by Mark Timlin
‘Leave him,’ said the voice of the man I couldn’t see.
‘There’s a policeman outside,’ I said.
‘We’re terrified,’ the geezer with the gun said. ‘One unarmed guy, half asleep. Give him a shout. You’ll be dead before he can move and he’ll be dead the moment he sticks his head round the door. Just do as you’re told.’
‘Why don’t you tell Catherine yourself?’
‘Give her this.’ He tossed a brass-jacketed bullet onto the bedside table. It glittered as it rolled across the polished wood and hit the base of the lamp with a click. ‘Tell her there’s another like it with her name on it. There’s one for you too if you’re not out of here by tomorrow night.’
‘Which one of you is Lorimar?’ I asked. It was a guess, but it seemed to hit the spot.
‘What did you say?’ The invisible man again, but now I could see him, or at least the shape of him, over by the window. For the first time he didn’t seem so sure of himself.
‘You heard,’ I said. I addressed the figure. ‘Is it you?’
There was no answer.
‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘You killed Leee.’
‘Yes,’ he said coldly.
‘What’s this all about?’ I asked.
‘A business deal, pure and simple. We kept our part of the bargain and she didn’t. We aren’t happy about that. That’s all you need to know. In fact, the less you do know, the better. We’re going now. I advise you to stay put. We’ve got that little belly gun of yours. If you want to raise a commotion, be our guest, but someone will get hurt and it might be you. Now get up and go to the bathroom.’
I did as I was told. The standing man slid into the shadow and I swung myself out of bed and went to the bathroom door. ‘Get inside and stay there,’ one of them ordered. Once again I did as I was told. I tried the bathroom light but the bulb must have been removed. I stood in the pitch dark for what seemed like hours but could only have been a couple of minutes. I opened the door and the bedroom was empty. I went back into the room. The bedside lamp had been turned off and the curtains were open, allowing the pre-dawn light to dribble through the window. I went over and peered through it without moving the curtain. The fire escape was as empty as if they’d never been there.
I closed the curtains and switched on the main light. The room looked exactly as when I went to bed. My watch was still in the bedside table drawer. It was 3 a.m. The Browning and its ankle holster were gone. I wasn’t having a lot of luck with firearms that night.
Though the room was warm and muggy, the sweat drying on my body was cool and I went back to the bathroom for a towel. Light from the bedroom leaked through the open door and I fumbled around until I eventually found one and rubbed myself down. I fetched cigarettes from the sitting room and lit one and sat on the bed. Things were starting to happen. Things were getting serious. I had been lied to and I wanted to know exactly what was going on. The police presence precluded my jumping straight in with my size tens. I’d have to be patient. I was no longer tired so I sat up for the rest of the night smoking and thinking.
14
I sat on the bed and watched all-night TV and drank the refrigerator dry of soft drinks. I dozed, then came awake. Leee’s death and the film I was watching and my dreams and what Lorimar and his murderous little crew had said ran into each other like the layers of a cake until long after dawn when I got dressed and went downstairs.
There was a different copper guarding Catherine’s door. He had found a delicate Chippendale chair and was slumped over it like a lumpy schoolboy, but straightened as I came into the corridor. ‘All right?’ I asked.
‘All right,’ he replied in an unfriendly way. My reputation had gone before me or else the chair was as uncomfortable as it looked.
‘No chance of anyone getting in last night with you lot about,’ I said. He mumbled something unintelligible in reply. ‘Keep up the good work,’ I said and walked on past. Christ, I could have been murdered in my bed for all he knew. I didn’t ask him about Catherine. He would be the last to know. Cannon fodder.
I went down to the dining room. It was barely six and the room was empty. No coppers, no coffee, and the dining chairs were back in their original positions. I needed to see Elizabeth but I needed coffee more. I went down to the kitchen. Courtneidge was standing next to a cold oven drinking from a huge white china mug. ‘Good morning,’ I said.
‘Not for us.’
‘Of course not.’ I could see he needed to have someone listen to his gripes.
‘Cook has taken to her bed and is threatening to walk out later. Miranda and Constance aren’t even down yet.’
‘The police kept them up late.’
‘They should be here,’ he said as if I hadn’t spoken.
I shrugged, he wasn’t interested in what I had to say. He was too wrapped up in himself. ‘Got any coffee?’
‘Instant, or there’s tea in the pot. I must apologise but I have to prepare breakfast for the family on my own. There’ll be fresh coffee later.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it matters. Standards always matter.’
‘Come off it, Courtneidge,’ I said. ‘There’s a kid spread all over the conservatory floor. Does it matter if the family have to make do with cornflakes instead of that spread that’s usually chucked away?’
‘It matters to me.’
I shook my head and spooned some coffee into a mug, added milk and sugar and hot water. It tasted just fine.
‘You must excuse me now, Mr Sharman. I have lots to do.’
‘Want a hand?’
‘Thank you, no.’
I knew when I wasn’t wanted and took my cup upstairs. The door to the conservatory was taped off and another uniform was leaning against the wall outside. I went into the drawing room and out onto the paved patio. It was already hot and the early mist had all but evaporated. A tarp had been stretched over the conservatory roof and the blinds drawn. I lit a cigarette and perched on the low wall that separated the levels of the patio and drank my coffee.
I ground out the cigarette and had a sudden feeling I was being watched. I shivered involuntarily under my shirt and turned slowly to look up the back wall of the house. The sunlight bounced off the windows and made me squint but on the second floor I thought I saw a face at one of the windows. I looked again and the face was gone.
I took my cup back into the drawing room and left it on the table there and went looking for life. I knocked on Elizabeth’s sitting-room door. She answered and I opened it. She was sitting in the bright sunlight in front of an open bureau writing in a leather-covered book. Newspapers were scattered over the sofa. She closed the book when she saw me and turned in her seat to face me. ‘Good morning,’ I said.
‘Is it?’
‘How’s Catherine?’
‘Not so good. I called out her doctor last night. She was close to a breakdown. He gave her something to make her sleep. If she’s no better this morning, I’m to call him again. Christ, what a mess.’
‘I had visitors last night,’ I said.
‘What kind of visitors?’
‘Friends of Catherine’s.’
‘What do you mean? What kind of friends?’
‘Bad friends with guns. Bad friends who killed Leee.’ I took the bullet that the Australian with the gun had thrown onto the table out of my pocket. ‘Bad friends who left this as a warning. And one of the bad friends was named Lorimar, and he knows Catherine, In fact, according to him, she owes him money on some kind of deal.’
Elizabeth’s face paled.
‘Did you know that she knew Lorimar?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘I’d hate to think you’ve been having me on, Elizabeth. Someone’s been lying and I want to know who. My visitors gave me a message for Catherine. I need to talk to her, to both of you.’
‘Not now, Catherine is resting. She’s not up to it yet. There
are reporters crawling all over the place. The papers are full of it. Murder, cross-dressing. They’re having a field day.’
‘Who can blame them?’ I said. ‘Imagine what they’d make of my visitors.’
Her face went even paler if that were possible. ‘You won’t,’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘No. You can trust me.’
‘I knew I could,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk later, I promise.’
‘Okay, I’ll wait, but I don’t like waiting. What’s on your agenda this morning?’
‘The police are coming back at eight. The conservatory is going to be cleaned and repaired as soon as possible and we’ll get back to normal.’
‘Do you think you ever will?’ I said. ‘I don’t want to talk to the law. They gave me a hard enough time last night. I’m going out. I’ve got to do some thinking. I’ll be back later to speak to Catherine, ready or not.’ I got up and left the room without waiting for a reply.
I let gravity carry me downstairs and met Miranda on the first-floor landing. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Awful,’ she replied. ‘I want to get away from here.’
‘I know how you feel.’
Her face puckered as she remembered. ‘There was so much blood,’ she said.
‘Try not to think about it.’ I touched her arm. ‘You shouldn’t be working today. Can’t you get some time off?’
‘I could, but the place is a shambles and I don’t want to leave the family.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. ‘I need some air,’ I told her. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘You can’t go out the front. There are reporters and photographers and TV cameras all over the place.’
‘I’ll use the back way.’
‘Mr Courtneidge has already chased some reporters away from there too. They were going through the dustbins.’
‘That’s about their speed,’ I said. ‘They won’t bother me.’ But I didn’t want to meet them. I didn’t want to meet anyone. ‘What time do you make it?’ I asked.
She looked at her wristwatch. ‘Seven o’clock.’
‘Do me a favour. Go downstairs and at exactly five past open the front door. Don’t go out or show yourself. Just keep the door open for a minute or two, okay?’
‘Why?’
‘Anyone at the back will come running and I can slip away.’
‘All right, Mr Sharman.’
‘You’re an angel, Miranda. I’ll owe you one.’
We went down to the hall and Miranda waited while I went down to the kitchen where the smell of bacon frying filled the air. I went out and squeezed past the dustbins. I looked through the railings and there were three guys hanging around smoking and chatting. Two of them had cameras round their necks. I looked at my watch and right on time there was a shout from the end of the mews where it entered Curzon Street. The three newsmen legged it across the cobbles. I smiled and ducked out and away in the opposite direction.
15
I went back to the park. On the way I bought a copy of every morning paper, a cheese sandwich and a black coffee in a styrofoam cup from an entrepreneurial newsagent cum snack bar behind the Hilton. I wandered across to the Serpentine and sat on a bench. I looked at the headlines and drank the coffee and investigated the inside of the sandwich, which was none too clever.
All the late editions of the papers had the story; the tabloids, with the exception of the Pike publications, had it splashed across their front pages. They made a meal of it, too. I found the news as hard to digest as the food I’d bought so I ended up trashing the linens and feeding the processed bread and cheese to the ducks. The coffee wasn’t bad, though. I smoked halfway through a pack of Silk Cut as the sun burned across the sky and thought about what had happened the previous night.
I was as jumpy as fuck and well pissed off with everyone with the surname Pike by the time I heard a clock strike eleven somewhere off towards Queensway. I got up and went looking for a boozer. I ended up at a big old gin palace at Scotch Corner. It was empty and anonymous and the staff didn’t give a toss about the customers. That suited me down to the ground, except that the beer was warm and about as expensive as they could get away with without being tarred and feathered and run out of Knightsbridge on a rail.
I watered the Becks down with ice until it was drinkable and sat in a quiet corner. As I finished the pack of cigarettes I watched the drinkers rotate in shifts from tourists to grannies on shopping trips to Harrod’s, to the wage slaves on their strict lunchtimes. When it got too crowded to move I split back into the one o’clock heat.
I walked across the edge of the park to Curzon Street where there was still a crowd of monkeys with cameras and portable phones and minicams and even the occasional anachronism of a real notebook and well-chewed pencil camped outside the house. I doubled back down to the mews avoiding a couple of hacks, and jumped over the railings before I could be immortalised on film or video.
I went into the coolness of the basement and through to the kitchen where Miranda was standing in front of the oven stirring something savoury in a Teflon saucepan.
‘Oh, you’re back are you? The police have been looking everywhere for you.’
‘They seek him here, they seek him there,’ I said.
‘You’re cheerful.’
‘Six bottles of Becks. It’ll do it every time.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Miranda, you should get that put on tape.’
‘Funny.’
‘Not one of my best. Are the Old Bill still around?’
‘I think the detectives have gone but there’s still an ordinary policeman in the conservatory.’
‘Good,’ I said. I didn’t want to see Endesleigh or his sidekick for a bit. ‘What about Catherine and Elizabeth?’
‘They’re up in Miss Elizabeth’s sitting room. I’m making them some soup for lunch.’
‘I’ll take it up.’
‘No, you mustn’t.’
‘It’s okay, trust me.’
‘All right,’ she said eventually. ‘But if you get me into trouble … ’
There was an answer to that one but I let it go. ‘It’ll be okay, I promise. I can handle those two.’ At least I hoped I could.
‘It’s Mr Courtneidge I’m worried about,’ she said.
‘Where is he?’
‘Having a nap. He was up very early and did everything himself this morning. He’s dead on his feet.’
An unfortunate choice of expression I thought, but I didn’t mention it. ‘No problem then,’ was what I did say.
She smiled and pulled a conspirational face. ‘Go on then.’
‘Thanks, and thanks for the diversion this morning. It worked like a charm.’
‘Good. I hate those newspaper people. They only want to cause trouble.’
I agreed and watched as she put the soup into a small tureen which she placed on an already prepared tray set with a creamy white cloth, two soup plates, cutlery, a wicker basket of fresh rolls and a china tub of butter. I picked up the whole shebang which, I might add, weighed a ton and made me think that Miranda and Constance must have been stronger than they looked, and took the servants’ lift to the second floor. I walked down the corridor. Balancing the tray on one arm, I knocked on Elizabeth’s sitting-room door and entered. Elizabeth and Catherine were both on the sofa, deep in conversation. ‘Leave the tray on the table,’ said Elizabeth without looking up. ‘We’ll ring when we’re finished.’
‘Don’t let it get cold,’ I said.
They both looked up as if they’d been goosed.
‘Where the hell have you been and what do you think you’re doing with that?’ said Elizabeth with an edge of anger in her voice.
‘Just saving the staff a job and I told you I was going out. I was finding the atmosphere a little oppressive in here.’
‘The police are looking for you,’ said Elizabeth.
‘So I understand.’
‘I suppose
they should have combed the local pubs,’ said Catherine nastily. She was changing her tune. Obviously Elizabeth had told her about my midnight callers.
‘I’m cut to the quick,’ I said back. ‘But as a matter of fact I did drop in for a livener.’
‘More than one, by the sound of it.’ Catherine again.
‘As if it’s any of your business.’
‘We’re paying you,’ said Elizabeth.
‘That’s another matter. Before we go into all that, I think you’ve got something to tell me.’
The two women seated on the sofa looked at each other.
‘Well, come on,’ I said impatiently. ‘Spit it out.’
‘What do you want to know?’ said Elizabeth.
‘Why the chicken crossed the road!’ I said. ‘What the hell do you think I want to know? I want to know what I’m doing here.’
‘Trying to bully us,’ Elizabeth retorted.
‘And obviously not succeeding,’ I said. ‘Okay, let’s take it one step at a time. You told me when you hired me that maybe, just maybe, your father’s death wasn’t the suicide it was supposed to be. You told me that Catherine was scared, of what you didn’t know. You also let me believe she was a sweet, hard-done-by soul, pure as the driven. Now I discover that she was involved all along with someone who was being paid a great deal of money by your late father. So, Catherine, dear, sweet, hard-done-by soul, tell me about it.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ said Catherine.
‘Who said I think anything?’ I asked. ‘And who is this cat Lorimar?’
‘One of those men I told you about, my mother’s men,’ replied Catherine.
‘And what is he?’
‘Anything he wants to be. A thief, a murderer, a con man. He was working the resort hotels when my mother met him.’
‘Doing what exactly?’
‘Like I said, anything. Scamming, stealing from rooms. Bunco, anything.’
‘And why did Sir Robert start paying him?’
‘My mother told Lorimar the whole story one night when she was drunk. He was a good listener. He had to be, doing what he did. He got in touch with my father and threatened to make the matter public.’