‘Goldie would be happy that Bess and Frank adopted her daughter.’
‘I didn’t know Goldie, but, yes, I think she would have,’ Ena said thoughtfully. She laughed. ‘When Nancy first came to Foxden Hotel with her aunt Maeve, she took a shine to Bess’ husband Frank. Frank kept laying hens, pigs and a few other animals, and Nancy loved helping him to feed them.’ Ena laughed again. ‘Bess said she followed Frank around like a puppy. He loved her from the very beginning. Bess did too. Nancy knew she was adopted from the start. Bess had always talked about her real mother. When her aunt Maeve went back to Ireland, she knew she wouldn’t be able to nurse her dying mother and bring up Nancy. She told Bess that to expect Nancy to live with constant sickness wouldn’t be right, or fair, on a young girl. She also wanted Nancy to have a better education than she’d have got in the village school, make friends with other children, and to have the freedom that she never had.’
‘So she left her small ward in England and went to look after her sick mother. That was an unselfish thing to do. She must have been heartbroken,’ Natalie said. ‘And is Maeve still in Ireland?’
‘Yes. Bess and Nancy go over and visit her every year. She’s in a convent.’ Natalie’s eyed widened with surprise. ‘She’s a nun. She sold the house and, apart from a few pieces of family jewellery that had belonged to her mother and to Goldie which she gave Nancy, all her possessions were sold and the money given to the convent for her board and lodging.
‘Nancy was old enough to understand and settled down at Foxden with her new mummy and daddy, and my mother, her new grandma. She loves Bess and Frank, devoted to them. She loves her aunt Maeve too, but understands why Maeve had to go back to Ireland. And, she loves Goldie. Nancy has enough love in her for her biological mother and for her adopted mother and father.’
‘What about her father? Does she know about him?’
‘Dave Sutherland?’ A shudder as cold as ice ran through her. Ena shook her head vehemently. ‘No! And she never will. Maeve told Bess that when Nancy was five and started school, she noticed that all the other children in her class had mummies and daddies. When she asked her aunt Maeve where her mummy and daddy were, Maeve told her that her father had been a brave airman in the RAF and had died when his plane was shot down.’
‘I hope she never finds out her real father was actually a fascist bully who killed her mother.’
‘There’s no reason why she should. His name isn’t on her birth certificate.’
‘What did her aunt tell her when she asked her about her mother?’
‘The truth, with a little elaboration. She told her that her mother had loved her very much and she didn’t want to leave her, but she was very poorly, so, once she knew Nancy was safe and would be loved by her aunt Maeve, she went to heaven.’
Natalie looked questioningly at Ena.
‘At the time Nancy’s aunt Maeve was telling her about her father. Bess’ fiancé, James Foxden, was missing after his aeroplane was shot down over Germany. It’s uncanny that Bess became Nancy’s mother.’
‘Bess’ fiancé was a brave man. Sutherland was a coward.’
Ena nodded in agreement.
‘Sutherland almost killed Goldie. He would have too, if Margot hadn’t found her, brought her to the theatre, and took her place on the stage that night. Until we received word that Goldie was safe in Ireland, Margot went on stage in her place. She wore her costumes, sang her songs and took her curtain call every night. Even after she had been followed, threatened and sent a bunch of dying arum lilies, she did the show as Goldie. Margot was very brave.’
It was Ena’s turn to wipe away the tears. Thinking about the constant pain her sister Margot was in, and how she rarely complained, she said, ‘Margot is still brave.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
On her way back to Mercer Street Ena called into Bow Street Police Station and asked to speak to Inspector Powell. She was told by the jovial desk sergeant that the inspector was in his office. The sergeant picked up the telephone to inform his boss that Ena was there and motioned for her to go through the door marked Private. A short buzz told Ena the door was unlocked. She thanked the sergeant and pushed the door open.
Inspector Powell met Ena as he always did, at the door of his office. ‘It’s good to see you, Ena. I hear you’re working out of the cold case office in Mercer Street.’
‘I am, but you wouldn’t recognise the place.’ Ena took a business card from her wallet and gave it to the inspector. ‘If you need help with an investigation, I am discretion personified – and my terms are very reasonable,’ Ena said, laughing.
DI Powell looked at the card. ‘Very professional. I’ll be in touch if I need you,’ he said laughing with her. ‘Though, with the Met’s resources, it may not be often.’
‘Well, I am at your disposal should you ever need me,’ Ena replied.
‘And I am at yours,’ Inspector Powell said.
‘That’s good because I have a favour to ask.’
The inspector laughed at Ena as she had laughed at him earlier. ‘Go on,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Is the lovely pathologist, Sandy Berman, still at St. Thomas’ Hospital?’
‘He is. What have you got for him?’
‘This.’ Ena carefully lifted the half-pint glass with the remains of the lemon cordial she’d taken from Mr Derby-Bloom’s room from her handbag and unwrapped the handkerchief from around it.
‘Looks interesting.’ Inspector Powell lifted it to his nose and sniffed. ‘Lemon and not a lot of anything else.’
‘No, but if it was analysed properly by Sandy Berman in his lab at St. Thomas’.’ Ena said, ‘I think you’ll find the liquid contains more than lemon.’
‘I’ll get it to him.’
‘I need it doing quickly,’ Ena pulled an overly emphasised apologetic face. ‘I wouldn’t ask, but my friend’s father is Jewish. She needs to bury him as soon as possible, but I’m certain he died in suspicious circumstances. Oh, and the other thing,’ Inspector Powell raised his eyebrows. ‘I need the glass back, now. I was wondering if you could transfer the contents to another glass. I wouldn’t ask, but I forgot to tell the woman who runs the place I’d taken it. If I sneak it into his room tomorrow, she’ll be none the wiser.’
Inspector Powell picked up the telephone on his desk and dialled one digit. ‘WPC Jarvis, could you find an evidence jar and bring it to my office?’
***
Ena dug deep into her handbag before remembering she’d given Artie the keys to the office when she’d taken Mrs Hardy to Café Romano. She didn’t have a spare set and rang the bell.
Artie was flushed and perspiring when he opened the door. ‘Thank God you’re back, Mrs Hardy has had me charring.’
Distracted by the sight of a long padded seat standing flush against the wall in the entrance hall, Ena hadn’t taken in what Artie had said. ‘That’s a nice piece of furniture,’ she remarked, running her fingers along the top of it. She followed Artie to her office and stood in the doorway open-mouthed. ‘I’ve come to the wrong office,’ she said, ‘I could have sworn the plaque outside said, Dudley Green Associates.’ Laughing Ena walked around the room. ‘Good Lord. How on earth—’
‘Mrs Hardy insisted on coming back with me to help with the furniture and she’s had me… She and I have been arranging it and cleaning all afternoon.’
‘Mrs Hardy, thank you. And you, Artie. Thank you both so much.’ Ena looked around the office in amazement.
‘Mrs Hardy vacuumed while I polished. I found a piece of paper in the kitchen with a hand drawn plan on it and I assumed it was how you wanted the layout of the room, so, ta-dah!’
‘I don’t know what to say. I left an empty room and now. Well, it looks like a real office; an office that says, “ready for business”.’ Ena walked from desk to desk, stopping when she came to the filing cabinet. ‘Good Lord. This is the filing cabinet from the visitors’ room in the Albert Theatre.’
‘A couple of stagehands dro
pped it off.’
‘I’ve just seen Natalie at the theatre. She didn’t say anything.’
Artie handed her a note.
‘Ena dear, I thought this might come in handy. If there’s anything I can do, or if there’s anything else you need from the visitors’ room let me know. Good luck, Natalie.’
Ena smiled. ‘It locks, which is good,’ she said, pulling open the top drawer. She turned and looked around the room. Taking everything in, she saw something on the windowsill. ‘What…? An African violet house plant?’ She went to it and touched the soil. It was damp. Emotion rose in her throat. ‘Thank you.’
‘I was dispatched at a jog to get that from Covent Garden market before you got back,’ Artie said, pulling a comical face at Mrs Hardy.
‘It’s lovely. Mrs Hardy, you shouldn’t have, but thank you. Thank you, both. I can’t believe how much work you’ve done in such a short time.’ She opened the door to the small kitchen and caught her breath. ‘You could eat your lunch off this worktop,’ she said, running her hand along its smooth surface. ‘I think we should celebrate with a cup of tea, don’t you?’
She tiptoed across the clean linoleum, filled the kettle and took three mugs from the cupboard above the sink. ‘It’s so clean, I hardly dare put the tea in the pot for fear of spilling the leaves and making a mess.’
‘Risk it!’ Artie shouted, ‘I’m parched.’
Ena carried their drinks into the office on a tray. ‘Milk and sugar,’ she said, taking both off the tray, ‘help yourselves.’ Going back to the kitchen she returned with a half-bottle of whisky.
‘That’s more like it,’ Artie said, as Ena poured a measure into his tea.
‘Not for me.’ Mrs Hardy put her hand over the top of her cup. ‘I don’t drink spirits.’
‘Come on, Doreen,’ Artie said, ‘we’ve worked hard and we deserve a tot to celebrate.’
‘If Mrs Hardy,’ Ena said, addressing Doreen by her surname and glaring at Artie for using her Christian name, ‘doesn’t drink whisky, don’t force her.’
Ena lifted her cup. ‘Thank you, both of you.’
When they had finished their tea, Ena told Mrs Hardy and Artie about her fruitless trip to the Duke of Wellington Hotel.
‘The blonde was Dolly,’ Mrs Hardy said. ‘I’m sorry she was rude to you.’
‘Not rude, just a bit brash. Don’t worry about Dolly, Mrs Hardy, if I find out it’s her who has been stealing money, she won’t be so smug.’
Ena saw Doreen Hardy out of the office and returned to find Artie in the kitchen washing up. She laughed. ‘Mrs Hardy has made a good impression on you.’
‘Doreen and I are colleagues in grime.’
Ena pulled a face and groaned at Artie’s joke. ‘That’s as maybe, but she’s also a client, so best to call her Mrs Hardy.’
‘She told me to call her Doreen and, as I’ve called her Doreen all afternoon, I can hardly go back to calling her Mrs Hardy now. Besides, she isn’t really a client, is she?’
‘Not a paying client, no, but…’ Ena took the tea towel from the worktop and began to dry the crockery that Artie had washed up. ‘The investigation into the theft of money at the Duke of Wellington Hotel, which Doreen Hardy has been accused of, means we have our first investigation. The death of George’s father could well be our second.’ Ena couldn’t help feeling excited, rolled up the tea towel and bowled it at Artie.
Artie caught it and hung it on the hook where it belonged. As he put the cups and saucers in the cupboard, Ena put the milk in the small refrigerator. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here, it’s been a long day.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The following morning Ena went to the Duke of Wellington Hotel. It was hardly a hotel at all. It might have been in its day, but that day had long gone. It now looked like a guest house for travelling salesmen selling corsets and encyclopaedias and everything in between. From the outside it looked like an old Victorian London pub – three storeys, large bay windows downstairs at the front, a grey façade which once had been white, but was now soot-stained by smoke from the many trains that came in and out of Waterloo station.
Ena drove past the public entrance on Waterloo Road and turned left opposite the Old Vic Theatre to The Cut and left again down Cornwall Road that took her to the car park at the rear of the hotel. She parked and walked along the side of the building, turning into a courtyard that would have been large enough for several horse and carts in Victorian times. Now the yard, like many since the invention of the motorcar, was used by delivery lorries rather than dray horses and carts. Beneath the first-floor windows were large barn doors where horses would once have been stabled. Like most of the mews houses in London the Duke of Wellington’s stables had been converted into garages. Ena knocked on the door marked Private.
After several minutes she heard a key turn in the lock and a bolt slide back with a clunk.
‘Mr Walters?’ Ena enquired.
A ruddy-faced, rotund figure of a man wearing a cellarman’s apron rubbed the sleep from his eyes. ‘Yes, what can I do for you, Miss?’
‘Mrs Green.’ Ena gave Mr Walters her card.
He held it at arm’s length before moving it nearer to his face. ‘Need my reading glasses,’ he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the hotel’s interior.
‘I’m representing Mrs Hardy. I believe, until yesterday, she was an employee of yours.’
‘Doreen was, yes…’ He lifted the card up to his face and squinted. ‘Who did you say you were?’
‘Ena Green, Dudley Green Associates, Private Investigators. Mrs Hardy is my client.’
‘Then you’d better come in,’ Mr Walters said, holding the door open for Ena to enter first. She stood to one side and when Mr Walters had closed and locked the door, followed him into an untidy room cluttered with old newspapers. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess.’ He picked up a teacup and an ashtray from an occasional table next to a well-used settee, which he cleared of several newspapers. Ena sat down. Mr Walters removed more newspapers from the armchair before lowering himself into it.
‘I’ll get straight to the point, Mr Walters. Mrs Hardy told me that she has been falsely accused of theft. She swears she did not steal your money and, as I know her to be an honest woman of good character, I believe her.’
Mr Walters nodded. ‘I didn’t think she’d stolen the money, but it was in her coat pocket and—’
‘You assumed she had taken it?’
He nodded again.
‘Would you show me where the money is usually kept?’
Mr Walters crossed the room to a walnut bureau, took a watchchain with a brass key on it from the breast pocket of his waistcoat, unlocked the bureau and pulled down the lid, turning the piece of furniture into a writing desk. He pulled a black and red metal cash box the size of a large writing pad from the back of the bureau and placed it on the top. ‘I put the morning’s takings and the night’s takings in here.’ He opened the box using a small key that he took from beneath a red cash book in a drawer in the middle of the bureau. ‘I count it, make a note of how much I put in the tin,’ he lifted a bank deposit book, ‘and then lock it.’ Ena watched him put the key back in the drawer and the cash book on top of it.
‘And you do the same every day?’
‘And night.’
‘When do you bank the money?’
‘Usually Monday morning, first thing. But because it’s been so warm at night these last few weeks I’ve taken a stroll and deposited it in the bank’s night safe. I didn’t know money was missing until the bank telephoned to inform me the amount written on the bank deposit slip didn’t tally with the money banked. I’d been adding the money up and writing down how many tens, fivers, pound and ten-shilling notes there were, then bagging up the silver and coppers and writing it in the bank book. I do that every night and then there’s only Sunday’s takings to put in. As I said, if it’s a nice night and I finish early, I walk it round to Barclays myself.’
He consulted the bank deposit book. ‘Fifty-three pounds.’
‘And that would be what, twenty, thirty notes?’
Mr Walters nodded. ‘Give or take.’
‘Has there been more than fifty pounds stolen in any one week?’
‘No. Last week the bank said there was a difference of twenty pounds, the week before, fifteen.’
‘Good. Then I suggest you mark twenty pounds of the money you have in the bureau. Make a small hole in each note with a pin. Prick the plume on Britannia’s helmet or make a tiny hole on the end of George’s spear. Vary it, so it isn’t easy to see, but keep a record. A different place on ten-shilling notes, pound notes and five-pound notes. A small hole in the eye of St. George’s dragon wouldn’t be seen unless the thief held the note up to the light. But why would they? Put the marked notes back in the bureau and whatever you take from now until you go to the bank, put underneath the marked money. You never know, some of the notes might turn up in the till in the public bar within a couple of days. If they do, keep a list of how many come back, the value of them and the date.’
‘You don’t think it’s someone I know?’
‘You thought it was Mrs Hardy and you know her.’
‘No, I didn’t think it was Doreen. Dolly said she’d seen her put some money in her pocket and when I asked Doreen about it, she went to her coat, put her hand in the pocket and there were four five-pound notes in it. Doreen looked as shocked as I was. She stood and stared at the money for some time before pushing it into my hands. She swore she hadn’t taken it. She said someone must have put it in her coat pocket because she didn’t.’
‘No, Mr Walters, she didn’t.’
‘I shouldn’t have listened to Dolly.’
‘Perhaps not, but you did and it’s too late now. There’s a chance that whoever is stealing your money is being overly generous with it. Have any of the staff been into the bar at night with friends, buying rounds for them?’ Walters shook his head. ‘Has anyone brought friends here to eat?’
Old Cases New Colours (A Dudley Green Investigation) (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 9) Page 4
