Raising her eyes, Mirabelle peered across the bed at the empty top drawer, which, after all, was the reason she had come. She wondered if whatever it had contained were the only truly personal effects in this, Dougie Beaumont’s immediate estate. The handle had been dusted with powder – presumably McGregor hoped his men might be able to isolate any fingermarks despite the scattering of grit and soot on the exterior. Carefully, she pulled the drawer clear of its runners. Now she’d started, this was simply habit more than anything else. Mirabelle knew how to search a room. She’d helped to write a manual about it when the first internment camps had been set up.
First she checked whether Dougie Beaumont had concealed anything to the rear of the drawers – this was by far the most common hiding place in a bedroom. He had not. With a sigh, she stood up and continued the routine, running her palm underneath the mattress. The cover smudged grit on to her coat but, unperturbed, she felt as far as she could, then walked to the other side of the bed and did the same. When her fingers alighted on something hard, sewn into the mattress, she lifted it up and snapped the thin thread that held the lining in place. Slipping her fingers between the springs, she retrieved a small leather packet. Mirabelle looked round, almost afraid of what she’d found. How had McGregor missed this? Fingers quivering, she opened the tan leather flap and stared at a sheaf of large white five pound notes which were unsullied by the fire. Counting quickly, she calculated that there were two hundred pounds or so – a small fortune. Below the money there was a strange-looking key. She turned it over in her hand. It was a peculiar shape – an oval at the centre with two shafts running in opposite directions. Perhaps it was something to do with a car, she thought – it looked as if it might be designed to loosen screws. Below the key, there were two black and white photographs. The first showed Dougie Beaumont and his sister, sitting on matching wicker chairs outside, somewhere sunny. They were laughing. Enid had flung her hands in the air in delight, clearly demonstrating by her naked fingers that she wasn’t yet married or even engaged. And, in the background, Mirabelle squinted, Kamari was serving drinks on a tray. On the back of the photograph someone had written in pencil ‘Christmas at Diyane Beach’, but there was no date. The second photograph showed a racing car, not pictured from the front, but the rear, with Beaumont peering out from under the engine with a spanner in his hand. Under the last photograph was a slim silver snuffbox. Mirabelle flipped open the lid and sighed. It contained white powder, finely milled. Businesslike, she licked her pinkie finger and picked up a tiny smear. ‘Cocaine,’ she whispered as she felt her gum numb where the powder touched it. That put a different complexion on things. Perhaps Dougie Beaumont hadn’t been such a golden boy, after all. She wondered what on earth had been in the bedside drawer if these were the things he’d hidden under the mattress? You couldn’t get more personal than this little collection. Had there been more money? Something incriminating that he had decided to keep to hand? That was odd in itself. The mattress was a safer hiding place, more out of the way. Did George Highton find what he had been looking for?
Mirabelle was recalled by the sound of steps approaching. She scrambled to conceal the packet, shoving it into her handbag.
‘Are you up here?’ It was Vesta’s voice.
Mirabelle dusted down her coat but the grit from the edges of the mattress had embedded itself in the fibre of the tweed. She was just about to make her way out of the bedroom when the girl appeared in the doorway.
‘There you are. What are you doing?’
‘He died up here,’ Mirabelle said simply, it coming to her rather suddenly that if she left with the tan case in her bag she was effectively stealing two hundred pounds and a tin of drugs from a crime scene.
‘My, you are maudlin.’ Vesta reached out and took her by the arm. ‘Come downstairs and we can talk about what the decorator will have to do.’
It took several hours before Mirabelle managed to get away from the office. Vesta had insisted they have lunch at a café and after that there had been the mail to see to. At about four o’clock two separate debtors had arrived, both keen to pay a portion of what they owed. Mirabelle frequently found in-office payments disconcerting – people were never at ease and appeared either cowed by the formality of the process or bitter because they felt hard done by. At least it was generally quick – they never lingered – and with everything seen to, she worked at her desk until Vesta was ready to pack up for the night. The women hovered as Vesta locked the door and, once downstairs, the girl wheeled her bike alongside Mirabelle as far as the top of East Street and then set off homewards, pedalling up the hill. Mirabelle waited until her figure had disappeared and then turned left past Bartholomew Square police station. The lights were on in McGregor’s office but she couldn’t make out any movement. She wondered how his investigation was coming along and if he had managed to uncover George Highton as Dougie Beaumont’s lover. The men had moved in secretive circles, after all, and a woman asking questions was undoubtedly in a better position to find out more than a policeman.
The hoardings on Prince Albert Street were peppered with tattered posters for the last of the summer shows. Vera Lynn had headlined in the variety at the Palladium. McGregor and she had meant to get tickets but the summer had slipped past. Now the loose edges fluttered in the breeze that whipped around the streets off the sea. Cutting down a tiny lane that only the observant would notice that ran along the side of the pub, Mirabelle disappeared from view. The alleyway looked abandoned, weeds tumbling out of fissures in the high wall that skirted one side and here and there an empty bottle of blue billy, abandoned by some desperate drunk. Halfway along she rapped on the door of a tatty cottage. A minute later, her friend Fred opened it.
‘Ah, Mirabelle.’ He always sounded delighted, as if she was a particularly welcome dinner guest. ‘Come in. What can I get you?’
When Fred had first moved to Brighton a couple of years ago, the front room of the little house had been stocked with black-market goods – anything that was still being rationed or was in short supply. On one occasion he had sold Mirabelle a gun that later saved her life. These days, however, he specialised in the rare and unusual and was expert at finding objects of desire – French lace and silk, Italian perfume, gourmet chocolate and, she was sure, risqué films for a certain clientele. Mirabelle knew Fred’s customers came from all over the country. Whatever you wanted in the way of luxury, he was your man. By contrast, the little cottage was almost falling apart. The ceiling was full of holes, the planking beneath the plaster exposed. A pipe that ran up the back wall slowly dripped dirty water into a strategically placed bucket. Mirabelle noted that the room was emptier than it used to be in the days when Fred traded boxes of eggs and bags of sugar. At one time every surface had been stacked high and she had been afraid to touch anything in case the towers tumbled. Now there were a mere half a dozen tea chests and a few cardboard boxes. Two paintings were stacked under the window, half-obscured by a grubby sheet, through which glimpses of their rococo frames protruded.
‘Gosh, I think this place gets more down-at-heel every time I visit.’
‘We don’t want anyone knowing what’s going on.’ Fred winked. ‘Or we’ll be knocked out cold with the tax bill. Whisky is it?’ he asked, leaning against the table that doubled as a shop counter.
‘These days I’m keener on gin,’ Mirabelle admitted. Whisky reminded her of Jack but in the old days her usual had always been a gin and tonic. Perhaps as time passed, she didn’t need to be reminded any more – perhaps she had become less nostalgic.
‘I’ve got London gin. Burleigh,’ Fred offered. ‘I can do you a deal.’
‘That’s not what I came for.’ Mirabelle cocked her head as she felt inside her bag. She opened the little leather pouch without bringing it out and withdrew the key. ‘I thought you might know something about this.’
Fred felt inside his pocket and pulled out a small magnifying lens in a black loop. He inserted this over his right eye, picked
up the key and peered at it. ‘Foreign,’ he said, turning it over slowly in his hand.
‘Foreign?’
Fred had the demeanour of an expert. During the war he’d applied his photographic memory to matters of national security. He’d been one of Jack’s best men in the field. Now he had turned his skills to items of commercial rather than national value, and he had learned quickly how to date silverware and take the measure of gemstones to identify what was worth his trouble and what wasn’t. ‘If you push me I’d say it’s probably French and it’s an old one. It’s the key to a clock, see.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘You can fit a lock anywhere, of course, but once you’ve seen one of these, you’d know it again. What you’ve got there is the key to a carriage clock. From 1810, 1820. Later than that and they made the keys out of brass but this one’s steel. They’re not particularly hard to come by. Still, if you’ve got the clock to go with it, I’ll make you an offer, Miss Bevan.’
Mirabelle thought back to Dougie Beaumont’s flat. She hadn’t seen a clock anywhere. She cast her mind over the Beaumonts’ house in London but there definitely hadn’t been a clock on the mantel, she was sure of it. There had been a huge grandfather clock in the hallway but a key of this size wouldn’t touch that.
Fred removed the loop from his eye. ‘How are you?’ he asked cheerily. ‘Got yourself a boyfriend, yet?’
Mirabelle felt her cheeks redden. ‘I’m afraid my love life hasn’t been going terribly well.’
Fred inhaled, sucking air through his teeth as much to say that Mirabelle was somehow not trying hard enough. ‘I hope you’re juggling one or two fellas, Miss Bevan. That’s the way to do it. Keeps them on their toes. Who have you got on the go?’
‘Right now? A racing driver. He’s the one I’m mainly interested in.’
Fred made exactly the same noise with his teeth, which this time clearly indicated his disapproval. ‘Fast crowd,’ he pronounced. ‘Not that I think you can’t handle whatever comes your way.’
Mirabelle smiled. ‘What do you mean?’
Fred reached across the table to a small shelf, which Mirabelle noticed housed a few packets of cigarettes, a brandy flask and a crumpled newspaper. He must have been in London earlier that day because he’d picked up an Evening Standard. Oblivious, Fred opened the paper, turned over the front page and pointed. ‘See. A body at Goodwood,’ he said. ‘There’s a racetrack there, isn’t there? They built it after the war.’
Mirabelle nodded and cast her eyes across the text. The article included a photograph of the exterior of Goodwood House which, she realised, must have come from a photo library because the trees were in leaf, setting off the green copper domes at the four corners of the flint building.
‘Is that today’s?’ she checked.
‘Picked it up myself at Victoria just after lunch.’
Mirabelle snatched the paper from his hand and shook it to open the page properly. Beneath the photograph of the house there was a smaller black and white shot of a man next to a motor car with the number ‘26’ painted on the side. Time slowed as Mirabelle recognised the car from the grit-marked photograph on Dougie Beaumont’s mantelpiece and then her gaze flickered as she also recognised the man’s face. It was George Highton. The caption underneath the picture said, ‘Racing journalist, Highton, mingled with the smart set.’ She scrambled to read the story, gulping in the details so quickly she had to slow herself to make sure that she was taking them in. ‘But I saw him only yesterday,’ she said, her voice low as she read that Highton had played a round of golf the afternoon after she’d left, and booked into the coaching inn on the Goodwood estate. He was invited to dinner at the main house and stayed on to play backgammon until the early hours of the morning. Then, the report said, he left late – perhaps after two – to take the short walk back to the inn. At first light his body had been discovered a few hundred yards down the driveway. ‘Drink had been taken,’ the Standard pronounced.
‘Oh no.’ The words slipped from Mirabelle’s lips as in her mind’s eye she saw him, jumping out of the Land Rover the day before. Still grieving. Poor George Highton. Her stomach turned as it dawned on her that if she’d given his name to McGregor, the fellow might have been taken into custody. That at least would have kept him alive. She had made a terrible mistake.
‘That isn’t your man, is it?’ Fred checked.
Mirabelle handed back the paper and picked up the key. ‘I have to go,’ she managed to get out as she made for the door.
Fred was nimble and cut in ahead of her. ‘Are you all right?’ he checked. ‘I don’t like to think of you having a fright. Do you know that fellow?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sort of.’
‘Don’t you go getting involved, Miss Bevan. I don’t want to have to supply you with arms again. Not after what happened the last time. Couldn’t you find yourself a doctor or a lawyer? A respectable kind of bloke?’
Mirabelle barely nodded as she opened the door. As far as she was concerned she was involved already and plenty of the professional men she’d bumped into over the years had turned out to be less than respectable. ‘You know me and a murder,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t say it’s a murder, Miss Bevan. It doesn’t say that. Poor chap might have had a dickie ticker.’
Mirabelle looked dubious. ‘He might have,’ she said.
Chapter 12
Investigation: a formal inquiry or systematic study
It was dark by the time Mirabelle arrived at the coaching inn where George Highton had booked in the night before. All the way down on the train, and then on the journey to the inn, having secured a car and a driver, she couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that somehow she might have prevented his death. There had been no streetlights since they left Chichester but the driver clearly knew the road and took it at some pace, the harsh light of the headlamps throwing up sharp bends skirted by thick hedgerows. Mirabelle couldn’t help think of the deacon at the cathedral saying people round here would race anything as she was flung one way and another in the back seat. The cold nipped at her ankles as she got out of the car and hovered on the fringes of the tarmac to pay the driver. Then she watched as the vehicle disappeared into the thick, black countryside. The small windows of the coaching inn glowed golden but the light hardly reached as far as the other side of the road. Clutching her handbag, Mirabelle made for the door. Inside, the bar was pleasant, an open fire burned in the grate and the low hum of conversation was punctuated by dominoes toppling at a table where a game was in play. When Mirabelle asked for a room the barman chose a key from the rack over the till without really looking. His hands were huge and rough and the key, which was attached to a lozenge of rounded wood, looked tiny as he handed it over.
‘Do you work on the estate?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. In the sawmill. I’m just helping out tonight. They wanted to have a fella around. Your room’s upstairs, miss.’ He gesticulated towards a door that led to a set of wooden stairs.
Following his vague directions, Mirabelle left the bar and climbed upwards to a dim corridor with a runner of thin carpet tacked along it. She turned the key in the lock and switched on the light. The room was hardly luxurious but it would do – a bed, a lamp and a side table with a sign saying there was a bathroom at the end of the hallway. It struck her she was becoming accustomed to sleeping in a strange bed. In London during the war she sometimes didn’t make it home for days on end. In the air-raid shelter at work there had been lumpy, makeshift mattresses on the floor. When she first moved to Brighton, the flat on the Lawns had felt luxurious and it had seemed as if she was settling down, sleeping in the same bed every night, in the same place, the darkness uninterrupted by any hint of emergency. It had felt as if all her difficulties were over.
Mirabelle clicked off the bedroom light and peered out of the window. Outside, the night sky was so completely unsullied by artificial light that she could almost believe the blackout was still in force. In Brighton it
was difficult to make out the stars but here the sky was peppered with them. The vista stretched cloudless – the cold moon only a sliver. The glass felt icy to her touch and clouded around her fingertips. She wondered momentarily if this room was the one George Highton had hired the night before. What exactly had he meant when he arrived at Tangmere saying he had to protect his interest in Beaumont’s car? And given what she’d found today under Dougie Beaumont’s mattress, were Highton’s red eyes and jumpy demeanour only down to his grief? She wouldn’t blame him for trying to block out his lover’s death with spirits or powder or both. She’d hit the bottle hard after Jack died. If only I’d given McGregor Highton’s name, she chided herself. If he’d been arrested he would have been safe. As the guilt turned in her gut, she tried not to dwell on her regrets. Telling the superintendent about Highton wouldn’t necessarily have saved his life. As it stood there was no point in crying over spilled milk. She might as well get on.
Operation Goodwood Page 12
