Brighton Belle

by Sara Sheridan

  Lisabetta shrugged slightly. She’d known a few. ‘Well, there’s nothing she can do. And, of course, I will have to handle everything as usual.’

  The doctor took a cigarette from a silver-plated box beside the fire. ‘How many have there been? Your clients? I don’t always get to meet them. Quite a menagerie. You can’t have the staff hearing you speak German, you know. It’s not on!’

  Lisabetta got up and crossed the room prettily. She stood over him. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? It’s all gone haywire down here, Crichton, and I hold you responsible. Three bodies in less than a week!’

  ‘Hardly!’ the doctor stifled a laugh. ‘Come on!’

  ‘And there’ll be more,’ she said ominously. ‘Getting rid of bodies is so ... troublesome. You do realise what’s at stake?’

  The doctor nodded.

  Lisabetta turned with a swish. She crossed to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a brandy with a dash of soda and a shot of whisky for the doctor, which she handed over solemnly.

  They clinked glasses.

  ‘Just don’t forget how easy it would be to poison you,’ she said, once he’d swallowed.

  18

  Horse racing is animated roulette.

  ‘This flat suits you, Mirabelle,’ Vesta announced the following morning . She had never slept anywhere so swanky – it was a far cry from the sparse bedsit she rented on the top floor of a shop along from the People’s Picture Palace on Lewes Road. She’d known, of course, that Mirabelle had some money – you could tell by her clothes – but she hadn’t expected the high-ceilinged apartment, the brand new kitchen and the expensive furnishings including an ornate pair of solid silver candlesticks perched on the alabaster fireplace. That said, the flat was a tip – there were newspapers everywhere for a start.

  Neither of the women had slept well, and now Vesta was concerned she wasn’t going to eat well either. Having skipped dinner she found herself, unsurprisingly, searching in vain through Mirabelle’s kitchen cupboards for something worth the effort of breakfast. It appeared that Mirabelle subsisted on tinned soup and sandwich paste. There was nothing else in the pantry. Vesta, however, did come across an abundance of ration slips in one of the drawers – Mirabelle never used much in the way of her weekly allowance – so she set out early for the nearest shop, bringing home butter, eggs, sugar, milk, coffee and some very nice bacon which she had bought under the counter.

  ‘I’m making pancakes,’ she called out.

  Mirabelle sat in the armchair by the high window with the map spread out before her. She rarely ate before lunchtime but whatever Vesta was doing certainly smelled nice. It was strange to have someone in the flat again – another human being.

  Vesta strolled through with a large plate piled high and two delicate china cups full of steaming strong black coffee. She fell cross-legged to the floor next to Mirabelle.

  ‘I know you don’t eat anything, but you got to try this, Mirabelle. Mmm.’

  Mirabelle reached over, tore the corner from a pancake and slipped it into her mouth. It was heavenly.

  ‘You’re a really good cook,’ she said to Vesta.

  ‘I’ll make some man a great wife some day,’ Vesta chimed. ‘Just got to find me some lucky black man who’s worth the trouble. Oh, and not get murdered.’

  Mirabelle smiled. ‘So, today,’ she picked up her cup, ‘I’m going to the racecourse. It’s the last place we can actually place Ben McGuigan.’

  ‘OK,’ Vesta agreed, her mouth still full. ‘And I’ll stay in the office. At one they’ll ring me and let me speak to Sandor. Do you think they’ll kill him?’ she asked, not for the first time.

  ‘Not until they’re sure they don’t need him. He’s a bargaining chip,’ Mirabelle said. ‘We have to keep him that way. Do you suppose people dress up for the races?’

  Vesta shrugged. ‘What – like they do at Ascot? Shouldn’t think it’s quite so swish.’ She pondered the question with tremendous seriousness. ‘Have you got a nice hat, though? That’s what ladies wear to the races, isn’t it? A hat?’

  Mirabelle disappeared into the bedroom and emerged wearing a glamorous pink silk confection on her head. She had bought it to wear at a wedding – it seemed like a hundred years ago.

  The coral shade brought out the hazel of her eyes, which were quite startling when you noticed them, thought Vesta. It was the first time she had seen Mirabelle wear anything frivolous. The splash of colour sparked her dark understated brown dress into life and easily knocked five years off her age. ‘That’s lovely!’ Vesta giggled.

  ‘I have to look like I belong there but I don’t want to attract attention,’ Mirabelle said.

  Vesta nodded. Her first thought was that with those eyes you would notice Mirabelle anywhere – she was simply too striking. Then, as her mind flew forwards, she ran through what she’d be doing later in the day while Mirabelle lived it up at Fairfield Road. She felt a flicker of emotion. ‘Mirabelle, what should I say to Sandor? They’re going to ring in four hours.’ She checked her watch. ‘What should I tell him?’

  ‘He’s a priest. Just say you’re praying for him – something like that. Don’t mention anyone or anywhere specific and talk about yourself as “I” not “we”. They’ll be listening. Say you’re sticking to the plan and that your thoughts are with him. And take a note of whatever he says – he might try to tell us something. The details are important.’

  Vesta frowned. ‘If anything happens ...’

  Mirabelle laid her hand on Vesta’s arm reassuringly. ‘We have time. We’ll find him. We’re going to do our best.’ Her tone was more confident than she felt. Mirabelle knew all too well that kidnap attempts rarely went to plan. It simply wasn’t a linear process. Sandor’s odds were poor, especially given what Vesta had told her about his attitude – he was fighting his captors openly rather than trying to befriend them. She buttoned her chocolate-coloured taffeta coat and tried not to think about it – Sandor had survived the aerial bombing of Berlin in the last few months of the war, he’d made it through SS screening procedures and, after VE Day, he had got himself to London, to the department, without any official help. He was tough and experienced, and that would count in his favour. After everything Sandor had survived he deserved to die safe and sound, at a good age, in his bed. Mirabelle dismissed the thought from her mind. Worrying would only distract her from helping, and it was helping that was important. ‘Come on,’ she grabbed the younger girl’s arm, ‘we’d better get you into the office. We’ve got work to do.’

  Forty minutes later Mirabelle entered the turnstile at Fairfield Road. It was still early, but the racecourse was buzzing and she was surprised to see how many women were already there. Racing was not something she associated with women – it was certainly not a pursuit in which she had ever taken an interest but, she noted, it couldn’t be much less than 50/50 at Brighton today. Many of the ladies were attired far more glamorously than she was, even in her fancy hat with smart high heels. The site was enormous – the crowd ran to a few thousand people already and in the next hour or two that number would double or triple easily. The morning trains from London were set to empty their load almost exclusively for the racecourse and the traffic in the centre of Brighton that morning attested to another large contingent arriving by car.

  The sun was shining and the snippets of conversation wafting by sounded knowledgeable. Mirabelle knew little about livestock and less about horses. She had no interest in riding and as a child she had been brought up in the city by parents who were both wealthy and modern in their outlook. They had, as far as she could remember, always travelled by car. As a result, apart from a rudimentary and mathematical knowledge of the odds given on the horses in each race, Mirabelle had no understanding of how the whole thing worked.

  This was, she cursed, somewhere Sandor would have been able to help. She knew he had grown up on a farm in Csikós, homeland of the Magyar cowboys. He had told her once that when he had announced he was going into the pries
thood, his mother had cried. If Sandor left, the family’s animals would go, in due course, to a cousin. He had been quite old when he got his calling – most priests knew from their choirboy days that the church was their vocation. However, he said when the revelation arrived he was adamant. His mother had been devastated. Perhaps, Mirabelle mused, Lisabetta’s interest in horses came from the same source. Hungarian society lived close to its animals but then, she recalled, Lisabetta probably wasn’t Hungarian. Almost certainly not. And Lisabetta’s interest, it would seem, was taken not by sport but by money.

  With this in mind, drawing her coat around her and checking her pretty pink corsage was in place, Mirabelle made her way down to the touts that ran along the border of the track. Business was already brisk – a lot of money was set to change hands today, the majority of it in one direction. Ready to receive it, the bookmakers were smartly turned out, making notes in their black-bound books and calculating every second while they took the bets placed by the more organised punters, well ahead of the first race. The crowd milling nearby smoked an endless stream of cigarettes, men leaning over smiling women to help light them up, serious-looking older gents smoking cigars or Camels with a contemplative air as they read the Racing Post, and jumpy bookmakers taking a couple of puffs of a Regal or Senior Service and then throwing away the stub with their eyes darting.

  It was a clear day and the vista of the suburbs stretched out into the distance from the racecourse’s vantage point on the hillside. Two little boys sat on the steps to the stand sharing a pie out of a brown paper bag, transfixed at the site of an old black man in an exotic outfit who was shouting ‘I’m Prince Monolulu and I gotta horse’. A crowd was gathering around him, waiting to hear his tips. Further off it looked as if people were attending a cocktail party – dressed to the nines and clutching champagne glasses as they chatted in the sunshine ignoring the show. There was a sense of excitement, even away from the track. Close to it Mirabelle caught the odd glimpse of a horse going through its paces or simply being checked over in the paddock by a trainer or a brightly-coloured satin-clad jockey. Right, she thought, I had best be methodical.

  She pushed her way through the crowd to inspect the touts one by one, heading for M. Williams where Ben had chosen to place his bets. Already there were small queues of people in front of each stand, jostling to get their bets in early. After ten minutes and some fine fresh bruises on her arms, she finally came to the stall marked M. Williams in green paint. There were figures written in chalk on the board – odds on horses in the first race – but the stall itself was empty. With determination Mirabelle pushed her way towards the bookmaker next door – a clean-shaven young man with sparkling green eyes and a crumpled brown suit standing next to a man of similar appearance – could it be his brother? – who was signalling with his hands and face at another bookmaker further up the field. Mirabelle didn’t focus too much on what he was doing.

  ‘Excuse me.’ She pointed at the neighbouring stall. ‘I’m looking for Mr Williams.’

  ‘What do you want, darling? I’ll give you any odds he’s offering you. Just tell me what you fancy.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s Mr Williams I’m looking for.’ Mirabelle tried to think of a reason she’d need to see Mr Williams in person. ‘I’m collecting,’ she came up with, ‘from the other day.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ The young man completely lost interest. ‘Well, he’s round here somewhere, love. Seen him this morning early. Takes a lot of bets from private clients these days, does Manni. Might be off seeing one of those.’

  Mirabelle’s heart jumped. Manni. Manni Williams. Of course, the man who had taken Lisabetta to the Grand. ‘Does he wear a grey suit the same colour as his hair?’

  ‘Thought you laid a bet with him?’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘Yes, yes. I mean, is he wearing that suit today? So I can spot him.’

  ‘Love, he always wears that suit. Some posh bird bought it for him and Manni won’t take it off until he’s in his box, I reckon. Maybe not even then.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Mirabelle retreated into the crowd with her mind running through the possibilities. Here was the link between Lisabetta and the racecourse. The next task was to find out if Manni was simply an upmarket client of Lisabetta’s who paid well for her company or the company of women Lisabetta procured for him, or if he was more than just a punter. Was there money being made illicitly here – and was that what Ben had been onto?

  Mirabelle wasn’t sure how bookmakers worked but if there was a system then there was a way of bucking it. She and Vesta had pored over the figures in Ben’s notebook the night before, but beyond the fact that the dates tied in with the days there were races, they hadn’t got very far. Had Big Ben been onto some scam? The sums he’d written down ran into thousands but betting wasn’t a safe way to make money and you surely couldn’t fix more than the odd race. Whatever he’d been up to, someone had caught him. In fact, in all probability, Lisabetta or Manni had caught him because he’d ended up in Romana Laszlo’s grave. Yes, the man in the grey suit was definitely involved. There was no other way she could see it working. Though if Ben had taken Romana’s place, where was the girl and, for that matter, her baby?

  Mirabelle started as she saw Manni Williams arrive at his stall, joking with a few punters who were waiting. He cheerily bantered with the bookies nearby and looked in his element as he drew a chalk from his pocket and altered the odds on his board. In between, he laconically ate a bacon roll he’d picked up from one of the catering stalls. Between bites he leaned down to take on a couple of bets from the crowd – a drunk woman in lemon yellow ostrich feathers handed over a sheaf of notes, laughing like a drain as she pointed, picking her horse. Then Mirabelle saw Detective Superintendent McGregor emerging from the throng with two uniformed policemen. What was he doing here? Was the bookmaker about to be arrested?

  ‘Good morning, Manni.’ McGregor smiled unpleasantly as the policemen blocked the front of the stall.

  Manni balanced the remains of his roll on the edge of the blackboard. ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you eating. Please.’

  The bookies on the stalls to either side froze so they could listen. One of them held off a fellow trying to hand over some money by motioning him to back off. Manni eyed his roll dubiously and instead rubbed out a set of odds and replaced them.

  McGregor stared. ‘Late breakfast, is it? Had mine before I left the house. Got to be up early to catch the worms, Manni.’

  ‘You got nothing on me,’ Manni said.

  ‘No, I haven’t, Manni. Not a sausage. Not a bean. Not a bacon roll.’

  Manni smirked.

  ‘All I’ve got is a funny feeling. So I thought I’d come down here today. I’m looking for a friend who appears to have taken up horse racing all of a sudden. No one’s seen him for a few days. Ben McGuigan. Know him?’

  Manni nodded. ‘Yeah, one of my punters. Big bloke, isn’t he? Can’t imagine much can have happened to him.’

  McGregor pulled two tickets from his pocket. ‘I wondered if either of these were winners?’

  Manni peered over to inspect the tickets. ‘Nah. Richy Rich placed but you only got on the nose there. Sorry, sir, I don’t remember taking your bet.’

  ‘These are McGuigan’s slips, Manni. As well you know.’

  ‘Oh, I think I might recall him putting down some money. He was hanging around earlier in the week – and last week, too. Thing is, I love my job, me. I got to concentrate on what I’m doing so I don’t always remember names and faces, see? Just numbers. That’s all. Don’t worry, nothing wrong with cashing in your mate’s chit, if you get your hands on it. Legally that’s a bearer bond, that is.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Manni,’ McGregor said sarcastically.

  ‘If you want to lay a bet I can give you a tip,’ Manni offered. He was getting carried away. ‘The Twelve Thirty!’ he called out. ‘Little Boy Blue! I’ll give you three to one.’

 
‘I’m just a spectator today, Manni. I’m watching. I’m going to be watching all day.’

  ‘No fun in that, sir.’ Manni picked up his roll.

  ‘You tell him, Manni, my old son! Three to one on Little Boy Blue is good odds. Might take a shilling or three on that myself,’ the bookie on the next stall shouted.

  McGregor turned. ‘I’m watching,’ he said.

  Mirabelle moved back. She was only one layer of the thickening crowd away from Williams, right behind McGregor. She followed him further into the melee but his mackintosh disappeared in the crush. Casting an eye over her shoulder she turned to see Manni taking bets again. His tone had reminded her of some of the war crimes cases – soldiers who had insisted they had only been doing their duty when they had been on the take or cocky deserters engaged in black market activity. His attitude was too bluff – too defiant. He was definitely up to something – she knew it as well as McGregor. In fact she knew more. But, it would seem, there was nothing stopping him taking bets – that part of what Ben had been looking at was above board and so far there was no sign of the kind of high rollers that Ben had been noting down. So what was Manni doing with these bets that wasn’t legal? Suddenly Mirabelle felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Miss Bevan, isn’t it?’ said a deep voice. ‘I wonder if you’re heading for Mr Williams’ stall. I think it might be best if you come with me.’

  The detective superintendent manhandled her through the crowd and up to the stands where he stopped to light a cigarette, keeping his eyes firmly on Mirabelle. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Mirabelle clutched her bag very tightly. ‘Is it illegal to go to the races now?’

  McGregor stared at her and waited.

  She knew that by acting this way she appeared guilty. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I wanted to come and have a look. This is where Ben made his bet before ...’

  McGregor eyed her suspiciously. ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before his wallet went missing.’ She composed herself. ‘And I still can’t find him, Detective Superintendent. Not anywhere.’