But the desk too was striking. Distracted by its incumbent, she hadn’t really noticed it before. But now she saw that it was a splendid example of eighteenth-century craftsmanship of the Irish style: dark, richly polished yew, solid ball-and-claw feet and meticulous, but unelaborate, carving. She smiled, thinking how jealous Dr Stanley would be: he had been after one like that for ages. She stood up to take a closer look, and through the clutter of books and notes, saw how finely the wood had been honed.
But then she saw something else: an ornate metal paper tray. And among its mess of odds and ends there lay, incongruously, a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses and a lipstick case. Or it would have been a case had the top not been missing.
Rosy gazed at the little object, recognising the familiar Revlon logo. She picked it up, and seeing the name of the shade, Brazen Maiden, caught her breath. Oh, surely not! Could it really be the dead girl’s – the missing bit of the item they had found in the beach hut? As Rosy had overheard her telling Alicia, Tippy had loved both the name and the vibrant colour.
Then fearing what she would find, she examined the sunglasses … Yes, they were there: the fake diamond studs in the side pieces. Rosy had not seen Tippy wearing the glasses, but she had heard enough to know they were the same. Apparently, they had been especially purchased to complement the red bikini, and Tippy had delighted in regaling Rosy with details of their colour and style. For a few seconds she heard the high breathy tone: ‘They look awfully Italian, you know – the frames sort of flick up like a cat’s eyes and they have the teeniest little diamonds set into the sides. I can’t wait to wear them, and I wish to hell it would stop raining!’
And then she heard a deeper voice. ‘Ah, I’ve checked my dates, and I find that—’ Ramsgate, who had re-entered quietly, stopped in mid sentence. He walked up to her and took both articles from her hands, giving a lopsided leer. ‘Not my accoutrements, of course – a tad too girlie. They belonged to a young friend,’ he murmured. Rosy stared at the smiling mouth and icy eyes.
In retrospect she felt she could have dissembled: concealed her shock, made some frivolous response, or simply said nothing and smiled vaguely like a fool. Had she done so, things might have been different. So different.
As it was, she was too stunned to muster her wits, and thus heard herself saying woodenly, ‘Yes, I know who you mean: Tippy Tildred, the kid who was shot in the beach hut. I suppose you picked up these things before lugging the body to the dunes.’
For the first time since their meeting Ramsgate regarded her with genuine interest. ‘What deductive powers you have, Miss Gilchrist,’ he said suavely. And then in a trice the tone changed: ‘Sit down,’ he snapped.
Mechanically, she did as he ordered. What else could she do? Rant and rave, throw herself at the French window, spit in his face?
The first thing he did was to go to the desk and rummage in one of the drawers. She watched as he withdrew a large pair of pointed scissors, and felt a pang of horror. Oh my God, surely he wouldn’t do that! Instinctively, she tensed, while looking desperately for something she could shield herself with.
But Ramsgate did not approach Rosy, for he had stretched over to the telephone on the windowsill, and with a deft movement severed its cord. He returned to his chair. ‘That’s better,’ he said, ‘no unseemly interruptions. And you, my dear, won’t be tempted to do anything foolish like demanding police protection. It’s quite easy, I believe: one just has to dial 999 and they come running like ants, blue lights ablaze and whistles screaming. So noisy!’
Rosy drew a deep breath, and in a voice considerably stronger than she felt, said defiantly, ‘Well, in that case I shall just have to walk out to my car, won’t I?’ She made a movement to get up.
‘Sit!’ he commanded as if instructing a dog. With a start, she saw he had produced a small pistol. He didn’t point it at her, but lay it on the blotting pad, fingering it casually. Seeing her staring at it, he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I only use this in an emergency, and at the moment there isn’t one … or at least, not as yet.’ He frowned and emitted a heavy sigh. ‘Quite honestly, my dear, you have rather messed up my afternoon; in fact, you have messed up a lot of things. It’s all very vexing.’
Somehow, Rosy found the light conversational tone far more chilling than overt threats. She sensed that his manner could change in an instant and that it only needed one false move and he would gun her down as he had Tippy. Yet despite her terror, she was sure there must be a way of foiling the bastard – some way of escaping and messing up his afternoon even more! But what? She gazed at the complacent features, seeking inspiration.
Vanity! That was it: the man loved to talk, and principally about himself. He was a born raconteur. She would ply him with questions – anything to delay his coming to a decision as to what to do with her. And in the meantime, God willing, the housekeeper might return early.
Rosy swallowed, and adopting the same casual tone as his own, said, ‘I know Tippy was blackmailing you and the Carshaltons about the bed business, which must have been quite a blow, but was it really worth killing her for that? And in any case, how were you able to persuade her to come to the beach hut? Pretty difficult, I should have thought.’
To her relief he seemed ready to talk. ‘Oh, the sex business wasn’t too much of a problem,’ he said airily, ‘one can generally nobble the press – or some of them, at any rate. And after all, the indignation of the prurient public is matched only by its indulgence – a few good tub-thumping speeches and Carshalton would have been back in favour again, albeit a few rungs down; and yours truly could doubtless have written a rather juicy memoir on the theme, probably a bestseller … No, tiresome though that was, the real problem was to do with Mickey Standish, nothing to do with the Carshaltons. And being Mickey’s problem it was also mine: we had a joint venture, you see, and that fool of a girl might just have blown it sky-high. So she had to be stopped.’
At the mention of Standish Rosy suddenly went numb. So he had been part of it too! She felt sickened and oddly betrayed, and for a moment had difficulty in fighting back irrational tears. ‘Hold steady,’ she told herself angrily, ‘show nothing.’
‘But as to the hut,’ Ramsgate continued, unaware of the effect of his words, ‘that was simple. I telephoned her to say that Mickey was looking for a good PA and would she be interested. The little miss had been sucking up to him at the party and I guessed that she would jump at the chance. As of course she did. I still had a key to Walter Hackle’s hut, which he had lent me ages ago, and I told her that Mickey often used it in the afternoons to catch up on his reading, and that if she cared to go along at a certain time he would be delighted to interview her.’
‘And that’s what she did,’ Rosy said dully.
He nodded. ‘That’s what she did. And we were waiting for her and she was shot.’
The stark words made Rosy’s stomach lurch, but she said nothing.
‘I fear that was Mickey’s doing, albeit at my suggestion.’ Ramsgate gave a sardonic laugh: ‘For a man of his particular talents he was awfully cack-handed with a pistol, and my intention had been to do it myself. But she arrived before expected and he happened to be holding the gun. By a sheer fluke he made quite a good job of it.’
Despite her disgust and fear, Rosy was intrigued. ‘What talents?’ she asked. ‘And if it’s not a rude question, what venture?’
The man laughed. ‘Inquisitive, aren’t you! Still, since you won’t be going anywhere I may as well tell you.’ At these words Rosy gripped her bag to stop her hands from shaking. But she kept silent and waited for him to continue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Despite appearances to the contrary, Mickey Standish was a liar, a cheat, an arch-swindler and a consummate racketeer. He was also utterly ruthless when it suited him.’ Ramsgate must have seen Rosy’s eyes widening, for he chuckled and added, ‘Oh yes, I forgot, rather a nifty locksmith too. It was something he had learnt at school from the caretaker and he used to
practise his skill by getting into the masters’ studies and raiding their wallets. It was he who intruded into your friends’ cottage to retrieve my letter. Said it would be the sort of challenge he hadn’t had for a long time!
‘But I digress. You asked about our venture: illicit arms dealing, my dear. We had been at it for years. Mickey was a first-class broker and had connections all over the world. It has all been most profitable. It started on a small scale after the war, but since then we have taken on rather bigger fish – Cuban insurrectionists, for example, and the African Mau Mau. We have also dabbled with certain factions of the IRA who have reason to be grateful. Currently, they are quiescent, but I can tell you there are weapon caches lying in Ireland based entirely on our expertise and contacts. Mickey was the brains of the outfit – one of our country’s top accountants and headhunted all over the place. He had his own consultancy, a financial wizard really, and did a slick bit of corporate embezzlement on the side. Afraid I can’t add up for toffee.’ Ramsgate grinned and shifted the gun to his other hand. ‘But we both took care of the arms aspect; that was rather exciting really. Made a nice change from sitting on my arse writing travel stuff or being charming on the Home Service!’
‘How nice,’ Rosy said dryly. And then a thought struck her: if Standish had been so damn sharp and the ‘brains of the outfit’ how come he had bothered to collaborate with Ramsgate? Wouldn’t it have been simpler, easier, to stay independent?
She cleared her throat, eyeing the plump finger idly caressing the trigger. ‘So, uhm, how did this lucrative liaison come about? If Standish had such talent and financial expertise couldn’t he have just gone it alone? I mean, presumably you had both been splitting the proceeds. Why should he have bothered to do that?’
‘Ah! A good question, my dear – though in my own modest defence I like to think that I was of some practical use in the operation! One is not entirely without ability. Oiling wheels and smoothing paths, that’s my forte – handy in our line of business.’ He gave an ingratiating smile and Felix’s judgement came back to Rosy: smarmy smoocher. Yes, she could just hear the patter! ‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘to give you the crucial reason: I had a hold over him – just as that silly little idiot thought she had over us, though in my case the hold was considerably tighter.’
‘So what was this hold to do with?’ Rosy asked indifferently, suddenly sickened by the man’s complacent vanity.
‘A schoolboy prank.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, sounds silly, doesn’t it? But it has proved most fruitful to me. It happened one afternoon when we were about fifteen, and when most of the school was watching a rugger match; but Mickey and I were in detention stuck in an upstairs classroom. When we finished our task, lines or whatever, Mickey suddenly produced a bottle of whisky he had filched from somewhere. “We’ll celebrate,” he said, “and give thanks we’ve been spared the bugger rugger.” So that’s what we did – and in the process got blind drunk. Or at least Mickey did, I wasn’t so bad.
‘Anyway, the upshot was we were caught by one of the prefects, who threatened to report us to the housemaster. This was a facer as it meant instant expulsion. Despite being October, it was a blazing hot day, and the window overlooking the quad two floors down was wide open …’ Ramsgate had paused, gazing at the wall behind Rosy, as if reliving the scene. ‘And then you see, one moment the prefect was there, and the next moment he wasn’t. My friend had pushed him out of the window.’
Even as he spoke, Rosy noticed a flicker of surprise cross the man’s face; yet the gun was held as tightly. ‘What happened?’ she murmured.
He shrugged. ‘The corpse was found an hour later, and as you can imagine there was one hell of a fuss. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that during that hour I disposed of the whisky bottle and hauled Mickey off for a walk to sober him up. The authorities never discovered the truth and assumed it was an accident: death by misadventure, as the phrase goes. From that day onwards neither of us ever referred to the incident again – not a single word. It has been a sort of tacit collusion, a mutual agreement to say nothing. But as you can imagine, his obligation to me has remained – hence our partnership.’ Ramsgate gave a wry smile. And then he added thoughtfully, ‘Whether it was intended as a joke, or the product of drunken fury, I am not sure. It could have been either. For a man of his intellect he had a surprisingly puerile humour; but then neither did he like being crossed – used to say it unsettled his nerves, if you please. But one thing is certain: not a drop of drink ever passed his lips again. Never.’
‘Fascinating,’ Rosy said grimly, the sarcasm hiding her terror. The danger would lie in his silence: once the man stopped talking, anything might happen!
But fortunately Ramsgate seemed ready to continue. A pensive look had come into his eyes. And with what sounded like a sigh of genuine regret, he said: ‘Yes, he’s a loss to me, is Mickey. And I don’t just mean in the practical sense. In an odd way I had always liked the fellow. God knows why – I suppose precisely because he was such a puzzle: an extraordinary mixture of charm and bastard ruthlessness. Women adored him, you know: it was the ascetic quality, they found it tantalising. The more detached he was the more they wanted him. Like moths around a freezing candle! But he was indifferent, quite unmoved.’ Ramsgate paused, looking thoughtful. ‘But he was like that generally,’ he added, ‘not just with women. It was as if he didn’t need anybody, not in the emotional sense. A bit like Kipling’s cat that walked by itself: completely self-contained. Funny, really.’ He stared at the revolver.
As did Rosy. ‘But surely,’ she said quickly, ‘if what Tippy had witnessed in the bedroom had nothing to do with him why were you both so set on killing her? Yes, she saw him in the hall – but what would that amount to? Hardly grounds for murder!’
Ramsgate sighed and looked almost sorry. ‘Yes, Fate up to his ill-timed tricks, I fear. As they say in the films, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man she saw him with was Aldo Pollini the Mayfair nightclub owner who, as you may recall, was then urgently being sought by the police in connection with a prostitution racket and other illicit activities – including arms trafficking. In fact, he was one of our best contacts.
‘Things were getting very hot for little Aldo – very – and he was all set to get out of the country. It so happened that his exit had been planned for that day. Sounds absurd, but Aldo couldn’t drive – always had a chauffeur. Anyway, for some reason the driver never turned up – sick or drunk, I suppose. Aldo was left stranded and desperate to make that dash to London Airport. What did he do? Phoned Mickey in a muck sweat and begged for his help. Mickey agreed, but said he would have to stop off at the Wilton Place house as he had left his briefcase there when doing some tax business with Carshalton earlier that day, and he needed it urgently.
‘So that’s what happened, you see. Mickey picked up Aldo at a prearranged spot, drove to Wilton Place, dashed in for his briefcase, encountered Tippy, dashed out again and drove like hell to the airport. Aldo caught his plane in the nick of time and all was well. Afterwards, Mickey drove up to Scotland and fished on the Tweed for a few days. He told me he had made a frightfully good catch.’
Ramsgate sat back in his chair, beaming brightly as if he had just finished telling a tale to an attentive child.
Rosy was no child but she was attentive all right! How could she prompt him to go on talking while she wracked her brain for some means of escape, some diversion to get her out of this nightmare?
She leant forward with an expression of thoughtful interest. ‘But things weren’t entirely all right, were they? I remember that business: the papers were full of it. And one of the intriguing aspects was the identity of the accomplice who had dropped him at the airport. That kept the press going for days until they eventually tired of it and switched to some other scandal.’
Ramsgate nodded. ‘Yes, it rather died a death, didn’t it? But unfortunately the whole affair was recently dug up
by a couple of smart reporters from the Manchester Guardian hoping to steal the Telegraph’s thunder. They had been doing some rather tiresome snooping and we were getting a bit windy. It would only take one person to report having seen Mickey with Aldo that day, and – if you will excuse the expression, my dear – we would very likely have been in the shit. Naturally such a “sighting” would not be proof of anything and Mickey would have produced a plausible tale or alibi. But the press can be persistent hounds, and once the seeds are there, who knows …?’ Ramsgate shrugged and said blandly, ‘The girl had a pretty little mouth but it made a big noise. We couldn’t afford the risk.’
Rosy’s own mouth was dry as dust, and she swallowed hard trying to keep her voice normal. ‘But was it really necessary to kill the girl?’ she asked. ‘I mean, it wasn’t as if she knew about any of this, was it?’
‘No. The silly little cow thought we were just up to sexual romps – well, so we were, or at least I was, and very nice too, if I may say. But when she started to twitch her foolish little nose and began bleating about seeing Mickey with Aldo (not that she knew who he was) we realised that one thing might conceivably lead to the other. If those two journalists were intent on making a retrospective feature of the affair with pictures of Aldo, it could easily have jogged her memory and given her ideas. She had to be nipped in the bud.’
‘Or shot in the back.’
He gave a non-committal but affirmative shrug.
‘And am I a silly little cow?’ Rosy asked quietly.
He flashed a disarming smile: ‘Oh far more tolerable! And if I may say so, far from silly. But,’ and a frown replaced the smile, ‘just as dangerous and probably more so. I am afraid you will have to go, my dear.’ He regarded her thoughtfully.
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