The Music Box Enigma

by R. N. Morris

  Callaghan shook his head unhappily but led Quinn upstairs all the same. Quinn had Leversedge and Macadam wait for him in the hallway. Three heavily booted detectives in her bedroom was unlikely to induce Lady Fonthill to cooperate. Even one was pushing it.

  She lay barefoot but fully clothed on top of a large four-poster bed, her chestnut hair fanned out around her head. Her eyes were closed, but she did not seem to be asleep, rather cast under a spell, like a princess in a fairy tale. There seemed to be no weight to her, as if she might float away at any moment.

  Her mouth was slightly open, in a downturned curve. Now and then it seemed to twitch, as if she was crying out in a dream.

  At that moment, all her privilege and inherited wealth was stripped from her. The luxuriousness of her surroundings meant nothing. None of this would help her in what she was facing now.

  Beside the bed, the doctor was packing his things away in his bag.

  ‘Can you rouse her?’ demanded Quinn.

  ‘Good heavens, no!’

  ‘But I need to ask her some questions. Her son’s life may depend on it.’

  ‘You can try, but I doubt you’ll get any sense out of her.’

  Quinn leant over the woman on the bed. ‘Lady Fonthill. Emma. It’s DCI Quinn.’

  There was no sign of a response. Not even the pattern of her breathing changed.

  Quinn turned to the doctor. ‘Can she hear me?’

  ‘I should think so. Whether or not she will be able to respond is another matter.’

  Quinn felt a sudden surge of rage at the doctor’s infuriatingly calm demeanour. ‘Why did you do this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sedate her.’

  ‘Because she was hysterical.’

  ‘So what? Her son’s been kidnapped. It’s natural that she would be hysterical. Did it not occur to you that the police would want to speak to her? Or that she herself might want to stay conscious? She is his mother.’

  ‘My only consideration was the wellbeing of my patient. I deemed sedation necessary on medical grounds.’

  ‘And she let you do it?’

  ‘She was in no state to refuse.’

  Quinn shook his head in frustration. ‘She’s run away. Away from us. Away from John. She’s abandoned her son.’

  There was a stirring from the bed. Lady Fonthill’s mouth juddered in a spasm of distress. A murmur that could have been ‘no’ trembled in her throat.

  Quinn bent over her again. ‘Lady Fonthill. Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything that you have kept from me, that you now wish to share, now that John’s life depends on it?’

  A quick, darting movement showed beneath her eyelids. In the next moment, they flickered open. Her whole head quaked under a tremendous effort to lift it. ‘Find. Him!’

  Quinn wondered at the less than gentle – almost venomous – force with which she expelled that last word. But perhaps it was simply the strain of rousing herself from the bonds of oblivion.

  But before he could challenge her about it, her eyes closed again, and her head sank back into the pillow.

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ said Leversedge, after Quinn had relayed the details of his interview with Lady Fonthill. ‘What now?’

  It was a good question. Quinn ran his hand down over his face as he thought through his next move. ‘DS Macadam, what can you tell us about Sir Aidan’s clubs?’

  With a flash of temper, Leversedge demanded, ‘What the devil have his clubs got to do with anything?’

  Quinn tried to keep his voice calm as he explained, ‘We don’t yet know what links Sir Aidan Fonthill to the man who has taken his son. That is because we don’t yet know enough about Sir Aidan Fonthill. We need to find more answers. We need to look more deeply into his life. There is something in his life, some huge aspect of it, that is so far unknown to us. We will not discover it from his wife, not now, not in her current state. There have been inklings of this secret life revealed by some of those we have spoken to already. Charles Cavendish hinted at Sir Aidan’s need for money, for example. And we know a mysterious stranger came to the house.’

  ‘Mr Toad,’ put in Macadam. ‘You know my views on that, sir.’

  ‘Yes. And the only person who saw him other than Sir Aidan was John Fonthill.’

  ‘That’s why he was taken,’ observed Leversedge. ‘Because he could identify the man.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ was all that Quinn would concede.

  Macadam rounded on Leversedge. ‘Your old governor, Coddington. He was thick as thieves with Tiggie Benson.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘If I’m right, that’s who Mr Toad is.’

  ‘If.’

  ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to find the boy.’

  ‘I just don’t want us to waste time on any more wild goose chases. What if it’s not Tiggie Benson? We don’t have a positive ID. All we have, in fact, is your wild guesswork. Besides, if Benson has taken the boy, he’s unlikely to be holding him at any of his known haunts. Benson may be many things, but he’s not stupid.’

  It was time for Quinn to intervene. ‘That’s why we keep digging. That’s why we keep talking to people who knew Sir Aidan. It’s the only thing we can do. Those clubs, Macadam.’

  ‘Sir Aidan Fonthill is listed in Debrett’s as having membership to three clubs. White’s. The Athenaeum. And Pootle’s.’

  Quinn was aware of experiencing a slight sense of relief. He had half-expected Fonthill’s clubs to include The Panther Club, an esoteric establishment which had figured in an earlier investigation; he found he had no desire to return there.

  ‘Mr Callaghan?’ The butler had been standing discreetly to one side as the three detectives conferred in the hallway. He now answered Quinn with a solemn bow. ‘To which of those were you in the habit of forwarding Sir Aidan’s mail during his absences from the house? Think carefully before you answer. A boy’s life may depend on it.’

  But Callaghan did not hesitate. ‘Pootle’s.’

  It was as good a place as any to start.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  DS Inchball hammered on the door of the house in Tufnell Park. He always preferred to knock, even when there was a bell. It made more of an impression, he always thought.

  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman, whose face was illuminated with a fragile happiness.

  ‘Is Jack Delaware here?’

  ‘Yes, he is!’ the woman cried excitedly. ‘We didn’t expect him back but his leave came through and he’s going to be here for Christmas! Can you believe it!’ It was only now that she seemed to take in the warrant card that Inchball was holding up. The happiness vanished from her expression, which grew suddenly anxious.

  ‘DS Inchball of the Special Crimes Department, Scotland Yard. May I come in?’

  The young man sipped the tea that his mother had made. Out of uniform, he didn’t look like much of a soldier. He was slight and pale. His eyes – well, some might call them sensitive, no doubt. But to Inchball they had a weak, shifty look about them.

  ‘I say, what’s this about?’

  ‘Where were you from about half past twelve onwards on the afternoon of Saturday, the nineteenth of December?’

  ‘Last Saturday?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Delaware paused a moment before answering, rather shamefacedly, Inchball couldn’t help thinking, ‘I was having lunch with a friend.’

  ‘This friend of yours, he’ll be able to vouch for you, will he?’

  ‘It’s not a he, it’s a she.’

  ‘You saw Hattie!’ Delaware’s mother cried out excitedly. Her expression darkened as she thought about what he had said. ‘But wait a minute, it wasn’t Saturday, surely? You only came home yesterday.’

  Delaware avoided looking at his mother. ‘It wasn’t Hattie.’

  ‘What do you mean? Who was it then?’

  ‘Look, what is this about?’ Delaware repeated, shifting uneasily on the settee.

&n
bsp; ‘It’s about whether you have an alibi for murder or not.’

  ‘Murder?’

  There was a shriek from Delaware’s mother.

  Delaware’s face was suddenly drained of colour. He looked as if he was about to be sick. ‘It wasn’t Hattie. Hattie doesn’t even know I’m home. I was … with someone else. Another girl.’

  ‘Oh, Jack!’ His mother’s disappointment was almost sharper than if he had been found to be a murderer.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Mother! After all, it’s not like we’re engaged, Hattie and I.’

  Inchball was not impressed with Delaware’s defence of his behaviour. He took against him on Hattie’s behalf, although he had never met her. ‘Who were you with?’ he barked sternly.

  ‘Yes, who is she?’ echoed Delaware’s mother, even more sternly.

  Inchball decided he might as well sit back and let her lead the interrogation. He had a feeling that she would be more successful at extracting the truth from her son.

  ‘Just someone. A friend. I spent the last few days with her.’

  ‘Did. You. Sleep. With. Her?’ Mrs Delaware’s disgust was loaded into each carefully enunciated word.

  Delaware threw up his hands hopelessly. ‘What kind of a question is that?’

  ‘Well, did you?’

  ‘She’s the kind of girl who … well, who likes company. Male company.’

  ‘She’s a prostitute!’

  ‘Mother! For goodness’ sake. It’s not like that. She’s not like that. You make it sound so … sordid.’

  ‘But what about Hattie?’

  ‘You don’t understand. Hattie will always be very special to me. But I needed something … something that I couldn’t go to Hattie for.’

  Mrs Delaware closed her eyes and shook her head in denial, her mouth pinched tightly shut.

  Jack pressed on: ‘I’m shipping out on the thirtieth. To Belgium.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t want it hanging over us. Well, the thing is, you see … I just wanted a bit of fun. Before … well, you never know what might happen out there. This might be my last Christmas.’

  ‘No! Don’t say that!’ cried his mother.

  ‘I didn’t want to pressure Hattie into anything. And I wanted the idea of her to stay pure and good.’

  ‘While you were off doing something dirty and wicked!’

  ‘Look, it just happened … I didn’t plan it, I swear. Things just got out of hand and I suppose I went along with it.’

  ‘This friend,’ said Inchball at last. ‘She have a name?’

  ‘Vera.’

  ‘Last name.’

  ‘I don’t know her last name. But if you go to the Dog and Duck in Soho and ask for Vera … she’s a barmaid there.’ He turned to his mother. ‘Not a prostitute.’

  Inchball closed his notebook and stood up. Then he remembered the tea and picked up his cup to gulp down the last few mouthfuls.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Pootle’s was housed in a Palladian mansion on St James’s Street. Although it was just around the corner from the Panther Club, it was a far cry from the only other gentlemen’s club Quinn had ever stepped inside.

  He felt the difference in the two clubs immediately. For one thing, Pootle’s did not have a secret entrance, nor was there a caged panther in the lobby. Quinn suspected that particular eccentricity had been dispensed with by now, after the unfortunate incident that had occurred when Bertie, the animal in question, had escaped from her cage earlier in the year. (The panther in the Panther Club was always female, and always called Bertie.) A brief glance around confirmed another difference: the members here did not conceal their identities behind celluloid masks.

  Perhaps his experience in the Panther Club had given him a distorted view of private members’ clubs, but he found that his distaste for such establishments ran deep. Even if things appeared more transparent here, he nevertheless disliked the air of quiet privilege that he was obliged to breathe. The hushed reverence of the club’s servants grated on his nerves.

  In a bastion of exclusivity, Quinn’s natural sympathy was always with the excluded. This was a place where strings were pulled, some of them no doubt to trip up men like him. For there was that sense that the club’s rules superseded the laws of the outside world. He did not need to ask to know that members looked out for one another. If his foray into the Panther Club had taught him anything it was that villainy was not solely the preserve of the lower orders, although when it was practised by the upper classes it was more properly called vice. And that when push came to shove, even gentlemen were not above closing ranks.

  As if to confirm the thought, he counted several former prime ministers among the distinguished members looking down on him from gilded frames. Their expressions were suitably forbidding.

  Do not dare to storm the citadel! they seemed to say.

  The ageing club official behind the reception desk gave every impression of having stepped down from one of the portraits. He was merely the servant of the diplomats, cabinet ministers and mandarins who made up the club’s memberships. But some part of their authority had clearly devolved to him. He stood as their proxy, indeed their gatekeeper, which gave him a level of discretion that amounted to power. He bore it modestly, but there was no doubt that it was there. The tilt of his head was guarded rather than imperious. He radiated a suave charm that would not have been out of place on a head waiter or high court judge. But something was withheld.

  He greeted Quinn with a measured smile, as if it was dispensed by means of a precision-engineered mechanism.

  There was not a hair out of place on his head, or a speck on his night-black swallow tailcoat.

  Quinn held out his warrant card. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department. These men are also police officers. We are investigating the murder of one of your members.’

  The man gave no indication of being shocked by any of this. Instead, his lips pursed regretfully, as if he were disappointed that any one of the members should show such a lapse in taste as to get themselves murdered. ‘I presume you are referring to Sir Aidan Fonthill?’

  ‘Have you had any other members murdered?’

  ‘Fortunately not.’

  ‘I understand that he stayed here at the club from time to time.’

  A minuscule frown suggested that the major-domo didn’t know what that had to do with anything.

  ‘We are anxious to speak to as many of Sir Aidan’s associates as we can. We would appreciate your cooperation in identifying those members who had any connection with him. His friends, of course. But anyone who might have spoken to him.’

  ‘But that would require me to give you a list of our entire membership! Anyone here might have spoken to him. Pootle’s is a very sociable club.’

  ‘I will need that, yes. And a list of club employees. It would help us if you could mark with an asterisk those who come into contact with members.’

  ‘An asterisk?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be an asterisk. You could underline them. I thought an asterisk would be easier.’

  ‘That will take time.’

  ‘Of course. To speed things along, perhaps you could supply me now with the names of people who were particularly close to Sir Aidan.’

  The man’s expression changed. The something that had been withheld before was brought out for all to see. It was the snarl of a mother fox preparing to defend her kits. ‘You must understand, Chief Inspector’ – he was of course fastidious in remembering Quinn’s rank, when most people unconsciously demoted him to inspector – ‘our members have a right to expect a certain discretion from those of us who are privileged to serve them.’

  ‘You are refusing to cooperate?’

  ‘It is not a question of refusing. We do not spy on our gentlemen. With whom they associate is their business, not ours. So even if I wished to supply you with this information, I cannot. It is simply the case that neither I, nor any of t
he staff here, ever see – and we certainly do not remember! – anything that goes on between individual members. So, as to who is a particular friend with whom, I am afraid we are not qualified to say. In addition, I must point out that what you are asking me to do is engage in tittle-tattle.’

  ‘I am asking you to help me save the life of a young boy. Sir Aidan’s son was abducted this morning.’

  What calculation took place behind the man’s calm gaze Quinn could only guess at. He suspected it was something to do with the greater good; it usually was in these circumstances. His primary duty was to protect the reputation of the club, and the membership as a whole. From time to time, that might entail sacrificing one of its members.

  To save the body, one sometimes has to cut off a limb.

  He leant forward confidentially across the counter. ‘There is one gentleman …’

  Quinn nodded for him to go on.

  When it came to it, the name slipped out more easily than the three detectives might have expected. And with it came more than they could have hoped.

  Quinn’s pencil flew across the page of his notebook as he tried to keep up with the man’s disclosures.

  ‘Thank you, you have been very helpful,’ said Quinn as he pocketed the information. ‘In the light of what you have told us, I do not think it will be necessary to supply those lists.’

  The major-domo closed his eyes to give a minute bow of appreciation. A moment later, his mask of guarded composure was back in place.

  FORTY-NINE

  Quinn left it to Macadam to hammer on the door to the apartment in the New Cavendish Street mansion block. ‘Police! Open up!’ Macadam did his best to create an intimidating racket, but he was no Inchball, as Quinn reflected with a tinge of regret.

  The concierge had let them in and was there beside them ready with a spare key should it be necessary.

  The element of surprise was on their side. In addition, it was still early enough in the day to catch a man like Simon Symington napping. His reputed habits were not generally conducive to early rising. That said, his livelihood depended to some extent on his ability to maintain at least the appearance of respectability. And so, he would be eager to cut short the scandalous commotion outside his door.