by Carola Dunn
Normal for Devenish, Alec thought. He asked, “Was she very distressed when he jilted her?”
“Not at all. She did not like him.”
“What about her father? He must have been angry.”
“Stepan Vladimirovich is old man and cripple. He is angry; he curse; he shout; but is nothing he can do.”
“Did he suggest that you should do something as he could not?”
“I am not servant to do such for him. I am grateful he obtain for me apprentice with Fabergé. I am happy for good job. But to commit crime—this, no!”
Alec was pretty certain he was speaking the truth, possibly nothing but the truth, but probably not the whole truth. However, he decided not to press him immediately. He wanted to hear Ernie’s impressions. Besides, they had a great many people who hadn’t yet had preliminary interviews. The Russians looked most promising so far, but there was a long way to go.
“Do you think any friends of the Prince might have acted for him, Mr. Petrov?”
“Most are old men. Not able for what I read in papers.”
“Do you know of any other friends, acquaintances, or enemies of Devenish?”
“I have not met any such.”
“Where were you last Wednesday morning?”
“I not remember anything different about that day, so I was here, working. We do good work, Miss Zvereva and I. We are always busy.”
“Us too!” said Piper.
“Now must go to furnace. Is wasting gas.”
They left him to his gold. Crossing the courtyard, Alec said, “I wonder why Miss Z didn’t want me to speak to him except through her.”
“Dunno. He gave us damn all. A cagy customer.”
“He was holding something back?”
“If you ask me.”
“I agree. But I don’t think he killed Devenish, and I doubt he has any idea who did.”
As they entered the house, Alec saw that the prince was not in his cosy corner.
“Your visit upset Papa,” Miss Zvereva said. “The servant and I helped him to go upstairs. It is not easy without help of Vasily Ivanovich, but he insisted.”
“We won’t disturb him,” said Alec. “I’d like to see the servants, though.”
“I will call them downstairs.”
There were two English housemaids, young and giggly, and a Russian manservant with an impressive beard. Alec wrote them all off as possible nanny impersonators immediately. As sources of information they might be useful. He nodded to Piper, who wrote down their names. He needed Miss Zvereva’s assistance with the man’s, as he understood little English and spoke less.
Leaving his sergeant to continue the laborious attempt to wring information out of the Russian, as interpreted by the man’s employer, Alec asked the girls to step through to the shop for a few minutes. At moments like this, he badly missed Tom Tring, who would have had them eating out of his hand in no time. Ernie would never have the same light touch.
Unsure which girl was which, he took their names again. “You remember Mr. Devenish?” he asked.
“Coo, yes,” said Doris, the smaller and prettier of the two. “Ever so ’andsome ’e was, wasn’t ’e, Nance.”
“’Andsome is as ’andsome does.”
“Go on! ’E was a good tipper, too. Is it true ’e was done in, sir, like what the papers say?”
“I’m afraid so. That’s why I have to ask you a few questions. He was a friend of your master’s, was he?”
They exchanged a glance.
“That’s as may be,” said Nancy. “They didn’t ’ave much to say to each other, and what they did say was in foreign.”
“French, it was, I think. Not Russian.”
“’E was always welcome, any road.”
“Only ’cause ’e was sweet on miss.”
“And she was sweet on him?” Alec queried.
“Not ’ardly!”
“Come off it. ’Ow would you know? Maybe she was playing ’ard to get.”
“I seen the look in ’er eyes, ’aven’t I. She put up with ’im so’s not to upset ’er dad, you take my word for it, sir.”
Provisionally, he did, as it agreed with what he’d heard before. “What about Mr. Petrov? Was he a friend of Mr. Devenish?”
“I never seen ’em together.”
“They never come upstairs at the same time.”
“I think,” said Nancy darkly, “’e stayed away when ’e knew Mr. D was ’ere.”
“Did anyone else—anyone I haven’t mentioned—visit upstairs while Mr. Devenish was here?”
“One evening ’e brought a bloke round.”
“What was his name?”
“Can’t remember. I only seen ’im once or twice.”
“Clark. It was Clark.”
“With an E or without?”
The girl looked blank.
“It wasn’t Clark anyways,” said the other. “It begun with R.”
“It didn’t, neither. Clark it was.”
With or without an E, Clark was one of the commonest surnames in England, if it actually was the man’s name. “Do you happen to know his christian name?”
The maids looked at each other and shook their heads.
“All I remember is, it was kind of funny. We ’ad a good giggle, didn’t we, Nance?”
“Not John or Jim or Joe,” the other agreed. “I just read it on ’is card once, when he first come here, and it went right out of my head.”
A man possibly called Clark with an unusual first name: The police had more than enough leads to follow without starting that wild-goose chase unless as a last resort. Devenish might have lacked any intimate friends but he had had a damnably vast acquaintance.
Alec wondered how Piper was doing. It was time to move on. They could always come back. He thanked the girls and ushered them into the back room.
Miss Zvereva dismissed the servants upstairs.
“Did Mr. Clark give you any business?” Alec asked casually.
“Clarrrk? No. He was friend of Teddy.”
“So he won’t be in your order book. Do you happen to remember his first name?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. I have no interest. I will make list from order book and send to Scotland Yard, yes?”
“To Detective Sergeant Piper, if you please, madam.”
“Very well. I hope you will not need to come again,” she said as she showed them out through the shop.
“Can’t promise,” the sergeant said cheerfully.
The door closed behind them. “You sound pretty chipper,” said Alec. “Don’t tell me the Russian gave you something useful?”
“Not him. Not a word. He refused to speak English at all, and going by what Miss Zed said, which I had to, all he said in Russian was ‘I don’t know.’ Did the maids have anything helpful to say?”
“A partial name, possibly misremembered, of yet another friend of Devenish, if anyone he ever associated with can be called a ‘friend.’ All we seem to be getting is an ever-growing list of names.”
“We’ll weed ’em out, Chief. Look, why don’t you go home and see if Mrs. Fletcher’s got any more names for us—”
“Just what we need!” Alec groused. “Not to mention that I told her not to do any more digging.”
His insubordinate subordinate grinned. “And have a bit of dinner. You’ll feel better after. I’ll go do some digging of my own. If I find anything, I’ll ring up. Otherwise, you could take the evening off for once.”
“Who’s the chief here? All the same, I think I will. I feel as if I’m coming down with something. I’ll take you back to the Yard and have a word with Mackinnon if he’s there.”
* * *
Alec reached home just in time for dinner. The rest of the evening’s interviews had been parcelled out between Mackinnon and another couple of men, and Piper was sorting out the reports that had come in during the day.
“I may have to go back to the Yard,” he warned Daisy.
“Oh, darlin
g! You’ve hardly had a moment to take a breath since you got back from Bristol. You look exhausted.”
“You work too hard, Daddy,” Belinda admonished.
“Persuade the crooks to lay off, pet, and I will too.”
He felt much better after a good, peaceful meal, listening to Belinda’s chatter about the shopping she and Daisy were going to do the next day in preparation for the beginning of the summer term.
“And tennis whites,” she added to her mental list. “I’m getting quite good at tennis, Daddy. I do hope you’ll be able to come for sports day this year.”
“I do try, Scouts’ honour.”
“Perhaps this will be the lucky year.”
If he were promoted to superintendent …
Belinda went off to bed and still no call had come from the Yard.
“Whisky?” asked Daisy.
“A small one. I’ll get it. What would you like, love?”
“I’ll have a Drambuie.”
“The house seems very quiet without your young cousins.”
“Doesn’t it! So peaceful I keep wondering what they’re up to. Cousin Edgar wired that they all arrived safely. I hope Mrs. Gilpin has, too. I expect her sister would have wired if she hadn’t.”
“She’s gone?”
“Yes. You didn’t want to see her before she left, did you?”
“Not really, assuming she had no returning memories to report.”
“I wouldn’t have sent her if she did. There was a wire from Phillip as well. He’s had to rush off to deal with some emergency in the North—Sunderland’s in the North, isn’t it? A factory up there is having difficulties with a new kind of windshield glass that Mr. Arbuckle wants them to make.”
“And why exactly did Petrie feel the necessity of informing you about his troubles with windshield glass? You weren’t planning another nightclub outing, were you?”
“Of course not, darling. He was going to come round here this evening to tell you something he found out about Teddy.”
“Don’t tell me he’s been sleuthing on his own!”
“Not deliberately. He was at his club, the RAC, last night—”
Alec groaned. “His club! Devenish was a member?”
“Apparently.”
“I must be tired. I never even thought of checking for club membership. It would be a last resort, if I had thought. It’s damn difficult to get them to disgorge any information whatever about their members, almost as bad as solicitors and doctors. What did Petrie find out?”
“I don’t know. That’s why he was going to drop in tonight. He just said everyone there was talking about Teddy but he didn’t want to tell me on the telephone or in the presence of his sister and Lucy and Angela.”
“Lucy and Angela? Teddy’s sister Angela? Great Scott, Daisy, what the deuce did—”
“It’s not really relevant, darling, and it was quite harrowing. I’d rather not go into details.”
“All right, I’ll trust your judgement.”
“For once.”
“When is Petrie coming back to give us the benefit of his discovery?”
“He managed to write a long telegram without ever mentioning that, nor how to get in touch with him.”
“Heaven preserve us from amateur meddlers! Since I have no idea of the length of his absence nor the significance of his knowledge, I don’t feel inclined to ask the Sunderland police to make the rounds of glass manufacturers hunting for him.”
“Gosh no. He may turn up back in London tomorrow.”
“He’s driving?”
“Can you imagine that car fanatic taking the train?”
“Frankly, no. I daresay he’ll be exceeding the speed limit all the way, and I’ll be called upon to bail him out because he claims to have essential information I need.” Alec set down his empty glass and stretched. “I think I’ll get an early night while I can and get up bright and early in the morning. Ernie’s not likely to ring so late. Coming up?”
Arm in arm they went upstairs.
TWENTY-THREE
Daisy and Belinda spent the next morning shopping for school clothes, then went to Maison Lyons for lunch, a favourite farewell treat before the start of the summer term. Their patisserie was a big draw for the back-to-school crowd. Daisy let Bel have both an éclair and a napoleon, and they bought a cream bun to take home for the twins to share.
“Because Nanny wouldn’t let them eat cream buns, Mummy, but Bertha will.”
“I hope it won’t upset their tummies.”
“It wasn’t ’cause of that, she just didn’t want the mess. Is Mrs. Gilpin coming back?”
“I’m not sure yet. It depends.”
“Bertha’s a perfectly good nurse and much nicer.”
“Don’t say nasty things about people who aren’t present to defend themselves.”
“Well, I would never say it to her face, Mummy.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Better not to say it at all.”
“Till I’m grown-up.”
Daisy laughed. “Then you can judge the situation for yourself and whether there is any good purpose for voicing your opinion. Now, check your list one more time to make sure we’ve bought everything. I don’t want to have to rush back to Oxford Street for last-minute stuff.”
When they reached home, Elsie waylaid Daisy in the hall.
“There’s a person to see you, madam.” Elsie disapproved, and she was obviously going to make Daisy go through a game of twenty-questions.
“A person? Male or female?”
“Female, madam.”
“Old or young?”
“Not old, madam, but not exactly young. She said you’d know her. Name of Phipps, she said.”
“Phipps? I don’t know any—Oh, wait! Faye Fanshawe.”
“Phipps is the name, madam.”
“Fanshawe is her stage name.”
“She looks as if she might be a theatrical person, madam.”
“An actress? Oh, Mummy, may I meet her?”
“Nightclub performer, darling, though quite a respectable one. I think not. Not just now, at any rate. I wonder what she wants. How long has she been waiting, Elsie?”
“Nearly two hours, madam. I put her in the small sitting room.”
“Thank you.”
Fay Fanshawe-Phipps jumped up as Daisy entered the room. “Oh, Mrs. Fletcher, I ’ope I done right to come. Only I telephoned Scotland Yard, like Mr. Fletcher said to do, and they wouldn’t let me talk to ’im. And Pa said it’d be just the same if I went there, they wouldn’t let me see ’im, and ’e said I wasn’t to, it was just askin’ for trouble. But I promised ’im and he was decent to me, and ’e said you was ’is wife, so I thought…” She faltered to a stop.
“That’s quite all right, Miss Fanshawe. You can tell me anything he needs to know and I’ll pass it on, or you can write it down and I’ll see he gets it today.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t write it. It would take ever so long and I’d be bound to spell everythin’ wrong.”
“Tell me, then. It’s about Edward Devenish, I presume?”
“Yeah. See, Mr. Fletcher wanted to know did I ever meet any of ’is friends. I didn’t remember—it was a few months ago—it was ’im that interduced me to Ray Richmond. That wasn’t ’is real name, mind. He had a stage name, same as me, only ’is was because ’e didn’t want ’is posh pals to find out ’e was workin’ wiv me.”
“Posh pals? You said something before, at the Kit-Cat, about your partner being too high and mighty for the job.”
“S’right. I can’t hardly ever find one o’ me own sort to work wiv. Not-so-good ain’t good enough for the Kit-Cat. Them that’s really up to it’ve got good jobs in the circus or the music hall, and they like that life, the comradry like they call it. No offence, but they’re not comf’table wiv toffs. Now me, being as how us buskers work the theatre queues, we got to get on wiv all sorts. Busking’s not a steady income, though, and I gotta think of Mum and Pa.”
“Of co
urse.” Daisy couldn’t see the relevance to Teddy, but she was interested in this glimpse into a way of life.
“Me first partner, Billy, was a bloke I known since I was a kid. ’Is family’s circus, but ’e married a London gal that hated touring, so ’e gave it a try. We worked out the routine ourselves and proposed it to the management. Billy didn’t like it. He was bored to death sitting about back stage and he missed the animals. So I put an advert in the paper. You coulda knocked me down with a feather when this young gentleman answered it!”
“I bet. Did he explain why?”
“The geegees, ’e said.”
“His horse always came in last?”
“Ain’t that the way of it? He was down to ’is uppers.”
“You must have known he wasn’t likely to stay long.”
“Didn’t ’ave much choice, did I. He was the only one that answered. He wasn’t bad, took a while to learn the routine. ’Course, you ’ave to change it to suit what they’re best at, and so the patrons don’t get bored. But ’e’d been a gymnast at school and ’e played squash so ’e was pretty nippy. He stuck wiv it for a couple of months, till ’is quarterly allowance fell due. ’E wasn’t a bad bloke, stayed till I’d found someone to take ’is place. The next was a friend, a busker that fell ill and couldn’t work outside for a while. He stayed till ’e was well enough. Couldn’t stand working indoors, ’im.”
“I admire your persistence.”
“Oh, I went through another two or three before ’im I was telling you about.”
“The one who knew Teddy Devenish.”
“Yeah. I told Teddy about having trouble keeping a partner and the sort of fella I needed. Next time ’e come round, ’e brought this bloke, friend of ’is that des’prately needed a job.”
“Gymnast and squash player?”
“You got it. He lasted longer than most, but he wasn’t ’appy, ’specially when Teddy wrote that bit in the paper I told you about. That was mean, that was.”
“But it sounds as if it was aimed at the friend, not at you.” Quite a stretch as a motive for murder, Daisy thought. “What was his name?”
“His stage name was Ray Richmond, like I said. He was ever so particular about never using ’is real name, and ’e shaved off his moustache and dyed ’is eyebrows so no one wouldn’t reckernise ’im. Trouble is, seeing ’ow I never used ’is real name, I can’t remember it, not for sure.”
