Posie called across softly: ‘Tell me, when you saw Minnie Alladice at the Post Office, was that yesterday morning or this morning?’
The spy looked mock surprised. ‘What a funny question! Why, as it happens it was yesterday morning. Early. About nine o’clock.’
‘And was she alone?’
‘Ja, she was. I’m just coming. So are the police.’
Posie nodded, but her thoughts were spinning. Certainties, or what had been given as certainties, were being blown apart by one coincidental but opportune sighting.
She heard but barely registered Max asking for the Commissario at the Questura, and while she waited she ripped open the sealed envelope which had been delivered just a few moments earlier, fresh off the Orient Express.
She found herself confronted with the work she had undertaken Sidney to do for her the day before in London. The work which had taken him to the Associated Press office on the Strand, where he must have found Sam Stubbs, her friendly journalist, for here was Sam’s card:
POSIE,
THIS IS ALL WE HAVE FROM THE CHARLTON STUDIO FOR THAT DATE. HOPE IT HELPS?
BEST WISHES,
SAM.
Three satiny-shiny press photographs dropped out. All identical, not dramatic or exciting at all. Posie scanned them all wearily. And then she gasped at the third photograph.
Time stood still about her.
‘Oh, my! So this is it. The reel…’
For on a second glance, the three photographs were not actually identical at all. The first two were dull as ditchwater, and the third was telling. More than telling, in fact: it was life-changing, life-threatening. The sort of thing one would commit murder for. The sort of thing one would phone Scotland Yard up about and start speaking of murder…
Max was beside her now. He screwed up his nose slightly, and this close up Posie saw a smattering of freckles below the fair skin. He frowned:
‘I’ve seen these before. No, not this one.’ He set aside the third photograph and looked at the other two less interesting ones, nodding. ‘I’ve seen these two. Up in Roger’s room. In a green folder.’
Posie nodded. ‘Copies of the same photographs were certainly up there. I’ve seen the incinerated bottom section of one before. A section which escaped the fire when Roger attempted to burn them.’
‘Are they important?’
Posie waved the third photograph.
‘This one is,’ she said in a low, angry voice. ‘It explains everything. It’s a motive for murder all by itself.’
****
Twenty-Eight
Together they hurried across the Campo San Vio, the sugar warehouse never out of their sights. Up ahead on the jetty was a lone Gondolier, basking in the rays of the late November light. Across the city bells were ringing out for four o’clock.
Before they reached the gondola, Max stopped Posie and grabbed at her arm. She looked into his eyes, which were blazing blue.
‘Ach, I told you this was dangerous, Posie,’ he hissed, ‘and I have a sense of real unease. It rarely happens to me, actually. Normally I can look danger in the eye and be done with it.’
His eyes took in the pink beads at her throat and he seemed to decide on something. ‘Maybe I feel I have something to lose now. If anything happens to you in there I will never forgive myself, and if something happens to me, don’t regret it. Don’t think of me – or speak of me – ever again. I’m glad I met you out here, and thank you for your trust in me. The jewels you kindly lent me are secreted away under a loose plank, in the near left-hand corner of the altana. It meant a lot to me that you put them at my disposal.’
Posie gulped, but before she could find a suitable response, Max was shoving something slippery and cool and lethal-feeling into her hand. Looking down she saw a small, sleek Luger pistol.
She shuddered and pressed it back: ‘No, no thank you. I’ve never carried a gun before.’
‘Then you should start now.’
‘Absolutely not. You take it.’
‘What makes you think I don’t have another one about my person?’
‘Well, have two then.’
They got into the gondola and crossed the Grand Canal, Max drawing his mouth into a hard, tight line of resignation. At the small, seen-better-days jetty of the sugar warehouse opposite, with its peeling paintwork and lack of any striped mooring posts, Posie and Max stepped out. The entrance to the warehouse, a huge wrought-iron and wood door, stood slightly ajar.
‘That door shouldn’t be open: it’s odd. Let’s wait here for the police,’ hissed Max, but Posie strode inside, followed unwillingly by Max. Downstairs, as was usual with Venetian houses, there was a small vestibule, but this one had been made even smaller than normal by the erection of a new wooden wall all along the back, perhaps making space for more storage.
A corkscrew metal staircase led upwards and they surged on, an echoing, metallic noise meeting their ears as they climbed higher. They came out into what would, in every Venetian house or palace, have been the main floor, the piano nobile. But here any resemblance to a typical Venetian house stopped. The normal floors of the place were missing, ripped out; replaced instead by metal minstrel’s galleries circling around and around the bare brick walls, all the way to the top of the building, ten storeys high at least, the galleries linked only by metal corkscrew staircases. The middle inside of the building where floors should have been was just a great shaft of light, giving the viewer a giddying sense of height, or dizziness when looking up, or down. Clanking lifts and industrial pulleys carrying baskets were whizzing up and down noisily in the vast empty shaft, being unloaded at every possible balcony. There was a busyness about the place which bordered on frantic.
The smell of roasted sugar still hung heavily in the dry, parched air. Bill Persimmon’s legacy.
Posie stared. For some reason she had expected to walk into a silent, deserted warehouse, a place flooded by an expectant calm; everybody making preparations for a business to start up. She had not expected this; black-clad figures darting about like industrious ants on every balcony, loading and unloading, shouting orders, following commands.
‘I had no idea!’ she breathed, scanning the ants for anyone resembling Alaric, or Dickie, or Roger.
‘Nein, why would you have?’ replied Max, evenly. ‘Quite the little industry your fiancé is about to join here, isn’t it?’
A door banged heavily overhead, and Posie looked up, screwing her eyes against the sunlight filtered down through huge panes of glass at the top of the building. A man was walking along one of the balconies, about six floors up, and despite the fact he was wearing a full black cloak with its hood up, Posie thought there was something of the dangerously athletic grace of Roger Valentine about him.
‘There!’ she hissed at Max, and she took the nearest staircase as quickly as she could, spiralling around and around, her sturdy boots clattering loudly as she went.
She reached the sixth level and ran along the narrow wrought-iron balcony, puffed out, taking a brief look down into the bottom of the building.
‘Gracious!’
Brown-paper packets were being unloaded off wooden pallets by perhaps twenty or thirty men on the rough square concrete floor of the piano nobile. The packets were then being sorted and placed on baskets and swung up to different levels where they were being repacked and sent off down external shutes. Not one man on the work floor stopped for a second, or chatted with a neighbour, or slacked off from the task at hand. Most didn’t raise their heads at all, just carrying on mutely, the only sounds filling the place being the smacking and slapping of packets and the whizzing of chains, up and down.
Posie scowled, for something was wrong here. But what? Turning, and about to ask Max, she realised suddenly that she was quite alone on the balcony and that Max had disappeared.
‘Hang it all!’
But she hurried on, aware of voices up ahead. English voices. Not raised exactly in an argument, but testy, and combative. On the
left, coming up, she saw the cheap wooden doorway which Roger – if it had been Roger – had gone through. It was obviously the door to a small office, perhaps a foreman’s office in the good old days of Mr Persimmon’s sugar empire.
Loitering outside for a few seconds she pressed her ear to the door to hear better. It was as she had thought.
Men’s voices, all of them known to her. A panic was in the air, surely the result of a gun having just been brought out? She heard Dickie Alladice, slow and firm. ‘Surely there’s no need for that, old fellow?’
And Alaric, reassuring: ‘No, none at all. Just put it away. This can all be sorted out without waving that about, can’t it?’
A sharp, bitter laugh. Roger Valentine: ‘On the contrary, Mr Boynton-Dale, I think you’ll find this can’t be sorted out in any other way.’
There was a click as the trigger was pulled, and Posie pushed open the door.
In a split-second she took in the man standing beside her, cloaked, holding a pistol trained on Alaric and Dickie, both wearing black tie, and seated in ancient, paint-spattered cast-off chairs. Another man in a dark pinstriped suit lurked behind them both, standing, and Posie registered that this was Mr Ennario, the notary. On the rickety desk-table were formal-looking papers, with a fountain-pen atop them, and a pile of other, fatter papers were stacked neatly in a corner. The silver Sargent and Greenleaf safe, rescued by Alaric from the fire, sat on the desk importantly, alongside a decanter of what looked like Scotch whisky. Posie’s heart was in her mouth and yet somehow she forced calm words into the chaos of the little room.
‘No! No! Don’t shoot, please.’
Everyone swung to look at her in one surprised movement.
‘Posie?’ Alaric said in disbelief. He stood up. The distraction was enough for Dickie Alladice to have got up too, and now Dickie was holding a second gun, trained on Roger Valentine.
It was a stand-off.
‘It’s delightful of you to join us, Posie,’ said Dickie. ‘But it’s not at all safe. This fella here is a complete madman, and you’d be best advised to step out; same way you came in. Cut along home.’
‘Dickie’s right.’ Alaric nodded, his handsome features knitted together in lines of worry.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me.’ Posie smiled with a certainty she did not feel. ‘I thought I might be able to help.’
‘Help?’ said Roger Valentine, a mocking tone entering his voice. ‘How can you help? What on earth do you understand?’
‘I understand almost everything,’ said Posie, hoping against hope that Commissario Salvarocca and Lovelace, or at least Max, or anyone, would get along pretty dashed soon.
She looked directly at Roger Valentine, who lowered his gun very slightly and flickered his gaze over her before he reverted to training his gun again on Dickie and Alaric. She had no doubt that the man meant business.
‘I know what you are,’ she said in a low voice.
Roger tutted: ‘Everyone knows who I am!’ he breathed. ‘I’ve never used an alias. Not even when things got really bad, in England, after the war.’
‘I said what you are,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘A rotten egg?’ murmured Dickie from behind his gun. ‘The man’s a crook, and a nasty one at that.’
‘Ah.’ Posie nodded. ‘You refer to poor Lucy Christie, being blackmailed over this last year, which is why you gave Roger here the heave-ho. Told him to leave Venice.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I agree,’ said Posie. ‘Roger is a first-class blackmailer. There’s not many he hasn’t turned his skills on, usually successfully. Sometimes, like with Lucy Christie, he makes a frequent demand. Sometimes there’s only one request for money, for a piece of handy information given: such as supplying Alaric here with information which could have been helpful to him. Or giving Aunt Millie that terrible, life-changing information about Bella’s Will, two months ago. Not knowing what the consequences would be…’
Dickie’s grey eyes clouded for a second in confusion, his brow furrowed. He kept the gun trained on the secretary but he appealed to Posie. ‘What’s that you’re speaking of, Miss Parker?’
There was a horrible cackle from Roger Valentine. He hooted with laughter: ‘That’s the best bit of all! Bella undid you, and you didn’t even know about it! You were going to get a nasty shock when the Will was read out next week by a proper lawyer who had sewn it all up neatly, weren’t you?’
Dickie appealed again to Posie. ‘What “nasty shock” is he blithering on about? I did tell you he was a madman, didn’t I?’
Posie bit her lip. ‘I’m afraid he’s speaking the truth, Dickie. Bella left all her company shares to your aunt, Minnie. Which means that together with her original share, Minnie will become the majority shareholder in Alladice Holdings.’
‘What?’ For once Dickie Alladice’s complexion matched the grey of his eyes and his surprise was genuine. ‘No! I don’t believe a word of it!’
Posie nodded. ‘Roger is right: you would have found out at the reading of the Will next week when Mr Proudfoot got here. It was all completely above board. You were with me earlier at the Frari Church – you remember the conversation we overheard then, about Minnie paying for the fire? – it all makes sense if you understand Minnie’s motivation. She acted as she did to get her hands on the company, as soon as she could…’
Dickie gasped and fixed his aim even straighter at Roger.
Alaric looked puzzled, as well as scared. ‘But why did you come back here, Valentine? You obviously didn’t want the police to catch you, hence that nifty escape. This can only end in disaster for you, surely? In death or capture?’
Posie looked at Roger, and she recognised the expression in his eyes: there was a lawlessness there, a devil-may-care attitude. It was the expression Max wore most often. He’s a man with nothing left to lose, she thought. The most dangerous kind.
Roger smiled. ‘I knew this meeting was going ahead today: the time, the location. I knew the importance of it. I had to come. I also knew that money was being transferred today at four o’clock… that things had to happen today.’
He waved his free hand around the office. ‘I had to stop all of this.’
Posie grabbed at her carpet bag, fished around inside it. She was nearest Roger, on his side, and only he could see what she drew out. It was the third incriminating photograph.
‘But in addition, I think you wanted to talk about this, didn’t you? To show it around? Like you showed it to Bella before she died…’
Roger glanced down, and surprise registered on his dark face, the handsome features drawn back in a sneer which turned to sudden admiration.
‘Why, Miss Parker! You’re absolutely right. Full marks to you! Seems I was wrong, after all. You do know everything.’
‘I told you. I know what you are: you are here to avenge.’
But in the few seconds in which Roger had looked away, when his focus had shifted, the notary in the corner had seized his chance. Grabbing at Dickie Alladice’s gun, Mr Ennario had spun around and taken aim.
And just a fraction of a second too late, Roger Valentine realised he had a new assailant, and gasping, he fired his pistol at exactly the same time as the notary. Screaming, shouting, Dickie Alladice and Alaric were on the floor, and Posie too, her head in her hands, face down on the rough-hewn wooden floorboards, desperate for cover, still holding the photograph she had shown Roger.
Whizzing, and the pep-pep of bullets hitting home filled the air and there was an almighty swishing sound, as the black cape of Roger Valentine was collapsing, falling, sinking down like petals at the end of summer.
And then there was a silence and a couple of seconds passed, and Posie realised that both Mr Ennario and Roger Valentine’s bullets had found their targets.
Her pulse hammering, she forced herself to look up, and she saw to her horror that both men were lying dead upon the floor.
****
Twenty-Nine
Was it Posie’
s imagination or was there a slight movement out on the balcony? Or was it simply a last juddering breath of air in one of the dead men, lying so horribly close to her? Like a reproach.
Posie cursed herself miserably: she hadn’t helped matters. Hadn’t helped at all. She had only made things worse.
After what seemed like an eternity, Alaric and Dickie were up on their feet again, and Alaric had come over to help Posie up.
Dickie stepped over Mr Ennario’s body and wrestled with the decanter on the desk. With trembling hands he filled two crystal glasses and passed them across to Posie and Alaric. He took a swig from the bottle itself and shuddered, wiping at his mouth.
Posie tried not to look down at the body of Roger Valentine, so close to her feet, or to look at the blood pooling from under the black cape. The coppery scent of it was filling the small, sawdusty room and she leant across to open the tiny window behind the desk; the salty, damp air which swished in from the Grand Canal providing real relief. Posie put the glass of whisky down, untasted. Now was no time for drinking.
Right up close to the desk Posie noticed that the pile of fat papers were certainly photographs, blown up to show details, and she noticed too that the small silver safe sat open, its door swinging wide. Posie was surprised to see that all it contained was one tiny black notebook, and she supposed the contents of the notebook must be more valuable than appeared at first glance.
Dickie had gone towards the door. ‘I’d better go down and find a telephone. I need to get one installed up here, but I haven’t got around to it yet. I’ll ring for the police to come. What a dreadful shock. But at least it’s all over.’
Posie stood up, straight as anything. ‘But it’s not, though, is it, Dickie?’
Dickie swung around, confusion showing clearly on his face. ‘Sorry, Posie? What did you say? I don’t quite follow you.’
‘I said it’s not over, is it? But it’s a nice tidy end to the story. Now you have a body you can present to the police, and you can say that Roger was the murderer, and was responsible for everything in this catalogue of horrors so far. But he wasn’t.’
Murder in Venice Page 23