Mortmain Hall

by Martin Edwards

  Why did he sense that she was setting him a challenge? Her hint – if it was a hint – that the Sylvia Gorrie case had some connection with the Danskin trial was equally frustrating. She’d given him pieces in a puzzle, but the picture he could make with them was incomplete. Even if her aim was to protect him from harm, she was maddening. He wasn’t a child. He could look after himself.

  In grumpy mood, he settled down on the sofa in his tiny sitting room, and began to read “The Demise of Gilbert Payne”.

  *

  Reggie Vickers didn’t sleep at all. Lying on his back, staring at his bedroom ceiling, he told himself that insomnia was a fate better than death.

  His neck stung, and his kidneys ached, but he’d been lucky. The blade could have slit his throat from ear to ear. He’d bled profusely, but the damage was superficial. The mark would take some explaining. He’d tell anyone who asked that he’d had a messy accident after his hand slipped while wielding a cut-throat razor. It was plausible. Just about.

  “Thank your lucky stars you didn’t call on the Savernake woman,” he murmured to himself. If anyone got wind that he’d spoken to her…

  How right he’d been to refuse to bow to pressure from her hireling. And to be so wary when approaching her in the first place. As the pea-souper in his mind began to clear, he realised why he’d been threatened.

  News of Gilbert Payne’s death was bound to shake him, make him vulnerable. Probably he was regarded as unreliable. The warning he’d received was a pre-emptive blow, a calculated reminder of the risk he’d run if he let anything slip.

  Not that he knew much, in all honesty. Only what he needed to be told.

  If only he’d never uttered a word. To Doodle, to Rachel Savernake. With Doodle, he’d been trying to impress, and failing. As it was, the shock of Doodle’s defection had helped to anaesthetise him to the loss of Payne. And he’d never believed there was much hope for poor Gilbert. To be run over by a fast train was a rotten way to go, but at least it was quick.

  No, it was Rachel Savernake he needed to worry about. He tumbled out of bed and, for the first time since he’d been assaulted by two older boys at school, he said a prayer.

  “Oh Lord, don’t let her keep pursuing me.”

  *

  “Sleep well?” Martha asked as Rachel strolled into the kitchen.

  “The sleep of the just.”

  The two women exchanged smiles as Martha put the teapot on the stove. This little joke had become a ritual between them. The maid found comfort in familiar routines. But Rachel never asked her how she’d slept. Ever since the acid attack, Martha had suffered from foul and recurrent nightmares. Only since the death of Judge Savernake, and the household’s departure from the little island, had the terrors of her adolescence abated. Even her physical scars were beginning to fade.

  “You told Jacob Flint that Jones was Gilbert Payne?”

  “Also that Leonora Dobell is playing with fire. That’s enough for him to get his teeth into. I warned him about the risk, but he’s intrepid. Or naive.”

  “Or both,” Martha said. “You’re sure this is better than asking an enquiry agent to help? Jacob’s just an ordinary young man, when all’s said and done.”

  “He’s as dogged as any private investigator. And we can rely on him.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  Rachel shot her a sidelong glance. “You like him, don’t you?”

  When Martha blushed, it made her look sixteen again. “Oh, he’d never look at me. Not if he had the chance to turn in the other direction.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” Rachel reached out and stroked the maid’s hair. “And don’t forget this, either. Jacob’s ordinariness is an asset. He makes it so easy for people to underestimate him.”

  *

  Gilbert Payne was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The only child of elderly parents, he grew up in a country house in the wilds of Shropshire. His father was a furrier from Manchester and his mother a member of an old Oswestry family. Cissie Payne became pregnant at a stage in her life when, after innumerable miscarriages, she despaired of ever carrying a child to term. This time, she gave birth to a son. Gilbert was the apple of her eye. When an attack of infantile paralysis nearly did for him at the age of five, Cissie became even more protective and doting. Polio lamed him, but he survived and his mother spoiled him endlessly.

  Leonora Dobell, alias Leo Slaterbeck, made no secret of her disapproval. Gilbert Payne was sensitive and intelligent, but softened by parental indulgence. At school, he was bullied, and took refuge in books. After earning a scholarship to Cambridge, he wrote enough poetry to fill a slim volume. When nobody wanted to publish it, he produced five hundred copies, and called it a limited edition.

  Critical indifference and public apathy greeted the book’s appearance. Yet Payne’s efforts weren’t a total failure. They introduced him to publishing’s pleasures as well as its pitfalls, and inspired him to take it up as a career. On graduating, he took a position in Bonnell’s before deciding to set up on his own. Following the death of his father, he sold the estate in Shropshire, bought a house in Hampstead for his mother, a flat in Chelsea for himself, and sank a large amount of money into his new venture.

  At first he specialised in poetry, with a sideline in political and philosophical monographs. His aim was to build an imprint with literary respectability, but the business drained his capital at an alarming rate. The turning point came in a casual conversation in Payne’s club.

  “Publishers don’t give a fig for young British patriots,” a friend complained to him. “We couldn’t care less about the blasted Bloomsbury set. The war’s over, thank God, but we still yearn for excitement. Stories of adventure. Yarns about chaps showing the spirit that vanquished the Hun. Tales where the best man wins.”

  Lo and behold! Leonora proclaimed. Within weeks, Payne had his breakthrough. A major who had been invalided out of the Grenadiers had written a tale of blood and thunder starring Lion Lonsdale, a much-decorated war hero who didn’t allow the Armistice to get in the way of a good punch-up. The dog-eared manuscript of Action in the Ardennes had received two dozen rejections by the time it reached Payne’s desk. Refreshed with a new title, the story sold fifty thousand copies. The Best Man Wins launched a long line of Lion Lonsdale stories. Gilbert Payne’s fortune was made.

  Payne wasn’t the marrying kind; he haunted the darker corners of Soho, hobnobbing with folk on the outer fringes of respectable society. One evening, he hosted a party in the West End to celebrate the publication of Lion Lonsdale’s latest escapade. When the gathering broke up, he announced to anyone who cared to listen that he was off for a nightcap at his club. That was the last anyone saw of him.

  His secretary reported him missing when he failed to turn up the next morning. For him to absent himself without warning was out of character. Once a body was fished out of the Thames mud near Limehouse, a murder enquiry began. The remains were presumed to belong to Payne; even though a boathook had destroyed his features, the body hadn’t quite been stripped bare in the water. At the mortuary, Payne’s distraught mother identified his watch, and confirmed that the corpse was the right height, weight, and age.

  So who had killed him? Leonora Dobell explored theories ranging from a commonplace robbery to a revenge attack on the part of a disgruntled lover, although she took care to avoid naming any likely suspect. The conclusion of her account struck Jacob as oddly inconclusive.

  “And there remains one other possibility, remote yet tantalising. What if the body in the Thames was not Gilbert Payne’s? What if he vanished for reasons of his own? If so, he may be among us right now, strolling the streets of London in disguise. Even that doesn’t solve the mystery of the disappearance of Gilbert Payne. The fundamental question remains:

  “Why did he vanish?”

  *

  “This is an unexpected pleasure,” Leonora Dobell said into the telephone when Rachel called the Circe Club.

  “Didn’t yo
u trust Jacob Flint to pass on your message?”

  “Oh, he seems well-meaning enough. For a journalist. I wasn’t sure you’d be willing to speak to me. Or know who I am.”

  “You’re too modest,” Rachel said. “As you’ve gathered, I am another student of crime. I’ve read your books, and your insights into the murderous mind intrigue me. I couldn’t resist making enquiries about you.”

  “Oh yes?” A cautious note entered the other woman’s voice.

  “I learned about your past. And the connection between us. Or rather, between our fathers.”

  After a pause, Leonora Dobell said, “Then you’ll know that we share a taste for detection. Perhaps we can meet?”

  “I’d like that,” Rachel said.

  “I stay here at the Circe when I’m carrying out my researches, but I’m about to catch a train home. My husband is an invalid, and I don’t trust his nurse.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rachel said. “Will you be back in London soon?”

  “Oh yes, it’s only a flying visit. As much to keep Bernice, the wretched nurse, on her toes as anything else. I’ll be back by Monday afternoon. What time would suit you?”

  “Shall we say three o’clock, outside Burlington House?” Rachel took a breath. “Perhaps you will allow me to introduce you to a murderer.”

  She rang off without waiting for a reply.

  *

  As the Clarion’s morning news conference broke up, Jacob turned his mind back to the puzzle of Gilbert Payne. He shut his office door, and lounged in his chair, feet up on the desk. What had he learned from Leonora Dobell’s book? She suspected there was more to Payne’s disappearance than met the eye, but had found no evidence to substantiate her theory. Unless, Jacob thought, she hadn’t dared to publish everything she’d discovered, for fear of a defamation claim. For anyone writing about a controversial subject, it was a familiar dilemma. You couldn’t tell the whole truth, because you couldn’t always prove it.

  If she was in danger, she must have angered someone. Murder and Mysteries had been published last autumn. Nine months later, she’d not come to any harm. What had changed?

  Payne’s mother had died, Jacob told himself, causing him to break cover. Yes, that must be the answer. While Payne was tucked safely away in exotic Tangier, any suggestion that he was still alive could be brushed away as mischievous speculation. His return to Britain made all the difference.

  Leonora wasn’t as well informed as Rachel. If she’d known that Payne was back in the country for the funeral, surely she wouldn’t have been content to linger at the Old Bailey?

  Rachel wanted him to undertake some detective work but was unwilling to tell him everything or even let him write up the story. A one-sided bargain and ridiculously unfair, but those were her terms, take them or leave them. He dared not cross her. She’d always played by her own rules.

  *

  “The Aussies are batting at Lord’s.” A fellow cricket fanatic, Basil Pennington, accosted Reggie Vickers as they left the office at lunchtime. “Our tail didn’t wag, and they’ve made a good start… Heavens, what have you done to your neck?”

  “Ah.” Reggie had prepared his answer. “Cut myself shaving with the old cut-throat. A real butterfingers. Bad as those dollies the Aussies dropped yesterday, eh?”

  “You need to take care,” Pennington advised.

  “I will,” Reggie said to himself. “Depend on it.”

  During the morning, his mood had lightened. The pain in his kidneys had subsided to a dull ache, and the Savernake woman hadn’t been in touch again. Thank God he’d held his nerve. She must have got the message.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  10

  “Payne?” Throaty laughter came down the telephone line. “Aye, a good name for a publisher. Dealing with ’em is always painful for a writer.”

  Jacob forced an appreciative chuckle. He was at Clarion House, making his latest call to an author from Payne’s list. So far, he’d learned nothing new. Now he was talking to Alexander Mudie, who was in his seventies and hadn’t published a word for years. As an officer of the Black Watch, Mudie had fought in the Boer War and served in the Punjab. Following the Armistice, he’d enjoyed a brief vogue with half a dozen thrillers recounting the daredevil exploits of Mackintosh Trueblood. In his youth, Jacob had devoured them all.

  “I’m researching an article about his murder. An unsolved mystery, you may recall?”

  “Can’t help, I’m afraid. I’d not heard from him for some time before he died. He used to pester me for another manuscript, but the well had run dry. I couldn’t come up with a new idea.”

  Jacob’s memories of the Trueblood saga suggested that he’d run out of inspiration long before that. Each story followed precisely the same template.

  “You knew him well?”

  “Only met him the once, when he held a party for his authors.” Mudie clicked his tongue. “And once was enough. London makes my head spin; give me the Lowlands any day.”

  “What do you remember of him?”

  “Well, de mortuis, you know, but Payne wasn’t my cup of tea. He was more at home with poets and political types. Oddballs, agitators.”

  Jacob found himself offering sympathy. “Oh dear.”

  “Aye, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, he invited along his friends as well as his scribblers. Very rum crowd. There was a young fellow who fawned on him, rather embarrassing. Wouldn’t have gone down well in the Black Watch.”

  “Perhaps he could help. Can you remember his name?”

  “Sorry, mind’s a blank. There was plenty to drink that night, thank the Lord. That made it just about bearable. Not much else I can tell you.”

  “If the chap’s name comes to mind, perhaps you’d give me a ring.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Mr… um, Flint.” Another throaty laugh. “You’ve read my yarns, you say? As it happens, I’m thinking of picking up the old quill again. If you care for an interview…”

  “Most generous of you,” Jacob interrupted. “We must talk about Trueblood some other time. Perhaps when you call back with that name.”

  *

  He took a break from the telephone to wander to the Clarion’s reference room, where an eclectic stock of books and periodicals supplemented back issues of the newspaper and even a couple of its competitors.

  Perhaps he could discover something about Leonora Dobell. The jackets of her books included no biographical notes about the author. Back copies of the newspaper included a couple of reviews, but revealed nothing about her, under her married name or pseudonym.

  A woman of mystery, yes, but no hermit. She’d been quite happy to talk to him at the Old Bailey, and according to Rachel, she mixed with people from Scotland Yard. He plucked the latest edition of Who’s Who from the shelves, and found that she merited an entry.

  Slaterbeck, Leonora (Mrs Leonora Dobell), writer on criminology, b. Osbaldwick, 1887, d. of the late N.O. Slaterbeck, m. Felix Dobell, 1918. Educ. Harrogate Ladies’ College. Publications: Murder and Mysteries, Respectable Murders. Recreations: attending trials. Address: Mortmain Hall, Yorkshire.

  Short and to the point. This was not a woman with the time or inclination for knitting, cookery, or flower arranging. Her single-mindedness reminded him of Rachel. But what had inspired such devotion to the study of crime and the machinery of law and justice?

  A gazetteer told him that Mortmain Hall had been the seat of the Dobells for two hundred years. What must it be like to live in a mansion handed down through the family from generation to generation? He felt no nostalgia for the terraced house in Armley where he’d grown up, but he could imagine that those to the manor born saw things differently.

  The Mortmain estate occupied a finger of land on the north Yorkshire coast, pointing out into the North Sea. Jacob was familiar with bustling Scarborough, the fishing village of Robin Hood’s Bay, and Whitby, home to an ancient abbey; but he didn’t know Mortmain.

  The last pe
ople to pay much attention to the place seemed to have been the Romans, who had built a signalling station there. The winding coast road bypassed the tiny settlement. It was a lonely stretch of country, exposed and wild. Merely to imagine the north-east gales lashing grey waves into a snarling frenzy made Jacob shiver.

  *

  “Between you, me, and the gatepost, I never cared for the chap.”

  It was half past five. Charles Bonnell had invited Jacob to join him at his club for a pre-prandial snifter. This was Jacob’s first visit to the Bookman’s Club, but he surmised that his host spent more time here than at the office. At forty-five, Bonnell had the jowls and greying whiskers of a man twenty years his senior. His hair was thinning, his eyes watered, and gout kept making him wince. He represented the Bonnell publishing dynasty’s third – and, Jacob guessed, final – generation. Already he’d explained that the key to managing a business involved letting the staff get on with it. While one got on with the task of consuming the profits, presumably.

  “Unreliable?” Jacob suggested.

  “Yes and no, as the legal johnnies would say,” Bonnell replied unhelpfully. “I mean, he wasn’t bad at his job, even if his literary pretensions were an embarrassment.”

  The nutty flavour of the Oloroso teased Jacob’s taste buds as he inhaled the odour of leather upholstery and tobacco. He was as unaccustomed to opulence as to fine sherry. The pubs around Fleet Street and Exmouth Market where he guzzled pints of bitter were crowded and noisy. Here you could hear an aitch drop; if one ever did.

  His luck had turned after largely fruitless efforts to track down people in Gilbert Payne’s circle. Bonnell’s willingness to talk had perplexed him until it became clear that the publisher’s priority was to find a drinking companion before dinner rather than gaining coverage in the press. His wife had left him six months ago, Bonnell said, and he hadn’t eaten at home since.