A Royal Affair

by Allison Montclair

  “All right. My answer is yes. Where do we meet?”

  “You know where Blackwall Yard is?”

  Lady Matheson glanced over at Iris, who nodded.

  “Yes,” said Lady Matheson.

  “Western side, next to Poplar Dock, there are a bunch of bombed-out warehouses. The one closest to the water, end of Brunswick Street.”

  “Last warehouse by Poplar Dock, end of Brunswick Street,” repeated Lady Matheson as the others scribbled down the address.

  “You come alone—”

  “No, I come with my secretary,” said Lady Matheson. “I am not venturing alone into a bombed-out warehouse on your say-so.”

  “All right, then,” said the man. “But only her.”

  He was expecting something like that, thought Iris.

  “You get there at three thirty.”

  “Four o’clock,” said Lady Matheson. “It will take us some time from where we are.”

  “You’re not at the Palace?”

  “We’re at a secure location, away from prying eyes. Don’t question how we handle this business. Four o’clock if you want your money.”

  “Four, then. The two of you walk in. I’ll have eyes on the place. If I see anything I don’t like, I’m smoke in the wind. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Tell me what you look like.”

  “I’m tall, blond, thirtyish,” said Lady Matheson, perusing Gwen as she spoke. “I’m wearing a light blue suit. My secretary is short, brunette, and wearing a cream-coloured linen suit. I doubt you’ll find any other ladies of that description down that way.”

  “Oh, there’s ladies enough wandering about the docks,” said the man. “Only they don’t dress so nice. Like I said, you go in and wait. Once I know the coast is clear, I come in after you. We make the swap, then I leave and you wait ten minutes. Four o’clock.”

  “But what if—” began Lady Matheson.

  The line went dead.

  Iris tore the address from her pad and folded it up.

  “You can still say no,” said Lady Matheson. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

  “No,” said Iris immediately.

  “Yes,” said Gwen, gathering up the money and putting it in a Hamleys shopping bag that she had saved from her recent expedition. “Go hide in the Palace, Patience. We’ll call Mrs. Fisher when we’re done.”

  “Good luck,” said Lady Matheson.

  Gwen waited until she heard them leave through the building’s front entrance, then closed the office door and turned to face Iris, a look of rage on her face.

  “Thirtyish!” she said indignantly. “She said I look thirtyish!”

  “That’s the part that upsets you?” Iris laughed.

  “I look nothing of the sort!”

  “You are twenty-eight. It’s close enough to be in the -ish range.”

  “But I don’t look it! I take a great deal of care not to look that old. You wouldn’t describe me as thirtyish, would you?”

  “Oh, twenty-fourish, no question,” said Iris, smirking.

  Gwen gave her the Stare.

  “No, I meant nineteen, certainly,” Iris amended hastily. “Fresh out of boarding school, strawberries and cream. Any man who sought you would be robbing the cradle.”

  “Stop,” said Gwen. “The damage has been done. There will be no repairing my ego today.”

  She picked up the Hamleys bag and stared at the money inside.

  “We could go on a massive shopping spree,” she said. “I would feel so much better after.”

  “Moral compass,” said Iris. “Remember?”

  “Right,” sighed Gwen. “Come, Muscle.”

  “Call me that again, and I may hit you.”

  “That’s why I bring you along. Damn!”

  “What?”

  “I should have demanded cab fare while I was being so mercenary. I guess that will come out of our fee. I have so much to learn as a bagman. Shall we?”

  “Ours not to make reply,” said Iris, grabbing her bag. “Ours not to reason why. Ours but to do and die.”

  “Do,” said Gwen firmly. “Only do.”

  * * *

  It took over an hour for the cab to get from Mayfair to the head of Brunswick Street. The cabbie took one look at the wreckage littering the street and pulled over.

  “This is as close as I get,” he said. “Can’t risk damaging the tyres. Are you sure this is where you want to go?”

  “It is,” said Gwen, paying him. “Thank you for your time.”

  “How are you getting back?” he asked. “Should I wait?”

  “We may be a while. We’ll find our way.”

  They got out and stood at the intersection, looking down towards the Thames. There were graving docks and warehouses still in working order off to their left, but the view directly in front of them was a war zone, untouched by repairs. Ruined warehouses lined the road, caved-in roofs surrounded by scorched walls. The road itself was lined with twisted rails, their jagged ends bent up towards the heavens in a final rictus of agonised steel. At the end of the street, a large crater marked where one of the heavy bombs had hit, bricks and cobblestones strewn carelessly about its edges.

  “Cheerful sight,” said Iris. “I don’t suppose there will be tea available.”

  “We’re early,” said Gwen. “Do you think he’s here yet?”

  “I think he’s here and watching us already,” said Iris.

  “Do you think he knows it’s us?”

  “Unless there have been other pairs of similarly dressed ladies wandering about, I should think we’re obviously us. Let’s go. And mind your footing.”

  “I never wear the right shoes for our more criminal endeavours,” complained Gwen, looking at the broken surface dubiously.

  They walked carefully down the street, stepping around the shards of broken glass and metal littering their path.

  “I’m glad it’s the last warehouse,” said Iris. “It would be difficult to tell which of these ruins to count otherwise. You brought your torch, I hope?”

  “Yes. A Girl Guide is always at the ready when things are at their darkest.”

  Iris scanned the ruins on both sides of the street.

  “I don’t see him,” she said. “But there are more than a dozen places he could be hiding.”

  “There isn’t a watchman on guard,” Gwen noted.

  “No need. There’s nothing to steal except scrap metal. It’s a smart choice of location.”

  “I’ll remember that the next time I do this,” said Gwen. “I’m frightened, I admit it.”

  “Now you’re frightened,” said Iris. “Where was this sensible reaction when we needed it? Shall we turn back?”

  “No,” said Gwen. “We’ve come this far. We have to see it through.”

  The last warehouse was mostly intact. A metal awning projected over the water, but the roof was heavily damaged. The brickwork, despite the utilitarian nature of the building, had bits of ornamental design riddling the surface, many of the bricks gouged and chipped from the debris of the blasts. An old sign dangled vertically from one rusting iron hook, the words “Midland Rai—” still legible under the soot.

  They advanced towards the front door. Gwen consulted her wristwatch.

  “Five of four,” she said. “Do we care about making an entrance at the exact hour?”

  “I’d rather not be standing about,” said Iris. “Look! There’s a padlock.”

  She pointed to where it lay to the side of the entrance, a chain lying next to it, still threaded through its loop. The plates to which the lock and chain had been secured were beyond them, separated from the door.

  “Someone has prepared the way,” said Iris. “With a crowbar. I don’t like that he has a crowbar. Crowbars can do a lot of damage to thirtyish-looking women.”

  “In other words, you want me to go in first,” said Gwen.

  “Curse you,” said Iris.

  She pushed the door open and waited fo
r a moment. The interior was dark.

  “Ready?” she asked, pulling her torch from her bag and holding it in her left hand.

  “Ready,” said Gwen, holding hers. Both voice and hand were unsteady.

  “Come on, Girl Guide,” said Iris. “Be prepared.”

  She stepped inside, Gwen following.

  The far corner on the left had crumbled, letting in some light, but the late afternoon sun was behind them, so much of the space beyond the doorway was dark. They stood side by side, letting the beams from their torches play across the cavernous space.

  His eyes still glistened. He had been crying, thought Iris, as she went over to where he lay. He didn’t die right away, so there were tears, whether from the pain or because he knew it was over and there was nothing he could do about it. The streaks marked his cheeks on both sides, falling towards his temples.

  “Iris?” Gwen’s voice quavered. “Is he—?”

  Iris squatted down by him and felt for a pulse, just in case she was wrong. But she wasn’t.

  “Dead,” she said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Iris stood, whipping her torch around.

  “Gwen, get that door closed,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Close the front door. And be a dear and wipe the outer handle for me first? I don’t want to leave any prints behind.”

  “But—”

  “No arguments with me right now,” said Iris, and Gwen saw the knife in her hand, then heard a soft snicking sound reverberating through the space as she flipped it open.

  “Iris?”

  “Gwen. Door. Now!” said Iris, sweeping her torch in every direction, then striding through the debris. “And thank you for not screaming.”

  “I’m not screaming? I thought I was screaming,” said Gwen as she moved numbly to the front door. “Why am I not screaming?”

  She took her handkerchief out and wiped the outer handle, then shut the door. Then she realised she had her bare hand on the inner handle. She let it go like a hot poker, then wiped it over and over again.

  She turned back to face the darkness. Iris was off to the left somewhere, her torch beaming its rays across the space, momentarily illuminating small portions of the interior—piles of rubble, old coal hoppers lying on their sides, a wheelbarrow split in jagged halves. There was a sudden flapping noise, and a group of rooks took flight through the hole in the corner, making rasping squawks as they were roused from their nests.

  What was the collective noun for rooks? thought Gwen. Parliament? No, that was owls. A clamour. That was it. Too appropriate. A clamour of rooks fleeing Iris, a clamour fleeing the glamour and the glimmer of Iris, who was off to the left in the darkness with a knife in one hand, a torch in the other, seeking a killer.

  Who, for all they knew, was to the right instead. Moving towards Gwen.

  Gwen swung her torch in that direction, rewarding herself with a fleeting glimpse of the dead man, still staring up at the roof. Past him, the room was empty. There was another set of wide doors in that direction. Must be for loading whatever it once was from ships to hoppers, or hoppers to ships. So much she didn’t know about what went on in warehouses, far from her Kensington life.

  So much she didn’t know about anything anymore.

  Iris prowled through the expanse of the warehouse, flashing the torch down at the floor every other step to make sure she wasn’t about to plunge through a hole into the Thames or whatever rat-infested sewer lay underneath.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she sang softly, her knife held before her, reflecting the torchlight.

  She saw no one. Satisfied that the killer had fled, she picked her way back to where Gwen held her post, waving her torch around wildly.

  “He’s gone,” reported Iris, taking a pair of black leather gloves from her bag and pulling them on. “Whoever he was, he chose not to hang around. Now, keep an ear out for anyone coming, and do me a favour and shine your torch at this poor chap.”

  “All right,” said Gwen, complying. “But why—my God, Iris! You’re—you’re touching him! It! Him!”

  “Can’t leave without seeing if he has what we’re looking for,” said Iris, running her hands through his coat. “Blast. Nothing that feels like a packet of letters. Here’s his billfold. Money still in it. And there’s his ident card. Nikolas Magoulias.”

  “He’s Greek?”

  “Well, it’s a Greek name,” said Iris. “British ident card, though. I wonder if it’s real.”

  She lit up the man’s face again. Olive-complexioned, dark hair and mustache. Glistening eyes …

  She reached down and closed them gently.

  “I should leave pennies for the ferryman,” she whispered to him. “I’m sorry that I won’t be.”

  She replaced his billfold in his coat pocket. Something glinted a few feet to her right. She turned her torch towards it.

  “Look,” she said. “A dagger.”

  “He was stabbed?”

  “He was stabbed, certainly,” said Iris, shining her torch at the man’s stomach, which was covered with blood. “Several times. But not with that.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Gwen.

  “Look at the blade,” said Iris. “Whoever stabbed this fellow plunged his knife in to the hilt, and did it more than once. That dagger’s blade is only bloodied at the tip. Let me see—”

  She slid her hands up his sleeves, then felt behind his neck.

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s a sheath at his collar. The dagger must have been his. He was able to do some damage to his killer before he succumbed.”

  “Should we be glad for that?” asked Gwen.

  Iris stood and shone her light at the ground around the man. Something red and wet caught her eye.

  “There,” she said, pointing to it. “A splash of blood. And another beyond it. The killer went that way, through that door.”

  “Then I think we should go out this way,” said Gwen, reaching for the front door. Then she froze. “Iris. There’s a siren. And I think it’s getting closer.”

  “Let’s take our chances with the killer, then,” said Iris. “Come on.”

  Gwen stood anchored in place.

  “We can’t just leave him,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right. There will be vermin.”

  “Sirens, Gwen,” said Iris, coming forwards to grab her by the arm. “The police will find him.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “I promise you that we will make an anonymous call at the first telephone box we find once we’re safely away,” said Iris. “Now, come on!”

  She hauled Gwen to a small door by the large ones facing the Thames.

  “Step to the side,” she instructed Gwen. “We don’t want to get any blood on your shoes.”

  “We’ve disturbed a crime scene,” said Gwen.

  “We have,” said Iris. “We’ve done many illegal things in a short space of time, and now we are going to run from the police like good criminals should.”

  She opened the door and peered out, knife at the ready.

  “The coast is clear,” she reported. “Follow me.”

  They emerged onto a strip of dock, half of which had fallen into the water. Iris took a quick look. The blood trail went towards their right.

  “He doubled back to Brunswick Street,” she said. “Maybe while we were in there. I’m not going to chance going after him and winding up in the arms of the police.”

  A sharp whistle hailed them from the middle of the river.

  “There’s our ride,” she said, waving to a small boat with an outboard motor heading in their direction. The skipper waved back.

  “Ladder,” said Iris, pointing to one nearby.

  “Wrong shoes for that as well,” muttered Gwen.

  Iris swung herself over the ladder and climbed down. Gwen gulped, then followed her.

  Sally sat in the stern of the boat, smiling broadly, the engine idling behind him.

  “Ahoy, ladies!”
he called. “May I offer you a lift?”

  Then he saw Gwen’s face, and his expression changed immediately to one of concern.

  “What happened?” he said, getting up to help them aboard. “Did you get what you came for?”

  “Quite a bit, and no,” said Iris. “But before I fill you in, have you any whisky handy?”

  “Always,” he said, producing a small pewter flask from his hip.

  Iris took it, removed the cap, and held it out to her partner. Gwen didn’t move, staring into space. Iris placed the mouth of the flask in Gwen’s and tilted it up. Gwen came to life, spluttering, then burst into tears.

  “That’s a start,” said Iris. “Get us out of here, Sally. Stay close to this side so the wall gives us some cover.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” said Sally.

  He took a small paddle and pushed the boat away from the dock, then throttled the motor up a notch.

  “May I?” asked Iris, holding up the flask.

  “By all means,” said Sally. “If I had known we’d be imbibing on the high seas, I would have brought grog.”

  They passed by the Blackwall Stairs, then angled to the south as the Thames snaked between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs.

  “We should give Buchanan-Wollaston a wave,” said Iris. “He’s probably watching us right now.”

  “Who on earth is he?” asked Sally. “And when are you going to tell me what happened? Did you make the exchange?”

  “No.”

  “Fellow got cold feet?”

  “Fellow got cold everything,” said Iris. “Fellow got killed. Stabbed to death, not long before we came on the scene.”

  “Oh dear,” said Sally. “Inconvenient, that. Is that what was drawing the attention of the police as we made our getaway?”

  “Very likely, and I’m wondering who alerted them. Did you see anyone going in or out from your vantage point?”

  “I couldn’t see the entrance,” said Sally. “It was all I could do to get here on time. I caught the note you threw out the window with the address, hopped on my motorcycle, and drove like a madman to where I had the boat ready. Good guess that he’d be using a riverside location.”