“I thought that mebbe the family had been notified and come over to clear the place out. Have you got any family here that might have done it?”
“Er . . . no, I haven’t. They’re all abroad, like Rose said. There’s only me here in England . . .” Joanna’s voice trailed off. “Why has everything gone?”
“Search me,” Muriel said. “I’ve still got the key. Want to go and take a look for yourself? Smell’s not too bad now. Whoever took the stuff gave the place a thorough going-over with disinfectant too.”
Joanna followed Muriel out of her apartment and into the passage, and watched as she unlocked the opposite door.
“Be glad when they get another tenant. A young family would be nice, breathe some life back into the place again. You don’t mind if I leave you to it, do you? That place still spooks me.”
“Of course not. I’ve disturbed you long enough anyway. Would you mind if I took your telephone number, just in case I need to get any other details?”
“I’ll write it down for you. Come collect it when you drop the key back in.”
Joanna stepped inside Rose’s apartment, pulling the door behind her. She switched on the light and stood in the tiny entrance hall, looking up at the steep, uneven staircase to her right. And knew that the woman she had helped out of the church two weeks back was no more capable of mounting those stairs than a newborn baby. Slowly, Joanna walked up them, each step creaking noisily. At the top of the stairs was a small landing. Two deserted, damp rooms lay beyond, one on each side. She paced them, finding nothing save four walls and bare boards. Even the windows had been cleaned recently, and she looked down into a weed-filled courtyard at the back of the building. She left the room and stood on the landing, her toes on the very edge of the top step. The drop was no more than fifteen feet, but from here it seemed much, much further . . .
She walked back downstairs and entered the sitting room where Rose had lived for the last days of her life among her tea chests. She sniffed. There was still a faintly unpleasant aroma in the room, but that was all. As Muriel had said, the room had been stripped bare. Joanna got down on her hands and knees and crawled across the floorboards, looking for anything that previous eyes might have missed. Nothing.
She inspected the bathroom and the kitchen, then went and stood again in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, where Muriel had found poor Rose.
. . . I don’t have long now . . . I am warning you, this is dangerous . . . If I have already gone . . .
A shiver of fear ran down Joanna’s spine as she realized there was every possibility Rose had been murdered.
The question was, why?
* * *
The car parked across the street started its engine as Joanna came out of the front door. The traffic was solid all the way down Marylebone High Street. He watched her as she stood outside uncertainly for a few seconds, then turned to her left and walked off.
6
Joanna spent a long, wet afternoon in the driving rain, standing huddled with other journalists and photographers outside the Chelsea house of “the Redhead,” as she was nicknamed by Joanna’s fellow hacks.
The flame-haired supermodel, who was reportedly love-nesting with another female model, finally made a run for it through her front door. The flashbulbs popped as the Redhead broke through the crowd and ran for her waiting taxi.
“Right. I’m off to follow her,” said Steve, Joanna’s photographer. “I’ll call you when I find out where she’s going. My bet is the airport, so don’t hold your breath.”
“Okay.” She watched the other photographers climbing onto their motorbikes, and the cluster of reporters dispersing into the rainy night. Groaning in frustration, she headed for Sloane Square tube station. All along King’s Road, the shops were full of end-of-season sale signs—it felt as depressed with post-Christmas fatigue as she did. On the tube, she stared blankly at the advertising panels above her.
Doorstepping was such a thankless task. All that hanging around for hours, sometimes days, when you knew the most you’d get out of the person was “No comment.” And it affronted her sense of basic human decency. If the Redhead wanted to have a rampaging affair with a sheep, for God’s sake, surely it was no one’s business but her own? However, as Alec constantly reminded her, there was no room for morals on the news desk of a national paper. The public had an insatiable appetite for all things salacious and sexy. The Redhead’s picture on the front page tomorrow would sell an extra ten thousand copies.
At Finsbury Park, Joanna left the tube and headed for the escalator. At the top she checked her mobile. There was a short voicemail from Steve.
“I was right. She’s on a plane to the States in an hour. Night.”
Joanna tucked away her mobile and headed outside for the bus queue.
Too busy at work since her conversation with Muriel to think through everything she had found out, Joanna wanted to pick Simon’s brain about it. She’d scribbled everything she could remember down on her notepad on the journey back and prayed there was nothing she’d forgotten.
Eventually, the bus arrived near Simon’s apartment building. Joanna alighted, then walked briskly along the street, so lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice a man melt into the shadows behind her.
Simon’s apartment was on the top floor of a large converted villa at the crest of Highgate Hill, with wonderful views over the green spaces and rooftops of North London. He’d bought it two years ago, saying that what it lacked in square footage on the inside was more than made up for by the feeling of space on the outside. Living in London was an enormous sacrifice for both of them. They still held Yorkshire in their hearts, yearning for the peace, tranquility, and emptiness of the moors on which they had been raised, which was probably why they had both ended up only a ten-minute bus ride apart in a leafy outpost of London. Joanna envied his view here, but was content in her own quirky little apartment at the bottom of the hill in cheaper Crouch End. Granted, double glazing and a decent bathroom suite were luxuries her cantankerous landlord had never bothered with, but her neighbors were kind and quiet, which was worth a great deal in London.
Joanna rang the buzzer and the security lock opened. She trudged up the seventy-six stairs and, panting, arrived on the small landing that led to his home. The door was open, delicious cooking smells wafting out, with the sound of Fats Waller on the CD player.
“Hi.”
“Jo, come in,” Simon called from the small kitchen in one corner of the open-plan space.
Joanna plonked a bottle of wine down on the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen and the sitting room. Simon, face pink from the rising steam of a saucepan he was stirring, put down his wooden spoon and came to give her a hug.
“How are we?”
“Er . . . fine. Just fine.”
He held her by the shoulders and looked at her. “Still pining for that idiot?”
“A little, yes. But I’m much, much better than I was. Really.”
“Good. Heard from him at all?”
“Not a word. I’ve put all his stuff in four rubbish sacks and left them in my entrance hall. If he doesn’t come for them in the next month, they’re going to the dump. I brought some wine.”
“Well done on both counts.” Simon nodded, reaching up into a cupboard above him to retrieve two glasses, and handing her a corkscrew. She opened the bottle and poured a healthy amount of wine into both of the glasses.
“Cheers.” Joanna toasted him and took a sip. “How are you?”
“Good. Sit down and I’ll serve the soup.”
She sat at the table by the window, and glanced out at the spectacular skyline of buildings that formed the City of London to the south of them, their high, red-lit rooftops glowing in the distance.
“What I’d give to actually see the stars again, without any of this light pollution.” Simon placed a dish of soup in front of her.
“I know. I’m planning to go home to Yorkshire for Easter. Fancy coming up with me?”
“Maybe. I’ll see what’s on at work.”
“God, this is good,” Joanna said as she hoovered up the thick black-bean soup. “I think you should forget about the civil service and open a restaurant.”
“Absolutely not. Cooking is my pleasure, my hobby, and my sanity after a long day in the nuthouse. Speaking of which, how’s your work?”
“Fine.”
“Not stumbled on a major scandal recently then? Discovered a famous soap star has changed her perfume?”
“No.” Joanna shrugged good-naturedly. She knew Simon had a passionate dislike for the tabloids. “But there is something I want to discuss with you.”
“Really?” He wandered into the kitchen, put the soup bowls in the sink, and took out an exquisite-looking rack of lamb, with roasted vegetables, that had been resting in the oven.
“Yes. A little mystery I managed to stumble on. It could be something, or nothing.” She watched as he filled two plates, then ferried the steaming food over to the table, accompanied by a jug of aromatic jus.
“Voilà, mademoiselle.” Simon came to sit opposite her.
Joanna doused her lamb liberally with the rich jus, then forked up a mouthful. “Wow! This is delicious.”
“Thanks. So, what’s the story?”
“Let’s enjoy eating first, shall we? It’s so weird and complicated that I need my full concentration to even know where to begin.”
“Sounds intriguing.” Simon raised an eyebrow.
After supper, Joanna washed up while Simon made coffee. Then she sat down in an armchair and curled her legs underneath her.
“Okay. Shoot. I’m all ears,” said Simon, handing her a mug and sitting down too.
“Remember the day you came round to the apartment, and I was so distraught about Matthew dumping me? And I told you I’d been to Sir James Harrison’s memorial service and sat next to that little old lady who almost keeled over, and who I had to help home?”
“Yes. The one who lived in a room full of tea chests.”
“Exactly. Well, this morning at work, I received an envelope from her and . . .”
Joanna went through the day’s events as chronologically and carefully as she could. Simon sat listening attentively, sipping his coffee every now and then.
“Whichever way you look at it, her death points to one thing,” she finished.
“And that is?”
“Murder.”
“That’s a very dramatic assumption, Jo.”
“I don’t think it is. I stood at the top of the stairs she fell down. There is just no way that Rose could have got up them by herself. And why should she want to? The top floor was completely deserted.”
“In these situations you have to think as laterally as you can. For example, have you considered that this old dear’s quality of life was such that she really couldn’t stand it any longer? Surely, the logical explanation is that she somehow managed to drag herself upstairs and committed suicide?”
“But what about the letter she sent me? And the theater program?”
“Have you brought them with you?”
“Yes.” Joanna rifled through her rucksack and drew out the envelope. She opened it and passed Rose’s letter to him.
Simon scanned it quickly. “And the other?”
“Here.” Joanna handed the love letter to him. “Be careful. The paper’s delicate.”
“Of course.” Simon slid it out of its envelope and read that too.
“Well, well,” he murmured. “Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.” He brought the letter closer to his eyes and studied it. “Have you noticed these?”
“What?”
Simon handed her the letter and pointed to what he’d seen. “Look, all round the edge there are tiny holes.”
Joanna looked and saw he was right. “How odd. They look like pinpricks.”
“Yes. Pass the program, Jo.”
She did so and he studied it for a while, then put it back down on the coffee table.
“So, Sherlock, what do you deduce?” she asked.
Simon rubbed his nose, as he always did when he was thinking. “Well . . . there is a chance that the old biddy was off her trolley. That letter could have easily been something written to her from an admirer, of absolutely no importance at all. Except to her, of course. Maybe her lover was an act in the music hall or something.”
“But why send them to me?” Joanna looked doubtful. “Why say it was ‘dangerous’? Rose’s letter is pretty intelligently composed for someone who’s supposedly lost their marbles.”
“All I’m trying to do is to suggest alternatives.”
“And if there are no plausible ones?”
Simon leaned forward and grinned at her. “Then, my dear Watson, it seems we have a mystery on our hands.”
“I’m convinced that Rose wasn’t mad, Simon. I’m also certain she was terrified of someone or something. But where on earth do I go from here?” Joanna sighed. “I was thinking that maybe I should show this to Alec at work, see what he thinks.”
“No,” Simon said firmly. “You haven’t got enough yet. I think the first thing you have to do is establish who Rose was.”
“How on earth do I do that?”
“You could start by going down to the local cop shop and spinning the same story you spun to Muriel, about being the great-niece just back from the land of koalas. They’ll probably point you in the direction of the morgue, if she’s not already been buried by her family, that is.”
“She told Muriel her family were all abroad.”
“Someone must have taken those tea chests away. The police may well have traced her relatives,” Simon pointed out.
“Even if they have, it seems odd that those rooms were swept clean within forty-eight hours. Besides, I can hardly go down to the police station in search of an aunt whose surname I don’t know.”
“Course you can. You can say she lost touch with the family years ago, that she may have remarried since and you’re not sure what surname she might go under now.”
“Good one. Okay, I’ll do that as soon as I can.”
“Fancy a brandy?”
Joanna checked her watch. “No. I’d better be on my way home.”
“Want me to spin you down the hill?”
“I’ll be fine, thanks. It’s a dry night and the walk will help work off my massive supper.” She placed the letter and the program back in their envelopes and stuffed them into her rucksack. Then she stood up and headed for the door. “Another culinary triumph, Simon. And thanks for the advice.”
“Anytime. But just watch yourself, Jo. You never know what you might have stumbled across by accident.”
“I doubt my little old lady’s tea chests contain the prototype to a nuclear bomb that could start World War Three, but I will,” she laughed as she kissed Simon on the cheek. “Night.”
Twenty minutes later, feeling better for the brisk walk down to Crouch End, Joanna put the key into the lock of her front door. Closing the door, she groped along the wall for the light switch, and flicked it on. She walked into the sitting room and let out a gasp of horror.
The room had been ransacked—there was no other word for it. Her floor-to-ceiling bookshelf had been tipped forward and hundreds of books were scattered across the floor. The lime-green sofa had been knifed, the material covering both frame and cushions violently ripped to pieces. Plant pots were overturned, the soil spilling out onto the floor, and her collection of old Wedgwood plates smashed in the fireplace.
Choking back a sob, Joanna ran through to the bedroom to find a similar scene. Her mattress had been ripped apart and flung aside, the divan underneath slashed and ruined, her clothes torn from the cupboards and drawers. In the bathroom, her pills and potions and makeup had been opened and flung into the bath, forming a colorful, congealing mess that any modern artist might have been proud of. The floor of the kitchen was a sea of milk, orange juice, and broken crockery.
Joanna ran back to the sittin
g room, huge, guttural sobs emanating from somewhere inside her. She reached for the telephone and discovered the wire had been wrenched out of the wall. Shaking violently, she searched through the wreckage to discover where she had left her rucksack and found it still in the hall by the door. Delving inside, she pulled out her mobile phone and, with fingers that shook so hard she dialed the wrong number three times, she finally reached Simon.
He found her standing in the hall ten minutes later, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.
“Jo, I’m so sorry.” He pulled her to him, but she was too hysterical to be comforted.
“Go in there!” she shouted. “See what the bastards have done! They’ve destroyed everything, everything! There’s nothing left, nothing!”
Simon stepped into the sitting room and took in the devastation, before moving into the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath, stepping over the detritus to return to Joanna in the hall. “Have you called the police like I told you to?”
Joanna nodded and sank down onto the heap of Matthew’s clothes that had spilled out of one of the slashed black bin bags in a corner of the hall.
“Did you notice whether they’ve actually taken anything? Your TV, for instance?” he asked gently.
“No, not really.”
“I’ll go check.”
Simon was back a few minutes later. “They’ve taken the TV, VCR, your computer and printer . . . the lot.”
Joanna shook her head in despair as they both saw the blue lights of a police car flashing through the glazed panel in the front door.
Simon stepped past her to open the door and went out to greet the police on the path outside. “Hello, Officer. I’m Simon Warburton.” He dug in his pocket and produced an identity card.
“That kind of a job, is it, sir?” the officer asked.
“No, I’m a friend of the victim and she is . . . er . . . unaware of my position,” he whispered.
“Righto, sir. I get your drift.”
“I just wanted a word before you go in. This was a most frenzied and violent attack. The lady was out at the time, thank God, but I would suggest that you take this seriously and do as much as you can to find the culprit, or culprits, as the case may be.”
The Royal Secret Page 7