Sisters Three

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘What if I did?’

  ‘And clean forgot what you were supposed to be doing there?’

  ‘Nope.’ Kenny uncapped the sauce bottle and poured a squiggle of brown sauce on to his ham and eggs. ‘Duty was always uppermost in my mind.’

  Noon now, Monday, Boxing Day: he was on duty at two o’clock and would be expected to deliver his report to Inspector Winstock first thing tomorrow morning. Fiona had also been called in that afternoon on the two to ten shift. With luck he might be able to persuade his sister to type to his dictation so that his report would look formal and substantial even if its content was thin.

  ‘Do you want another slice of ham?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘After all you ate last night I’m surprised you can face breakfast at all.’

  He grinned. ‘I’m a growing boy, don’t you know?’

  ‘Did she tell you that?’ Fiona said.

  ‘No, her mother did.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re well in there, I see.’

  ‘I could be even better in if I was that way inclined.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it does,’ Fiona said.

  ‘It means I could marry Rosie, give up the Force, take a well-paid job with Manone – and live happily ever after.’

  ‘Kenny, you wouldn’t!’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Might marry Rosie, though.’

  ‘In which case you’d have to resign.’

  ‘If I’m still there, yes,’ Kenny said.

  ‘Where else would you be?’

  ‘In the army,’ Kenny said, ‘like everyone else.’

  Fiona was dressed for the office; navy blue pleated skirt, white blouse, starched collar fastened with a cameo brooch that had once belonged to her grandmother. What would their old granny say if she knew that her treasure was gracing the throat of a civilian assistant to a police inspector, Kenny wondered? He covered a fried egg with a slice of ham, lifted it carefully on his fork and put the lot into his mouth while Fiona seated herself at the narrow kitchen table and poured herself tea.

  ‘Is that your plan, Kenneth?’ she said, soberly.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘To leave the Force, join the army, and marry this deaf girl?’

  ‘It’s a thought,’ Kenny said.

  ‘Be serious, please.’

  ‘I am being serious. I think I’m in love with her.’

  ‘How depressing,’ Fiona said. ‘How really and truly depressing.’

  He ate again, cleaning the breakfast plate, then he said, ‘I thought you wanted to hear what happened last night?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘She told us off – Polly, Manone’s wife. Gave us a good earful and warned us not to start arguing again in front of her mother.’

  ‘Lizzie Peabody?’

  ‘Aye, they’re very protective of the big woman.’

  ‘Mater familias,’ Fiona said.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Head of the household, elder of the tribe.’

  ‘She’s not head of the household. Manone’s head of the household,’ Kenny said. ‘But they certainly do look after her.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ said Fiona. ‘She raised them, didn’t she?’

  ‘Fiona, they’re crooks. They’re all crooks, all except Rosie. The mother was married to a crook at one time and she let her daughters…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Fiona said. ‘Never mind the anthropology. Get on with it.’

  ‘Not much else to tell,’ Kenny said. ‘Except that all is not quite what it seems in the Manone family.’

  ‘Elucidate, please.’

  ‘The wife, Polly, she nabbed me in the hallway just as we were leaving. About one o’clock in the morning it was. She’d been drinking quite a lot. Manone was mad at her for drinking so much. He kept it quiet but you could see how angry he was. She’s not a happy lady, our Mrs Manone.’

  ‘What, did she make a pass at you?’

  ‘God, no! She wasn’t that tiddly,’ Kenny said. ‘Just as I was putting on my overcoat to go out and look for a taxi, she slipped me this.’

  He fished in the pocket of his shirt and brought out a visiting-card, passed it to his sister who studied the printed name and address as intently as if it were code.

  ‘Other side,’ said Kenny.

  Fiona turned the card over and read out the message scribbled in pencil on the back: ‘My house is your house. Call me.’ Puzzled she looked up at her brother. ‘My house is your house: what the devil does she mean by that?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Kenny, ‘but the other bit’s plain enough.’

  Fiona said. ‘I take it that you will call her?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Kenny.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon, but not immediately.’

  ‘Inspector Winstock will expect you to establish contact at once.’

  ‘Ah, but old Wetsock won’t know about it, not just yet.’

  ‘Kenny!’ said Fiona, warningly.

  ‘I think we may have found what we’re looking for,’ Kenny said, ‘but I want to be dead sure before I take it to Winstock.’

  ‘Found what?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘The family’s weakest link,’ said Kenny.

  ‘The wife, you mean?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Kenny said. ‘I mean the mother.’

  Chapter Nine

  Polly did not know why she became breathless when she heard the sergeant’s voice. She had no designs on him, none at all. Even if he hadn’t been Rosie’s boyfriend she wouldn’t have fancied him: Kenny MacGregor was emphatically not her type.

  Leah held out the telephone.

  ‘It’s a man for you. He’s asking for you.’

  Polly took the receiver and spoke into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Polly Manone.’

  ‘Sergeant MacGregor. Kenny.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Good of you to call.’

  Leaning on the handle of the Hoover Leah eavesdropped with unabashed interest. Her hair, like Polly’s, was tucked into a dust-cap. Like Polly she wore a floral housecoat and an apron. The air in the hallway was defined by a fine haze of dust and the smell of Mansion polish mingled with the faint burnt-toast odour that the Hoover gave off when it was used for long periods. From the stairs that led to the kitchen came the sound of Mrs O’Shea banging pots and pans and singing away to herself, not some quaint Irish ditty but a chorus of ‘If I Had a Talking Picture of You’. Patricia had taken the children to school. She had been given a list of groceries to hand in to Lipton’s on her way home. She would dawdle in the shop, Polly reckoned, for a young man there had his eye on her and Patricia was well aware of it. There were worse things to be up to on a blustery Monday morning in January Polly reckoned, than flirting with a grocer’s assistant.

  ‘One moment, please,’ Polly said, mimicking an operator.

  She held the phone away from her ear and frowned at Leah who, after ten or fifteen seconds, took the hint and with a sigh, unplugged the vacuum cleaner and wheeled it away, cord trailing, into the living-room.

  ‘Yes,’ Polly said into the telephone. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I’m not disturbing you, I hope.’

  ‘Housework, that’s all.’

  ‘I won’t keep you then,’ said Kenny. ‘I was hoping we could meet somewhere, at your convenience.’

  Polly was reminded of a rude music hall joke but it hadn’t struck her as funny first time she’d heard it and she did not wish to embarrass Sergeant MacGregor by repeating it now. He sounded distinctly Highland on the phone. She wondered where he was: CID headquarters in St Andrew’s Street most likely, with his boss breathing down his neck.

  Unconsciously Polly rounded out her vowels and shaped her consonants properly as if she were speaking to Rosie.

  ‘Why would I want to meet with you, Sergeant?’

  ‘You – you gave me your card.’

  ‘I was only being polite.’

  ‘Oh!’ a pause. ‘Sorry.’

/>   Polly glanced up and down the hallway.

  The living-room door was closed and even if Leah did have her ear pressed to the woodwork she wouldn’t be able to hear anything. Down in the kitchen, Mrs O’Shea was still trilling away.

  Polly’s heart beat a shade faster under the housecoat as the prospect of a long drab day of house-cleaning and grocery shopping slid away.

  She said, ‘Where are you? Right now, I mean.’

  ‘In – in Glasgow.’

  ‘Are you taking Rosie to lunch?’

  ‘If I can find time.’

  ‘You don’t have a date with her then?’

  ‘Open, it’s open,’ said Kenny. ‘She understands.’

  ‘What? About us?’

  ‘No, she – no, there’s nothing to understand about us. Is there?’

  ‘I’m teasing,’ Polly said.

  ‘I see,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘As a matter of fact I would rather like to have a word with you,’ Polly said.

  ‘May I ask what about?’

  ‘Not Rosie,’ Polly said. ‘Something else.’

  ‘I see,’ Kenny MacGregor said again.

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to take me to lunch instead of my sister.’

  A hesitation, a careful pause: ‘Yes, that would be very nice.’

  ‘Today. Twelve-thirty.’

  ‘Fine. Where?’

  ‘The Ramshorn in Ingram Street. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Kenny said. ‘Is it maybe not a bit…’

  ‘Public?’ said Polly. ‘What harm if we’re seen together? You’re courting my sister so naturally I’m interested in getting to know you better. If you’re worried about my husband, he’s gone off down the coast.’

  ‘Twelve-thirty it is then, Mrs Manone.’

  ‘At The Ramshorn,’ said Polly.

  * * *

  If she had known that Dominic would bring the next consignment of machinery in person she would have spent more time on her appearance. Since Christmas she had become careless and had allowed herself to slip into a routine that left little or no time to fuss with her hair, paint her nails or apply make-up. Indeed, she barely managed to keep herself clean, for little Dougie Giffard had discovered the pleasures of the tub and would soak for hours in the bath in the bathroom adjacent to the laundry-room. He did not, thank God, sing, but his silences seemed more sinister than song and Tony was concerned that Dougie had found a means of buying drink and was tapping into a secret stash of whisky and would sink into a state of paralytic collapse before the printing equipment was fully installed.

  Penny considered the accusation unfair. There were no signs that Dougie was back-sliding. He still enjoyed his daily ration of spirits but she’d noticed that the half bottle was no longer empty at the witching of noon when Tony or she unlocked the cupboard and brought out a replacement.

  Tony remained agitated, however, and would beat upon the bathroom door and shout, ‘What the hell are you doing in there, old man?’ And Dougie’s gruff reply would drift out damply, ‘The crossword, man, the bloody crossword.’

  Tony was agitated about everything these days, of course. He was also drinking more than Dougie now, not just the flavoured coffee that the girl brewed in her fancy Italian percolator. He would punctuate long hours of nurse-maiding, when he had nothing to do but watch the girl at work, with grumpy little trips to the whisky cupboard.

  It wasn’t much of a life stuck out on a farm for a man who was used to a different sort of idleness, Dougie supposed. Personally he loved it here, and Frobe was in his element. Even the girl seemed content, especially after the equipment began to arrive and he took her under his wing and showed her how to do things with it while he adapted the rotary type multigraph that Dominic had found for him and which he intended to link to a flat-bed press.

  He had no idea where Dominic had raked up the machinery but he had seldom worked with such fine equipment. Big lenses, shaded spotlights, even a reflector camera with which to enlarge the plates for detailed scrutiny. He crammed the camera on to a table in his bedroom and had Tony rig up lights from a power box on the ground floor, for the attic was warmer than the stable and he needed to be comfortable to concentrate while he worked on perfecting the signature of the Bank of England’s current Cashier, Kenneth Oswald Peppiat.

  Kenneth Oswald Peppiat was driving him crazy, though. The K bore more than a passing resemblance to an H and the nib the chap had used for the original copy-plate had reduced the final T-cross to a fat left-to-right slash. In addition Mr Peppiat had popped in two full stops slightly, just slightly, out of alignment. Practice and enlargement, copying and checking would do the trick, however, and before long he would be ready to engrave a separate block for the signature.

  Dominic had picked up a tray of type which would exactly duplicate the serial numbers and all Dougie required now was a routing machine and he’d be ready to undertake the delicate process of cutting into and building up the block.

  ‘When?’ the girl would ask. ‘When, Dougie, when?’

  ‘When I can, lass,’ he would tell her. ‘It’s somethin’ I can’t rush.’

  ‘Are not the plates good enough?’

  ‘Aye, the plates are grand,’ Dougie would say, ‘but I’ve only got one pair o’ hands, in case ye hadn’t noticed.’

  Penny was more patient than Dougie gave her credit for.

  She ran the household with ease and efficiency, cooking and cleaning and attending to the laundry-bags in a manner that would have made her mother proud. Blackstone had already begun to feel like home. Only the oddity of the sleeping arrangements, and Tony Lombard’s hostility, prevented her being happier than she’d been in many months. She pressed Dougie for answers not because she wanted this phase to end but because she knew that war was imminent and she must get out of the country before it did or risk being stuck here until the Panzer army came growling over the hill and Scotland became just another outpost of the Reich.

  The Wolseley drew up in the yard, and Dominic got out.

  For once he was less than immaculate. He wore a bulky woollen sweater, a pair of corduroys and a knitted cap that made him look like a stevedore.

  There was no one else in the motorcar but a wooden crate was propped in the rear seat and, in the luggage trunk, three large flat parcels.

  ‘Where is Giffard?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Is he sober?’

  ‘He is never not sober,’ Penny answered. ‘He is working, I think.’

  She ran her hands down her flanks, smoothing her rumpled skirt.

  The day was blustery, the wind veering from the north, chilly rather than cold. She watched the breeze flirt with Dominic’s dark hair. He was clearly in no mood to be teased today, however, and she put on her serious face.

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘I think he is in the toilet. I will fetch him if you wish.’

  ‘No.’ Dominic placed himself in front of her, so close that she could see perspiration on his upper lip, a strange dry sort of sweat. ‘You lied to me, Penny. I want to know why you lied to me.’

  ‘I did not lie to you,’ she said. ‘I do not tell lies.’

  ‘Ballocks!’ he said.

  She was not offended by the dirty word, only by the manner of its utterance. She had never seen him like this before, his veneer of cool courtesy rubbed away, anger and aggression showing through. He seemed now like what he was, perhaps, not a well-educated Scottish businessman but the son of a violent Italian peasant. She was shocked and thrilled at one and the same time and wondered fleetingly if he had a gun on his person or a revolver hidden in the car and if it came to it – if he ever discovered just how many lies she had told him – he would have the nerve to use it. She arched her back, spread her hands, spoke loudly:

  ‘What lies have I told you? What is it that I have said?’

  ‘You told me the paper was coming in from Verona.’

  ‘And is it not?’

 
‘You told me my uncle Guido was handling that end of it.’

  ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘My uncle Guide is dead.’ He dug into the hip pocket of the corduroy trousers and brought out a cablegram, the yellow-tinted form crushed and crumpled. He snapped it between his fingers and waved it at her. ‘He’s been dead for over a week. And he wasn’t in Verona. He was nowhere near Verona. He died in a hospital in Genoa.’

  ‘Perhaps he was taken suddenly,’ Penny said.

  ‘He’d been in the hospital for months, for all I know,’ Dominic said. ‘Guido was never part of this deal, was he?’

  ‘I did not tell you that he was. Edgar said that…’

  ‘Sod Edgar!’ Dominic said. ‘I’m not interested in Harker. I want you to tell me what’s going on and where the first delivery of paper really came from.’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘It arrived by carrier from Hull. Hired carrier from the docks at Hull. Dumped on my damned doorstep like the morning milk,’ Dominic said. ‘How many other guys are working on this deal and, more to the point, who’s paying them?’

  ‘I do not know. Honestly. I will cross my heart if I am telling…’

  ‘Who sent you to me?’

  ‘Your father.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘Where did the cable come from?’ Penny asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who was it who sent you news of your uncle?’

  The question stopped him in his tracks.

  She knew perfectly well that the old man in Italy had not been involved. She could not imagine why Eddie Harker had told her to support that particular lie. God knows, there were lies enough in the air, lies and deceptions stretching endlessly to the horizon, without adding one more. She could see no reason for it, not now, not in hindsight. But then much of what was done seemed to be based on reasoning so twisted that it was not just stupid but perverse.

  ‘Who?’ she insisted. ‘Was it your aunt?’

  ‘Teresa? No, she – I don’t know where she is, or what will become of her.’

  ‘Carlo will take care of her,’ Penny said. ‘Perhaps he will bring her to America, out of Italy.’

  ‘If he can,’ Dominic said.

  ‘Tell me,’ she spoke quietly, not backing away. ‘Who sent you the cable?’

  ‘Pappy,’ Dominic said. ‘My father.’