by Alys Clare
‘Now Julian has fallen in love with an actress,’ he says baldly. ‘Her name, or perhaps it is her professional name, is Violetta da Rosa, and I’m told she is part-Italian and has appeared on the stage in Paris, Rome and elsewhere on the Continent. I do not wish to insult or disparage the lady, but nevertheless I am forced to confess that I mistrust her and have very grave doubts about the sincerity of her feelings for my son. He is in many ways an innocent, Miss Raynor; like many young men of his class, he has had very little experience of the world, although, again like many if not all young men, he believes he knows all there is to know.’ He pauses. ‘The young lady in question – well, she is not in fact all that young – is, on the face of it, dazzling and fascinating, and she has undoubtedly turned my son’s head. I have reason to believe that they have – that they –’ to her distress, the pale cheeks blush – ‘that he has taken her as his mistress, although he has not yet set her up in her own accommodation.’
They’ve been signing into the sort of hotels that don’t ask too many questions, Lily thinks. It is, she has to agree, a little sordid. How much more so must it seem to this utterly correct and dignified man sitting before her?
‘Now you have been recommended to me by my good friend Lord Dunorlan.’ His voice has dropped to a whisper. ‘He tells me that you acted with efficiency and discretion, and that I would not be likely to find anybody better.’
She bowed her head. ‘I am gratified to have been of service to his lordship,’ she murmurs.
‘What I would like you to do, if you feel it is possible,’ Lord Berwick goes on, ‘is to perform a very thorough investigation into the lady’s background; in particular, whether she has had liaisons before, whether, indeed, she entertains other men even whilst involved with my son, and what she does when she is not with him.’ His eyes meet Lily’s. His expression is beseeching, full of distress. ‘Is this, do you think, the sort of thing that your Bureau could undertake?’
‘It is precisely the sort of thing,’ she says.
‘Then will you agree to take the case?’
‘I will.’
He seems to slump a little with relief. As if in celebration, he pushes the tall, many-tiered cake stand her way and now, at last, she thinks she might be able to do the contents justice. When they have each had three little cakes and another cup of tea, Lily takes a very small notebook out of her bag and, writing under cover of the table so that even the long-sighted would not be able to see, she jots down, to Lord Berwick’s dictation, the name of the actress (he spells it out), the theatre where she has recently been performing (although he believes that the run is now over and he’s not sure what she is doing now), her known haunts and the places to which his son habitually escorts her. She asks one or two questions about Julian Willoughby, to which his father eagerly replies; it touches her that he appears to think that the more he helps her with information, the greater the likelihood of her being able to achieve the result he so badly needs. Which is, of course, the total discrediting of the not-so-young actress and her rapid descent from the pedestal upon which her adoring and besotted young suitor has placed her.
Lily doesn’t even let herself think that all the discrediting in the world won’t help while young Julian’s infatuation remains at its height; while his hot young blood pumps round his body and his lust is focused on only the one woman.
When the Bureau’s terms have been discreetly discussed and agreed, there is no more to be said. Lily thanks her host for the delightful tea, draws on her gloves, picks up her bag and, murmuring that she will contact him as soon as there is anything to report, takes her leave.
Making her way home, Lily is wondering whether it might be an idea to entrust this task to her new office assistant. In the weeks he has worked for her, she has begun to see that Felix is far, far more than someone to write letters and do the filing (but she certainly shouldn’t have let him anywhere near the plants). It is, after all, a relatively straightforward task, and a handsome man is surely much more likely to persuade an opportunist actress beyond the first flush of youth to open up and tell the truth than someone like herself. Besides, Felix is pawing the ground for something more challenging than the tasks for which she engaged him.
I shall entrust the job to him, she decides. She gives a curt nod, as if to endorse the decision. It will be a test, and I shall judge carefully how he gets on.
She smiles to herself as she heads down into the underground station. She finds she is quite looking forward to telling him the good news.
She can tell as soon as she enters the outer office that something has happened, for there is a sense of suppressed excitement about her new assistant and he is clearly finding it difficult to stop smiling. She nods to him, suggests he makes them a cup of tea and, while he does so, goes into her own office to remove her hat and gloves and take her notebook out of her bag. When he returns with the tea tray she summons him into her office and pulls up a chair.
‘Well?’ she says, regarding him over her teacup.
He feigns innocence. ‘Well what?’
She goes on watching him. ‘If I had to guess,’ she says, ‘I would say someone came to the office, confided some small tale of woe to you, you asked a few questions and then, when this someone asked if the Bureau could help, you said yes and proffered our rates. If I am correct and you have indeed found us a new client, then I congratulate you.’
The rapidly changing expressions that cross his face are highly entertaining, and she is quite hard put to it not to smile. After a moment he puts his cup down and clears his throat.
‘You are indeed correct, in all but one detail.’ His clear hazel eyes fix on hers. ‘If I were to place this small tale of woe, as you call it, somewhere on a scale between lost dogs and illicit love affairs, I would put it very close to, if not at, the top.’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘Go on.’
‘A man called Stibbins has a young and beautiful wife who he discovered, after a short time of being married to her, is a gifted medium. Seances are now regularly held at their house in the suburbs south of the river, and all went well until the wife, whose name is Albertina, began to be informed by her guides that someone intends to harm her. Mr Stibbins, stoutly uxorial man that he is, wanted to protect his wife himself, but was persuaded by all the seance regulars that the threat was too dangerous and hence he went first to the police, who didn’t appear to offer much in the way of protection, and then here to us – er, to the Bureau.’
He corrects himself swiftly, but she rather likes the fact that he said us.
‘And you said we would investigate?’
‘I did,’ he agrees. ‘I told him what we charge and he swallowed a couple of times but said that would be all right. He asked how we’d go about it and I said I couldn’t tell him that. Well, I couldn’t have done,’ he adds disarmingly, ‘since I have absolutely no idea.’
‘Well, one thing you should have done is to have asked for a deposit in respect of the engagement of our services, there and then,’ she says, ‘but that is easily put right by a letter in the post to him tonight.’
He nods an acknowledgement.
She waits, for she is quite sure there is more. ‘And?’ she prompts when he doesn’t speak.
‘I gave him one of the business cards and he assumed I was L. G. Raynor and I didn’t correct him,’ he blurts out. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Raynor, I know I ought to have told him, but he was in the middle of spilling his story to me and I didn’t want to distract him.’
She nods. She is thinking. After a few moments she says, ‘You ought to have told him, yes, but I can appreciate why you didn’t.’ He looks absurdly grateful. ‘And in fact,’ she goes on slowly, ‘I think it may have been to our advantage that you left the misapprehension uncorrected.’ She thinks some more. ‘I believe I should be the one to investigate these threats from the spirit world,’ she says eventually. His face falls. Wait, she thinks. Just be patient. ‘Mr Stibbins doesn’t know me, and has no idea o
f my connection with the World’s End Bureau. I think I should discover when the seances are held and present myself at the next one.’
Felix is frowning, but it soon becomes clear that it’s not because she has taken over the case. ‘I think that you turning up out of the blue the very next time they sit in Circle – that’s how they refer to it – would look suspicious. Well, suspicious is the wrong word – I mean that Ernest Stibbins might well guess you’ve come from the Bureau. Instead, why not observe the comings and goings and select one of the Circle, follow her, get into conversation with her, let it be known you’ve suffered a recent loss, and let her be the one to suggest you go along to the next seance? That way, you’ll be introduced by someone they already know, and the likelihood of Ernest guessing your real reason for being there will be lessened.’
He is right, and he has reasoned well. But, ‘Why is it preferable for Mr Stibbins not to know who I am?’ she asks.
He frowns in thought. ‘Because you need to see them in Circle precisely the way they usually are,’ he says. ‘If he or anybody else knows there’s a private investigator present, it’ll be different.’ He shakes his head in impatience. ‘I can’t really explain any better than that, although I do feel strongly that you ought not to reveal who you really are.’
She nods. ‘I agree. I will do precisely as you say. When does the Circle meet again?’
He consults a black-backed notebook. ‘They almost always sit on Sundays, sometimes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, although Ernest really prefers to be there to support Albertina and it’s rare for him to have a half-day holiday. He works at Pearson and Mitchells, off Oxford Street, in the accounts department,’ he adds. ‘The Sunday session, I imagine, is for the benefit of this who work all the rest of the week. So, the next meeting will be this coming Sunday, I presume.’
‘Good. And while I embark on investigating these threats to Albertina Stibbins, there is something I want you to do.’ Even when the delighted astonishment is still spreading across his face, she tells him the tale of Julian Willoughby and his actress, and reveals what he is to do about it.
Quite soon, she notices, he has turned to a fresh page in his notebook and is writing rapidly. He asks her several questions, all of them pertinent, one or two of which she cannot in fact answer as she omitted to ask them of Lord Berwick. When she has finished, he sits unspeaking for some time. He is very still, and, uncharacteristically, his mobile face is quite expressionless. This interests her, as she had been starting to wonder how someone whose least emotion seems to be instantly visible in his face could ever hope to succeed as a private investigator. She need wonder no more, for it has suddenly become clear that he has another mode; that, in short, there may well be considerably more to Felix Wilbraham than meets the eye.
Finally he comes out of his reverie. Looking at her, he remarks, ‘It’s Saturday tomorrow.’
‘It is,’ she agrees.
‘The end of the working week,’ he adds softly, ‘although probably not if you’re an actress …’
She waits.
Suddenly he stands up, a swift, quite violent movement as if he can no longer bear to sit still. ‘I’m going to do some groundwork tonight,’ he says. ‘Your Lord Berwick was able to tell you where Violetta da Rosa was last engaged, but he didn’t know, apparently, what she’s doing now. She’ll have an agent, professional actresses always do, and I’m going to begin by finding out who it is.’
Lily looks up at him. ‘I didn’t necessarily expect you to start immediately,’ she says mildly.
He stares at her. ‘Didn’t you?’
Then, with a grin and a gesture that is almost a salute, he picks up his notebook, calls over his shoulder, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and is gone.
Lily finishes her tea, then takes the cups through to the scullery, washes and dries them and sets them back on the shelf. Mrs Clapper won’t be back until Monday – not that Lily is in the habit of leaving her dirty crocks for anyone else to see to – and it will be up to her to keep the kitchen and the scullery neat and tidy over the next two days. Which will probably mean another argument with the Little Ballerina about the importance of cleaning up after oneself and not expecting one’s landlady’s hired help to do it for one …
Oh, dear.
If Lily could make just one wish and have it fulfilled, it would be to have the necessity of having a lodger removed from her. But it is a wish that cannot yet come true, for running a house as large as 3, Hob’s Court is not cheap and she now has the additional cost of employing Felix.
‘Who has just demonstrated very plainly,’ she says aloud, ‘that he is probably worth far more than I am paying him, and who may very well prove to be the making of the World’s End Bureau.’
On that optimistic thought, she goes upstairs to change out of her best costume and then returns to the kitchen to set out a supper tray. Then, passing the hour or so until it is time to eat, she goes back to her desk, locates the large-scale map of London and finds the street where Ernest and Albertina Stibbins live. It is actually quite close, and she can reach it easily by crossing Battersea Bridge, turning east and going through Battersea Park, emerging on its south side and diving down into the maze of streets on the other side of Prince of Wales Road.
Emulating Felix, she opens her notebook at a new page and writes down everything he has just told her about the Stibbins case. The efficient and retentive memory that she developed during her nursing training flexes its muscles and hastens to her aid, names, facts and figures flowing from her pen and onto the clean white paper. After some time, she sits back and looks at what she has written.
Ernest Harold Stibbins married first wife Enid (née Clough) in 1865 when he was 27. She brought a small inheritance to the marriage, and it was this that caused the vicar to introduce her to her future husband, it being his credentials as an accounts clerk (and probably also a man of modest and frugal habits) that persuaded the clergyman he was the man for the job of giving considered and impartial advice.
Here Lily makes a note to herself that she might consider trying to discover where the inheritance came from.
Eight years later, in 1873, Enid Stibbins drowned, apparently having fallen from Chelsea Bridge. Her body is not recovered for some time, and her poor husband is summoned to identify her.
Lily writes a second note, comprising the details of the river police, whom she understands to be responsible for bodies pulled out of the Thames; she believes their headquarters are at Wapping.
Ernest spends several lonely years as a widower before meeting and marrying his second wife, Albertina Goodchild. Considerably younger than he, it is his opinion that she consents to be his wife because he is kind and offers security; he believes, however, that love has since grown. Ernest discovers that she has psychic powers, and—
Lily suddenly sits up straight. It has occurred to her just what a shock it must have been for the correct, upright, frugal-living, excitement-avoiding Ernest to find out just what manner of a young woman he had taken to his bosom and installed, in his carefully neat and tidy little house, as his new wife. Of all things, for a self-confessed stalwart of the local church – churchwarden and long-serving tenor in the choir to boot, she reminds herself – to have married, in all innocence, a gifted medium! What did the fellow members of his congregation think? What about the vicar, the Reverend James Jellicote?
She makes a note: Speak to vicar. Then she realizes that this is a job for Felix, for when she presents herself at the seance, she does not want someone piping up, ‘Ooh, you’re the young woman who was asking the vicar all those questions about Ernest and Albertina!’ London may be vast and home to an ever-increasing population but Lily knows full well that most human beings prefer to live in small, tight communities, and that these are formed even – perhaps especially – within the huge impersonality of a city.
She sits perfectly still for a while. Then she realizes that perhaps there is an important fact neither she nor Felix has yet considered, for
she doubts very much that Albertina’s services as a medium are provided for nothing.
Or, rather, she corrects herself, while it is very unlikely that innocent, unworldly Albertina would expect to be paid for the practising of her gift, what is not so likely is that Ernest would see it that way. If ever called upon by his young wife to justify asking the members of Circle to contribute their thruppence a session, or whatever it is, he would probably say, ‘But, my dear, they sit in our house, they take advantage of our fire in the colder months, they drink the tea we offer afterwards and nibble at the biscuits we set out for them. Is it not therefore reasonable to ask a modest sum in recompense? Such is the comfort and the joy that your generous sharing of your gift provides, dear Albertina, that I am perfectly sure none of those who attend would wish us to be out of pocket.’
Although Lily has not yet encountered Ernest Stibbins, she can almost hear him saying the words.
She discovers that she is looking forward very much to meeting Mr and Mrs Stibbins.
She fetches her supper on its tray, lights another lamp, for time has gone by and the darkness is advancing, and, while she takes a first bite, she begins to work on the identity she will assume when she goes to the seance. She cannot, of course, present herself as Lily Raynor or even L. G. Raynor, since, for better or worse, that is the name that Ernest Stibbins associates with Felix.
‘I shall be Miss Maud Garrett,’ she announces to the empty office, ‘gently reared but forced through circumstances to make her own living. A father in the army who died in India, a mother remarried to a man by whom she has several children, so that there is no money to support a grown-up daughter,’ she goes on, her imagination fired by this absorbing task of creating an alternative identity, ‘and last year cheered enormously by meeting a suitable young man who, after a few months, proposed marriage.’
She writes swiftly, the poached egg on toast forgotten and rapidly cooling.
