by Carola Dunn
“You appear to know a good deal about Mrs. Abernathy.”
“Not really.” She looked flustered. “That is, I suppose so. Gilbert has worked with her before and he talks about the people he works with.”
“People like Miss de la Costa? I expect you hoped for a word with her, too, when you went to the soloists’ room.”
“No, why should I? I didn’t know yet … I mean, I had no reason to talk to her. I gave up years ago trying to change Gilbert or to persuade his mistresses not to take him away from his family.”
“Until it came to Mrs. Abernathy,” Alec rapped out. “You begged her to give up your husband.”
“Begged!” she cried, jumping up. “I wouldn’t have begged that woman for a crust if I and my children were starving in a ditch!” She took an agitated turn about the room.
Standing with his hand on the back of his chair, Alec continued, “We know you spoke to her about her involvement with your husband.”
“I suppose she gossiped.” Mrs. Gower slumped into her seat again. “That’s the sort of thing she’d do. Yes, I talked to her. I reminded her about Gilbert’s responsibilities to his family, and her own to poor Mr. Abernathy. That’s all.”
“You admit you knew about the affair.”
“I knew,” she said drearily.
“And that it was different from Mr. Gower’s previous liaisons, which you could overlook rather than deprive your children of their father. As an Englishwoman, Mrs. Abernathy posed a real threat to your marriage.”
“I didn’t kill her! Gilbert always comes home!”
“Of course he does, Jennie darling.” Gower came in, wearing an unconvincing air of hearty cheerfulness. “What-ho, Chief Inspector.”
“Good-afternoon, sir.” Internally, Alec cursed. Another few minutes and Jennifer Gower might have confessed, saving everyone a great deal of trouble. “I’m here to clear up one or two points. Mrs. Gower has been most helpful. Perhaps I might ask you a few questions now?”
“Of course, old chap. Er”—he gave his wife an uneasy glance—“Jennifer, my dear, I’ll take these gentlemen to my study and leave you in peace.” He led the way.
The tenor’s study was dominated by a second piano rather than the usual desk, but the deep, comfortable armchairs were standard for a gentleman’s retreat, as was the tantalus on a side-table. Gower crossed to it at once.
“You’ll have a drink, Chief Inspector? No? Constable?”
“No, thank you, sir.” Piper was at his most stolid.
“Not on duty, I suppose, ha ha. You don’t object if I ‘tak a wee dram’?” He poured a hefty slug of Scotch from a cut-glass decanter. Something about the action tugged at Alec’s mind, but he lost the thought as Gower continued, “No smoking, if you don’t mind. Bad for the voice.” He patted his throat, swathed in a red and blue silk Paisley cravat.
As they sat down, Alec said, his tone dry, “I hope you’re sufficiently recovered from the shock, sir, to tell us a bit more than you were able to last night.”
Gower was not at all abashed. “I expect Miss Dalrymple told you I said Marchenko did it,” he said breezily. “I didn’t actually see him, I’m afraid. Didn’t set foot out of the dressing-room, as a matter of fact, and nor did Finch, if you’ve got him in your sights.”
Alec had forgotten the organist. “You’ll vouch for Mr. Finch?”
“Certainly, though I don’t expect him to return the favour. Lives in another world, does our Finch. Never stirred from his imaginary organ.”
“But Marchenko did leave the dressing-room. What makes you think he might have murdered Mrs. Abernathy?”
“Oh, he was mad as a hornet at Bettina. With good cause, to be fair,” he added. “She was a bloody nuisance to me, but she virtually swindled him out of a fortune in jewels and then was damn nasty on top of it—in public, too. Don’t know how I ever got myself mixed up with her.” He gulped the remains of his whisky.
“An unhappy situation,” Alec agreed smoothly, “especially for her husband and your wife.”
“Jennifer didn’t know about Bettina,” Gower said, but he had the grace to look a trifle shamefaced. “Besides, she’s used to my … er … peccadilloes. She knows I’d never desert her and the children. You’re not suggesting she poisoned Bettina? Good God, man, Jennie wouldn’t hurt a fly! Look at the way she spends half her time at that East End clinic, taking care of indigent brats.”
“And Roger Abernathy?”
“Abernathy? Well, it wasn’t as if I was Bettina’s first lover, was it? Poor fellow, he was used to wearing the horns. He’d do anything for her, even put up with that.”
“Did she take another lover after you?”
Gower frowned. “I wondered about Eric Cochran. I’d heard he was involved with a mezzo-soprano, and he gave Bettina the Verdi part. But if it wasn’t for that, I’d have said there was no love lost between them. He wouldn’t have bumped her off, though, not in the middle of a concert. Nor would his wife. She’s even keener on his career than he is.”
“So I’m given to understand. What about Muriel Westlea?”
“Who? Oh, the fair Bettina’s ugly sister. In the choir, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I know about her,” Gower said without interest.
“Yakov Levich?”
“The violinist? Well, one is more or less obliged to shake hands with the leader after a good performance, but otherwise … Not quite one of us, is he?”
“Olivia Blaise?”
“Is she the smart little filly who was hanging about? Pupil of Abernathy’s? Not my style,” he dismissed her.
The tenor had little else to impart. Sergeant Tring was summoned from the kitchen and the Gowers’ fingerprints were taken without incident.
Mrs. Gower showed them out. On the doorstep, she detained Alec with a hand on his sleeve and said urgently, “You must believe me, I really am resigned to Gilbert’s straying. I’ve learned to make allowances for the artistic temperament, not like Ursula Cochran, who just pretends it hasn’t happened, though she knew perfectly well her husband was carrying on with that woman.”
“It seems certain, ma’am, that Eric Cochran and Mrs. Abernathy were not lovers.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. Misery loves company, Alec thought. “Well, I’ll have to make sure dear Ursula knows her suspicions were unfounded. Good-bye, Chief Inspector.” Shoulders drooping, she turned and went back into the house.
As the door clicked shut, Tom Tring announced, “The servants all agree Madam’s been like a cat on hot bricks for weeks.”
“She knew about Bettina all right,” Alec said grimly, “and she was afraid if it came to a tug of war over her husband, she’d lose. She’d visited Miss Fotheringay’s studio, and she was alone in the soloists’ room. In the normal way of things, I’m sure she’s a kind and charitable woman, but for her children’s sake … .”
They passed the laurels and emerged into the street. In the front seat of Alec’s little Austin sat a stranger.
12
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher?” The stranger stepped out of the car onto the pavement. Middling height, nondescript clothes, a trilby pulled low over a nondescript face with a small, neat, greying moustache—altogether unremarkable, yet somehow vaguely familiar. He held out a card towards Alec, shielded by his hand from Tom and Ernie.
Superintendent, Special Branch!
Founded as the Special Irish Branch in the 1880s, to combat the Fenian bombing outrages, the organization had got off to an unhappy start when its offices were blown up by the Irish terrorists. However it had then put an end to their attacks in London and gone on to the investigation and suppression of anarchist plots. Now it dealt with all crimes of a political nature.
And when Special Branch and Criminal Investigation Department crossed paths, the Special Branch had the right of way.
“I’d like a word with you, Mr. Fletcher. Five or ten minutes at most.”
“Tring, Piper, I
’ll meet you outside Miss Blaise’s place in a quarter of an hour.”
As the two trudged off, the Special Branch man returned to the passenger seat of the Chummy, so Alec walked around and got in behind the wheel. “What’s going on, sir?”
“You’re to stay away from Dimitri Marchenko,” said the clipped, public school and Sandhurst voice.
“Marchenko! But he’s one of my main suspects.”
“Nonetheless, leave him alone.”
“I’m investigating a murder, sir,” Alec said angrily, “not an unlicensed vehicle.”
The Superintendent sighed. “I was warned you wouldn’t lie down and roll over at a word. I’ll explain, but if a hint of this leaks out I’ll have your badge and your head, not necessarily in that order.”
“I can keep my mouth shut, sir.”
“If I thought you couldn’t, I’d have you taken off the case altogether. Marchenko is a member of a group of anti-Bolshevik refugees. In a sense, he’s their cover: he provides a respectable front, funding, and a house. The cellar of that house is full of explosives, dynamite, glyceryl trinitrate, TNT, enough to take out every building for streets around. They’re planning to blow up the Soviet Russian legation.”
“But if they get the wind up … ,” said Alec slowly, chilled by the memory of the Siege of Sidney Street. In 1911, when he was fresh from university and doing his years on the beat, two anarchists who had killed three policemen had been cornered in a terrace house. Rather than be taken, they had set it on fire, regardless of the risk to the houses next door.
“If they get the wind up, who knows but what they may decide to go out in a blaze of glory, taking several hundred neighbours with them.”
The two men sat in silence for a moment. Then Alec said, “We’ll stay away from Marchenko, sir. What are you going to do?”
“You know better than to ask that,” the Special Branch man said mildly. He opened the car door and strolled away down the street, the very image of unconcern.
Alec’s mind raced. He had better stop the uniformed branch enquiring after Marchenko at chemists’ shops, but he’d go on asking the other suspects about him. They would think it odd if he didn’t. Nor did he see any reason not to have the jewellery valued. If the Ukrainian’s motive was as strong as Gower seemed to think, and if no convincing evidence against any of the others turned up, he would do his best to get his man. Once the plot was foiled, once Marchenko and his fellow-conspirators were safely in custody, the Special Branch might even be glad of a murder charge to hold him on.
He drove to a telephone booth, where he rang up the Inspector in charge of the chemists’ enquiry team. Fortunately, he felt justified in taking Finch and Miss de la Costa off their list as well as Marchenko, so Inspector Wardle saw nothing noteworthy in his request.
Tom Tring was going to be another matter. He’d want to know just why they were dropping his favourite suspect from the investigation, and he wouldn’t be slow to connect it with the mysterious stranger. On the other hand, very likely he had seen the Superintendent around at the Yard, knew perfectly well who he was, and would not only button his lip but keep Piper’s buttoned, too.
When Alec reached Miss Blaise’s address, a light rain was falling and there was no sign of his men. They had had plenty of time to walk here. He looked around in irritation to see where they might have taken shelter.
“Hoy, Chief!”
He glanced up. Ernie was hanging out of a third-storey window, waving and beckoning. Still more irritated, Alec went up. He was sure he had told them to wait outside.
Olivia Blaise opened the door to him. “Don’t blame them, Chief Inspector,” she said, regarding his sour expression with sardonic amusement. “I came home to find them waiting and as it had just started to rain I persuaded them to come in. You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll think you’re about to arrest me. The kettle’s on the boil.”
“Thank you, Miss Blaise, I won’t say no.”
His arrival crowded the tiny room. As sparsely and cheaply furnished as Marchenko’s, it was brightened by opera posters drawing-pinned on the walls, vivid-hued cushions scattered about, and colourful curtains. The curtain in one corner probably hid Miss Blaise’s clothes, that in another a wash-basin. The kettle steamed on a gas-ring beside the metered gas fire. Tring sat on a kitchen chair painted scarlet, Piper on a couch-bed covered with a patchwork quilt.
A working girl making the best of things—Alec felt an immediate sympathy with her. He joined Ernie on the couch.
Tom had already taken fingerprints, so once the tea was poured, Alec started asking questions. Olivia Blaise frankly admitted to her affair with Eric Cochran. She was “pretty sure” Mrs. Cochran had not known about it.
“We were fearfully discreet,” she said with a grimace. “He took me to the most ghastly cafés and we always came back here, never to a hotel, let alone dancing. But dear Ursula may guess now, if she hasn’t already. Eric’s asked me to sing in the repeat performance.”
“Congratulations.”
“Which means I gained by Bettina’s death precisely what she denied me in life. It’s all right, Chief Inspector, I didn’t poison your tea. I didn’t poison Bettina, either. It was by no means a sure thing that there would be a repeat performance, nor that Eric would offer me the part. We had quarrelled, as I’m sure you’re aware. In spite of that, I suppose I might have considered doing in the bitch before the concert, in the hope of a reconciliation. I didn’t, though. The idea never crossed my mind, and if it had I’d have chased it out.” Her sharp-featured face and cool eyes softened. “I couldn’t have done that to Roger.”
All she’d say about the others was that Muriel, likewise, would never deliberately do anything to distress Roger Abernathy, and that Eric would not have sabotaged his own concert. “Nor would she,” Miss Blaise added sourly.
She hadn’t noticed what anyone else did while she was in the soloists’ room. She’d been talking to Muriel. When Muriel went into the dressing-room to fetch her music, she had listened to Eric arguing for a last-minute change in the “quam olim Abrahae.” (Piper’s flying pencil hesitated at the phrase and she kindly spelled it out for him.) She hadn’t gone anywhere near the table.
“Except just to tell Mr. Levich that Muriel wanted a word with him.”
“I assume you didn’t observe Mr. Levich putting something in the decanter?”
She laughed. “No, certainly not. And if it’s gossip you want, well, I’ve enough on my own plate without poking into other people’s business. That’s not a dig at your profession, Chief Inspector,” she assured him with a smile, but she adamantly refused to say more, until, as they left, she said in a reflective voice, “Roger should have married Muriel. Her voice would have been as good if it had been trained, and she’s good and kind. But men always fall for golden curls.” She flipped her own dark, glossy cap derisively. “Good-bye, gentlemen. Do call again some time.”
Following Alec down the narrow staircase, Tring’s ruminative rumble observed, “If there’s anything I hate, it’s seeing a bright young woman madly in love with a married man.”
“Olivia Blaise in love with Eric Cochran?” said Alec, surprised. “She’s very off-hand about him.”
“Ah, she’s not the sort to wear her heart on her sleeve. You was watching her with an eye to Mrs. Abernathy’s murder, Chief.”
“And you with an eye to a pretty girl?”
“That’s as may be.” Tom preened his luxuriant moustache as they emerged into the street. “Take it from me, Chief, she’s pining for him. Now if we was to find Mrs. Cochran dead … .”
“Then I’ll arrest Miss Blaise.” Alec took his place behind the Austin’s wheel and pressed the self-starter. “I’m inclined to doubt she murdered Mrs. Abernathy. If you’re right, Tom, she might even have hoped for Mrs. Cochran to be told about the affair in hopes of cutting her lover loose.”
“Cochrans next, Chief?” asked Piper.
“Yes. We can rule out
Miss de la Costa, at least provisionally. Levich is going to dinner at Abernathy’s and I’d quite like to run him to earth there. Tom, unless I miss my guess, the Cochrans will make a fuss over the fingerprinting so we’ll leave it till last. You talk to the servants first, especially Mrs. Cochran’s lady’s maid and the chauffeur.”
“Right, Chief.”
The Cochrans’ imposing residence overlooked the Thames. A smart, pretty parlourmaid let them in out of the rain. In the hall, several stags’ heads stared down in glassy-eyed disapproval at an antlered hat-tree, an elephant’s-foot umbrella-stand, and a stuffed fox on a pedestal. From the ceiling dangled a cock-pheasant in full flight. Facing the door hung a portrait of a patriarchal gentleman of the hirsute period of the previous century—full beard, moustache, and whiskers—in a shooting-jacket. He was flanked by two suits of armour.
“Crikey!” breathed Ernie Piper, and blushed as the pretty parlourmaid smiled at him.
“I’ll see if the mistress is home,” she said primly, remembering her place. Alec, who had no intention of being denied, followed hot on her heels. She opened a door, glanced back at him, and announced, a bit flustered, “It’s the police, madam.”
Entering the spacious drawing room, Alec winced. Elegant Sheraton and Hepplewhite, hideously disfigured by Victorian bobbles and fringes and antimacassars, mingled with the latest tubular steel and aluminium. Someone with no natural taste knew what was “good,” what was fashionable, and what her father had liked. Wryly aware of his own snobbery, Alec guessed Sir Denzil Vernon attained his baronetcy and his country manor by making a fortune in beer, or perhaps pig-feed, and donating large sums to the Tory party.
Averting his eyes from a stuffed fish in a glass case on the mantelpiece, Alec met the almost equally cold gaze of Mrs. Cochran.
“The striking portrait in the hall, is that Sir Denzil?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s my father.” The atmosphere thawed perceptibly. “No doubt you wish to speak to my husband. He’s rather busy but …”
