by Eric Brown
Langham stared at her. ‘They did? What about?’
Beckwith shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. It was after my time – long after I’d sworn never to set eyes on Fenton again. Early in the war. Someone mentioned that Maxwell and Edgar had had an almighty bust-up.’
‘And you don’t know what about?’ Langham pressed. ‘You didn’t hear rumours?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m not even sure if I was told, and forgot, or if I never knew. I tried to wipe away all my memories of the awful man, forget that I ever knew him.’
Langham stared at the photograph of the actor. If Fenton and Benedict had fallen out during the war, then why had the artist contacted the theatrical agency and booked the actor for purposes unknown?
Holly Beckwith laid her fingers on his cuff, tapping. ‘Just a tick! I do recall something. This was years ago, just after the war. I don’t know who – perhaps a mutual acquaintance – but someone told me that Edgar was so cut up about the row that it had made him quite ill. Apparently, he’d approached Fenton again and again in the hope of a rapprochement. He begged to be forgiven, apparently, for whatever he was supposed to have done.’
‘But you don’t know what that was?’ Langham asked.
The actress shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s all so long ago. It’s gone.’
Ralph indicated the untouched wedge of gateau before the actress. ‘Aren’t you going to eat that?’ he asked.
She regarded the cake. ‘Do you know something?’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ve quite lost my appetite.’ She looked at her wristwatch. ‘Snakes alive! I’d better dash – they’ll be getting back.’
Langham wrote Pamela’s Bermondsey telephone number on the back of his calling card and passed it to the actress. ‘In case you remember anything else concerning Fenton,’ he said.
She thanked him and slipped the card into her bag.
‘You promise to do as I said?’ Langham pressed. ‘Go back with the constable, tell the director that you’re indisposed, then return under escort to your friend’s place.’
‘I’ll have to inform my agent,’ she began.
‘I’m not bothered what you have to do – but please, just do it, OK?’
She nodded, gathered her hat and handbag, and made to rise.
Langham recalled her visit to his office and her hesitancy on leaving. She had been about to tell him something then but had thought better of it.
He said, ‘One more thing. The other day, just as you were leaving my office, there was something you were about to say. Considering everything that’s occurred since, would you mind telling me what that was?’
She thought about it, then sat down again. ‘That night, at Winterfield, Mr Langham …’
‘Yes.’
She looked uncertain, then said, ‘As we were leaving, and they brought the body out …’
‘Your reaction to seeing the corpse’s hand,’ Langham said, recalling her expression of horror.
‘Exactly.’ She fell silent, staring down at her handbag.
‘Well?’
‘You’re going to think I’m mad!’
‘Try me.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I might be imagining it, after the shock of what’s happened and everything.’
Ralph leaned forward. ‘Imagining what?’ he asked.
She fixed Langham with her bright blue eyes. ‘Well, when they brought the body out, on the stretcher, and I saw the hand, just hanging there. I know this is going to sound stupid, but I thought that isn’t Max Fenton’s hand.’
Langham stared at her. ‘What?’
‘I told you you’d think me crazy.’ She buckled her forehead in a frown. ‘But at the time … it might have been the stress of the occasion, but I was struck by the fact that it couldn’t possibly be Fenton’s hand.’
‘But you’d seen him earlier, face to face,’ Langham said. ‘Were you in any doubt then?’
She frowned prettily again. ‘No. That is, I was shocked at his appearance, at how his illness had ravaged him. But I put the change down to just that – his illness. But when I saw his hand—’
‘What was different about it?’
‘You see, Max had big hands – workman’s hands. Blunt, with short fingers. But those I saw that night were thin, long.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I’m imagining it, aren’t I? It was only a glimpse, after all. Or perhaps the illness would account for the change. But at the time it struck me as odd.’
She glanced at her watch again. ‘I really must dash,’ she said. She smiled from Langham to Ralph, rose from the table and hurried out into the street.
Langham stood and moved to the door, wiping a porthole in the condensation and peering out to ensure that the constable had seen her and was following.
The bobby spotted her, signalled to Langham and hurried across the road to meet the actress.
He returned to the table, lost in thought. If Beckwith was right, and the corpse was not that of Maxwell Fenton …
Ralph was staring at him. ‘Christ, Don. You don’t think …?’
‘I do – if we’re thinking along the same lines.’
‘That if the corpse wasn’t Fenton’s,’ Ralph said, ‘then it was Edgar Benedict’s, right?’
Langham frowned. ‘But ruddy hell, Ralph. It must have been Fenton. His own doctor identified him. I recall Bryce doing so when the police surgeon arrived. And anyway, if it was Edgar Benedict playing the part of Fenton, pretending to be him – why? Why did he go through the rigmarole of assuming the artist’s identity, threatening the guests, and then blowing his brains out? It just doesn’t make any kind of sense.’
‘What now?’ Ralph asked.
‘Jeff needs informing. I’ll phone the Yard and try to reach him.’
He asked Ralph to order him another coffee and hurried from the café.
EIGHTEEN
Langham found a phone box thirty yards along the street.
He got through to Scotland Yard and asked to speak to Detective Inspector Mallory. A desk sergeant put him through.
‘Jeff. Developments.’
Briefly, he recounted the interview with Holly Beckwith, her claim that the actor Edgar Benedict had fallen out with Fenton during the war, and that the corpse’s hand had not resembled that of the artist.
‘So how about this, Jeff – the corpse was that of the actor, Benedict?’
‘Christ,’ Mallory said. ‘OK. Where are you now?’
‘Not far from the Café Neapolitan on Rupert Street—’
‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’
Langham walked slowly back to the café, lost in thought.
Ralph was troughing into the actress’s gateau with a busy fork. He looked up like a guilty schoolboy caught in the act. ‘Well, she didn’t want it …’
‘You have the appetite of a gannet,’ Langham said.
The waiter brought two more coffees.
Ralph said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it, Don. Could it really’ve been the actor? I mean, everyone there that night had known Maxwell Fenton. Surely they’d twig an imposter?’
‘They knew him years ago,’ Langham pointed out, ‘before the war. And thinking back, when we entered the library that night, Maria did say he was unrecognizable …’
They drank their coffee and discussed the case for the next few minutes. Langham was about to say, ‘What doesn’t make sense—’ when the door opened and the big mackintoshed figure of Jeff Mallory entered the café. He ordered a coffee and joined them.
‘As I was about to say,’ Langham said as Mallory sat down, ‘what doesn’t make sense in all this is that Doctor Bryce identified the corpse as that of Maxwell Fenton.’
Mallory smiled. ‘But it does make sense,’ he said.
‘In that case, enlighten me.’
‘It’ll make sense, that is, if I tell you that Venables was going through Doctor Bryce’s accounts this morning and discovered that every month, for the past five years, Bryce has been pay
ing twenty-five quid into Fenton’s account.’
‘You mean …?’ Ralph began.
Mallory nodded. ‘Fenton was blackmailing the doctor.’
‘Blackmailing?’ Langham repeated. ‘Just a second … George Goudge mentioned something about Bryce treating one of Fenton’s lovers way back, but it went wrong and she died. I wonder if this is what Fenton had over the doctor, and Bryce was paying him to keep mum?’
‘OK,’ Ralph said, ‘so if Fenton was blackmailing the doctor, how does that tie in with—’
Mallory interrupted. ‘So Fenton was blackmailing Bryce, twenty-five quid a month, but he decided to tap the doctor for a little more. Not cash, this time, but services rendered. He coerced Bryce into lying to the police surgeon and identifying the corpse as that of himself.’
Ralph shook his head. ‘But why would the actor agree to come to the house of his ex-friend, pretend to be him, and then blow his brains out?’
Langham thought about it. ‘How about this? Benedict agreed, when Fenton contacted the theatrical agency, because he wanted Fenton’s forgiveness for whatever wrong he’d done the artist. Apparently, Benedict was desperate to patch things up with Fenton, according to Beckwith. Of course he’d agree to play the part. A piece of cake for an actor of Benedict’s experience. Fenton would explain that he wanted to put the wind up a few old enemies, promised to pay the actor handsomely, and gave him the script we all heard that night—’
‘And then Benedict willingly went and blew his brains out?’ Ralph said, shaking his head.
‘No, not willingly at all. Unknowingly,’ Langham said. ‘You see, that wasn’t in the script. In the script, the gun was unloaded. Fenton probably told Benedict he wanted to scare his guests by suggesting he was going to kill himself. Perhaps he showed Benedict an unloaded gun, then switched it – with the result that the actor inadvertently killed himself. And the guests didn’t recognize that it wasn’t Maxwell Fenton because Benedict was made up to look just like him and to appear terminally ill.’
It went a long way, he thought, to answer his niggling feeling that Fenton’s threats and his subsequent suicide had not added up.
‘And the reason Fenton wanted Benedict dead,’ Mallory said, ‘was that he hadn’t forgiven the actor for whatever they’d fallen out about. In fact, Benedict was just another one of his victims – the very first one.’ He shook his head. ‘Ingenious – how diabolically clever of Fenton to fake his own death in order to be free to kill the rest of the guests, starting with Bryce – who needed to be got out of the way in case he spilt the beans about the corpse’s true identity.’
‘Neat,’ Langham said, ‘very neat. However, there’s just one snag.’
Mallory finished his coffee. ‘Go on.’
‘Why did Fenton contact the theatrical agency and use an alias? Why didn’t he simply use his own name if he wanted to give the impression to Benedict that all was forgiven?’
Mallory frowned. ‘It’s certainly odd, but I don’t think it undermines the case we’ve outlined. What I need to do now is get down to Essex and have the corpse examined. If you could give me Edgar Benedict’s details, I’ll rustle up his dental records. It’s only just over two days since “Fenton” died, so he wouldn’t have been buried yet.’
He stood and buttoned his raincoat.
Langham said, ‘If we’re right, and Fenton is still alive and responsible for the killings, what about the redhead?’
‘As we mooted,’ Mallory said, ‘it’s no more than a coincidence. She has nothing to do with any of this.’
Langham frowned. ‘If so, then how did Fenton kill the Goudges? How the blazes did he manage to get in past the bobby on the door, and the concierge, and out again without being seen?’
Mallory shrugged. ‘Perhaps he filched the back-door key from the concierge’s office at some point, made a copy and used it yesterday to get in and out?’
Ralph nodded. ‘That’d certainly work.’
‘Good work,’ Mallory said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Ralph finished his coffee and shook his head in amazement. ‘That’s what I like about this job, Don: never a dull moment. Who’d’ve thought?’
Langham stared into his empty coffee cup, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He looked up at his friend. ‘What I don’t like about this job is the idea that there’s someone out there who’s gone to a hell of a lot of trouble planning the deaths of six – no, seven – innocent people.’
‘What now?’ Ralph asked as Langham rose to leave.
‘Now I’m going back to Bermondsey. I’ll stop at an off-licence to buy a few bottles of ale, some wine for Maria and Pamela, and we’ll settle down for a quiet evening in front of the fire …’
A quiet evening was a nice idea, he reflected later, but it was not to be.
He arrived back at the Bermondsey terrace house laden with four bottles of Bass and an expensive French Merlot. The door was locked, and it was Maria who opened it and greeted him.
She looked relieved. ‘Donald.’
‘Sorry I’m late. I had to take a detour to find somewhere that was open. Bought these,’ he went on as he kissed her cheek and stepped into the front room.
Pamela was sitting on the edge of an armchair, fretting and biting her nails.
He looked from the girl to Maria, standing silently beside the sitting-room door. ‘What?’ he said, his stomach turning.
Maria closed the door and leaned against it. ‘Donald, Pamela noticed someone earlier.’
He dumped the bottles on the sofa. ‘Noticed someone?’
‘A woman,’ Pamela said. ‘She was watching the house. I saw her when I was upstairs, and when I came down here, she was still there, walking up and down the street, on the other side, and stopping occasionally to stare across.’
‘Did you get a close look at the woman?’
‘Pamela went out to confront her—’ Maria began.
‘What?’ He ran a hand through his hair, exasperated, and slumped into an armchair.
‘I wanted to know what she was up to, so I went out.’ She shot an odd look at Maria, then went on. ‘As soon as the woman saw me, she hurried off down the road. I followed, but …’
‘Did you see her? Close up, I mean?’
Pamela shook her head. ‘No. It was misty. She was always twenty yards away.’
‘Can you describe her?’
She shrugged, hugging herself. ‘She was smallish … in a raincoat and a beret.’
Langham stared at the girl, his pulse suddenly loud in his ears.
So much for the redhead having nothing to do with the murders. But how the hell, he wanted to know, had the woman known that Maria had taken refuge here?
He nodded, trying to order his thoughts. ‘And what happened then? How far did you follow her?’
‘Just around the corner, halfway along the street. She jumped into a car and drove off.’
‘Did you get its registration?’
She shook her head. ‘It was too far away.’
‘Or notice its make or colour?’
She shook her head again, looking woebegone. ‘No. I’m sorry. By this time she was fifty yards away, more. It was misty and getting dark. I just saw its red lights as it drove off.’
Langham nodded again, staring at the wall and going through what he had to do next.
‘I take it you phoned the police?’
Maria nodded. ‘I explained the situation, and they said they’d send someone round just as soon as they could. But that was just after three.’
‘And they haven’t shown up yet?’
She nodded.
He sat in silence for a time, brooding.
Maria said, ‘Donald?’
He sighed and lifted his hands from the arm of the chair in a hopeless gesture. ‘A small red-headed woman in a raincoat and beret was seen leaving the Goudges’ mansion yesterday evening.’
He hesitated, staring across at the shocked women.
‘The Goudges were killed
between six and midnight. The woman, who had rented an apartment at the mansions, was seen leaving around nine o’clock last night.’
He recounted the events at the Tivoli Mansions that morning, and the various interviews he and Ralph had conducted that afternoon, finishing with a long, involved account of what Holly Beckwith had told them.
Maria stared at him. ‘But how does this red-headed woman fit in with all this?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. What a bloody situation!’ He saw the bottles on the sofa. ‘I need a drink.’
Pamela gathered the bottles and carried them into the kitchen. He heard her prising the cap from one of the beers.
Maria called out, ‘Could you also open the wine, Pamela? I need a drink, too, I think.’ To Langham, she said, ‘What now?’
‘I’ll get through to Scotland Yard and see what the situation is regarding police protection. And in the morning you’re both coming with me to the office. I’m not leaving you here.’
Pamela returned with Langham’s beer, the wine and two glasses.
The women sat drinking in silence while Langham telephoned the Yard. He spoke to a desk sergeant and explained the situation at length. The sergeant heard him out, then said he’d contact his supervisor and arrange for someone to get to the address as soon as possible. Langham requested that Detective Inspector Mallory be informed as soon as he returned to duty and rang off.
‘We haven’t eaten,’ Pamela said a little later. ‘Would you like something, Donald?’
‘Don’t cook. I’ll be happy with a sandwich.’
‘I have some potted beef and tomatoes.’
‘Lovely. And if you could open another beer …’
While Pamela was in the kitchen, Maria sat on the arm of his chair and said in a small voice, ‘Donald, how did …? The Goudges? How were they killed?’
He grimaced. Earlier, in his account of the events of the morning, he’d refrained from going into detail.
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does!’ she insisted. ‘I’m in danger, Donald. Fenton and this woman … they want to kill me. How did the Goudges die?’