by Rhys Bowen
“God, I hope not,” I said.
“By the way, was that your grandfather we saw last night? Looked exactly like him.”
“Yes, it was. My mother’s here too. She and Noel Coward are working on a play together and Granddad came down to help look after them.”
“Your mother and Noel Coward—what an unlikely pair.” Darcy chuckled. “So she’s going back to the theater, is she? The big blond German man is nicht mehr?”
“He’s gone to stay with his family for Christmas,” I said. “And between ourselves I see the beginning of the end. I think she’s only toying with the idea of acting again. She does so love being adored.”
“Don’t we all?” Darcy gave me the most wonderful smile that melted me all the way to my toes.
“Oh, Darcy, you’re up. Jolly good.” Bunty stopped short when she saw us together. “I was wondering if you wanted to go out for a shoot. Oodles of pheasants around here just waiting to be bagged.”
“I think we’d better see what your mother has planned for us,” Darcy said. “She seems to have the whole thing organized.”
“There’s no need for family to have to take part in all her silly fun and games,” Bunty said, latching on to his arm. “You and I could slip away and not be noticed.”
“Another time, Bunty,” he said. He gave me a swift glance, saw me trying to look indifferent, then cleared his throat. “Bunty, I think you should know that Georgie and I . . . well . . .”
There was a dreadfully long silence in which I shifted uneasily on my seat.
“I knew it,” she said at last. “I saw the way you look at her. Oh, bugger. Well. I suppose I’d better be charitable and say ‘Bless you, my children.’ I probably wouldn’t have been able to marry my cousin anyway. Blast and damnation. How am I ever going to meet anyone decent stuck down here?”
And she stomped out. Darcy and I exchanged a long look. “I had to tell her,” he said. “She’s been pestering me every second since I got here.”
“I hope her mother won’t mind,” I said, trying to look blasé while all the time a voice was yelling through my head that Darcy had acknowledged me as his sweetheart. “Perhaps she had her heart set on a match too.”
“A match?” Darcy smiled. “I don’t think I’d be described as much of a catch at the moment. A title sometime in the distant future and no prospects for the present. Hopeless, if you ask me.” He gave me another one of those smiles.
Other people began to drift into the breakfast room muttering “Morning” in a way that indicated they too were suffering from hangovers. I got up. “I should go and see what Lady Hawse-Gorzley wants me to do,” I said. But before I could leave the room she came in.
“Georgiana dear. The weather’s not promising this morning. It may snow again. May rain. Dashed nuisance. So I suggest you round up the young people and get to work on the pantomime.”
“Pantomime?”
“Oh, yes. We always put on a pantomime on Boxing Day. The funnier the better. Ask Bunty for the local jokes. I’ll have the servants bring the dressing-up box down from the attic. Always such fun. And we’ll keep it down for when we play charades. You can have the small sitting room next to the ballroom.”
She looked around the table. “Everyone all right? Splendid. Splendid. I’ll have the butler put the morning papers in the library for you.”
And she was off again. I looked down at Darcy.
“How are you at pantomimes?” I asked.
“Expert,” he said. “My Widow Twankey brought the house down.”
“What pantomime is she in?”
He looked shocked. “Aladdin. You know—Wishy Washy and the magic lamp and all that.”
I shrugged. “Sorry, I’ve never seen it.”
“Never seen Aladdin? My dear girl, you haven’t lived.”
“There aren’t too many pantomimes around Castle Rannoch, you know. And I’ve hardly ever been in London for Christmas. I think I may have seen Puss in Boots once, but I can’t remember anything about it.”
“And then there is Dick Whittington, isn’t there? And Cinderella, of course. And Babes in the Wood.”
“We’ll need one with seven or eight roles,” I said. “Everyone should have a part.”
“Well, that rules out Dick Whittington,” Darcy said. “I can only think of Dick and his cat.”
“I expect he had a sweetheart,” I said. “It seems to be one of the requirements.”
“It had better be Cinderella,” Darcy said. “At least we know the story to that one.”
I counted on my fingers. “Let’s see—Cinderella, wicked stepmother—”
“I claim that role for myself,” he said.
“Two ugly sisters.”
“Monty and Badger.”
“The prince, the fairy godmother.”
“The king and the person who carries around the glass slipper. That makes eight.”
“Perfect,” I said.
I rounded up the younger members and presented the idea to them. Naturally Cherie thought it would be boring, Junior thought it would be stupid and Ethel didn’t look too enthusiastic. But Cherie brightened up a lot when I made her Cinderella. Ethel agreed to be the fairy godmother and I assigned Bunty to be the prince. As you know, the principal boy in a pantomime is always played by a female in tights, and there is always a comic older woman played by a man. It’s tradition. And a lot of pies in the face and that kind of thing.
By the end of the morning we had a rough sketch of our lines and everyone had entered into the spirit of the thing, Ethel proving to be rather sharp and witty and even Junior happy to be made the king. But the more they laughed and joked and tried on impossible costumes the more I tried to fight off a lingering uneasiness. Why had I sensed danger so close to my mother’s cottage the night before? A ridiculous notion entered my head. What if one of those convicts knew that my grandfather had been a policeman? Might they want to get him out of the way as their fifth victim?
I could stand it no longer. “I’ll leave you to run through it once more,” I said. “I have to pop down to the village for a minute.”
I put on my coat, grabbed my gifts and ran all the way down the drive, sliding a little in snow that had started to melt. I hammered on my mother’s door. When Granddad opened it I let out a huge sigh of relief.
“Oh, you’re all right. Thank goodness.”
“And why shouldn’t I be all right?” he asked, helping me off with my coat. “Fit as a fiddle, me.” And he thumped his chest. “Come on in, ducks. We’ve got company.”
I went through into the sitting room and found Detective Inspector Newcombe seated by the fire, a cup of tea in his hand.
“The inspector just dropped in for a chat,” Granddad said.
“There hasn’t been another death, has there?” I asked.
“Not that we’ve heard of,” the inspector said, “but I’m not at all happy. Those first deaths I could explain, but that poor woman at the telephone exchange—that had to be malicious and intentional. We can’t tell any more, because the place burned, but I’d say the wires were deliberately hooked up to kill someone. That’s why I came to see your grandfather, miss.”
Obviously it had slipped his mind that I wasn’t a miss, I was a milady. “My chief inspector is off skiing in France so it’s all up to me. I know I should probably call in Scotland Yard, but I don’t want to do that and look a fool, so I thought that a retired member of the Metropolitan Police Service could maybe give me some pointers.”
He looked hopefully at my grandfather. Granddad tried to look like someone who had been a Scotland Yard expert detective, instead of an ordinary copper.
“Do you have anyone around here who might have a grudge against the people who have died? Anyone who has been a bit off his rocker?”
The inspector shook his head. “Nobody. It’s normally quieter than the grave in these parts—oh, dear, that was a tactless expression, wasn’t it? But the occasional robbery, a bit of cattle or sheep ste
aling, someone beating up his old lady on a Saturday night—that’s what crime means to us. This has to be an outsider, and the only outsiders I know are those convicts.”
“There are all the people staying with Lady Hawse-Gorzley,” I pointed out. “They are all outsiders.”
“Yes, but with no connections to the people who have died, surely?” The inspector sounded shocked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Since they’ve just come from America and Yorkshire and India.”
“I wish they’d hurry up and catch those blasted convicts,” the inspector said. “Until they are caught I have to believe that they are hiding out on my patch and it’s up to me to find them.”
“You’ve asked everybody in the area to report break-ins or stolen food immediately, have you?” I said. “They have to eat and shelter somewhere.”
“Exactly. With the kind of weather we’ve just had, someone must be hiding them, but we’ve pretty much searched door to door. Most of the local people have lived here all their lives. They’re not the kind of people to be harboring criminals.”
“I’m not sure it is your convicts we’re looking at,” Granddad said slowly. “In my time on the force I came up against a lot of criminals. Most of them were not too bright and if they were going to kill someone they did it with the first thing that came to hand—coshing someone over the head with a brick, stabbing them, or shooting, if they had a gun. And they usually chose the same way too. They’d leave behind a blueprint we could identify. If these are murders, they are clever methods of killing—someone with a good brain is killing in very different ways—heaven knows for what reason. Either that or more than one person is involved. So we have to ask ourselves why. Why would a man bother to electrocute someone at a switchboard when he could presumably follow her home in the dark and cosh or stab her? Until we can get inside his head, we’re not going to be able to stop him.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the inspector said. “But as it happens these convicts were not your usual thugs. One was a bank teller, reckoned to be the brains behind a big train robbery. Another was an escape artist in the theater. You know, Britain’s answer to Houdini. We reckon he was the one who got them out of their shackles. He went bad and turned to safecracking. And the third used to do a comic music-hall act with his wife. The old colonel and the innocent young girl.”
“Sounds harmless enough,” Granddad said.
“I don’t know about that,” the inspector said. “When there was no more money to be made from music halls they started robbing their landladies, or conning them out of their life savings. Some of the old biddies met an untimely end, but we could never prove that this bloke was actually guilty of murder.”
“What happened to the wife? Did she go to jail too?” Granddad asked.
“She committed suicide. Drowned herself off Beachy Head in Sussex.”
“So not from around here, then?”
“None of them were. Driving me mad, that’s what it’s doing.”
He took a long swig of tea, then set down the teacup.
“I don’t think you should be focusing on those convicts,” Granddad said. “An escaped convict is not going to go to the trouble of setting up an elaborate death to look like an accident, is he? If you’re on the run and hiding, the more time you spend out in the open, the greater the likelihood of being caught.”
“Well, at least there hasn’t been a death so far today, touch wood,” the inspector said. “Maybe he’s got the four people he wants.”
“And why did he want them?” Granddad asked. “It seems to me that they couldn’t be more different, and they wouldn’t be a threat to anybody.”
The inspector sighed. “I know. Hopeless, isn’t it? But my chief is going to come back from France and bawl me out if I haven’t solved it.” He got to his feet. “Thanks for the chat, Albert. Maybe things have quieted down for Christmas. Maybe even a hardened criminal can’t bring himself to kill anyone at such a sacred time. Maybe I can even have Christmas dinner with my wife and the nippers for once.”
As he opened the front door a bobby in blue uniform was coming up the path toward us.
“Oh, there you are, sir,” he said. “I was sent from the station to get you. There’s been a robbery in the high street. Mr. Klein the jeweler. They broke in overnight and they’ve taken his most valuable pieces. He’s in a terrible state, sir. Ranting and raving and blaming the police. You’d better come quickly.”
Chapter 17
Inspector Newcombe started down the path toward his motor. “I hope nobody’s touched anything and messed up the fingerprints,” he said. “A lot of damage, was there? Did they smash the window?”
“Oh, no, sir. There were no obvious signs of a break-in and the pieces they took were in the safe at the back. Sarge reckons it was professionals, all right. Picked the lock on the front door. Knew exactly what they were doing and what they were looking for. Only took some rings with bloody great diamonds in them. And Sarge don’t reckon we’ll find any fingerprints neither.”
“Aha,” Newcombe said. “See, what did I tell you? One of those convicts was a professional escape artist, wasn’t he? Expert at picking locks. I knew they were still hanging around here.”
“Oh, but that’s the other thing I’ve got to tell you, sir,” the constable said, his cheeks pink with excitement. “A message just came in that they’ve caught one of the convicts up in Birmingham. Jim Howard, sir. Wasn’t he the one who was the escape artist?”
“Damn,” Inspector Newcombe muttered. “That shoots down my theory, then. I don’t think a bank clerk or a music hall entertainer would know how to crack a safe. I wonder if the other two were with him or if he knows where they are. I don’t suppose he’ll squeal on his mates, anyway.” He clapped a hand on the constable’s shoulder. “Come on, then, lad. Let’s get back into town. Sorry for rushing off like this, Albert. I’ll let you know what we find.”
And he strode down the path to his waiting car.
“At least it’s not a murder,” I said shakily, thinking of the polite and charming Mr. Klein, who had told me about the fine pieces he’d just acquired from Paris. Maybe he had also mentioned these fine pieces to the wrong person. But at least he was still alive and unharmed.
“And this one shouldn’t be too hard to figure out,” Granddad said, staring thoughtfully at the departing car. “There are only a limited number of criminals in an area like this who possess the skills to crack a safe and have the knowledge to take only the best pieces. Your petty thief who needs extra money for Christmas would have smashed the window and grabbed what he could.”
“So you don’t think this crime was related to the strange deaths, do you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Don’t see how. If the others are murders, then they are the work of a twisted sort of mind. And this is the work of an expert burglar. Probably a known criminal.”
We returned to the cozy sitting room. My mother had appeared, wearing a blue satin robe trimmed with feathers. “Has that horrid little man gone?” she asked. “We’re supposed to be having a quiet and peaceful Christmas and instead we have nasty policemen tramping in and out of the house all the time. You shouldn’t have encouraged him, Daddy.”
“The poor bloke is at his wit’s end, ducks. He wanted my advice.”
“I take it you haven’t told him you were just a humble copper and not the leading light of Scotland Yard?” She curled herself into an armchair. “Oh, hello, Georgie, darling. Come and give your aged mother a kiss.”
I did so, then I handed her the package. “A small Christmas token from me. Not to be opened until tomorrow.”
“Georgie, you shouldn’t. How sweet of you. And now I feel terrible because I wasn’t expecting to see you until the new year, when I was planning to take you on a shopping spree.” She uncurled herself. “But you have to have something. Come upstairs and see what you’d like. I know I’m teeny tiny compared to you, but I have some pretty scarves and hats and things
.”
“It’s all right, Mummy, you really don’t need to. . . .”
“Nonsense. I insist. You have to have something on the right day. Besides, I always travel with far too many clothes.”
And she dragged me up the narrow staircase into a frightfully untidy bedroom. It was clear she rarely traveled without her maid and Mrs. Huggins wasn’t up to the task of keeping a lady’s wardrobe in order.
“Help yourself, darling. Anything you’d like.”
My gaze swept around the room, alighting on a lovely cashmere cardigan in a soft rose. Modesty almost prevented me from asking for it, but I reasoned that she had the money to buy a replacement whenever she wanted while I wasn’t likely to be offered cashmere again in a hurry.
“Could I try this on?” I asked. “It looks as if it might be big enough for me.”
“That old thing?” she said. “Take it, darling. I only brought it in case it was freezing here, but as you can see, it’s lovely and warm.”
I tried it on and it fitted rather well.
“You need a skirt to go with it,” she said. “That tweed you’re wearing is hopelessly shapeless. Let’s see.” She rummaged in a wardrobe and held up a slim gray crepe de chine. “This is long on me and you do have a nice little waist.”
After a half hour I came away with the cardigan and skirt, a divine peach silk scarf and a clever little black hat with a jaunty peacock feather on one side. As we left the bedroom the door beside it opened and Noel Coward peeked out.
“I’ve been finding Christmas presents for Georgie,” my mother said. “Such fun.”
“Oh, God. Is one supposed to give presents?” Noel said. “It never crossed my mind.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring a present for you, Mr. Coward. I didn’t see anything you might want.”
“Dear child, you couldn’t afford anything I might want,” he said. “In fact, my needs are few these days. But I tell you what—I’ll write a song for you. How would that be?”
“As long as you give her the royalties, Noel,” my mother said astutely.
“Naturally,” he said smoothly. “At least half of them. Ah, well, back to work. I’ve nearly finished that scene, Claire. Can we go through it in a few minutes?”