by Robert Gott
‘The detective said we’d be perfectly safe, and that he’s posting a policeman downstairs, just to be sure.’
‘Which means he’s not sure, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But I couldn’t say no, could I?’
Dora smiled.
‘Of course you couldn’t. We’ll have to tell her about us, Con. I’m not going to sleep on the couch to protect Miss Quinn’s sensibilities.’
‘I’m sure she already knows, and I don’t think she’ll be fussed, really. If Mary Quinn disapproves, that’s Mary Quinn’s problem, and if she makes a fuss you can write her out of The Red Mask. Besides, I don’t think she’s got a boyfriend, so maybe she’s a daughter of Sappho herself. She is gorgeous, you must admit.’
Dora conceded that Mary Quinn was indeed a looker. But while that was something in her favour, it wasn’t enough.
‘I still don’t like her, Con. I don’t like the way she says my lines. I know she comes from money, but she doesn’t have an aristocratic bone in her body. She’s common, and you can hear it in her voice.’
‘You’re too hard on her, Dora. I think she’s fine as Lady Mary, and she’ll get better.’
Dora gave a dismissive little toss of her head, and her perfect Louise Brooks bob fell perfectly back into place. She’d worn her hair like this for many years, and unlike most women who imagined that the severe cut made them look like Miss Brooks, Dora Mansfield was right in supposing that it did. Constance didn’t want her to experiment with a different style. As she’d said many times, she liked to retire each night with Lulu. It was a thrill.
‘Christmas Day is an inconvenient time to have a family tragedy,’ Dora said. ‘It’s one of the things I don’t like about Mary Quinn — her timing is always slightly off.’
During the drive into town, Mary Quinn was silent, but she spent the time tap-tapping on her teeth. The small, clicking noise irritated Joe Sable so much that he felt his sympathy for her diminishing. But this may have been largely because he’d been offended on Sheila Draper’s behalf by Mary’s open dissatisfaction with the quality of Sheila’s rooms. It didn’t seem to have bothered Sheila, but perhaps that was born of a long period of having stoically accepted her place. She was grateful for what she had, Joe thought, and not envious of what she lacked. A character comparison between the two women was not flattering to Mary Quinn. To assuage a small stirring of guilt, he asked, ‘Are you all right, Miss Quinn?’
She turned towards him.
‘I’m very frightened, Sergeant — that, most of all.’
‘Is there anybody who can help you with the … arrangements.’
‘Arrangements?’
‘The funeral arrangements.’
Mary Quinn looked stricken.
‘Oh God, I hadn’t even thought of that.’
‘You mentioned a priest your father was close to.’
Her face relaxed.
‘Oh, yes. Him. He’ll know what to do.’
Joe got the impression that, as far as Mary was concerned, this problem was now solved.
Constance Thorpe’s flat was on the eighth floor of the Manchester Unity Building. It was one of only a handful of flats in the art-deco edifice, and when Joe Sable and Mary Quinn stepped out of the extravagant lift, it became apparent that it was the sole private residence on the floor. There was a dentist, a jeweller, a solicitor, and number 812 — Constance Thorpe’s flat. Joe knocked, and the door was opened by Dora Mansfield.
‘Miss Thorpe?’ Joe asked.
‘No. Constance is inside. I’m Dora Mansfield — a friend of hers. Mary, I’m so sorry. Please come in.’
Constance came forward, and took Mary’s hands and led her to a chair. She began to ply her with questions, but in such a thoughtful way that Joe was impressed by her discretion. He understood why Mary would feel safe with her. There was something about Constance and Dora — Joe immediately surmised that they were intimate companions — that made disorder seem unlikely. Their flat, of course, suited Mary’s sense of the comfort and elegance that was her due. The interior might have been designed by the same hand that had designed Joe’s in Princes Hill. This flat, however, was furnished sparsely, but expensively, and every piece had been carefully chosen to be faithful to art-deco principles.
Joe declined Constance’s offer of tea. He had no intention of lingering, and he was careful about what he said to her, offering nothing that could be construed as a strong opinion. He was aware, nonetheless, that Constance was finding out what she needed to know, extracting almost as much information from what he didn’t say as from what he did say. He could tell that Mary would tell Constance and Dora everything that she knew anyway. In the safety of this flat, she would play out the drama for all it was worth.
For the moment, though, she was sitting quietly and listening to Joe. When he occasionally turned to look at her, he had the strong sensation that what she was feeling was fear; he couldn’t see any grief in her. It didn’t make him like her any the more.
Ptolemy Jones walked past number 1 Clarendon Street at nine o’clock on Christmas night. It would be properly dark in a very short time. He stopped a few houses down and watched. A man walking a dog passed close by. The blackouts in the Quinn house were up, but light spilled from the front door when someone came out. Even though it was too dark to see his features, Jones knew he must have been a detective. Who else would be in the house? They would’ve taken the bodies away by now, and they’d be scratching their heads over this one. He’d had a bit of fun in there, especially with the son. Thinking about it made his cock hard again. He’d forced the father to watch. He liked it when someone had to watch — double the fun. He walked away towards the boarding house where that friend of hers lived, sure that he’d find Mary Quinn there. He put his hand in his pocket and felt his erection through the cloth.
Inspector Lambert left the Quinn house around nine, and checked the street before getting into his car. A man was walking some distance away and receding into the darkness. But there was no one lurking about: no gawkers, and no newspaper men. There were two men inside the house — science boys — and they’d be working through the night, doing a final top-to-bottom check.
When he arrived home, Maude was listening to the radio. She’d decided that it was her responsibility to keep an eye on the progress of the war and to pass on every depressing report to him. Nevertheless, Titus was grateful for her daily précis; without it, he might almost forget that there was a war on at all. Maude turned the radio off, and poured them each a large whiskey. Whiskey was almost unobtainable, except at exorbitant prices on the black market, so the single-malt had become the preserve of Christmas and birthdays. Even so, the bottle was already close to empty.
‘Mary Quinn’s staying the night with the producer of her show’, Titus said. ‘She didn’t feel safe at her friend’s place.’
‘I don’t blame her, Titus. If I’d seen what she’s seen, I’d lock myself in my room and never come out.’
‘Then she’s moving to the Windsor.’
‘Well, she can afford to lock herself in a very nice room there.’
Titus told Maude about the visit from Intelligence, and about Joe Sable’s temporary secondment to it. He wasn’t going to let the Crimes Act limit the information he passed on to Maude.
‘You mean they want him to have dealings with those dreadful people, Titus? Even though he’s Jewish?’
‘I think Intelligence sees that as an advantage — Daniel in the lion’s den, and I suspect Joe feels, not obligated exactly, but compelled maybe. I don’t think he’s ever been confronted before by savage anti-Semitism.’
‘Well, anti-Semitism isn’t the exclusive preserve of fascists. It’s more likely that someone in Intelligence thinks it’s funny to put a Jew in danger.’
Titus began to object.
‘I’m s
orry, Titus. That was hysterical of me. That magazine has rattled me. I know Joe Sable can look after himself, and I’ll wager that he agreed to do it without batting an eyelid.’
‘He did. He’ll be fine. He won’t take stupid risks — he’s not the type to play the hero.’
They were silent for a moment.
‘I have to speak to John Quinn’s priest tomorrow,’ Titus said. ‘I don’t like talking to priests. There’s always something strange about them.’
‘I imagine your Methodists demonised them.’
Titus laughed.
‘Yes, yes, they did. It didn’t work, though, because I still feel they have some sort of ghastly moral authority, and I resent that feeling.’
‘He’s just a man in a black dress, Titus. Think of him like that.’
Titus leaned across and kissed Maude. The kiss took them to the bedroom, where the troubles of the world were shut out.
Ptolemy Jones stood at the gate of the boarding house where Mary Quinn’s friend lived. No lights were showing, but he’d been here before and he knew that the windows on the ground floor, to the right of the front door, were the windows to her room. Several times he’d seen Mary Quinn go in there, and he’d waited for her to come out. She never seemed to stay long. She’d be in there now, being comforted by her friend. But now it was time for a change of mood; it was time to give Mary Quinn her Christmas present.
Jones pushed open the gate and walked up to the front door. It wasn’t locked. That was careless. The hallway was dimly lit — so dimly that it took his eyes a moment to adjust. It had seemed brighter outside. The door to the right was where Mary Quinn and her friend would be. A small sliver of light escaped from beneath it. He put his ear against the door. There was no sound. He tried the doorknob, which turned noiselessly. It was a heavy door, and it opened without a sound. The hinges must have been kept well oiled. Jones stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
He was in a sitting room. The only light came from a standard lamp, which stood behind an armchair in which a woman was sitting, reading. She had her back to him, and she obviously hadn’t heard him come in as she slowly turned a page of her book. He could only see the back of her head, but he knew that it wasn’t Mary Quinn. She must be the friend, Jones thought. Where was Mary Quinn? There were other rooms. Perhaps she was in a bedroom.
He took a step forward and, just as he did so, Sheila Draper looked up from her book and, out of the corner of her eye, saw something move in the darkness behind her. She stood up suddenly, gave a little cry, and found herself facing Ptolemy Jones. She couldn’t see him properly because her eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark outside the lamp’s light, and before she could cry out again he was upon her. He stuffed his handkerchief into her mouth and forced her to the floor. She was winded into silence.
He stripped off his clothes, folded them neatly, and looked down at the curled-up woman. If Mary Quinn wasn’t here, well, that was too bad. He’d take it slowly with her friend, and maybe she’d return before he’d finished. It didn’t matter. She’d find out soon enough that he’d come calling. He put his face close to Sheila Draper’s. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said.
Boxing Day
-8-
Joe Sable had spent Christmas night reading the information on Mitchell Magill and other known Hitlerites that Intelligence had provided. He’d been astonished, dumbfounded, by the proudly expressed beliefs of several individuals. Goad had mentioned Mills, with his absurd, pagan aspirations. But there was another man, W. Hardy Wilson, whose views were improbably bizarre and extreme. Joe decided to adopt Wilson’s ideas as his own when he met Magill. From the notes, it was clear that both Wilson and Magill were aesthetes, and Joe was confident that he knew enough about the arts to be convincing. He tried saying some of Wilson’s words out loud, to hear what they sounded like and to judge how they made him feel: ‘Jews are noxious irritants who cause social disease.’ He wondered when these words rose into his mouth if he could go through with this. Just saying them made his guts churn violently.
On Boxing Day morning, very early, he walked down to Russell Street headquarters. He hadn’t worked out how to orchestrate a meeting with Magill directly, but among Magill’s associates was a woman named Peggy Montford, whom Intelligence believed to be Magill’s lover. She worked as an instructor at the Glaciarium in the city, where the doughboys liked to take or pick up girls. As it happened, Joe had been ice-skating a few times over the years, and he’d acquired bog-standard competence at it. He could stay on his feet; in fact, he could even glide and come to a stop without crashing. And he knew that the Glaciarium would be open on Boxing Day.
There was no photograph of Peggy Montford in the file — just a description of her as being about twenty-five years old, and blonde. Joe was confident that he’d recognise her at the Glaciarium, but he only had a vague plan as to how he’d go about it. He’d come into the Homicide office early, simply because he thought something more concrete might occur to him there. Should he ask Sheila Draper to go with him, to play the part of his companion? No, he couldn’t embroil her in this; in any case, Inspector Lambert would never permit it. Lambert had said often that when it came to murder, everyone was a suspect until the killer was found. That made Sheila Draper a suspect in the murders of John and Xavier Quinn. Joe thought he’d need someone to go with him to the Glaciarium, just in case a civilian on his own was unusual enough to stand out. There were a few female constables at Russell Street, and many more women from the Women’s Police Auxiliary Force. They did mostly clerical work, replacing men who’d filled those positions before the war. Some were drivers, and some conducted licence tests. While they’d been sworn in as special constables, Joe wanted a more experienced woman for the job — a fully sworn member of the force.
Titus Lambert arrived not long after Joe. He was slightly annoyed when Joe outlined his intentions — not because he thought the exercise was pointless, but because his preference was for Joe to be working for him exclusively. He had to accept, though, that Joe now had a second master, and to remind himself that his goal, and that of Intelligence, was to catch the same person. The difference was that Titus saw that person as a murderer; Intelligence saw him as a traitor. When Joe raised the question of roping in a female constable as an ice-skating companion at the Glaciarium, Titus agreed with the stratagem; he knew just the person for the job, and thought she must have been on duty because he’d seen her as he came in. He picked up his telephone and asked the duty officer to find Constable Helen Lord and send her up to Homicide.
When Helen Lord was told that Inspector Lambert wanted to speak with her, she let out a little ‘Ooooh’ for the benefit of the young woman who’d passed on the message. Helen Lord liked being a policewoman, but she didn’t much care for most of the men she had to work with. They saw her as a novelty, useful to them only occasionally in dealing with hysterical tarts and with wives who’d been beaten up by their hopeless, drunken husbands.
Like all female constables, Helen didn’t wear a uniform. She didn’t see this as an advantage, but for what it was: a way of reminding her of her place — as she could never expect to rise above the level of constable, no uniform on which to stitch extra stripes was needed. In these circumstances, to be called to the new offices of Homicide was a significant and slightly unnerving event. Helen had had only a glancing acquaintanceship with Inspector Lambert, and as he was one of only a few officers who acknowledged her when they saw her, she was disposed to like him. She didn’t expect that this disposition would survive a conversation with him, though. You didn’t get to be an inspector, she imagined, without being an exaggerated version of the men around her.
When she walked into the office, she was met by a detective whose face was familiar but whose name was new to her.
‘Detective Sergeant Joe Sable,’ he said, and put out his hand. ‘You must be Constable Lord.’
This strangely formal and polite gesture took her by surprise. ‘Yes,’ she said, and accepted his hand.
‘Inspector Lambert is just on the telephone. He’ll be here in a minute.’
Joe’s initial impression of Helen was favourable. She was short — about five foot four. She wasn’t pretty but, like Sheila Draper, her face expressed her character strongly. She was probably in her late twenties, he thought, and her hair was dark, untouched by grey. It was cut short, like Ingrid Bergman’s in For Whom the Bell Tolls. He thought she even looked a bit like Ingrid Bergman, although that might have just been the effect of the haircut. In the few seconds it took him to assess her, Joe realised that he wasn’t attracted to pretty women. This came to him as something of a revelation, and it made him smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking of something else.’
‘I was wondering how I’d amused you,’ Helen said, and added, ‘sir’, as an afterthought.
Joe couldn’t get used to other ranks addressing him as ‘sir,’ even though he knew first names were out of the question, at least when on duty. The police force was a hierarchy, and hierarchies were weakened by familiarity.
‘Sit down, please,’ he said. ‘We have something to put to you.’
At that moment, Inspector Lambert entered the room and asked peremptorily, ‘Do you ice-skate, Constable?’
Helen Lord did not seem taken aback by such a strange opening question. ‘I’m pretty good, actually,’ she said. ‘I have a low centre of gravity.’
Titus and Joe were impressed by her demeanour and her answer.
‘Do you think you could manage to create the impression of being on the ice for the first time?’ Titus asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Good. You are to accompany Detective Sergeant Sable to the Glaciarium this morning. What you are wearing will be perfectly suitable.’