‘Not so sweet after all?’
‘I’d say those soft scarves conceal a very dark soul. I read her diary. It’s her only personal possession.’
‘That’s a bit much, don’t you think?’
Max shrugged. ‘My job knows no boundaries, and I can’t afford to have scruples or regrets. What I found out was interesting: Aunt Minnie hates all of the Alladices, Bella especially. She blames them for her poverty. She blames Bella for ruffling feathers at an English Club for ladies in Venice, which she obviously adores. She spends most of the diary moaning about how she’s been tarred with the same brush as her niece, how the respectable ladies at the club give her a wide berth and how unfair it all is. But she doesn’t have a good word to say about the smart secretary or about Miss Christie, either. There was malice on every page. Evil stuff, really. It shocked me, and that takes some doing.’
‘Evil thoughts leading to evil deeds?’ muttered Posie darkly. ‘Or just a way of letting off steam?’
‘Again, I don’t know, and it’s not your lookout either, is it?’ added Max maddeningly. ‘Mention your suspicions to that big burly policeman, but leave it at that.’
Posie nodded, thoughts tripping over themselves. ‘Thank you. I asked Scotland Yard for some information about this little crew, but I bet what they find isn’t half as interesting as this. You’re obviously jolly good at your job.’ She made as if to proceed down the stairs. But Max came very close to Posie, barring her way.
‘Hang on a minute.’ He took her hand. If she was surprised she didn’t show it and she let his hand linger.
‘Don’t forget what I said about getting out. And please, take those priceless jewels off.’
Posie raised an eyebrow. Quick as a flash she made a decision. Wordlessly she took off the sapphire earrings. She shook off Max’s hand and opened his palm like a flower. She pushed the jewels into it.
‘Take them. I’d like you to have these now. I don’t need them. In your game you never know when you might need ready cash, or something to barter with, I suppose. If I ever see you again perhaps you can give them back to me, if you still have them. If not, don’t worry.’
Max didn’t try and argue with her, or insist on Posie keeping the stones. He shoved them instead into some section of his large briefcase known only to himself. There was the expectancy of a promise being made.
‘Allow me to give you something back, Posie. I bought this for you early this morning in the Rialto market, near the Post Office. I thought it looked cheery. More usable than real jewels, anyhow. If you never see me again, which you might not, remember me when you wear it.’
He produced a string of blush-pink Murano glass beads, cheap as seaside chips, with little gold squiggles all over them. Their fastening was a fake gold screw. Posie grinned for probably the first time all day.
‘Thanks,’ she muttered, flushing red. ‘I must go. That Police Surgeon…’
Two steps down, he called her back. He looked worried. ‘One thing, Posie. We both saw that silver flask with the carved initials last night. You gave it to me to drink from.’
‘It wasn’t mine!’ hissed Posie.
‘I know that. You told me it was Lucy’s. But that one flask seems to have passed through many hands. And someone put poison in it for Bella Alladice to drink today. You need to mention seeing it last night to the police.’
He turned and walked away. Posie stared at his retreating back.
She had been thinking along the same lines. That flask, the one Lucy had given her last night, which she’d returned very early this morning, had borne the legend ‘AA’, presumably for Annabella Alladice, in curvy Edwardian script. Lucy had obviously ‘borrowed’ it from her employer and then lent it to Posie. But had she tampered with the flask before giving it back to her employer this morning at breakfast?
It hardly seemed credible. Lucy was so nice.
But there were odd things about her too, it was true. She had apparently been in charge of Bella’s medicines. What exactly had Lucy got from the apothecary late last night? Had that dark-coloured bottle contained the prussic acid? What was going on with Lucy and the various men here? What had Dickie told her to ‘hold her nerve’ about? A planned murder?
But there were odd things about everyone here, and that didn’t make them all murderers.
Posie suddenly became aware that the telephone was ringing insistently in the entrance vestibule downstairs, and it had probably been ringing for several minutes. Bounding downwards, and realising there was quite simply no-one to answer it, everyone being locked in the mirrored salon, or acting sentry on the door, she snatched up the black-and-gold receiver.
A babble of Italian followed, and all Posie could say was ‘Si, per favore. Put the connection through.’
Please let this be helpful, Posie thought to herself.
The welcome voice of the International Operator clicked through after a small pause.
‘London calling. Scotland Yard wants Miss Parker. Will you wait?’
****
Thirteen
The front door to the Campo stood ajar, and a few flashlights were going off outside. Posie assumed that the Venetian press must somehow have got wind of the death and were swarming hungrily for news. It was the same here as in Fleet Street, of course: everyone with their crust of bread to earn.
Through the front door Posie could also see that a bevy of excitable uniformed policemen were crowding on the steps down to the jetty of the Campo San Vio. Behind them a large police barge was tethered, and what looked like forensics experts were loading out cardboard boxes and glass plates. But she watched in some surprise as, rather than come up to the guesthouse, they were pointing elsewhere, over the canal towards the Palace, seeming to argue about where to go first.
Very peculiar.
Posie’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice, almost irritable, repeating her name down the telephone.
‘Is that you, Sergeant Rainbird?’
It was. ‘I’ve got what you wanted, Miss Parker. Information about your Venice crowd.’
Posie took down rapid notes, parrot-fashion, avoiding repeating or voicing names aloud. But the first two reports were distinctly disappointing.
1. Countess Bella Romagnoli. Nothing exciting to note. Up to date with taxes paid to the Revenue authorities in England. Listed as a Director and Shareholder of Alladice Holdings.
2. Dickie Alladice. No war record (he didn’t serve) and nothing on the police record. Always late with his own income tax but the Revenue authorities seem to turn a bit of a blind eye. Big charitable donations made on a yearly basis, particularly to hospitals and workhouses in the north of England. Listed as a Director and Shareholder of Alladice Holdings.
3. Millicent (Minnie) Alladice. No police records, no tax records of any kind, despite being listed as a minor Shareholder in Alladice Holdings. Receives a few shillings a week (as a widow) from a war pension following the death of her husband on active service…
Posie did a double take. It didn’t fit. ‘Sorry? A husband?’
Sergeant Rainbird was clearing his throat. ‘That’s correct, Miss. She married a Henry Walters, a Post-Master and shopkeeper, just outside of Burnley, in 1913. I have the certificate right here, from Somerset House.’
‘I didn’t know she’d been married. I just assumed she was a spinster.’ Posie frowned and cursed herself for her slackness. She normally didn’t assume anything; that way danger led.
Rainbird was making tut-tutting noises down the line.
‘It’s not the most salubrious story, Miss Parker, if you want to know. Frankly I’m not surprised the lady doesn’t talk about it. Seems she married this fella in her late thirties, and married beneath herself socially, too. He seems to have been a bit of a cad: declared bankrupt within a year of the marriage. I have all the bankruptcy papers here from the Court. Seems the lady had her own money, plenty actually, from the Alladice family, at the time of the marriage but he sunk it all. Huge debts were owed by
1914 to creditors of the Post Office and the shop which he ran, but also to various bookmakers. Horses. Big sums for the time.’
Posie whistled. The shame of the Bankruptcy Court was about equal to the Divorce Court, but the consequences were infinitely worse. You could marry again, for sure, but the decree of bankruptcy and the taint which came with it never really left you.
‘Was she declared bankrupt? Minnie?’
‘No. Not that I can see. The Bankruptcy Court gave Mr Walters an ultimatum: a year in the debtors’ jail or serve the country in war-torn France. He was old to serve – over forty – but he went anyhow, in early 1915.’
‘I say! He chose badly.’
‘Quite. Died the same year and left his missus in a dreadful pickle.’
Posie shook her head, conjuring up an image of Millie Alladice a decade earlier: pathetically grateful to be shown any attention, even if it was from a man of a different social class, and even if there were suspicions that he might just have been after Minnie’s money. Maybe the unfortunate Henry Walters had been easy on the eye? Or funny, or kind? An adeptness with finances and a gambling habit weren’t the first things one noticed about a man, anyhow.
Rainbird was continuing, somewhat sanctimoniously: ‘I’d say Minnie Alladice wouldn’t marry Walters if she had her time again.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Posie muttered darkly. ‘People do stupid things for some men. But what do you mean, he left her in a “dreadful pickle”?’
‘Well, the sale of the shop didn’t cover half the debt. Minnie Alladice took the debt on herself after her husband’s death, as she was obliged to do, but she seems to have had some sort of nervous breakdown later in 1915. The Alladice family stepped in quickly and paid it off.’
‘Who paid it, exactly?’
‘It doesn’t say here on the Court papers. It just says Minnie was in a nursing home and unable to work. Alladice Holdings paid the debt.’
‘Mnnn. I see.’ Mr Alladice Senior had been alive back then, and he had probably managed the whole mess, cancelling out his sister’s debt, using the family company’s finances to do so. Obviously not the ‘great wrong’ Bella had said her father had inflicted on Minnie.
Actually, Posie couldn’t find much that was controversial in Minnie Alladice’s background, or her position back in 1915, although it had obviously been most unfortunate.
Posie’s thoughts were instead returning again and again to Lucy, the companion, with her medicine bottles and her borrowed hip-flask and borrowed liqueur. She asked Rainbird for his information about the girl, and she stood with her pencil poised.
‘There’s nothing on your Miss Christie, I’m afraid.’
‘What? Nothing at all?’
‘That’s right, Miss. No birth certificate, no work record, no war record, no listing with the Revenue authorities. I’d say your Miss Christie doesn’t exist. And if she does, she’s not who she says she is.’
Posie was stumped. She’d come across people assuming other people’s names and identities before. But why would Lucy do so?
At her silence the Sergeant moved on. ‘I have nothing on your young Count, either. He’s not known over here, full-stop. But what is juicy is this Roger Valentine fellow you asked me to investigate.’
‘Go on.’
4. Roger Valentine. Went to Oxford University, studied Chemistry. Excelled. Won medals for various sports, including gymnastics. Taken on by the government straight out of Oxford in 1914. Working on highly confidential chemical war-work, often in Whitehall. All classified.
Posie dropped her voice as low as it would go and cast an anxious look around the dark empty entrance. ‘I say! Are we talking about developing poison gasses, and such like, Sergeant?’
‘I’d imagine so, Miss.’
Posie was reminded for a brief second of Max, working in a similar fashion in Germany. Men everywhere, first-class brains, trained at top universities, plotting and scheming to find ways of wiping out men just like themselves. It was ludicrous. Heart-breaking, actually.
‘How do you know about this, Sergeant? If it was top-secret?’
‘Because Roger Valentine messed up. Big-time. It seems that whenever a team he was working in were getting close to making some hard-hitting chemical breakthrough, there’d be an accident, or an explosion, or a fire. Or plans would go missing. The first couple of incidents were put down to carelessness, but the carelessness continued.’
‘Deliberate sabotage?’
‘Aye, Miss. They never found out who he was in pay to exactly, but of course it was the Germans, wasn’t it? He was had up for treason. It’s in the official papers.’
Posie gasped. Treason still carried the death-sentence. ‘But he got off?’
‘Lack of evidence. So he was put in prison for the duration of the war on a trumped-up charge of dereliction of duty. When he got out he was unemployable. He was banned from ever working as a chemist again. Or working for the government, for that matter.’
‘So what has he done?’
‘Bit of this, bit of that. Mainly work as a secretary. I suppose he just glossed over his prison past, and his chemical “mistakes”. The Revenue authorities have him listed in several jobs, all ending very suddenly, all with the payment of large amounts of money at their conclusions.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Isn’t it just? Indicates your Mr Valentine was probably trying to blackmail his employers, making the employment situations he was in untenable, hence the large payments to see the back of the fellow. He sounds a right nasty piece of work.’
Posie’s brain was working overtime. Chemistry. An expert in poisons. A blackmailer.
At her silence the Sergeant carried on: ‘I hope it was helpful? I’ve got a new lad, Constable Fox, to train up. He’s a bright fellow, and he helped me out no end.’
‘Jolly good. Oh, Sergeant! What about the company itself? Alladice Holdings.’
A deep sigh came down the line, as if all of Fox’s good work had been undone in a second. ‘No can do, Miss. We spoke to Companies House, where Alladice Holdings are obliged to keep their records. Apparently the paperwork is being updated or something. It won’t be ready for another week or so. There’s a big note saying “OUT FOR REVIEW” in the place in the bookshelf where it should be.’
Posie frowned. ‘Is that usual?’
‘My lad Fox asked much the same question, Miss. It seems it’s not unusual. Could be just Companies House checking things. Coincidental, like?’
‘Mnnn.’
Thanking the Sergeant and his eager new police recruit, Posie hung up.
But there was no time to think on Rainbird’s findings, for the telephone was ringing again, and she snatched up the receiver. It was Sidney. For just a second she couldn’t remember quite why anyone at Grape Street might be calling her.
‘Miss? Ain’t I half-glad I got you! I been tryin’ that café place and I been tryin’ again here for at least the last half hour!’
‘Sorry Sidney. Is this about the Somerset House Will?’
‘Sure is, Miss! I wanted to tell you before I forgot the details. You were right: I couldn’t copy anythin’ down. Lucky for you I’ve got a first-class memory.’
‘Lucky me. Carry on.’
‘It was very short, this Will. I think the fella hand-wrote it before leavin’ for France. Your dead chap, this John Alladice, he starts off by sayin’ that while he supposes people think he might be rich, he doesn’t own that much really, as all of his wealth is in the family company.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘He only had one treasure, a diamond solitaire, which had belonged to his mother. He says there’s a girl who he loves, but he can’t get up the nerve to ask her to marry him for fear she’ll turn ’im down. Says he’ll ask her when he returns from the war. Poor lad. Imagine!’
‘And?’
‘He says he’s sent the ring to the girl in question already, and that folks should know and appreciate it was what he wanted. There’s
to be no argument.’
‘I see. Is that all?’
‘No, not on your nelly! He then says he owns company shares, a lot of them. He says he can only leave them to an “Alladice” and that he doesn’t want to do that, that it almost breaks his heart because it’s very difficult to choose between his siblings on account of no love lost between them all. Says he’ll leave them to his sister Bella but only on the condition that she’ll look after the girl he loves; keep the girl protected and living in the style to which she has grown accustomed. Very nicely, I suppose.’
‘Gosh.’ Posie frowned. ‘Bella didn’t mention any of this to me when we spoke yesterday. I wonder who this girl was?’
There was an exited chirrup down the line from Bloomsbury. ‘You want her name, Miss?’ Sidney sounded proud. ‘I made sure to remember it.’
‘I’m all ears.’
Posie had got out her notepad again. But she nearly dropped it in shock when she heard Sidney’s answer.
‘It were Lucy Christie, Miss.’
****
Fourteen
For a few minutes Posie sat, hidden from view. In her rush she had knocked down two carnival masks, the long-nosed plague doctor’s mask of Scaramuccia, and the comic-sad face of Tartaglia, which must have been stuffed up on the top shelf among a load of junk.
Both masks had at some point been roughly painted black, which lent them a horribly funereal aspect. Posie hated masks and puppets and that kind of ghoulish make-believe at the best of times, and she put them down carelessly at her feet, thoughts reeling.
This recent news from Sidney was just too much.
In an instant Lucy had been transformed from being Bella’s underpaid and ill-treated companion to being all of that and more. A wronged woman; the woman Johnny Alladice had loved, whose care and financial security he had entrusted to his sister Bella in the event of his death. And Bella had taken the company shares but not taken on the responsibility; she had ‘kept’ Lucy as an underpaid companion in some dreadful mimicry of what her brother had really wanted.
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