Mornings in London

by Janice Law

  “To Rinaldi,” she said. “Why?”

  “Peter Tollman thinks Freddie was killed for the money he was carrying, because he had won big at cards the night before.”

  “I knew that Freddie was lying!”

  “Or else Tollman lied about Freddie’s winning. Didn’t the papers say that his wallet was virtually empty?”

  “I think. But why lie about a card game anyway?” she exclaimed. “And why did someone search my apartment and who’s following me in the street?” She turned around in agitation and looked out the window.

  “Was Freddie in your room at the Larkins?”

  “Grow up! Of course he was.” And she made a face.

  “If he had something to hide . . .”

  “Oh!” Her expression changed. Despite her anger, she really still hadn’t thought that badly of Freddie. “In my things, you mean. How absolutely rotten of him!”

  “It’s a possibility. Or maybe he didn’t, but whoever killed him has come up empty and thinks that he might have.”

  “He’s jolly well out of luck in that case!”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “You’ve been staying at your mother’s house. You’ve probably taken clothes, things, back and forth. We’d better have a look through your room at home.”

  “Today’s Mother’s bridge afternoon. No one will be home.”

  That sounded ideal to me. Aunt Theresa has never been a favorite of mine, and I’m sure she’d say the same of me. We walked over to the square and up the front steps to the Dinesmor house, big, solid, and comfortable. Poppy let us in with her key. “Maids’ day off,” she said.

  Poppy’s bedroom was on the second floor to the back, a fine square room with big windows, a fireplace, and a window seat. Her canopy bed was frilly with white linen and flanked by pictures showing favorite horses festooned with the many ribbons she’d won from pony up to novice hunter competitions. She had a stool covered in cowhide and supported by legs and hooves. She had a nice bamboo rocking chair and a pretty Aubusson rug and fine striped wallpaper. A hockey stick leaned next to the door, and the single bookshelf held a collection of scrapbooks and schoolgirl albums.

  “Don’t you dare open those,” Poppy said. “Too juvenile for words.”

  Closet first. A very enviable evening cape in midnight velvet. “Practically an antique,” Poppy said. Assorted dresses, none with pockets. We paid particular attention to the clothes she had brought back from Larkin Manor but came up empty-handed. Ditto the drawers, her jewelry case, her toiletries bag. We opened the top of the window seat. We looked under the bed. Nothing dropped, nothing lost. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe Freddie had returned to the house for other reasons entirely.

  Finally, Poppy picked up her purse and said, “Let’s go out for tea and cakes. My treat.”

  As we walked toward Sloane Square, a breeze swept along the pavement and ruffled through the trees. Several cabs passed us, along with delivery boys pedaling heavy bikes with big wicker baskets of vegetables, fruit, bread, or meat. A neighbor waved to Poppy just as a motorbike, grumbling behind us, accelerated. The driver hopped the machine onto the sidewalk and, before either of us could react, grabbed the purse hanging from Poppy’s shoulder and accelerated again.

  The force of the machine hurled Poppy to the cement and started to drag her.

  “Let it go! Let go!” I shouted, before the strap was wrenched from her hand and the machine leaped off the curb and roared away.

  Both my cousin’s legs were bleeding; her jacket was torn, and she had a scuff down the left side of her face. She sat on the sidewalk for a minute, clearly stunned. I was helping her up when a woman bustled from one of the houses.

  “I saw that!” she called. “I’ll ring the police. Bring your friend inside.”

  “I’m perfectly all right,” Poppy said, and she repeated that twice. But it took both me and the stout, corseted lady of the house to help her up the steps and into the front hallway.

  “Sit yourself down,” the woman said. “I’ll get the police.”

  We heard her calling. She was Mrs. Lionel Partinger and she was shocked and angry. The “young woman” was injured, bleeding. The “demon motorcyclist” had been speeding, and, worst of all, I suspected, “this outrageous attack” had occurred right at her front door. “Of course, I saw everything. I was just stepping outside!” she concluded. Footsteps in the hall and a pause before she returned with a shot of brandy and a basin of water.

  “Drink up and take your stockings off before the blood dries,” she said to Poppy. “And you”—meaning me—“wait on the stoop for the police.” She issued commands like a ward matron, and we did what we were told.

  Within minutes, a beanpole tall and spider gangly constable arrived to park his high black bicycle against the railings. He took my name, address, and a short account before we went inside where we found Poppy looking a little better. Her color had returned and the dizzy shock had passed, for she was sitting up straight with a cup of tea. Her torn and bloody stockings lay dead on the floor, and even with the blood wiped from her bare legs, her oozing knees and long abrasions showed how far she had been dragged along the walk.

  “A nasty business, miss,” said the constable.

  She nodded, cradling her left arm. The elbow was gone from the jacket on that side, and at the very least, I guessed poor Poppy had severe bruising. And she is left-handed, too.

  “She needs to see a doctor,” said Mrs. Partinger. “And something other than a bicycle to get her there.”

  “I’m fine to walk,” Poppy protested.

  “You’ll have your legs bleeding,” said Mrs. Partinger, and I agreed this was not a good plan.

  “I’ll take a cab,” Poppy said, before she remembered the loss of her purse.

  “Much money in it, miss?” the constable asked.

  “A few shillings. Not even a pound.”

  “Odd business,” he said, closing up his notebook. He asked to use the phone and was directed to the alcove at the end of the hall.

  “Now,” said Mrs. Partinger, “is there someone to be notified?”

  Poppy nodded reluctantly. “Mother, I guess. She’ll make a frightful fuss.”

  “A mother’s privilege,” said Mrs. Partinger in a tone that brooked no denial.

  “She can pick me up in a cab,” Poppy said. “If it’s not a trouble for me to wait here?”

  “Nonsense. We’ll use my small sitting room. But bandages, first, now everything’s been cleaned.” She left us for a moment, returning with iodine, gauze, and tape. “The iodine will sting,” she warned and began dabbing Poppy’s legs, bringing tears to her eyes. “This takes me back,” Mrs. Partinger said.

  “You’ve done nursing?” I asked, mostly to distract Poppy.

  “Forward dressing stations in the Ardennes.” For a moment, her face darkened. “Nothing so serious here anyway,” she told Poppy. “But the arm should be looked to. You could have a hairline fracture. Your doctor will want to check your eyes, too. Just to make sure your head is all right.”

  “I’ve taken worse falls from horses,” Poppy said, recovering a little of her spirit.

  Mrs. Partinger stood up. “I’m sure you have, but this is different. You were hurt deliberately. You keep after the police to find out why.”

  My aunt Theresa arrived with a good deal of comment and excitement to whisk Poppy off to their local GP, where Mrs. Partinger was proved accurate: My cousin had a hairline fracture and a possible concussion. She was to stay quiet for a few days, or, as she put it, under “house arrest and strict surveillance,” a sentence that included bridge with her mother’s friends every afternoon.

  When I arrived a few days later, bearing some of Nan’s scones—I know what their cook’s are like, said Nan—Poppy’s face lit up.

  “Oh, Francis! You’re a prince and a savior!” She sat up straighte
r on her frilly bed. Even under a good deal of makeup, the livid bruise down the side of her face and the dark swelling around her left eye were all too visible. Her chewed-up legs were hidden in a smart pair of slacks and her left arm was in a sling. “I’d break right out of here if I didn’t feel like I’ve been run over by a cement mixer.”

  I sympathized and told her amusing stories (amusing in retrospect, that is) of a time in Berlin when I’d collected broken ribs under similar circumstances. Poppy looked thoughtful when I was finished. “Perhaps it wasn’t robbery at all,” she said. “We didn’t look terribly rich, did we?”

  “Certainly, I didn’t.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  I shook my head. “No chance. He was wearing goggles and a cap pulled down.”

  Just then, the doorbell rang. We heard Annie in the hall and low masculine voices.

  “Would you see who that is, Francis?”

  I leaned over the hall railing to meet Inspector Carstairs’s gaze. Next to him was another man, also in plainclothes, showing Annie his identity card. “You’d better come up,” I said, and the two mounted the stairs.

  “Inspector Carstairs,” Poppy said, “I didn’t expect to see you. The local constable is investigating. Supposedly.”

  “This is Inspector Davis from the Met, but we aren’t here directly about your injuries.”

  “I should think you would be!” Aunt Theresa had appeared in the doorway, and she had a lot to say about Poppy’s injuries and the activities of the Met. When Inspector Carstairs explained that new evidence had been uncovered and that Poppy would be needed to identify it, my aunt warmed up on his entirely unwarranted intrusion, with an aside about my presence. By the time she was finished, Poppy would have been ready to accompany white slavers, never mind respectable coppers.

  “Nonsense, Mother. I’m stiff and sore, but if I can help in any way with the investigation, I’m ready to go.”

  “You should have a lawyer,” I said, for new evidence, two detectives, and a trip to Sussex all raised alarms for me.

  Wrong remark. My aunt went from indignation to high dudgeon. A respectable young lady had nothing to worry about from any police inquiry ever. “But you can make yourself useful, Francis,” she concluded. “This is partly your fault, as you were with Penelope at that disastrous house party. Go down to Sussex with her. A member of the family should be there, and I trust this time that you’ll keep her from disaster.”

  I sensed a fallacy in this plan, but Inspector Carstairs pronounced the arrangement “ideal” with something approaching enthusiasm.

  I helped Poppy into her coat, her mother fetched a purse, and we departed in an unmarked car for an awkward ride down to Sussex. Poppy and I sat in the back, the two inspectors up front. Carstairs concentrated on the driving, but the man from the Met made himself agreeable, all the better to ask questions informally.

  Inspector Davis was younger than our rural inspector and dressed much more smartly. He had strong, even features in a square face, rather large and protuberant eyes, and a round, bold skull that kept him a few degrees from elegance. He wanted to know if Poppy ever carried substantial sums of money or wore valuable jewelry that might have attracted the man on the motorcycle. Poppy shook her head.

  “Maybe he wasn’t after money,” she said and proceeded to explain that her flat had been searched, mentioning the missing blouse. At this, Carstairs took a quick look in his rearview mirror, but neither he nor Inspector Davis followed up the information until we reached his local station, a two-story smoke-blackened brick building that opened to a dark reception area and holding cells down one corridor and interview rooms down another. The whole place was permeated by a smell of stale sweat and smoke, and when Poppy took my arm, I felt her heart. My cousin lacks imagination. I think until that moment, she hadn’t anticipated anything worse than inconvenience. The station underlined not just Freddie’s death but her own danger. “What a dreadful place!”

  “Be prepared,” I said, but with the two inspectors and a constable bearing mugs of tea, I had no chance to give her better warning before we were ushered to an interview room. The four of us sat down at the scarred green table. A young uniformed officer sat a little behind us with a notepad. This had a very official feel. I was tempted to interrupt and insist on a solicitor for Poppy, but my cousin was wearing a determined look, suggesting that even good advice might be ignored.

  Inspector Carstairs put his large hands on the table. “There have been developments,” he said. “Following the autopsy report.”

  I hadn’t expected that.

  “The guests at Larkin Manor were more or less ruled out either by alibis or by the difficulty of fatally slashing a man of his size and strength so close to the wall of the tower. However, Mr. Bosworth must have fallen—or was pushed—from the top of the ruin. The autopsy revealed a severe head injury as well as damage to his spine. He was probably unconscious when his throat was cut.”

  “That’s horrible,” said Poppy. “That’s almost worse to think about.”

  Horrible, indeed, for I realized that alibis or not, any one of the guests could have managed to dispatch him.

  “As you see,” the inspector continued, “this very much changes our views on who might physically have been able to commit the murder.”

  Poppy nodded.

  “Then we have this,” Carstairs said, and he opened a paper parcel sitting on the scarred green table.

  Inside was a plain mauve silk blouse with short sleeves and pearl buttons and a big, almost black, swath of what I guessed was dried blood.

  “Do you recognize it?” Inspector Carstairs asked Poppy.

  She had gone quite pale, but if my cousin lacks imagination, she makes up for it with courage. “It looks like my missing blouse,” she said, voice steady. “Annie puts my initials on all my things—back of the collar.”

  The inspector turned the blouse, revealing script initials embroidered in slightly darker silk. Annie is a fine seamstress.

  “It’s mine. I had it at the Larkins, but I never wore it, and as I told Inspector Davis in the car, that blouse has been missing for well over a week, closer to two.”

  “We have a problem then,” said Carstairs. “Given the blood.”

  “It is human?” I asked.

  “Very definitely.”

  “But you can’t tell whose, can you?”

  “Who else’s would it be than Freddie Bosworth’s?”

  “But I didn’t have it on at the Larkins!” exclaimed Poppy. “Not even for a minute. It turned out not to match my tweed skirt.”

  “Odd it should turn up now,” I said. “When your men searched the property so carefully.”

  “Indeed,” said Carstairs.

  “Could we ask where it was found?”

  Carstairs thought for a moment before he said, “Major Larkin was having some repairs done on the little banqueting house floor. A carpenter found the blouse under a loose board and reported it, given its proximity to the murder scene.”

  The idea was ridiculous. Poppy had supposedly pushed Freddie off the tower, slashed his throat (with what convenient knife?), and stashed the bloodstained blouse in the banqueting house. I expected her to burst out laughing, but she looked shocked.

  “You can’t seriously think that Poppy walked back, bloody and half naked, across the north lawn without anyone seeing her?” I asked.

  “Perhaps she changed in the banqueting house,” the inspector suggested. “Perhaps she had hidden another garment there.”

  “That little house was kept locked. When the major gave me the tour, he opened it with an impressive key.”

  Carstairs gave a half smile and produced another paper parcel. “Like this?” he asked, revealing a key that certainly looked like the major’s prize artifact.

  “You’ve tried it in the lock?”

&n
bsp; “Of course. It was in the victim’s pocket.”

  Why hadn’t I searched Freddie’s pockets when I had the chance! I glanced at Poppy, who didn’t meet my eye.

  “Well?” asked the inspector.

  “I did not kill Freddie,” Poppy said. “I was never up in the tower, and I certainly didn’t hide that blouse. But Francis is right. I should have a solicitor.”

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. I did, too, half expecting the command to sit down.

  “That is your right,” Inspector Davis said smoothly. “But”—and here he looked at his watch—“it’s late in the day. Too late to contact your local solicitor and have someone come down from London. You’ll have to remain here.”

  “Not in one of your ghastly cells!”

  “We’ll find somewhere in town,” I said, though I was uncertain that would be allowed even if we managed to pay for it.

  Poppy had another idea. “I’ll call the Larkins. They’re old friends of my family even if they did find the blouse. Eveline will put us up. That will be all right, won’t it, Inspector?”

  I expected a quick denial, but Davis said that was a capital idea and Carstairs offered to phone the Larkins for us. “You can call your mother yourself,” he added, “and arrange for legal advice.”

  Chapter 5

  Rain completed my joy when we arrived at Larkin Manor. Inspector Davis had taken charge of us, and when he dropped us off, I saw that he and the major were obviously acquainted. The old camaraderie of the trenches? Or some other connection? For Poppy’s sake, I wanted to know, and I tried to rouse myself to find out.

  But it is difficult to do anything when I so dislike the country. Especially in rain, which creates mud and brings up all the odors of horse and cow and dog that make my head hurt. Give me the artificial life of London any day of the week.

  Poppy, now, is a different sort. Here, where her engagement blew up, where her faithless ex-fiancé was slaughtered, and where she, herself, lay under suspicion of a capital crime, she took a deep breath and smiled. “Country air,” she said.