Death of a Delft Blue mb-37

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Well, if that’s it…’ said Florian. ‘No, dash it, I can’t! What if I should be wrong?’

  ‘We’ll sort that one out. Tell us what you suspect. Give us something to go on, however wrong you turn out to be.’

  ‘You’ll swear he’ll get a sporting chance? You won’t go and hang the wrong man?’

  ‘It’s clear to me that you don’t think it is the wrong man. In any case, I don’t suppose he’ll be hanged. They discriminate nowadays, you know.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case… look here, I know jolly well who it was. It was my brute of a cousin, Bernardo Rose.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gavin, unemotionally. He made a note, got up, nodded to Florian and went up the stairs to Bernard van Zestien and Binnie.

  ‘Did you get what you wanted from Florian?’ the old man enquired. ‘Did he answer your questions?’

  ‘Yes, he was most informative,’ Gavin replied.

  ‘I am glad. He can be difficult and obstinate. Perhaps at last he is learning a little commonsense. You will stay for dinner, Mr Gavin?’

  ‘As Mr Gavin I should like very much to accept, sir. As Policeman Gavin, I’m afraid I must be on my way.’

  He drove into Norwich, telephoned a long telegram from police headquarters there to the Superintendent in Derbyshire and booked a room for the night. In the morning, immediately after an early breakfast, he drove to Kensington and had lunch with Dame Beatrice and his wife.

  ‘So there it is,’ he said, when, after lunch, he had told his story. ‘I must look up Bernardo Rose’s address.’

  ‘It’s the same as old Rebekah’s, I expect,’ said Laura. ‘You’ll find that she and Petra and Bernardo and Bernardo’s father and mother all muck in together. What’ll you bet?’

  No wager was made, but Laura turned out to be right, or near enough for Gavin’s convenience and purpose. The two households occupied identical service flats in Golders Green, one above the other in the same building. The door was opened by Petra, whom he recognised from Laura’s description. She was clad in what his old-fashioned, untutored mind informed him was a ‘confection’. It was a pyjama-style négligée in rose-pink satin ornamented with silver sequins and, in Gavin’s respectful opinion, it accorded well with her slightly olive complexion and lustrous, beautifully-dressed dark hair. She smiled at the handsome, manly visitor.

  ‘Miss Rose, I believe,’ said Gavin. ‘I am a Scotland Yard police officer. I wonder whether I might have a word with your mother, Mrs Rebekah Rose?’

  ‘Mother isn’t up,’ said Petra. ‘Is it very important, or could you call again later?’

  The point was settled by Rebekah herself, who yelled from somewhere inside the flat,

  ‘Is a young man? I wish!’

  ‘You had better come in then, Mr…’

  ‘Gavin — Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin of New Scotland Yard. My card.’

  ‘Oh — Gavin! Then you must be Mrs Gavin’s husband?’

  ‘Such is my lowly lot.’ He was admitted to a room furnished in the Chinese style of the English eighteenth century — expensively furnished, at that. Rather gingerly he seated himself upon a part-wicker chair upholstered in a golden damask cloth bestrewn liberally with dragons. He gazed upon lacquer screens, priceless embroideries in frames on the walls and, in a cabinet whose legs were in the form of lions, a collection of Ming china of undoubted authenticity.

  He was not left long in contemplation of these riches. The door burst open and in came the waddling but redoubtable figure of Rebekah, followed by that of her daughter. Unlike the elegant Petra, Rebekah was wearing a quilted dressing-gown in screaming green bice. This was topped by a mauve turban. She looked like a tipsy gipsy queen.

  Gavin stood up. Rebekah toddled towards him on slipshod, be-feathered mules and gave him both her plump hands. Her rings made excruciating indentations on his fingers and palms.

  ‘So much,’ she shouted, ‘how I like to see young men about my place. So should Petra marry one of you, so should I have him also with me. Platonic, of course. You think it over, perhaps?’

  ‘I should be charmed,’ said Gavin, with a gallant glance at Petra, ‘but, unfortunately, I am already bespoke.’

  ‘Ah, what is that “bespoke”?’ retorted Rebekah. ‘So I am bespoke to a bargain Esau Levy offers me, but beats me to it that Jacob Bernstein, isn’t it? You are believing the stories in what you are calling the Old Test, no?’

  ‘Well, I’ve read the story of Esau and Jacob,’ admitted Gavin cautiously, recognising the identity of the Old Test.

  ‘So comes round history. But am I defeated?’ Rebekah demanded.

  ‘I am sure you were not,’ said Gavin, who felt that this was indeed a certainty.

  ‘Just as this first Jacob is having to be scared for his life of this Esau, so I am scaring the pants off Jacob Bernstein. We are in America, visiting my son Philip and my other daughter Sarah, so I report Jacob Bernstein for spitting on the sidewalk.’ She chuckled richly.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Gavin, with becoming gravity. ‘Did he really do that?’

  ‘How should I know? I do not go with him on the sidewalk. But they are already wanting to get the goods on him in New York, so any excuse to arrest him, you see, and then grill him about what else he does besides spitting on sidewalks. Oh, they get plenty on him before he is through with them. It is costing him five thousand dollars in bribes before they stop grilling him and are putting him in the clear. He does not muscle in on my “bespoke” any more.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame him. Well, now, Mrs Rose—’

  ‘I sit down, so you can sit down, too,’ said Rebekah handsomely. ‘But please to lower yourself careful. This room is furnished by Petra. Interior decoration she is doing. I am paying the fees since six years. She studies here, she studies there — nothing but money to be found, and her father dead and an expensive funeral, nothing spared.’

  ‘You’ve been paid back with six per cent interest, you know, Mother,’ said Petra, smiling at Gavin. Rebekah gravitated, like an elephant perched on a medicine ball, and embraced her daughter warmly.

  ‘She is a good girl, and pays rent of this flat,’ she said, beaming. She released Petra, who calmly sat down. Rebekah followed suit and Gavin lowered himself carefully into the chair from which he had risen.

  ‘So now,’ said Rebekah, hopefully, ‘you are inviting us to visit your home in exchange hospitality, no?’

  ‘Well, not this time, I’m afraid,’ said Gavin tactfully. ‘This time I’m here on duty. I want to ask you a few questions, if you won’t mind.’

  ‘For Income Tax I have an accountant.’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing like that. All I want to know is whether you spent the war years in England.’

  ‘Of Black Market I am also innocent.’

  ‘I bet you weren’t!’ thought Gavin. He said, ‘I am not attempting to accuse you of any offence whatever, Mrs Rose, but it will help me very much with a case on which I am engaged if you will just reply to my questions.’

  ‘He means it, Mother,’ said Petra, in her mild, sad tones. Rebekah inflated her bosom.

  ‘So shall I be slaughtered to do the police a good turn?’ she enquired grandly. ‘I am in England the whole of the war.’

  ‘Had you any relatives in Germany or in any of the Occupied countries?’

  ‘No, thank God, I had not. I do not count those Colwyn-Welch people. Anyway, they came to no harm except to be in among the bombs, but who was not? Opal and Ruby were interned — so they say! — but Binnen went underground and was heroine of Dutch Resistance — never caught.’

  ‘And your children?’

  ‘Petra here was sixteen when the war ended, Sarah, then married and all time in America, was thirty, and Philip, also in America and married, was twenty-six.’

  ‘He was drafted, then?’

  ‘Yes, but not to leave America. He has bad eyes. Good for clerical work (he pays so much for his glasses)-should be on National Health, like in England-but not the
good eyesight for shooting people.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Rose. You’ve been extremely helpful.’

  ‘Now you tell me how comes this questioning.’

  ‘It’s top secret at present, but it may help us to get our hands on a very dangerous criminal.’

  ‘You are giving me police protection, then?’

  ‘Yes, if you like, but it isn’t really necessary. Even if the criminal finds out that I’ve been here, there wouldn’t be any indication that what you’ve told me might be material evidence, so don’t you worry.’

  Petra showed him out.

  ‘I can see what you’re getting at,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gavin. ‘I’m sorry it had to be so obvious. Don’t go in for too much family loyalty, though, will you?’

  She smiled. She really was a most attractive woman, he thought, and much less of a dumb cluck then Laura had led him to believe. A modest, unassuming man in many ways, he did not allow for the influence of the accident of sex, or the determining factor of his own good looks and charm.

  ‘Family loyalty?’ said Petra. ‘I’d lie like a trooper for mother and my brothers and sister and their children, of course. Otherwise — in my mother’s expression — phooey! And that goes for that horrible boy Florian.’

  Gavin believed her and climbed to the flat above. This time the door was opened by a maid. Gavin gave his name and rank and asked whether Mr Bernardo Rose was at home. Before the girl could answer, Maarte Rose joined her in the outer vestibule.

  ‘What is it, Ethel?’ she asked. Gavin explained. Maarte dismissed the girl and looked at Gavin enquiringly.

  ‘My son is in no trouble?’ she asked. Gavin smiled.

  ‘I hope not,’ he said, ‘but I should be glad to have a word with him, if he is Mr Bernardo Rose.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About his movements during the past few weeks.’

  ‘But he has not been much in England during the past few weeks. We are in the diamond business and my son goes often to Amsterdam. It saves my husband the journey and leaves him free, also, to attend to the work on this side.’

  ‘Is your son in England now?’

  ‘Yes, but busy, very busy.’

  ‘In his office?’

  ‘In his office, yes.’

  ‘May I have the address, please?’

  ‘Not until I know why you want to see him.’ Her round, fair-complexioned face spelled obstinacy.

  ‘Well,’ said Gavin, ‘an accusation has been levelled against him, and I want…’

  ‘False! My son would do nothing against the law. We have a good name. It would not pay us to cheat people.’

  ‘I know. It is nothing to do with your family business. I’m sorry I can’t explain.’

  ‘I did not know that in England we have the secret police.’

  ‘Come, now, Mrs Rose, you’ll have to trust me. After I’ve spoken to your son he will be at perfect liberty to tell you anything he chooses about the interview, but, if we are to refute this charge which has been made against him, I really must see him. Don’t you understand that?’

  Maarte studied him with solemn, unemotional blue eyes.

  ‘Please to come in,’ she said. ‘I will engage Bernardo upon the telephone and find out whether he is willing to speak to you.’

  ‘He’ll be very unwise if he refuses to speak to me,’ said Gavin, smiling at her, but obtaining no response except the same direct and serious scrutiny. ‘But, before you telephone, perhaps you would be kind enough to answer a question.’

  ‘Perhaps. What is it? Please to sit down. Now?’

  ‘In which country did you spend the war years?’

  ‘In which country? Why, of course, here in England.’

  ‘You were in England when war broke out?’

  ‘Certainly! Since I was born I am living in England, so I was certainly here when war began.’

  ‘Thank you. And your husband?’

  ‘He and his family are English Jews since 1900.’

  ‘Was he in the Army, then, during the war?’

  ‘A gunner, yes.’

  ‘A prisoner of war?’

  ‘Oh, no, never a prisoner of war.’

  ‘And Bernardo, I take it, was too young to fight?’

  ‘Bernardo is a little boy of not quite two when war breaks out. He is a little boy evacuated to America, to my husband’s sister, as soon as we think things may be bad.’

  ‘I see. Thank you. That clears that up, then. Were any of your relatives still in Holland during the war?’

  ‘Oh, yes. My aunt Binnen and my cousins, her daughters. They were interned, they say, and suffered hunger and bad treatment, but not my aunt. She was of the Dutch Resistance. We are proud of her.’

  ‘Yes, of course you are. Now, if you wouldn’t mind ringing up your son…’

  He did not hear the conversation between Bernardo and his mother, as the telephone was not in the room where he was sitting, but Maarte came back after a surprisingly short absence and told him that Bernardo would be pleased to see him over a drink at six o’clock that evening. The hostelry was named and Gavin took his leave. He treated himself later to a large, indigestible tea and lingered over it, and then went off to meet Maarte’s son. He felt interested in Bernardo.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Dinner with Bernardo

  ‘… and your Family I thank God is very well, and I hope a little time will put an end to this troublesom Affaire…’

  Samuel Pepys

  « ^ »

  Bernardo and Gavin met at a pub in the City, but Bernardo soon suggested that they should adjourn.

  ‘My mamma says you want to talk to me,’ he said, ‘and that it is police business. Why don’t I give you dinner somewhere? Then we can discuss matters.’

  ‘Very good of you,’ said Gavin. ‘I agree that perhaps our business might be better talked over at table, preferably in a crowded sort of place where everybody is intent on his own business. I have my car.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bernardo. ‘It is unfashionable, I know, but I don’t drive much in Town.’

  No table had been booked, as the invitation had been issued on the spur of the moment, but Bernardo appeared to be persona grata with the head waiter and a place was found for them in a crowded grill-room which formed part of the basement of a popular hotel not far from Piccadilly Circus.

  Bernardo was a smooth and excellent host and Gavin began to enjoy himself. The case, he was certain by now, was a push-over, but he was canny and careful and did not want to leave any loopholes. Over the hors-d’oeuvres (Bernardo) and his own choice (hare soup) the conversation was polite and general, but when the turbot with Hollandaise sauce had been cleared and a Burgundy substituted for the Barsac, Bernardo got down to business.

  ‘So the police are after me,’ he said, with his charming smile. ‘Exactly why?’

  ‘If the police were really after you,’ said Gavin, ‘I should not be accepting your hospitality. One of our old-fashioned but reassuring rules. There are just a few things I would like you to tell me, but that is all. First, what is your attitude towards your cousin, Florian Colwyn-Welch?’

  ‘My attitude? I don’t really know. I’m engaged to be married to his sister and I don’t think he likes the idea.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘He’s inclined to be a sort of member of the Hitler Youth, I think — i.e. a bit anti-Semitic. Then, too, apart from the fact that it’s obvious he doesn’t want her to marry me, I don’t think he wants Binnie to marry at all. Fortunately she takes this attitude mostly as a big joke. She isn’t very intelligent, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And you don’t find a lack of intelligence a drawback? It doesn’t irritate you, I mean?’

  Bernardo hesitated while the waiter poured a little wine into his glass. He sniffed and tasted, as a matter of form, (the wine cellar at the hotel was a noted one), and then replied:

  ‘There are too many intelligent women in our family. A good-
natured fool will be a most pleasant change. Besides, Binnie, apart from possessing fewer brains than our average, is a restful sort of person. She doesn’t make demands on one, she is cheerful and practical and, in contrast to Florian, she’s extroverted to a most refreshing degree. Of course, she’s apt to giggle, but I don’t mind that at all.’

  ‘Right. Let’s go back to Colwyn-Welch. Do you know why his granduncle quarrelled with him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The old man told me. After all, my grandmother, my father and I are all concerned in the marketing of diamonds. There are times when the trade takes precedence even of family affairs. To be in diamonds is to be in love. Everything else is secondary. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Florian (whose allowance from grandpapa has never been spectacularly generous, and whose prospects suffered an eclipse when I became engaged to Binnie), light-fingered some of the old man’s best diamonds — those he kept in the house — and, like the ass he is, let himself be found out. Well, you might get away with murder where a diamond-merchant is concerned, but not with half-inching his pebbles. There was the father and mother of a row and Florian was cast into outer darkness.’

  ‘But he has been reinstated, as I understand it. How did that come about?’

  ‘Well, grandpapa took me into his confidence, so my mamma and I talked turkey to him. My Dutch sense of justice took precedence, for once, over my Jewish instinct for hanging on to a good thing so long as it was honestly come by. Mamma was particularly forthright, and was heavily backed by uncles Derde and Sweyn. Florian, of course, is popular in the family.’

  Gavin looked up from the roast beef and Yorkshire he had chosen.

  ‘With every member of it?’ he asked. Bernardo smiled and addressed himself to saddle of mutton and brussels sprouts.

  ‘Well, with every member except, possibly, my aunt Ruby, my papa and myself,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it seems fairly certain that while he was in exile in Derbyshire, somebody attempted to poison him with a piece of chocolate-cream which, the evidence indicates, was sent to him from Holland.’