over you.”

  “She was younger than the two of you, but earned considerably more. How did you feel about that?”

  Grace smiled. “Cross! Very cross indeed, when she first arrived. And did you know, Sergeant, that her father is a family friend? Nepotism! Is that the word? Raises the hackles. But it didn’t last. She was so nice. Never thought to give us orders, though she could have done. She helped us out. Made us think we were all in the same boat, working towards the same thing. I don’t think the Bensons really thought about what they were doing when they took her on, so she made her own job. Called herself ‘assistant office manager.’ Kept old Philpott off our backs!”

  “At first, she was given the books to do,” Ada told him. “She told Philpott she had a good head for figures. Big mistake!”

  “He put her on to tracking down a sum that had gone missing from the records. She found it, no bother. But she carried on examining the books. Never said a word, but I think she found something in there she didn’t like the look of.”

  Ada added thoughtfully, “And right after that, Lois decided it would be a good idea if she went off for a day to the factory to learn what went on there. ‘Staff liaison,’ she called it. ‘Shared knowledge leads to increased efficiency,’ or something like that.”

  “She got away with things like that because it jolly well worked,” Grace said. “She’d caught on that she had better abilities than any of us in writing. She set about answering the correspondence and giving us copies to type up. It was a lot faster and more pleasant than taking dictation from Philpott. She cleared a week’s backlog in no time. She always knew exactly the right phrases to use, the correct grammar and punctuation. And she could write to anyone.”

  “She had to compose a letter to the queen one day!” Ada remembered. With an assessing glance at the sergeant, she added with a gurgle of amusement, “Can you imagine? She had to sell—or offer, rather—a sample of our latest wonder pill, developed to overcome monthly aches and pains in females to Her Majesty!”

  “Even queens have the monthlies,” Thoday said, determined to show he was unshockable. “I’d have thought Her Maj was a bit past that sort of thing, though.”

  “Her daughter isn’t. Her maids aren’t. Her sons have wives. But that wouldn’t have occurred to Mr. Philpott. That’s when we realised how clever Lois was. Just the right tone, but persuasive and informative with it. Anyone would have dashed out and bought a bottle,” Grace said.

  “And she wrote it in five minutes! I’d have been chewing my pencil for an hour,” Ada commented.

  “Even the boss—that’s Mr. Benson—started listening to her advice. She had the knack of correcting him and pointing him in the right direction, though he had no idea he was being steered one way or another. She got to know the production side of the business. She said understanding the processes would help her with the correspondence and with the books.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Thoday encouraged.

  “As the weeks went on, she had hi
m more and more firmly in her pocket,” Grace told him. “I still don’t know quite how she pulled that off—it was all very professional—but she had him all right. And before you ask, Mr. Plod—no, there was no hanky-panky going on.”

  Ada giggled. “You’d be looking a long time at Mr. Benson before you thought of Ramon Novarro! No interest in ladies. It’s hard to think what he is interested in, but it certainly doesn’t wear a skirt.”

  Thoday filed this away for future reference.

  “And the other gentleman in the office?” he asked without emphasis. “Mr. George Philpott? The office manager?”

  He was pleased to see the girls exchange looks. Finally, Grace spoke. “Well, I’m afraid he was outmanaged. Lois didn’t set out to annoy him—quite the reverse—but he came to realise that she had more talent than he did. There was nothing he could do, because in the event of a difference of opinion between them, Mr. Benson always came down on Lois’s side.”

  “Ouch! Sounds uncomfortable. Surely Philpott resented that?”

  “He hid it well if he did.”

  “Possibility here—imaginary scenario: Philpott meets Lois by chance by the river. Resentment bubbles over. He seizes her by the throat, kills her and disposes of her body. How likely would that be?”

  Both girls, in spite of the appalling scene suggested, burst into nervous giggles. “You’ve never met Mr. Philpott, have you?” asked Grace.

  “Philpott is a weed! A right softie! He wouldn’t say boo to a goose,” Ada exclaimed.

  “Hang on, now. He’s not someone you’d want to be stuck in a lift with, is he?”