Wolfe had been with him when the first shot was fired; that probably let him out. Bradshaw hadn’t been at dinner, but that didn’t mean Bradshaw couldn’t have found out what Eric was up to and decided to take matters into his own hands.
Saxon’s familiarity with the area had put him in the lead. They’d ducked down alleys that were not at first apparent, cut through one private courtyard, circled back around, and roughly doubled the distance they’d have otherwise had to walk had they taken the most direct route. If anyone had been following them, it seemed reasonable to think they’d given him the slip, and they slowed to a walking pace.
Evidently feeling safer now, Saxon stuck his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders as he trudged alongside Eric. His head was deeply bowed, and his brow was furrowed enough to plant potatoes in. He said, “I knew exactly what Benson was doing, you know. I’d always wanted to know the truth of what happened to Emily. I … I was very fond of her. If cousin Ambrose hadn’t been killed in the first year of the War, Father would never have become the Earl of Bufferin, and nobody would have cared two hoots who I married…”
Eric looked at Saxon in surprise. The fellow was sunk in a state of melancholy. The last time he’d shaved had been for Benson’s funeral the previous day, and the dark stubble had grown quite pronounced. Everyone had got so used to his eccentricity that no one ever questioned his motivations anymore. Any joys and sorrows he had, he’d kept to himself, hidden behind the irascible mask with which he defended his absentminded habits. Confessing his feelings for Emily had stripped the mask away, leaving him raw and vulnerable.
“I didn’t think you cared two hoots what people thought,” Eric said. He was still trying to digest this revelation that Saxon had been “fond” of Emily Ang.
“Do you have any idea, Peterkin, what it would have done to Emily if I’d presented her to society as Lady Saxon?”
“That would have been her battle, not yours. Her choice to accept, if you asked.”
Saxon let out a sigh that was half frustration, half acquiescence. “Too late for that now, isn’t it?”
“Saxon.” Eric hesitated, then decided that Saxon was a man who appreciated the direct approach. “Your visit to Sotheby Manor … that was the day Emily disappeared, wasn’t it? She was last seen in the company of a man in a green Crossley, the same sort of motorcar you drive.”
“What of it? I drove her back to the house and left her there. I don’t know anything else. I didn’t even know what had happened until it was too late to do anything about it.”
“The story was in the Chichester Observer. It said you had some sort of argument.”
“I don’t read the Chichester Observer,” Saxon said shortly. He patted himself down in search of an apple and, finding nothing, stuck his hands back into his pockets. “Emily didn’t want to put me through the trouble of driving her back to the house, but I had to go and retrieve a briefcase I’d left behind, so it was no trouble at all.”
It’s more than that, Eric thought. “Mrs. Aldershott said you’d gone to check on Emily, and Aldershott told me she was in the family way—”
“How does Aldershott know?” Saxon demanded, rounding on Eric with a snarl. “Was he responsible?”
“He said Sir Andrew Sotheby told him,” Eric replied, taking a step back.
Saxon accepted the explanation only grudgingly. “I expect that’s possible,” he muttered. “Emily didn’t want me to make a scene, on top of the one I’d already made when I confronted Sir Andrew about the unforgivable way he was treating her. I was sure at the time that it was Benson who’d got her in trouble, and I was going to give him as sound a thrashing as I could, but she wouldn’t have it. She said it wasn’t him, and I wasn’t sure if I should believe her. The last thing I said to her was that I’d do everything in my power to see that whoever it was did right by her; or, failing that, that both she and her child would be properly taken care of. I swore it on my word of honour.” He spat angrily into the gutter. “I should have just offered to marry her instead, and to hell with English society.”
They’d reached Piccadilly by now, and the fog was growing thicker. One knew that the trees of Green Park were just across the way, but one couldn’t see them. This southern edge of Mayfair was where Clubland began, with nearly every other building housing one prestigious gentlemen’s club or another. Their windows glowed above the haze, and their walls seemed proof against the creeping miasma of fog. Eric shivered and pulled his overcoat closer about him. He’d been sure for some time that the danger had passed, but the unsettling memories lingered still.
Saxon, forgetting that he’d come up empty-handed once before, again searched his pockets for an apple to munch on. This time, he came up with a torn scrap of paper, all covered with sketched diagrams and doodles.
“If you thought Benson was the father of Emily’s child,” Eric said, “why did you sponsor him to the club? Most people thought you two didn’t even know each other.”
“Norris introduced us. They came to me about a week before … everything happened. Benson said he knew something about what happened to Emily, and he wanted my help to get at the truth. I didn’t ask for details. He looked uncomfortable enough as it was, talking to me, and I guessed that he felt guilty.”
“Norris was helping Benson too?”
Saxon seemed unimpressed. “For what it’s worth. Benson and Norris were friendly, but Benson told me later that Norris was far from helpful. He was a complete outsider when it came to Emily, you see—didn’t know what happened, didn’t have a thing he could do to help.”
Eric was disappointed. “Benson didn’t tell you anything? And you weren’t curious?”
“I’ve learnt the hard way, Peterkin, that sometimes it’s better if we only know as much as we need to know.” Having ascertained that the detritus of his pockets really was detritus, Saxon dropped it into the decorative urn outside one nearby house. “Benson did tell me, the night he died, that he’d found something important. He was worried about this bet he had with Wolfe and Aldershott, though clearly not worried enough to put a stop to it right away. But he was getting more worried by the minute, so I finally told him he should go back to the club and take one of the lodging rooms. That way he’d be on hand if anyone tried anything.” Saxon stopped and stared across the street to where Green Park would be if they could see through the yellow-grey haze. He looked up and down the street warily before finally deciding that they were safe. “I sent him to his death, Peterkin. If I hadn’t told him to stay at the club, he’d still be alive today.”
“It’s not your fault, Saxon.”
“Isn’t it?” Saxon sat down on the steps of one august edifice and looked back up at Eric. “Do you know what I was doing during the War, Peterkin? I was a codebreaker. I spent the War with MI1b, deciphering coded German messages. That kept me here in London, out of the fighting. It was a grand time, Peterkin: we tore the German communications network apart one cypher at a time—some of us without getting out of our pyjamas. But we never actually saw anyone die.”
Saxon lapsed into silence, and Eric let him collect his thoughts.
“I always knew, though,” Saxon said, more quietly. “Sometimes the news would come back about such and such a failed operation, or so many dead in some futile action; everyone would put on a brave face and just call it jolly bad luck, but I’d look down at the last puzzle I was busy disentangling, connect the dots between the news and the puzzle, and know that if I’d only been faster, or more accurate … Everybody looks at people like Field Marshal Haig and blames them for people dying, but what were they supposed to do if people like me didn’t give them the information they needed? Now I’m back on civvy street, hawking cider like a common tradesman … I thought this business of sending people to die was behind me.”
Eric glanced back at the decorative urn where Saxon had absent-mindedly discarded that last scrap of rubbish from his pockets earlier. It occurred to him that Saxon was a walking security risk:
to be kept on with MI1b, he had to be bloody brilliant.
“I’m surprised you haven’t solved the mystery of Emily’s disappearance yourself,” Eric said, “or Benson’s murder.”
“They’re not messages written in code, are they? I can’t twist the letters into anything that makes sense. No, Peterkin. My job was only to analyse the evidence, not to decide what to do with it afterwards. That’s how it was in the War, anyway. You did your part, and you let the boys in the field do theirs. You were at another remove from the violence … You were responsible, but you didn’t see it actually happen. When Benson came to me, suddenly it was the other way around: he had all the information, and I was in the field. By that logic, I should have been the one to die.”
Eric had seen this before, in men who’d come back from disastrous action in which they’d lost friends and comrades. “It should have been me,” they said. It took a lot of telling them otherwise to change their minds, sometimes more than was humanly possible. Sometimes it was better to just steer the person in another direction.
“Benson asked you to get him into the Britannia Club, then? Did he ask you to do anything else for him?”
“Yes, he—” Saxon stopped and shook his head. “It’s not important.”
Eric stood on the pavement and considered Saxon. The untidy fellow, in spite of his dinner jacket, looked a bit like a tramp as he slouched on the bottom step of the Piccadilly clubhouse. They were still enclosed by the surrounding fog, and, without an apple to munch on, he looked lost. But why had Benson gone to Saxon for help, and not to Aldershott, with whom he at least had some sort of existing working relationship? Was it only because they were united in how they’d felt about Emily? What did Benson think Saxon could do that he himself couldn’t?
Saxon had money and social influence. He had the proper credentials to impress, and that could go some way towards getting through to certain bureaucratic types.
It was only a guess, but … “Was it something to do with the Bruton Wood skeleton?”
Saxon’s head jerked up in surprise, and Eric had his answer.
“Yes,” Saxon said at last. “Benson said it was Emily. I didn’t ask how he knew. He wanted me to quietly claim the body for a proper Christian burial, but I’m afraid it’s not so easy as all that. You can’t just walk into a coroner’s office and demand they hand over a body with no questions asked, especially one found two years ago and already consigned to a pauper’s grave. I doubt if even Bradshaw could do it, and Benson didn’t want to involve Bradshaw.”
It sounded as though Benson had reason to suspect Bradshaw of something unsavoury. After the previous night’s encounter at Brolly’s music hall, Eric felt just a little bit less inclined to dismiss the idea as fanciful.
Saxon got back to his feet and peered down Piccadilly. The fog made it difficult to see, but Piccadilly was a major thoroughfare, and traffic was to be expected even on a pea-souper night like this. “I’m going to have to ask you to stop asking questions about Emily,” Saxon said. He sounded calmer, as though he’d made up his mind. The headlamps of a cruising taxicab glowed in the distance, and Saxon flagged it down. “We all know where asking questions got Benson, and I’d rather not see history repeat itself. Get in, Peterkin.”
Eric stood in the open door of the cab and said, “You know I can’t just give this up. Not now. Benson may not have been your friend, exactly, but he was your comrade in this matter. Surely you don’t want to see his efforts go to waste?”
A look of irritation crossed Saxon’s face. “What does it matter? Benson’s death means the police are looking into it. Leave the bloody mess to the professionals.”
“I don’t think Inspector Parker can be trusted. I saw him removing evidence from Benson’s room. Even if he didn’t kill Benson himself, he’s in this up to his neck.”
“Benson said Parker was innocent of any wrongdoing.”
Did he now? But why mention Parker at all, unless there’d been some question of wrongdoing in the first place? Eric said, “Benson might have been wrong.”
“Hey,” called the cabbie, “you gentlemen ready to go yet? You want to talk, close the door and talk inside. You’re letting the fog get in.”
Saxon made a conciliatory gesture in the driver’s direction, then turned back to Eric. “Just leave it, Peterkin, or … or …”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll have you kicked out of the club.” Saxon gave a determined nod. “Don’t think I won’t do it.”
As a matter of fact, Eric didn’t think for a minute that Saxon would follow through, not unless he were a great deal more deeply invested in suppressing the inquiry, which boded ill for his innocence. “I’ll do what’s right,” he said, getting into the taxi and shifting over to make room for Saxon.
But Saxon just leaned in to thrust half a pound at the driver. “Take my friend here wherever he wants to go,” he said before turning back to Eric. “No, I’m not coming with you. I’ll walk. But you … you were the one getting shot at not half an hour ago, remember?”
“Shot at?” squawked the cabbie, turning in his seat to stare at them. “What d’you mean, shot at?”
“The sooner you drop him off, the less likely you’ll get shot at too,” Saxon snapped, overriding Eric’s attempt to explain the situation. “Good night, Peterkin. And remember what I said.” He shut the door firmly before Eric could reply, and withdrew, tendrils of fog swirling to cover his departure.
“Right,” said the cabbie. “Where to, guv?”
Eric discarded the idea of home almost immediately. He needed to talk about this with someone, and it seemed likely that Avery would still be haunting the Arabica. “Soho Square,” he said, and the taxi tore away into the fog.
CARDS ON THE TABLE
IT WAS NOT quite eleven o’clock when the taxicab dropped Eric off at the Arabica coffeehouse, just a little way off Soho Square. The fog was just as thick, and the night just as dark, but Mayfair felt worlds away from here.
The Arabica was half a flight below street level. It was narrow but very deep, and lined with booths that offered the clientele a touch of welcome privacy. The decor had pretensions of the exotic Near East—India or Arabia or Turkey—and consisted of elaborate geometric patterns next to carvings of elephants and prints taken from the Arabian Nights. It was warm, smoky, and dimly lit; the scent of cinnamon and cloves embraced you as you entered, growing stronger the deeper you went.
The owner and manager was a Chinese fellow named Chiang, who’d been a translator for the Weihaiwei Regiment during the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century. He sat behind the front counter with a newspaper and a fez, under a massive picture of Scheherazade gesticulating dramatically by the foot of the Sultan’s bed. Eric always got the impression that Chiang disliked him and suffered his presence only because he tipped well and was friendly with Avery, the Arabica’s best customer.
Avery, in a shapeless calf-length coat and a knitted scarf long enough for three, fit right in with the Bohemian clientele. As a group, they lingered late into the night over cups of coffee, and their conversation was a self-conscious whisper seeking meaning in both fact and fiction. One saw silk scarves with tassels, startling embroidery, and colours not generally held to be entirely respectable, while the dim lighting glittered on glass beads and hid the worst of the frayed edges.
Eric, with his Clubland-approved dinner jacket and his ramrod-straight soldier’s posture, fit in like a fox in a henhouse.
Avery’s usual booth—a Usual Booth much like Eric’s Usual Armchair—was right at the very back of the room, where the smoke was thickest. Avery was there, as expected, laying out a Tarot reading. It wasn’t until Eric drew abreast of the booth that he saw Avery’s “seeker” was none other than his own sister, Penny.
“Eric!” Penny cried, leaping out of the booth to give him a sisterly peck on the cheek. “How wonderful! Though if you’re out already, I expect this must mean the dinner was a bit of a disaster. Was it?”
“Well, my head’s swimming,” said Penny. “What about you, Avery?”
“I think,” said Avery, “it’s just a matter of asking the right questions of the right people. I’m sure your father would know exactly—”
“No!” shouted the Peterkin siblings in unison. The Bohemian hubbub elsewhere dropped into a lull as heads peeked out from nearby booths to see what the commotion was.
“We are not holding a séance,” Eric said firmly. “Not now, and not ever.”
“Have it your way.” Avery pouted, stubbed out his clove cigarette, and swept up his Tarot cards from the table. “How about a Tarot reading, then? I was just telling Penny how perfectly lovely her future with this Patrick Norris could be. I daresay I could tell you what you need to know to get on with this murder inquiry.”
“Oh no,” Eric protested, but Avery had already drawn the Knight of Swords from the Tarot deck and laid it faceup in the middle of the table. Eric rolled his eyes. “That’s supposed to represent me, is it? Why am I always the Knight of Swords?”
“Because he has such a darling horse,” Penny said. “Avery, which cards would you use to represent everyone? I’ve met Patch, and I remember Mr. Bradshaw from Daddy’s funeral. Everyone else is a mystery, and I keep losing track of them. I want pictures to go with the names; it may help us decide who our main suspect is.”
A Gentleman's Murder Page 17