Mornings in London

by Janice Law

  “She didn’t sound like herself with me, either. We need to find her, Francis, and make sure she’s safe.”

  “You said that she called you more than once. Did she give you a phone number?”

  “Yes, a Hastings number and a time to call, which I thought was odd, but it turned out to be a public phone box.”

  “And you tried to call her back?”

  “At the time suggested. A passerby finally answered. The phone box was on the seafront. I could hear gulls and music. Since then, nothing at all. Now I’m thinking I should break my word and contact the police.”

  “Maybe. Inspector Carstairs, the local chap, seems fine. The guy from the Met, I’m not so sure about. But I should have told you straightaway that the autopsy report has changed the situation. Anyone at the manor—or indeed the passing stranger—could have murdered Freddie, because he had already been disabled by a fall before his throat was slashed. That’s bad for Poppy. What’s good is that someone appears to be trying to implicate her, and the police have picked up on that. For what it’s worth, I think she’s been moved down on the suspect list.”

  Lizzie seemed both unsurprised—such faith in my cousin!—and nonchalant—consorting with a potential murder suspect! All she said was, “Could you go down to Sussex with me tomorrow?”

  I thought of my damaged studio, the bills for the locksmith, and the repair of my sample chairs, not to mention the probable delays of the insurance, and said, “I could about manage a third-class return.”

  “I’ll borrow my brother’s car. That way we can easily get down and back before dark, and we’ll be able to cover more ground than on foot or by public transport.”

  She seemed so competent, I wondered why she wanted my company, but I said that was a capital idea.

  “I’ll maybe have to work on George for a bit, so call me tonight just to be sure we’re on. Any time after nine, but don’t give your own name again. It was just lucky Nell picked up. She’s hard of hearing. Mother hears too much, and she reads all the news stories. If she answers, she’ll know what I’m about, and there’ll be a fine to-do. Be Tony. Do you like ‘Tony’?”

  More spy novel stuff. I thought I’d left all that behind on the Continent. “Tony’s fine, but I rather fancied Edwina.”

  “Let’s give my mother hope,” she said and winked.

  Ah, so she was a female member of my tribe, complete with anxious and disapproving parents. We exchanged a look of complete understanding before she leaned over, kissed my cheek, and strode away.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, just after seven, a bright red saloon with a black top pulled up outside Avant Design. I hopped in. The leather interior smelled like a tack room and the dashboard and fittings were burl maple. The ride was as smooth as a sofa, and when we left the city, Lizzie pushed the speed up over 50 mph. “Impressive,” I said.

  “A Morris 8 saloon with lots of custom touches. George’s baby. I had to promise him the earth to get a loan.”

  “George is your older brother?”

  “That’s right. Next in line for the firm. But when Daddy retires, I’ll have to take over the business end. George can do anything with math so long as it doesn’t involve money.”

  “What does the company do?” I asked, just to keep the conversation going.

  “Armitage, Ltd., makes electrical equipment, switches, relays, transformers.”

  “Very forward looking.”

  “Absolutely,” Lizzie said, “and George is in the forefront.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s a genius engineer but otherwise a dolt. Did you know he introduced Pops to Freddie? The fatal man, gorgeous but toxic—not that George would have noticed. The only things he notices under the hood, so to speak, are motors.”

  You can bet that gave me something to think about: a genius electrical engineer who knew Freddie! Did George know about mysterious waves and magnetrons? Had I worried about all the wrong people? These were unpleasant thoughts under the circumstances, and I think the trip would have become awkward if Lizzie hadn’t clearly enjoyed driving. Rolling along, she told me amusing stories about her schooldays with Poppy. I equate school with penal servitude, but she recalled their establishment as a jolly place where they played rough games on the hockey pitch and toasted bread and sausages in their rooms and made eyes at suitable boys. “Or girls,” Lizzie added and winked.

  “Would Poppy have stuck to girls! Or at least not picked such a rascal.”

  “Damn handsome just the same,” Lizzie said, and I wondered how much she knew about the late Freddie. But though I tried several times to steer the conversation back to him, Lizzie offered nothing more. Something to think about there, too.

  We turned onto the Grand Parade in Hastings at midmorning. The summer holiday makers had departed, but a good number of truants, lovers, convalescents, and ancients were out on the seafront enjoying the mild weather, the clouded sun, those supposedly healthy sea breezes. I’m not fond of the sea. Although sandy resorts are a big step up from country living, they’re still a big step down from London and civilized life.

  “We used to go to the pier when I was a child,” Lizzie said, nodding toward the cluster of bulbous pleasure domes perched at the end of a long pier. “We’ll go, if we have time.”

  The joys of dancing and other recreations while perched over many feet of salt water escape me completely, but I said, “If we can find Poppy, I’ll be happy to go.”

  She gave me a glance as if she’d read my mind. “You’re very fond of Pops, aren’t you?”

  “My favorite relative, hands down.”

  Lizzie glanced up at the rows of five- and six-story hotels facing the front and said, “We need a plan of attack.”

  That would have been the moment for me to mention the convalescent home, the big one that was so busy during the war, but I didn’t. Maurice would say my subconscious was sending me warnings. “What we have is a phone box on the front,” I said. “Maybe find that first and narrow down the search?”

  “I can’t think of anything better,” she said.

  We left George’s saloon in the fine new car park and walked to the seafront, arriving quite near the Queen’s Hotel, a big whipped cream–colored building with balconies and a fancy porte cochere where expensive cars were discharging well-heeled guests: Poppy’s normal sort of place.

  “What do you think of that?” Lizzie asked.

  I shrugged. “She’d need a suitcase and dry clothes, but there are shops aplenty, so she’d have gotten a room. Big hotels have security, too, and people around all the time.”

  “So safer in one way. But her photo has been in the papers. What do you think the chances are of someone recognizing her?”

  “Not too many can afford luxury digs at the moment, and they’re mostly in the same set. So pretty good unless she kept to her room.”

  “That I don’t see.”

  I agreed. My cousin was not the sort to cower in any hotel room, no matter how luxurious. I nodded toward a phone box on the other side of the street. “Shall we start with that one?”

  Over on the beach side, people strolled the sidewalk above the sand, sat on the benches, or leaned against the railings, braving the brisk wind to stare at the sea. It stared back, gray-green, turbulent, and potentially hostile. Farther down the shore, the pier ventured out on its high iron legs like some queer insect, and faint sounds of music drifted from the pavilions. Lizzie went one way and I went the other, checking the numbers of the phones in the public kiosks. I was bored with sea air and getting discouraged when I saw her waving far down the street.

  When I arrived at the kiosk, Lizzie held up the scrap of paper with the phone number. “She was here! Three days ago. Right here!”

  We were still in the resort belt with terraced housing and cheek-by-jowl detached homes, all big and solid and mos
t sporting B&B or hotel signs. Farther along, the ground rose abruptly. The buildings of the town slid away while the steep, green hills of the Downs occupied the horizon and overlooked the sea.

  We split up again to visit establishments along this promising section of the front. I don’t know what story Lizzie invented, but I was looking for a cousin who’d suffered a breakdown following the death of her fiancé. She’d been on a recuperative holiday but dropped out of contact after a couple penny postcards from Hastings and a single phone call. I thought my spiel both convincing and touching, but I got no response. Only one hotel manager had any reaction at all, a touch of evasiveness that was as likely due to indigestion or a difficult guest as to anything significant.

  I rested my hopes on Lizzie, but she came up empty, too. By then, the light was dropping behind the hills, and she’d promised to return the car before dark. “Won’t happen even if we leave now,” she admitted.

  I walked back with her, but near the car park, I abruptly changed my mind. “I think I should stay overnight. If Poppy is lying low here, she might chance a restaurant in the evening. She might even fancy a walk along the front. I’ll catch a train in the morning—could you let Nan know?”

  “Of course. I think there’s an old kit bag in the boot of the car. You’ll need a bag to take a room.”

  Actually, I’d had other plans for obtaining lodgings, anticipating a troll along the promenade or around the better restaurants and cinemas to pick up a well-heeled visitor. I could fancy a fine room with elegant room service. I like eating in bed—and I like chilled Champagne and chocolate biscuits. The weakness of my plan was that it left everything to a chance encounter and a complacent hotel deskman, while sober respectability could secure me a room in our target area. Not without some regret, I told Lizzie, “Good idea.”

  An hour later, I was occupying a second-floor room with a sea view very close to the phone box Poppy had used. I sat at the window for a while, keeping watch along the beachfront walk and the entrances to the various B&Bs and hotels until the sun set and the streetlights came on. Then I smoothed my hair and sallied out for the evening, still hoping for an elegant dinner at someone else’s expense.

  Fortune decided otherwise. Despite starting early and wandering late, I wound up sharing meat pies and beer with a fisherman, one of the fleet whose boats were beached nightly on the shingle. Ernie was thin and angular with strong, if asymmetric, features, the result, he said, of a boom catching the side of his face. His skin was as dark and leathery as a man twice his age and his light eyes seemed at once distant and sly. He divided up the pies with a lethal-looking fish knife, and on closer acquaintance, he carried a perfume of fish, salt, and waterlogged wood that I found promising.

  When I suggested a walk, he endorsed the lower level of the new promenade, full of shadows and alcoves and the smell of the sea. Overhead, the tap and thump of footsteps, down below, the echo of the surf and the voices of other loiterers looking for excitement. A good idea. Even better was his notion to venture under the support pillars of the pier. We crossed the shingle beyond the lights and neon signs and slipped under the deep shadows of the ironwork. The incoming tide rattled the pebbles, a marine whisper running under the dance music, and he was very strong, very aggressive, very much to my taste altogether.

  Intense moments, before a sudden surge of salt water surprised us as I was straightening my clothes and picking bits of rust out of my hands. I hopped to save my shoes, and we were retreating up the beach when a figure burst from the brilliant lights of the pier entrance and cleared the railing to slip and slide across the shingle. A woman, hampered by a sling on one arm, was running toward us, and I recognized her silhouette against the lights. “Poppy!”

  With an anxious glance behind her, she stumbled over.

  “Oh, Francis!” she said and put her hand on my arm. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  Ernie laughed. “Who is this?” he asked.

  “My cousin,” I said. “Why were you running, Poppy?”

  “It was the same man. The same man as in London.” She shivered with distress. “I’m sure of it. He broke my arm,” she told Ernie, who gallantly took out his fish knife and said, “We’ll sort him for you,” as if enthusiastic about trouble. There really is no accounting for tastes. “Just one of them?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  Ernie looked up and down the dark beach, then took a glance at Poppy’s shoes, not high but with a fashionable heel. “No point taking chances. If you don’t mind taking off your shoes.”

  Poppy put a hand on my shoulder and slipped off her heels. I did the same with my shoes. Ernie led us back under the pier where the incoming tide crept almost thigh high. This is exactly why I dislike the seaside: stones underfoot, cold breezes above, and icy water in between. We had reached the other side of the pier supports when Ernie held up his hand. Someone was standing on the sand, watching the front I guessed.

  “That him?” Ernie asked.

  “Looks like it,” said Poppy, who was wringing the water from her skirt. “He saw me at the phone box near my hotel, so he’ll have a good idea where I’m staying.”

  “There’ll be more than one probably.”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  “He’s only watching one way, isn’t he?”

  Ernie had a grasp of tactics.

  “Probably armed, too. One is fine, two with the injured lady here—not so good.”

  He correctly saw I would not be the best combatant. “Avoid the hotel,” I told Poppy.

  She nodded but looked miserable. “I don’t think there’s a train until morning.”

  “Seven a.m.,” said Ernie. “You need a place until then, right?”

  “Yes. Preferably away from here before we’re swept out to sea.” Nan’s best encouragement had gone for naught; I can’t swim.

  “Plenty room yet.” Ernie led us up the slope until the girders that floored the pavilions were only a few inches above our heads. We could hear the thump of feet on the boards above, and once in a while, a discarded cigarette flared down like a miniature comet. Poppy was shivering in her light dress and a cardigan. I gave her my jacket and shivered in turn. Ernie, used to gales at sea, sat stoically in his shirtsleeves and a vest. Periodically, he ducked around the piers to check the beach and the entrance to the pier where he’d spotted another loiterer. After a long and frigid time, he announced the all clear and led us back to the sidewalk, where despite her injured arm, my agile cousin scrambled over the railing and onto the pavement.

  Approaching the midnight hour, there were still revelers on the pier and strollers catching a last breath of sea air but not enough of a crowd for complete safety. Worse, we must have looked a sight, our clothes wet with salt water well above our knees. We put our shoes back on and Poppy scanned the pedestrians anxiously. With everything looking normal on the seafront, a heavy mist in the air, and the promise of rain, not to mention our sodden clothes, I think she was tempted by her hotel.

  “Not a good idea,” I said, and Ernie concurred. “These were city folk after you, right?”

  “I’d guess. I first spotted the man in London.” She moved her injured arm. “Left me gun-shy.”

  “I know a place, not comfortable, I warn you, but nowhere a Londoner would ever think to look.”

  That sounded good to me, and Poppy was game as usual. He took us up the backstreets then turned eastward. When we returned to the shore, we saw the black silhouettes of boats pulled up on the shingle and a collection of disproportionately tall wooden buildings, set close together so that their roofs looked like the sharp teeth of a giant mouth.

  “This is where we dry our nets,” Ernie said. “Can’t count on many sunny days here.”

  He opened a door and we stepped into weird shadows and the smell of salt and fish and other mysterious hi
nts of the marine. “I’ll be back before dawn. Keep quiet as you can and be ready to leave as soon as I knock.”

  With that, he closed the door and left us in pitch-darkness.

  “Safest to sit down on the floor, I think.”

  “Another frock ruined,” said Poppy. “Ouch. Oh, there’s a sort of bench.” She held out her hand for me and, after banging my shins, I sat down on a wooden plank beside her.

  “Your pirate or whatever he is won’t return to cut our throats?”

  “He’s a sailor. Part of the local fishing fleet.”

  “You really are a fast worker, Francis. How long have you been here?”

  “Lizzie and I arrived this morning. We really did come to find you.”

  “I should have gone to London,” she said in a reflective tone. “I should never have agreed to hide in a convalescent home, of all places. It’s exactly the kind of Gothic pile mad wives were stashed in. I locked my door every night and tried to be on the Downs all day, but when I recognized the car, I knew I had to get out.”

  “The car?”

  “The red-and-black saloon that Freddie used to borrow. It belongs to George.”

  “Lizzie’s brother?” That was either implausible or alarming. “We drove his car here today, Lizzie and I. We parked in the main lot and walked half the town. She didn’t stay over because she’d promised to have it back in good time tonight.”

  “Francis, I’m talking three days ago! I certainly would have recognized you and Lizzie.”

  “You’re sure that it was George’s car and that he was driving?”

  “I was in such a state I thought it was Freddie. All this hiding in the woodwork is absolutely too, too bad. Of course, it was George! I recognized the license plate. I’d ridden in the car a number of times. Driven it, too, but naturally George didn’t know about that.”

  I had the feeling, as Uncle Lastings would say, that we were about to go down the rabbit hole. “I don’t think Lizzie knew he’d been here. If she did, she didn’t mention it.”