by Janice Law
I stepped away from the clothes rack, and the boy frantically checked every inch of the jackets and trousers. Fortunately, the damage was confined to my own shirt and jacket, and after the store receiver, official in a white shirt and a long pin-striped apron, had entered the goods on his sheet, the boy calmed down. By that time, I was sitting on the floor with my handkerchief pressed to my neck, wheezing as I always do after running and feeling more than a little weak and woozy.
Once the all-important garments were stowed, the receiver, small and dark like the tailor’s boy but with a plump face and a complaisant expression, approached with a semiclean towel. Now that all was well in men’s suiting, I was a matter of interest. My neck was wiped; the towel turned red. The resourceful shopman fetched his teakettle and poured a good deal of water over the wound.
Then he and the boy held a consultation. A long but shallow cut was their diagnosis. Despite their business in fabrics, they did not seem to have any scrap linen for a bandage. Their solution employed the tools of their trade. The boy whipped a thin curved needle from his lapel and the receiver scrounged a hank of silk thread. The boy threaded it with practiced ease and after another wipe of the towel, squeezed the edges of the slash together and slid the needle painfully into my skin.
What he lacked in gentleness, he made up for in speed, and soon he whipped off a knot and cut the thread with his teeth. The receiver leaned over to inspect his work. “Very neat! A surgeon couldn’t have done better! You are so lucky. Such hands Jakob has!”
I thanked them both and tipped my surgeon another sixpence. The receiver then put on the kettle, being of Nan’s persuasion that strong tea with sugar is, like whiskey, a genuine cure-all. We drank our tea and denounced the fascists, and after the tailor’s boy left and I’d had enough blood removed to look presentable, the receiver led me through the back corridors to the main shop floor, where I feigned interest in a number of frilly trifles until I was sure the coast was clear. I hustled to the nearest Tube station and made my way home. At the corner of our street, I stopped at the phone box. I dialed the number my uncle had given me, and as soon as he picked up, I said, “It was George Armitage.”
Chapter 13
You might expect since I had secured the negatives in the first place, conveyed them safely to the authorities in the second place, and identified a suspect in the third place, that I would be in my uncle’s good graces. That I would be, as he was wont to say on special occasions, “one in a million.” You’d expect nothing less, but I am sorry to say you’d be wrong.
The next morning, having gotten a proper bandage around my neck and a good deal of coddling from Nan, I was enjoying a late breakfast when Uncle Lastings thumped at the studio door. Nan had just left to do the marketing, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to have waited until he saw her go out. Wise of him if he did, for Nan was down on officialdom that morning and blaming my uncle for my slashed throat—an exaggeration. I had a big oozing scratch, now stained sienna with Nan’s iodine, but otherwise, no lasting consequences. Just the same, a little sympathy from my uncle and sincere congratulations would not have come amiss.
Instead, what did I get? Not only my uncle in a foul mood over his spoiled plans and ready to fault me for the decline of the empire, but also my least favorite copper, Inspector Davis of the chilly eyes and mysterious agendas. The two of them were united in displeasure, because George Armitage had left both his work and his flat and disappeared.
“I can’t think why you’re surprised,” I said, although I was both surprised and alarmed. With so much else to worry about, I’d found it easy to assume that George was wedded to his invisible waves and mysterious generators. “He must have suspected that his name would come up. Why else was he in Hastings that day? He either thought Poppy knew something or hoped Freddie had left her the documents. So he was already suspicious then.”
Such an appeal to reason did not impress my uncle. “Had you met me yesterday morning at ten as we’d agreed, we’d have had the identification within the hour, and George Armitage would have been picked up before lunchtime!”
“You didn’t need to know where Poppy was. Nobody’s been concerned about her safety.”
“That young woman tipped off the suspect,” said Inspector Davis.
“You can’t know that,” I said, although as soon as he mentioned it, I thought it likely. The urge to phone George, or more likely Lizzie, would explain Poppy’s haste to get me out of the flat. “He’d have been at work. I doubt she knew his number.”
“But his sister would have known and she and your cousin are good friends. He left his place of work roughly two hours before you called Lastings. Because you delayed that call, Armitage was warned and had time to slip away.”
“I was prevented,” I said, touching the bandage on my throat. I had downplayed the incident with Nan; I gave my uncle and the inspector a much more dramatic account.
But Inspector Davis proved as heartless as my uncle and equally unreasonable. He was unalterably opposed to civilians in any investigation, but when I heartily agreed, he pulled a sour face and said the least I could do was to help retrieve the situation.
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. I liked the plan they’d concocted even less. Basically, I was to be the goat while they played Great White Hunter. I flatly refused.
“Too bad about your friends,” the inspector said.
I looked at him.
“The Mendelssohns.”
“Davis here is Special Branch. Were he to suggest that the Mendelssohns are a security risk, your deal would be off,” Uncle Lastings said and added, “Don’t think even Clarice Fallowfield could buck that,” in a tone that told me how much he’d disliked the arrangement.
“And here I’d assumed I was immune to blackmail,” I said, but they were too shameless to take offense. One really is in Oscar Wilde territory when one’s virtues are more dangerous than one’s vices! We went back and forth for a while, but it was clear that in protecting Poppy, I’d put Muriel and her husband in real danger. “All right,” I said finally, “but I must leave a note for Nan.”
They didn’t like this, either, and started on about security and discretion.
“If Nan comes back and I’ve disappeared, she’ll call the police, the papers, and the lord mayor of London,” I said and saw my uncle give Davis a slight nod. They looked over my shoulder as I wrote that Uncle Lastings and a colleague had asked for my assistance. I’m not sure how long I’ll be, but don’t worry, I concluded.
“Right,” said Uncle Lastings. “Into the breach!”
Beware of my uncle’s enthusiasm, especially when he adds military metaphors. “Exactly where are we going?”
Inspector Davis shook his head. I reluctantly locked the studio and followed them to a waiting car. My heart sank as we turned south into the green and pleasant countryside. Now that I was trapped, Inspector Davis unfolded the details. They were worse than I’d feared. Not only was I supposed to be peddling the very documents that were now safe in the hands of His Majesty’s government, but I was to do this at a little party at Larkin Manor.
“Surely you’re joking! Rinaldi has tried to get the material twice by force and once by purchase. Why now? It must be obvious to him that any meeting with me will be a trap.”
“Rinaldi,” Inspector Davis said with a sniff, “has diplomatic immunity. The most we could do would be to have him sent home, and that is not necessarily in our interest.”
“The devil you know,” suggested my helpful uncle.
“So Tollman and Grove,” I said. “The sex photos, yes, I can see that. If we’re right that’s Tollman in one, he’d maybe pay for it. But Grove? What’s his interest?”
“Same as Freddie’s, we think,” Davis said. “Leverage to get information.”
“But George has disappeared.”
“They don’t know that yet, hence o
ur haste.”
“Too much for my taste. Grove and Tollman must still be suspicious.”
“We’re counting on them being nervous. The major has handled the matter very well. He’s let them know that you’ll be down for a little historical recreation.” The inspector made it sound perverse and gave me a sly look. “Quite plausible, actually. He’s started a dig just beyond the Norman tower and has unearthed postholes or pots or oyster shells. Great excitement, and you are thrilled beyond measure. Remember that.”
It sounded worse than antique brasses and Jacobean furnishings.
“He let it slip at his club that you’d be coming down.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “you were setting this up even before George Armitage did a runner.”
“There is still the matter of Bosworth’s murder,” Inspector Davis said calmly. “Anyway, they were both charmed with you—or so they said.” He looked dubious. “And they asked to be included in the party when you arrived.”
“They are dropping everything midweek to be charmed by my company?”
“They are clearly after something,” said my uncle. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out two little packets. “Copies of all the negatives.”
“Except for the document,” Davis added. “We faked something up, because we can’t risk the real thing.”
“Hide these carefully. One or both may want to avoid paying.”
I asked him what he thought they were worth. “Rinaldi wanted to give me a hundred pounds for everything.”
“He’d have gotten promoted for sure with that deal,” said Davis. “But a hundred pounds for the sex photos? A nice round number, I think.”
“We don’t know who else is in them, do we?”
“That’s something we’re hoping you can find out,” said my uncle.
What a nice tête-à-tête that would be! But irrelevant. “George is the important one. If he’s the one who got Freddie the material about Chain Home—”
“Don’t even mention that name,” Inspector Davis warned.
“My point is that George’ll have the information right in his head.”
“The precise reason we need to find him before the Italians or someone else does. If he agrees to work with a foreign power, we lose the advantage of the project. If he refuses, they’ll kill him to be sure the project is delayed. They profit either way.”
Poor Lizzie, I thought. “He’s really that important?”
“The man’s a bloody genius,” said the inspector. “A bloody genius blackmail-courting poofter.”
I shrugged. “He wouldn’t have been blackmailed if His Majesty’s government was more enlightened. We could have had more plays by Oscar Wilde, too.”
Clearly Inspector Davis was not a theater fan. “There’s danger and then there’s danger,” said the inspector. “He’ll be lucky to escape alive.”
“So why are we fooling about with a furniture magnate and a probably dodgy financier?”
“They are committed fascists,” Uncle Lastings said. “We know they are in touch with the Italians. They may know where Armitage would hide. Or they might be acting as go-betweens.”
The inspector nodded. “If Armitage tries to leave the country, we have a good chance of intercepting him. But if he’s gone to ground here, Tollman and Grove may be our best hope.”
Talk about the artistic imagination! Their whole plan rested on assumptions and hope. Worse, I suspected that they had other agendas yet to be revealed, and I was not in a happy mood when we pulled into the station one stop north of the manor’s. “We can’t drive you to the door,” Inspector Davis said, “but don’t try to leave the train or to continue on to the coast. If you are not at Larkin Manor within the hour, I’ll see that both Mendelssohns are detained, preliminary to deportation. You can count on it.”
My uncle gave me a return train ticket and handed me a valise.
“What’s in here?”
“Dinner clothes. And an informal kit for your work on the dig. I’ve assured Major Larkin that you can’t wait to get your hands dirty.”
We were standing behind the open trunk of the car. “Can I trust him?” I asked too quietly for Davis to hear.
For the first time, my uncle seemed uncertain. “I believe he’s loyal,” he said, “but safest to trust no one entirely.”
I thought that must be my motto. A quarter of an hour later, I stepped off the train. Larkin Manor was a mile and a half away by road, less by the farm lanes. With no sign of a cab, I decided to defy fate and take Freddie’s route to the manor. I climbed a bar way off the main road, skirted a harvested wheat field, and reached a network of footpaths and farm tracks. Within ten minutes, I spotted the rubble and ruin of the tower, and, behind it just visible through the trees, the complicated roofs of the manor itself. I must be in better shape than I’d imagined. Or, more plausibly, Freddie must have had more time around the manor than we’d figured.
I wondered how long he’d been lurking behind the house before he was killed. And how many people he’d managed to see, because I didn’t really credit all those alibis. With good questions without obvious answers, I was almost glad to be distracted by the sound of metal hitting earth. The dig, no doubt. Perhaps my asthma would play up and I could be excused.
I rounded the brushy corner of the base of the tower. Between it and the stables was a quite level stretch of ground. I learned to ride a pony there, Poppy had said. Now it was set off by stakes and ropes. A burly fellow with a muscular backside was swinging a pickax under the major’s direction, and when he turned at my greeting, I recognized the agreeable Jenkins. A possible glimmer of light in the rural darkness!
“Walked from the station, did you? You might have called for Thorne,” the major said.
“It was no bother; I took a shortcut.” In fact, the country air was already causing me to wheeze gently. I hoped the major would notice, but he immediately launched into the implications of his find. “A kitchen midden.”
When I looked blank, he added, “We won’t find the glamorous stuff. No, no. But the essentials of life in a remote stronghold. Meat and drink, wouldn’t you think, for the National Trust?” I detected a faint note of desperation. Perhaps the National Trust had been less than enthusiastic about opening its purse. “There are fancier places, more distinguished architecture, I admit that,” the major continued, “but here we have the whole history, even bones and pots and broken tools. Look at this.” He held out a shard of pottery. “Recognize this?”
It was a lumpy grayish-green something. I turned it first one way and then the other. “Looks like a piece of an egg cup.”
The major laughed. “Same shape, that’s right, but it’s a lamp. Eleventh century. Maybe even tenth. Jenkins here always goes for the earlier date.”
Jenkins had stopped work to lean on his pickax, and he held out his hand for the lamp fragment. I was interested in how carefully he examined the piece. “All handmade,” he said to me. “No potter’s wheel back then.”
“Amazingly primitive,” agreed the major, and the two of them stood with their heads together studying the brittle remains of some long-ago housemaid’s breakage. “I’m sure you can see the importance,” he said to me finally. “But go change. I know you’ll want to get some time in on the dig.”
I paid my respects to the butler and to the housekeeper, who said that Lady Larkin was unavailable. In my room, I looked for a likely hiding place for the negatives, but every possibility seemed vulnerable even to a lazy chambermaid, never mind a dedicated searcher. Finally, I stuck them in the pockets of the caramel-colored corduroy pants my uncle had mysteriously chosen for the dig and went off for some historical recreation.
The major and Jenkins were deep in the newly excavated ditch. They had pinned a tape measure to the cut, and while Jenkins read off the depths of the different layers, the major wrote them down in a n
otebook. Presently, he sent me to the stable for a pail of water and, when I returned, set me to washing the finds of the day, the homeliest assortment of broken crockery imaginable.
We worked until the light started to go and Jenkins announced, with what seemed amazingly like regret, that he was needed for the dinner preparations. “The guests arrive on the 7:06,” he reminded the major.
Major Larkin stuck a marker into the last recorded layer and told Jenkins to carry on. When he was halfway to the house, the major set his notebook alongside my collection of drying pottery and got down to business. “You’ve been briefed by Davis?”
“Up to a point. A good deal seems to be left to improvisation.”
“The key thing,” the major said, “is that all conversations of a personal nature should take place in the billiard room.” He raised his eyebrows to see if I understood.
“Right.” So Davis or my uncle or the major would be listening on some obscure connection. Cloak-and-dagger stuff—but reassuring in a way.
“That’s it then. See what you can elicit from Grove and Tollman.”
“Do you think they killed Freddie?”
“If they did, they didn’t gain much, did they?” He took out his pipe, fiddled with the tobacco for a moment, then lit it. “I suspect they wanted to, but they’re amateurs.”
He spoke in such a cool and reflective way that I wondered exactly what he was. A nice old architecture buff, the henpecked husband of a rich and politically ambitious wife? Or a cold ex-intelligence officer with a loyal batman and the experience to distinguish between amateur and professional homicide? I decided that the sooner I could stop washing pots and unload those duplicate negatives, the better.
But first dinner. Or, rather, first, a stroll about the manor to find a place for the negatives. Perhaps, as Nan maintains, honest labor clears the mind, because as soon as I entered the main hall, I spotted the major’s pride and joy, that elegant and insalubrious pioneer WC at Larkin Manor. Confident that no one was around, I slipped inside. Attar of ancient drains. A big tiled basin. Lovely decorative tiles on the walls. I hoped for a loose one, but finally I climbed onto the fine mahogany seat of the toilet and tucked the little packet with the faux document negatives behind the plate of the flushing mechanism. I decided to keep Freddie’s action shots in my pocket. I eased the door open and returned unseen to my room to await the dinner gong.